Fractured by N.O Darling

Chapter 303

** Deacon's POV **

The minutes tick by at a snail's pace as every inch of the underground network is uncovered.

Only the section my bond group had been in had collapsed, or more likely, had been purposely destroyed. We

only find one more teen, who was not buried but had been trapped in one of the small cut-out rooms by the

collapsed earth.

“There's no one else down there,” one of the guys with a molecular gift I'd brought in calls over to us.

“There is! Keep looking!” Josie demands as she moves more earth, going way beyond the original tunnels.

The guy looks atand | give him a subtle nod to stop searching. It's clear that Luke is not here, now | just have

to convince Josie of that too.

| slowly approach Josie, with Axel and Theo beside me, and Mason starts making his way towards us from where

he had been searching.

“Josie...” | start.

“Takedown there,” she demands, cuttingoff.

“He’s not there, Josie, I'm sorry. Let's get back to headquarters and cup with a plan to find him,” | say

cautiously, knowing she is right on the edge of how much she can take.

We had only just got Harper back, and only spent a few minutes with her before we chere to deal with this

mess, and now we are already thrown into yet another crisis, another person we love taken from us.

“Either portdown there, or I'll jump, | can make it,” she threatens.

| look down into the pit in the ground. She could make it, she'd possibly break her ankles, but she would survive

it

“Just take us down there, D, she isn’t going to rest until she sees for herself he is not there,” Mason says, and |

nod before porting us all back down into what used to be tunnels.

Josie shifts into her wolf in an instant and Axel joins her, shifting to his huge wolf too. The pair begin sniffing

around as the rest of us watch. I'm not sure what they think they will achieve by doing this. If they do pick up

Luke's scent, there's no way to say it was from when the place caved in or just minutes before, when he was

here searching with us, or posing as a rogue not long before that

| try to reach out to Luke through the bond again, but there's nothing. Just an empty void where | should feel hin

My heart rate begins to pick up, and I look over to Josie’s wolf as she focuses on something in what remains of

one of the bedrooms. She paws at a blanket on the ground and then lets out a yip. Axel lies on the ground beside

her with a whine.

“What is it?” Theo asks as we walk towards them.

“A syringe, and whatever was in it smells toxic. | don’t like how this looks,” Axel responds in the mind link.

| look down at the object and, sure enough, there is a syringe with a needle attached to the end. It looks empty,

but there must be a trace amount of whatever its contents were still inside the actual needle.

“No one touch it,” | say, even though | know none of them would.

| pull out my phone to call Raff to let him know what Josie Has found, and he tellshe is already getting a

Chapter 303

forensics team together and to wait for him to get there before we move.

“What does it smell like?” Mason asks.

“I don’t know. It's nothing | have ever smelt before, but it’s acrid,” Axel says, shifting back to his human form. ”

There's also a faint scent of Luke here,” he adds as Josie continues to sniff around the area.

“So are we thinking Luke was injected with whatever is in the syringe and taken?” Theo asks.

“That or he is Tristan and history is repeating itself,” Mason growls, his fists clenching as he speaks the words |

hadn't dared to.

Josie shifts back to her human form so fast that | barely register it has happened before she shoves Mason in the

chest. “Don’t you fucking dare!” She hisses.

“Why not? Do you want us just to pretend it’s not a possibility? That he wouldn't do such a thing? Because news

flash, one of us already did before,” Mason snaps back at her.

“Luke has been taken. Even if he was a traitor, which he isn’t, he’s had plenty of opportunities to betray us

before now. All of us have, and yet we are all still here, together. So don’t even hint that it's even remotely

possible; we are a solid group. Luke did not betray us!” Josie shouts.

“Arguing about it is not going to solve anything, let's all just calm down and go through all the potential

scenarios with logical reasoning rather than feelings,” | say, trying to stop this before it escalates.

“Deacon is right, we should be pulling together right now, not trying to rip out each other's throats,” Theo sighs.

Raff calls down to us from the surface at that moment and informs us they're coming in. Josie and Mason

continue to have a silent stare-off until Raff asks where the syringe is and Josie turns away to show him.

“Okay, we will take it from here. You might want to get back and talk to the last kids Luke brought in. They may

have seen or heard something,” Raff suggests.

“Fine,” Josie nods, taking one last look at the tunnels before coming over toto port out.

| port us all back to the room where Harper, Dillon and Archie are busy reassuring the kids we had saved. Most of

them are calm, but a few are not willing to accept that this is in fact a rescue and not a kidnapping.

All eyes shift to us when they notice our arrival and Harper gasps before running over to us.

“I can’t believe they tried to bury you alive. Did you get everyone out?” she asks.

“The tunnels have been emptied, there's no one left buried!” | reassure her, not sure what we are going to tell

her about Luke.

“I know it's been a traumatic day for sof you, but one of my bonds has been taken from the tunnels when

they collapsed. Someone must know something and | need any information you can giveto help find him,”

Josie calls out loudly to the room and Harper lets out a pained sound as her eyes quickly scan over each of us to

work out which of her dads is missing.

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