Chapter 31: An Empty House

The manor was too quiet. It was most of the time, but this time the silence felt too loud.

Marcel stepped through the front entrance and felt the absence immediately, not the ordinary stillness of a vampire residence at night, but something emptier. The usual low hum of presence, of servants moving at a respectful distance, of his brother’s restless energy somewhere in the eastern wing, was gone. The air itself felt hollow.

He did not call out at first. He simply walked upstairs, coat still on, and went directly to the private suite he had given Asher.

The doors stood open. The bed was neatly made. Asher’s scent lingered, warm, human, threaded with the faint metallic note of the claim ring and the deeper imprint of Marcel’s own blood from the nights before. But the room itself was empty. No heartbeat, no soft shift of breath. Nothing.

Marcel didn’t panic, as long as the human was within these walls, he was certain that he was safe. All he needed to do was simply find him.

"Asher." Marcel called out in a loud, but not too loud voice. He waited two seconds, expecting a response or some sort of movement. But none of that happened.

Marcel stood in the center of the room for a long moment, black eyes moving over every surface. The clothes Asher had worn earlier were gone. There was no sign of a struggle. Only absence.

He turned and walked the length of the corridor to the eastern wing. Adrian certainly loved taking the human on exploration trips, perhaps they were in his younger brother’s room. They weren’t.

Adrian’s rooms were in the same state — undisturbed, empty, and wrong. The bed had not been slept in. The wardrobe stood open as if someone had taken a coat in a hurry. Marcel’s gaze lingered on the space where his brother’s preferred jacket usually hung, and a cold, precise understanding settled over him.

Adrian had taken Asher.

The realization did not arrive with panic. His younger brother had always been reckless, always too willing to indulge a human’s request if it amused him or if it offered a chance to needle Marcel. Asher, still shaken by the coffins and the weight of everything that had happened, would have asked. Adrian would have said yes, and he would have done so just to spite his elder brother.

Marcel descended the stairs without hurry and crossed the courtyard to the private garage. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions yet, they could have simply gone out for a night walk for all he knew, after all it did get lonely inside the manor. And for a human who had just seen coffins of his love interest’s exes, loneliness might be a bit overwhelming.

Marcel stood to be corrected the moment he reached the garage. Adrian’s car was missing, and that was the final piece he needed to confirm his suspicions.

"Son of a bitch," Marcel said softly to the empty space where the vehicle should have been.

He did not waste time returning to the house for explanations or servants’ reports. He already knew enough. He slid behind the wheel of his own black car, the engine coming to life with a low, predatory purr, and drove out through the gates into the night.

The road unspooled beneath the tires in a dark ribbon. Marcel drove with both hands on the wheel and his senses stretched wide, searching for any trace of Asher or Adrian’s familiar presence. Miles passed. The ordered forests of vampire territory began to thin into wilder land.

Then he saw the wreckage.

Adrian’s car sat half on the road and half in the ditch, a ruined shell of twisted metal and shattered glass. Marcel brought his own vehicle to a stop and stepped out into the cold air. The smell hit him first — wolf musk, spilled blood, the copper-bright scent of his brother’s injuries, and underneath it all the fainter, unmistakable thread of Asher.

Claw marks raked the exterior from every angle. The roof had been torn open. The passenger door hung at a broken angle. Dark blood, some of it vampire, some of it wolf, painted the road and the surrounding grass in wide, violent arcs. Chunks of fur and viscera clung to the undercarriage and lay scattered across the asphalt. The fight had been brutal and one-sided in its intensity.

Marcel walked the perimeter of the wreck in silence. He found no bodies.

No cooling corpses of either Asher or Adrian. The amount of blood suggested serious injury, particularly to Adrian, but the absence of remains meant they had been taken alive. Wolves did not leave valuable captives on the roadside.

Marcel crouched beside a particularly deep set of claw gouges in the driver’s side panel and touched two fingers to a smear of dried blood that was unmistakably his brother’s. The residual energy in it confirmed what he already knew: Adrian had fought hard, and he had lost.

He rose slowly.

The why did not matter. Whether the wolves had targeted Asher for his gift, for his blood, or for some older grudge involving Adrian was irrelevant. They had put hands on what belonged to him. They had taken his brother and the human Marcel had already decided was not temporary.

Marcel returned to his car, closed the door with quiet precision, and turned the vehicle toward the nearest known wolf territory. The engine’s growl deepened as he accelerated. Trees blurred past on either side of the road. The night air pouring through the vents carried the distant, telltale scent of pack lands ahead.

He did not know yet which Alpha had ordered the attack, but he would find out soon enough.

And if the reason was not substantial enough to justify touching his mate and his younger brother, Marcel Thorne intended to make certain the lesson was permanent. The wolves would learn thoroughly, and without the possibility of misunderstanding, that there were things in this world they were not permitted to claim.