Fangless: The Alpha's Vampire Mate
Chapter 213: Red Crystals and Broken Hearts

Chapter 213: Red Crystals and Broken Hearts

"What? Your brother?" Vesper’s eyes widened, panic flickering across his battered face.

"What’s going on, Riona? Did something happen to Florian?" Thorin dropped the battle without a second thought like it was some mildly inconvenient chore he could revisit later.

But Riona wasn’t listening to Thorin—or anyone else, for that matter. Her fiery glare locked onto Vesper, and she grabbed him by the collar again, shaking him like a rag doll. "Where is he?! Where the hell did you send him?"

"What the—? How the hell should I know?" Vesper sputtered, his voice strained, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "I’m not his babysitter!"

"Don’t you dare start bullshitting me!" she snapped, her grip tightening. "I know you know! They said you were the one who stuffed them all in Thorin’s office. So where is my brother, Vesper? Where. Did. You. Dump. Him?"

"Hey! He’s telling the truth!" Morgan suddenly butted in, flapping her arms like a distressed seagull. Her dramatic tone and wild gesturing were almost impressive, if not utterly irritating.

Riona’s head snapped toward Morgan, her restraint hanging by a thread. It took every ounce of willpower not to lunge at her and force that drama queen to spill whatever she was hiding. Instead, her glare sharpened like a blade.

"Oh, don’t you worry, Morgan. Your turn’s coming next."

Riona turned back to Vesper, shaking him like a rag doll. "Cut the crap and tell me—where is Florian?!"

"He wasn’t even there when we checked Thorin’s office!" Morgan blurted out, her voice shrill and unconvincing.

Riona turned to the side, eyeing Morgan with suspicions, but Morgan was telling the truth.

Morgan realized that saving Vesper meant throwing herself into the fray before Riona or Thorin decided she was next on the list. So, she shifted tactics to damage control mode, hoping to douse Riona’s temper.

"We thought he had gone to follow you," Morgan said.

Of course, this was a lie—Morgan and Vesper had both convinced themselves that Florian had bolted like a coward, abandoning his sister without so much as a backward glance.

"He didn’t," Riona muttered, her voice low and dangerous, more to herself than anyone else.

Her mind whirled with grim possibilities. Had the Zachs’s knights gotten to Florian?

But that didn’t make sense. If Florian had tried to rescue her, they’d have crossed paths. And why would he play lone wolf when Trudy’s group was right there? The whole thing stank of something being seriously wrong.

Frustrated, Riona shoved Vesper back onto the sand. Turning to Thorin and Puck, she demanded, "Have either of you seen him?"

Morgan darted to Vesper’s side, trying to help him up. He waved her off, opting to lie there like the world’s saddest doormat. A dramatic choice, but considering his bruises, not entirely unjustified.

"No. Not since we left," Thorin said.

Puck nudged him, jerking his head toward Vesper. "So, what’s the plan for him?"

Thorin barely spared Vesper a glance, the kind of dismissive look you’d give a bug that wasn’t even worth squashing. "Leave him. He’s done here. He’s no longer welcome in Wintertooth."

Thorin might as well have stamped exiled on Vesper’s forehead. Vesper, for his part, looked surprisingly relieved. Breathing was better than the alternative, even if it came with total humiliation. He didn’t know he would fear death that much.

Still, it wasn’t like he could just bounce up and strut off.

For one, his whole body felt like it had been thrown into a blender. For another, the sheer humiliation would be unbearable. No, slipping away quietly when nobody was looking seemed like the smarter move.

Unfortunately, fate—or perhaps karma—wasn’t going to let him off that easily. The middle-aged woman who’d been the third witness to the Trial of Claim stormed over, her face washed with relief.

"Why are you still here?" she whispered while glancing around. "You should leave now. Hurry! Before the Alpha changes his mind."

Fortunately for Vesper, he had achieved the incredible feat of being so irrelevant that no one even bothered to notice his dramatic groaning.

As the middle-aged woman and Morgan hauled him up and awkwardly shuffled him out of Wintertooth, it looked less like an injured man’s retreat and more like a second-rate circus act nobody paid to watch.

Not one head turned. Congratulations, Vesper—you were officially invisible.

"Alright, let’s cool it for now," Thorin said, his voice calm but firm as he draped an arm around Riona, gently steering her away from the beach. "We’ll help you look for him, okay? He wouldn’t have gotten far—not with that red cuff on his wrist."

Thorin immediately organized a search party, assigning people to scour the area and ask around for any sign of Florian. Meanwhile, Puck, the tracking expert, sprang into action.

It didn’t take long for Puck to return with news, but of course, it wasn’t good—because why would anything go Riona’s way? With a grim face that screamed brace yourself, he said, "I found traces of him."

"And?" Riona pressed, stepping forward instinctively, her whole body tense. Thorin stood beside her, just as eager to hear the answer.

"It looks like he left on his own." Puck held up shards of a familiar crystallized red aura. "I found these in the forest."

He pointed in a direction that was very not toward the Zacharia castle.

The pieces fell into place—and crushed her along the way. Florian hadn’t been trying to follow her. He’d been heading somewhere else entirely. Her mind snapped back to their last conversation, the one where he’d casually dropped the bombshell about wanting to return to Eira.

"He left me... behind," she whispered, her voice trembling as tears rolled down her cheeks.

But sadness quickly gave way to fury. With her fists clenched, she stormed into the center of the residential area, where werewolves were busy rebuilding their homes.

Riona glared at the first unfortunate group she spotted. "This is YOUR fault!" she shouted. "You drove him away! With your judgmental stares and your mocking attitudes. If you hadn’t treated us like some kind of infection, none of this would have happened!"

Even as the words left her mouth, she knew deep down it wasn’t true. Florian had been changing right after they stepped out of Eira, and no amount of kindness would have stopped it.

Consumed by emotion, she ran into the forest, leaving Thorin and Puck behind. Thorin made a move to follow, but Puck placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Let her go," he said softly. "She needs time to process this."

Alone in the woods, Riona didn’t sit around and cry—she fought back. She wasn’t the type to wallow in her feelings. Whether it was disappointment, sadness, or betrayal, she always dealt with it the same way: by getting angry.

Her fists pounded against the trees, each hit a release for the frustration boiling inside her. But no matter how hard she hit, it didn’t feel like enough. As her anger grew, something inside her snapped—her Blood Moon power surged, and before she knew it, the entire forest erupted in flames.

She watched in shock as the fire spread. "No... Did I really just burn down Wintertooth?"

Then, out of nowhere, came a voice. One she hadn’t heard in ages.

"Kid. It’s me," came a voice she hadn’t heard in what felt like forever.

Riona froze mid-punch. "Ancestor?" she asked, blinking in disbelief.

"I’m sorry."