Chapter Five – Airport Chaos
Chapter Five-Airport Chaos
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Thorne’s POV
The sheets were cold.
Thorne knew before he opened his eyes that she was gone.
“Elara?” His voice rasped the empty room. No answer.
Only silence answered.
His chest constricted, an ache so sharp it nearly stole his breath. He didn’t need anyone to tell him what it meant
his wolf already knew. The bond had
snapped into place last night with terrifying certainty.
He had found her.
His mate.
And now she was gone.
She’d slipped through his fingers like smoke, leaving nothing but the echo of her name on his lips.
“Elara,” he whispered again, a vow and a plea all at once.
He launched from the bed, the wolf inside him already snarling. Her scent lingered – sweet and sharp, burned into his lungs – but the trail was faint, fading fast. Clothes gone. Bag gone. No note. Nothing.
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Chapter Five Airport Chaos
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His chest constricted, claws scraping against his ribs from the inside. He had found her. His mate. After years of wondering if fate had passed him by – she was here, real, undeniable. And now she was gone.
He stormed out into the hallway, golden eyes blazing. Staff froze in their tracks as he descended on the concierge desk, his aura crackling like a storm.
“The woman,” he demanded. “Where did she go?”
The concierge nearly fumbled the register in his hands. “She-she left, monsieur. Very early. Around dawn.”
“Did she check out?”
The man swallowed hard. “N-no, Alpha. The suite is under your name. There was… nothing to process.”
Thorne’s jaw flexed, fury simmering in his chest. No note. No number. No
she had erased herself. trace. She hadn’t just left
—
Julian Renard appeared at his shoulder, as unruffled as ever, though his eyes were sharp. “Looks like your mystery girl slipped out without a sound,” he said, his tone almost amused.
Thorne rounded on him, his voice a growl. “Not a mystery. My mate.”
For once, Julian’s easy smirk faltered.
But Thorne was already moving again, snapping orders into his phone. “Track the airports. The trains. The bus stations. I want eyes everywhere. Sweep CCTV feeds. She couldn’t have gotten far.”
“Yes, Alpha,” came the swift replies.
Still, every second stretched like a blade against his skin. She was already
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Chapter Five – Airport Chaos
gone, disappearing into the veins of Paris.
He clenched his fists, the wolf inside him clawing to break free.
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“Elara,” he murmured, voice low and lethal, a vow carried into the empty air.
“I will find you. No matter how long it takes.”
Elara’s POV
The second I stumbled into Charles de Gaulle, the place seemed louder, brighter, and far too judgmental. My bag wobbled dangerously on its squeaky wheel, my blouse clung where sweat dampened it, and my curls were-let’s just say Paris humidity had staged a coup on my head.
But worse than that was my phone.
It buzzed so violently in my pocket I half-expected smoke to start pouring out. Groaning, I fished it out and unlocked the screen.
Cassia. Dozens of messages stacked on top of each other like a digital wall of doom.
Cassia: WHERE ARE YOU.
Cassia: You’re not answering. Suspicious.
Cassia: If you died, I’m gonna be so mad.
Cassia: Wait. You didn’t DIE. You HOOKED UP.
Cassia: That’s it, isn’t it? OHHH.
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Cassia: Tell me you didn’t just ditch me for a Parisian fling. Actually, no, tell me everything.
Cassia: If you don’t respond in 3 mins, I’m calling your mom.
Attached: an aggressively unflattering selfie of Cassia fake-crying with mascara streaks drawn on her face in eyeliner.
I stuffed the phone back in my pocket like it was radioactive. “I hate her,” I muttered.
Unfortunately, the universe had no mercy.
Because there she was.
Cassia Valemont — my cousin, my best friend, my personal chaos incarnate – stood at the gate like she was the star of a drama. Blonde bun perched high, oversized sunglasses covering half her face, and a scarf so long it could double as a noose. Her arms were crossed, her boot tapped a menacing beat, and the second she spotted me, her mouth dropped into a triumphant O.
“Elara Quinn,” she boomed, loud enough for the entire gate to hear, “do you
know what TIME it is?”
I winced. “Hi, Cass.”
“Hi, Cass?”” she repeated, scandalized. “Hi, Cass?!’ Do you have any idea how worried I was? I sent you fifty-three texts, two voice notes, and a very moving obituary draft. I was about to commission your headstone!”
“I overslept,” I muttered, dragging my suitcase toward the line.
Cassia gasped like I’d insulted the moon goddess. “Lies.”
“It’s not-”
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“Oh, it IS.” She whipped off her sunglasses, narrowing her eyes at me. “Because oversleeping is drool and mismatched socks. Oversleeping is not—” she circled me with a finger, “-the I just spent the night with Mr.
Tall-Dark-and-Holy-Hell’ glow.”
Heat flamed my cheeks. “Cassia-”
“Oh my goddess.” Her grin widened, evil and gleeful. “It was him, wasn’t it? The broody guy at the bar. The one with shoulders so wide they should’ve had their own zip code.”
My stomach dropped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I absolutely do,” she said smugly, fanning herself with her boarding pass. “I told you he was looking at you like you were dessert. And now you’re glowing like a crème brûlée someone set on fire.”
I groaned. “It was nothing. Just… one night.”
Cassia froze for exactly two beats. Then burst out laughing so loudly the elderly woman across the aisle startled. “One night?! You absolute minx! Elara Quinn, who spent college dodging dates, just had a one-night stand with a man who looked like a fallen god?”
I shoved her forward as the line moved, praying the ground would swallow me whole. “Can we not broadcast this to the entire airport?”
“Oh no,” she whispered fiercely, looping her arm with mine. “I saw him. That man was dangerous, Elara. The broody ones always are. And mark my words- one night with a man like that is never just one night.”
By the time we were on the plane, Cassia was still buzzing like she’d downed three espressos, while I pressed my forehead to the cold window, begging my face to cool down.
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Cassia leaned smugly back, sipping her juice like royalty. “So. Tall, dangerous, and now officially your international fling. Goddess, I live for this.”
I closed my eyes, but her words rang in my ears like a curse.
Just one night, I told myself again. That’s all it was.
米米米
Elara’s POV
The turbulence hit an hour into the flight, shaking the overhead bins and rattling my drink until ginger ale sloshed over the rim of its flimsy plastic cup. My stomach lurched, and I gripped the armrest so hard my knuckles went white.
Beside me, Cassia peered over her oversized sunglasses like a detective sniffing out a scandal. “Well, well, well.”
“Don’t start,” I muttered, clamping my eyes shut against another jolt.
“You’re green.”
“It’s turbulence.”
“Mm-hm.” She tapped her chin with mock thoughtfulness. “Or-you’re pregnant.”
I nearly choked on my own tongue. “WHAT?!”
The businessman across the aisle glanced at us, then angled his newspaper higher like a shield.
Cassia’s grin turned shark-like. “I knew it. Paris fling, mysterious man, and now
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nausea. Textbook!”
“Cassia!” I hissed, swatting her arm.
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She leaned closer, stage-whispering just loud enough for the row behind us to hear, “Aunt Cassia has a nice ring to it.”
Heat exploded in my cheeks. “I am not pregnant.”
“Sure you’re not.” She smirked, opening the packet of peanuts like she had all the evidence she needed. “Step one: you glow. Step two: you look guilty. Step three: turbulence makes you sick. Case closed.”
I shoved the sad little plastic snack pack at her. “Eat something and stop talking.”
She took it, but the smirk never left her face.
Over the next week, Cassia and I tore through Europe like fugitives from responsibility.
In Madrid, she dared me into a flamenco bar, insisting we could “blend in.” The moment I stepped onto the stage, my heel caught the hem of my skirt, nearly sending me sprawling into a guitarist. Cassia clapped like I’d just won an Olympic medal.
“You’re a natural!” she yelled.
“I almost murdered a man with my shoe!”
“That’s art, Elara!”
She then launched herself onto the floor, scarf flying like a battle flag, and proceeded to whirl so violently that one poor tourist’s drink went sailing. The bartender kicked us out, but Cassia bowed on her way to the door like she’d just
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finished Swan Lake.
:
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Later, we sat on the curb, eating greasy churros wrapped in paper. Cinnamon sugar dusted my fingers, and Cassia licked hers dramatically, sighing. “I could survive on this. Just churros and patatas bravas. Forget men, forget wolves, give
me carbs.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’d get scurvy in a month.”
“Worth it.”
Lisbon was no better.
–
Cassia insisted we buy “travel hats” from a street vendor – hers a wide-brimmed monstrosity that made her look like a dramatic widow from a telenovela, mine a floppy straw thing that flopped so far it obscured my view.
“You look adorable,” she declared, snapping a dozen photos.
“I look like I’m hiding from paparazzi.”
“That’s the vibe! Mysterious, tragic, Parisian secret affair!”
I glared at her. “Cassia…”
“Oh, relax, I won’t say his name. Except you never gave me his name.” Her eyes narrowed, gleaming with mischief. “Why is that, Elara?”
“Because it doesn’t matter,” I said quickly, ducking into a bookshop before she could press further.
The bookshop was dusty, crowded, and smelled like heaven. I immediately buried myself in the back shelves while Cassia wandered off. Five minutes later, I found her standing in the poetry section, pretending to recite in dramatic tones while three local students stared in horror.
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“Oh, the agony of churros lost,” she intoned, one hand on her chest. “The sorrow of sangria gone stale-”
“Cassia!” I yanked her away, mortified, but she doubled over laughing.
That night, she dragged me into a fado club. The music was raw and aching, the singer’s voice slicing through the air like glass. Cassia, of course, decided to join in. Her attempt was so off-key that the entire table beside us grimaced in
unison.
The locals clapped politely, clearly out of pity, and I nearly slid under the table from secondhand embarrassment.
“See?” she crowed, bowing with a flourish. “They loved me.”
“Pity applause is not love.”
“It still counts.”
By the end of the trip, we’d taken enough selfies to fill an album we jokingly titled Two Idiots Abroad.
One picture showed me tripping on Lisbon’s hills while Cassia posed like a runway model. Another caught her mid-bite of a tapa, eyes wide, while I tried to swat her hand out of the frame.
We laughed until we cried, argued over Google Maps directions until we got hopelessly lost, and made up again over late-night gelato.
It was chaos. It was comfort.
And every time my thoughts drifted back to Paris, to him, I buried them under churros, sangria, and Cassia’s endless commentary.
Just one night, I told myself. That’s all it was. Just one night.
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But even as I repeated it, my chest ached with something I didn’t have the
courage to name.
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