Matthias's POV

The three leaders had commanded the cursed fighters to be forthcoming and they were. They had been questioned at length by a number of pack members and we knew much about where and how the eastern forces trained their packs.

The most aggravating detail was how secretive the king was in his location. We could surmise his base was probably in Southern Ontario or Quebec, which told us very little. It was a population dense part of Canada and rather surprising that the leader of a pack of werewolves would choose to remain amongst so many humans when there was so much uninhabited land in other parts of the country.

If the thralls even knew what they were talking about. Most of them had never even seen the eastern king.

Our newest thrall, the one that had been captured the night Elise had been taken, had imparted the most important information, because he was ranked more highly than the others. He spoke of rumours how the king punished dissidence harshly.

It was enough to send fear rushing through me about Elise's safety at his hands, but not enough to truly help us get her back.

My hope that the prisoners might have some important information they were holding back was dashed.

I felt guilt when I looked at the damage I had done to the bastard's thrall, and all for nothing. I pushed it aside, for the time being.

It was not until Friday that we finally that we had our breakthrough and it had nothing to do with the prisoners.

I had begun helping Nick at the offices again, because when I was not searching for some non-existent clue in Mark and Fenton's records, I was stalking around and making everyone uneasy. My family's patience with my short fuse was waning, and I could not take any more idleness.

"Matt!" Nick roared from his private office.

I leapt to my feet and rushed down the hall, instantly on alert.

Nick's door was open and he was standing beside his desk, still wearing his jacket.

I scanned the room, but nothing seemed to be out of place.

Nick pushed a button on his phone.

Elise's recorded voice played back at us, telling us she was alive and where she thought she might be.

"Elise."

I had known she must be alive, but the relief at the confirmation almost overwhelmed me. Even better, her voice had been steady and determined. I had feared that her time away from him would be as bad as all the times when the bastard had left her to fight.

My determined Elise was fighting. My lips turned up in what might almost have been a positive emotion.

Nick picked up the phone and had two abrupt conversations with Austin and Serge, but I barely heard him over the pounding in my own head. We were going to find her and get her back.

He played the message again, and again, and again, as if he, like me, could not get enough of his daughter's voice. Then, I reluctantly left the room to wait for the other leaders to arrive. I could hear Nick talking to Sean as I walked away.

Finally, we were moving.

* * * * * * * * *

It didn't take long to get everything together because people had already been preparing in the hope that we would have a chance to go on the offensive for once. We were ready to leave the next day. I was glad that we were finally moving, first by plane, then by vans we acquired in Sioux Lookout. It would have been faster to fly down to southern Ontario, but there was no way that we were going to be able to get the amount of firepower we carried onto a plane or through an airport. So, in a few groups of six or seven, we drove for more than twenty hours, stopping only for gas.

We followed Highway 17 as it wound southeast through the province. My early elation wore off as the distance we had yet to travel to reach her seemed to stretch out before me. I had never been this far south before and I was in no mood to appreciate the changes in the scenery as we travelled, the evergreen trees of the north giving way to trees that seemed unfamiliar and foreign. We made goodtime, except when traffic slowed during the day, frustrating me to no end.

We took turns sleeping when we were not driving, and I dozed throughout part of the night, waking closer to Elise than I had been before I fell asleep. A tentatively good feeling allowed me to hope that we might find her and this could all be over.

I was sitting in the front passenger seat when Toronto first came into view. We rented hotel rooms under the guise of a sports team, and after settling in, we met in Serge's room. Lucian, a member of Austin's pack, handled most of our tech needs and had managed to dig up some floor plans for the building we thought was the likely location. Lacy, Tabitha, and Bobbi were sent on ahead to scout out the building.

They came back, fairly certain that we had the right location. We continued arguing long into the night, until we had finally settled on a plan to get in that we hoped would work.

* * * * * * * * *

The next morning I woke up, my mind full of anxious expectation. My instinct was to run straight in the front door and fight my way to the top, but we were too outnumbered to do anything like that. Instead, we were sneaking in, which made sense strategically but was far less satisfying.

After a longer wait than I would have preferred, I was waiting again outside the back of the building along with the other fighters who had come along. There was one guard outside guarding the back.

On the inside, Lucian had gone inside disguised as a delivery person. The plan was for him to open the door from the inside and let us in. Every moment we waited my unease grew that he had been caught, and that our hope of catching the eastern king off guard had been squandered.

But then the door cracked open to reveal Lucian. The guard turned to look more closely at the door, and as soon as he turned, Serge charged forward in his wolf form, and bit the guard. The guard fall to his knees in a shaking pile that reminded me of Elise. I had no time to pity him because the rest of us rushed in the door.

Now we just had to get to Elise.