Chapter 73: #SEVENTY- THREE

CASSIAN’S POV

I wasn’t surprised that Elijah had finally broken down after everything we’d been through that day, but seeing it happen still caught me off guard.

He had spent hours forcing himself to keep moving, asking questions, checking cameras and refusing to accept that we might have reached a dead end, so I knew there was only so much he could take before everything caught up with him.

When he started blaming himself for Nicholas’s disappearance again, I reminded him that none of us had known what was going to happen and that sitting there punishing himself wouldn’t bring Nicholas back. I told him we would continue the search the following morning and that whoever was responsible would regret what they had done.

I wasn’t interested in making empty promises, but I needed Elijah to understand that we weren’t giving up just because we hadn’t found Nicholas that night.

We still had the receipt, Jayden was still missing, his phone was switched off and there were enough suspicious circumstances surrounding him for us to keep investigating.

"We’re going to find him," I told Elijah as we headed home, keeping my voice firm because I knew he needed something solid to hold on to. "And when we find the person responsible, we’ll deal with him. Right now, the only thing that matters is finding Nicholas alive. Everything else can wait until he’s back."

Elijah nodded, wiped his face and followed me toward the car. I didn’t continue talking about his guilt because we’d already spent enough time on it, and I knew repeating the same reassurance wasn’t going to make him suddenly feel better. Instead, I let him sit quietly during the drive while I thought through everything we’d discovered.

The receipt with the initial J bothered me more than I wanted to admit. It wasn’t enough to prove that Jayden had bought the medication, much less that he had anything to do with Nicholas’s disappearance, but combined with his absence, the switched-off phone and the fact that Nicholas had been suspicious of him before, it was becoming harder to dismiss him as a coincidence.

I kept going over the timeline in my head, trying to figure out what we had missed, while Elijah remained quiet beside me. By the time we reached home, it was already late, and I expected everyone else to still be in the study waiting for us.

The moment we stepped inside, Elijah spoke before either of us had even taken a few steps into the house. "We couldn’t find him," he said, his voice carrying through the quiet hallway. "We checked everywhere we could think of, and we still couldn’t find Nicholas, but we’re almost certain Jayden has something to do with it. His phone is switched off, he isn’t at home, and we found a receipt from the store where someone bought a large quantity of the medication Nicholas needed. The receipt had the initial J on it, and we’re trying to establish whether that person was Jayden." He said all of this while walking toward the room where we expected our brothers to be, but when we entered, we immediately realized something was different.

Our family was sitting around the dining table, dinner already served, and both our father and Nicholas’s mother were there with them.

Everyone stopped eating when they heard Elijah’s words, and for several seconds nobody said anything. Our father slowly put down the utensil he was holding while Nicholas’s mother looked between us with a confused expression that quickly turned into concern.

"What exactly do you mean when you say you couldn’t find Nicholas?" our father asked, his voice suddenly much more serious. "Where is he?"

Elijah stopped.

Oh shit.

I could tell immediately that he was trying to figure out how much we should reveal, because we’d spent the entire day searching without telling our parents everything.

We had hoped to find Nicholas before they needed to know, and none of us wanted to be the people who sat at the dinner table and told his mother that we had lost track of him.

Adrian looked toward me, Roman looked at Elijah and Elijah looked back at all of us as though he expected someone else to answer. Nobody did.

Our father noticed the silence and became even more suspicious. "I asked where Nicholas is."

"He isn’t home," Adrian said.

Our father frowned. "I can see that. Where is he?"

"He’s missing," Elijah finally said.

The words changed the atmosphere around the table immediately.

Nicholas’s mother pushed her chair backward so quickly that it scraped against the floor. "Missing?"

I stepped forward before she could start asking questions we weren’t prepared to answer. "We haven’t been able to locate him since earlier today. We’ve searched the school and several places he usually visits, and we’re still investigating. We have reason to believe someone may have taken him."

"Someone took him?" she asked, staring at me. "Who? What happened to him?"

"We don’t know everything yet," I said carefully. "We’re working on it."

Elijah immediately interrupted, his frustration making his words come faster. "We think it could be Jayden. Nicholas’s friend from school. He’s been around him a lot, and we’ve discovered some things that make him suspicious. His phone is off, he isn’t at home and someone bought a large amount of the medication Nicholas uses. There’s a receipt with the initial J, but we haven’t been able to prove it’s him yet."

Our father looked from Elijah to me. "What medication?"

Nobody answered and he narrowed his eyes. "What medication are you talking about?"

I knew then that there was no point trying to hide anything anymore. We’d already said too much, and the pieces were beginning to connect in front of them. If we continued withholding information, they would only become more suspicious, and we needed their help now more than ever.

We sat down and I explained everything from the beginning.

I told them about the stalker Nicholas had mentioned, the messages and photographs he had received, and the concerns he’d raised about someone following him around school. I explained how the situation had escalated and how Nicholas had eventually been suspended after the incident involving Elijah. I told them that Nicholas had hidden the suspension from them and that we had only recently realized how much trouble he had been dealing with without telling anyone at home. I explained the suspicious medication he had received, the fact that it had been poisoned and the circumstances surrounding his collapse at school.

I didn’t leave out the part about the principal discovering that Nicholas was an Omega, nor did I hide the fact that he had fled the clinic afterward and disappeared.

By the time I finished, nobody at the table was touching their food.

Nicholas’s mother was staring at me with an expression I couldn’t read, and our father remained completely still.

Elijah sat beside me, looking down at the table.

I continued because there was no reason to stop now. "We believe the stalker may be connected to what happened today. We also believe Jayden could be involved, but we don’t have enough evidence yet to say that he’s definitely responsible. His phone is switched off, he’s not at home and we haven’t been able to locate him. We’re checking cameras and trying to trace every possible route he could have taken, but so far we haven’t found Nicholas."

His mother finally spoke. "You said he was poisoned."

I looked at her. "Yes."

"How badly?"

"We don’t know exactly how much the poison affected him because we lost track of him before we could get all the answers from the clinic. The nurse said the medication he’d taken had been poisoned, and that’s what caused him to collapse."

She stared at me. "And you let him leave?"

"No," Elijah said immediately. "He ran from the clinic."

His mother looked toward him. "Why?"

Elijah’s face tightened. "The principal found out he was an Omega and threatened to report him. Nicholas panicked and ran."

The room went completely silent and Nicholas’s mother looked as though she had stopped breathing. "She found out?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"And now he’s missing?" Her voice cracked.

"Yes."

She pushed herself away from the table and I saw her face change before she even moved. "Nicholas..." Her voice was barely audible.

Then she collapsed.

Oh shit.

I moved immediately and I caught her before she could hit the floor and lowered her carefully, calling for someone to help me.

Elijah stood up so quickly that his chair nearly fell backward, while our father was already moving toward us.

"Get the car," I said.

He didn’t argue as I lifted her carefully and carried her toward the entrance while our father hurried ahead to unlock the doors. We got her into his car, and I climbed into the back with her while he took the driver’s seat.

Elijah and the others remained behind as we pulled away, but I barely noticed them because all my attention was on the unconscious woman beside me.

"Mom," I called softly, checking whether she was breathing normally. "Can you hear me?"

She didn’t respond and our father kept his eyes on the road. "How is she?"

"She’s breathing. We need to get her to the hospital quickly."

He pressed harder on the accelerator.

I supported her head against me and watched her face, hoping she would regain consciousness before we arrived.

Nicholas was missing. His mother had collapsed from the shock. Our father knew that something serious had happened under his roof, and we still had no idea where Nicholas was or what had been done to him after he left the school.

I looked out through the window as the hospital lights appeared in the distance, and one thought kept running through my head.

This was getting way worse.