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I smell the earth with my nose, trying to pick Adeline's scent. Nothing. Just the annoying scent of Lawrence and booze.
Does Lawrence have her buried somewhere, so far beneath the earth that her scent can’t escape? Maybe in a box? In a basement?
In a coffin, Luke.
"No,"I growl the words as a wolf.
Fena looks at me."What?"
"Nothing. I don't think she's here."
"Then let's check the other houses."
"There are other houses? Why didn't you say that?"
Fena doesn't want to answer. She runs to the back of the house where two other similar houses stand. We walk with our noses in the ground and I finally catch Adeline's scent coming from the third house.
"She's here!"
Without waiting for Fena to speak, I race into the house. I'm so overwhelmed with the prospect of finding Adeline that I don't think of stumbling upon her brothers in the house.
To my luck, they aren't there. I continue to sniff the empty rooms until her smell leads me to the cellar. I shift into my human form and tug at the door.
"Adeline?" I cry, trying hard to remove the bolts on the door.
It surprisingly feels impossible to remove it, but I'm not giving up.
"Luke?" A weak voice responds from inside. "Is that you?"
"Adeline! I'm coming!"
Her voice multiplies my determination. As low and weak as it sounds, her response injects me with the strength of a hundred men and with one final tug at the bolt, the door flies open.
Adeline is in the center of the dark cellar, naked, bloody. She must have shifted several times to save herself because fur litters the ground. The binds make her wrists and legs bleed and she trembles like a child, curled up into a ball.
"Oh my God, Adeline." Tears threaten at the sight of her wounded body. I race to her, cradling her frail frame in my arms. "I'm so sorry."
She tries to talk but can barely open her mouth. Her parched body shivers as I help her to her feet.
"Let's get you out of here."
Carrying Adeline in my arms, I walk out of the cellar and into the empty living room of the house. Fena is at the door, still in her wolf form. Her nose soon flares up and her head swiftly turns in the direction where she must have caught a scent.
With blinding speed, she morphs into a human. "Red Tomatoes!"
I set Adeline on her feet but she's too weak to stand properly. Her knees buckle and she has to hold me for support.
"Hey, look at me." I put my hands on the sides of her face, trying to snap her groggy eyes to me. "Your brothers are back. We have to get out of here."
"They are?" Adeline speaks like she's in a trance. "Yeah, right. I can smell them."
"We have to hurry out of here."
Urgency thrumming through my veins, I scoop her up again and follow Fena out of the house. We race back to the first empty house in the area just as Adeline's brothers reach the place where they’d been keeping her.
A culmination of deep howls explodes from the house, informing us that the brothers have found out Adeline is missing. It rings through the night like a battle cry. The sound heightens my speed and my desire to protect Adeline from these monsters.
“Hold on tight,” I say to Addy then morph into my wolf.
