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“Oscar?” I call out, as I step into the hallway.
I listen for a response, but he doesn’t call back to me.
My panic starts to spiral. Where is he? Why isn’t he answering me?
“Oscar?” I call again, as I rush down the stairs.
I head toward the living room first, hoping he fell asleep on the couch after he put me to bed. It’s dark, and empty. The TV’s off, and the pizza’s been cleared away.
Shit. I close my eyes and try to take the edge off my panic.
I need to focus. If I concentrate, I can pick up his scent trail.
All I need to do is follow that, and I’ll find him.
If I can just get my breathing under control first.
It takes a few seconds, but I get there. I find his scent trail, and it’s faded. My heart starts to thunder in my chest. I follow it out of the room anyway. It leads me to the staircase, where it seems even more faded. Oh, Goddess. Where is he?
I move past the staircase, moving to the lounge door and pausing to check for his trail. It’s not here. I open the door anyway, but it’s dark inside and there’s no trace of his scent here. I close the door, and move on, heading toward the kitchen where his trail seems to be leading me.
“Oscar?” I call out again, my chest tightening when I get no response.
The lights are on in the kitchen, and the door isn’t all the way closed, but I don’t find him inside. The pizza box is on the counter, though, and he’s tidied away the tablecloth and the clothes I left in the room. I follow the trail to the laundry basket in the little room that sits between the kitchen and the dining room. I lift the lid and see that’s where the tablecloth went, along with my discarded clothes.
The trail leads into the dining room but doesn’t go all the way to the other door to the lounge.
The cushion he took from that room has been discarded on one of the chairs in here.
I leave the room once I’ve spotted it, trying to figure out where he would have gone after he tidied up in here. I don’t think we really left anything in the gym. But he did leave his clothes outside.
“Oh, Goddess, no,” I murmur, as I dart out of the kitchen.
His scent trail leads to the back door, confirming my fears.
The door isn’t locked. His keys are hanging from the lock, and it’s open just a crack.
Fear grips hold as I yank the door open and step out into the yard.
My shifter enhanced sight is required in the darkness, and my vision glows as I start to walk toward the woods, every sense on high alert while I search for my mate.
Oscar’s trail leads out here, but he’s not in the yard.
He must have gone further into the woods.
We didn’t walk far earlier to assess his wolf. If he only came out here to grab his clothes, he would be back in the garden by now. I try not to panic as I quicken my pace to reach the end of the garden and gaze out across the woods.
After everything he confessed tonight, I can’t believe he’d come out here on his own.
There’s only one real reason we ever go into the woods, and it’s always to let our wolves run.
I can’t see any hint of movement nearby as I scan the area, but his scent trail is still strong enough to follow. Shifting will bring me to him faster, so I ditch the clothes I stole from him, and I let my wolf take my body over. She’s as anxious as I am to find our mate. She takes off at high speed into the forest, chasing his scent trail faster than I could ever identify it in human form.
The woods fly past as she sprints onward, throwing us deeper and deeper into the forest.
I can barely take in what’s happening when she skids to a halt and growls wildly as if there’s an enemy threat present. The golden glow of my wolf’s enhanced night vision feeds me shapes I can’t make sense of, until I register them as vaguely human. Then, I begin to translate the flashes of pale skin and dark shadowy patches of something less obvious.
Clothing doesn’t look like that. It’s not clothing. It’s something else.
