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In the quiet of the late night, minutes stretched into hours. Our search party was thinning out as people got exhausted or disheartened. It felt less and less likely that we would find our friends.
Finally, a knock on the door disrupted our silence. We hurried to answer it, opening the door to two park rangers standing on the doorstep, their enthusiasm visibly lacking.
I greeted them with a tight smile. “Thank you for coming. We’re facing a grave situation and need to organize a search party for some missing shifters. There were some clear signs of a struggle, and we worried they might be in danger. Here, let me pull up some photos—”
One of the rangers put a hand up. “No need. We’ve just come to take a statement, and we’ll be on our way.”
My frustration surged. “A statement? That’s it? Lives are in jeopardy out there, and you’re telling us you won’t assist in the search?”
The rangers exchanged a stoic glance. “We’re following protocol,” the younger ranger explained. “Matters between shifters are most safely handled by other shifters. We just need accurate information for our records.”
“We need help, though,” I urged. “There’s hundreds of acres of forest, and most of our shifters have never even lived outside of the city.”
“Perhaps you should have been more cautious about visiting unfamiliar parts of town,” the ranger said, making steady eye contact with me.
I knew I should have seen this coming, but I also couldn’t help how much it pissed me off. Were there no decent humans? Were they all horrible like this? It was starting to feel like they were. I was starting to hate working with other humans because of their apathy in every single interaction.
“Fine,” I said finally. “Tell us what you need to know.”
The search went on until the small hours of the morning. When I ran out of things to do, I took to coordinating the effort to get everything broken down from the party. I felt numb and cold. I didn’t feel any sense of responsibility for what had happened. Instead, I felt like I was inconsequential. Like there was nothing I could have done about this scenario to protect my friends.
When everything had been torn down, I walked with aching feet to a huge pile of cushions ready to be loaded into the car. I collapsed onto them. Grabbing a blanket, I pulled it over me, shivering beneath the damp fabric as I stared up at the moon and the stars, making their slow journey across the sky.
My exhaustion caught up with me, and I must have fallen asleep because I jolted awake at a sudden weight shifting the makeshift bed. Strong arms wrapped around me, crushing me close, and Cole’s familiar scent tickled my nose.
Just beyond the disheveled wisps of his hair, I saw the pretty pink sky in the distance. I’d been asleep for a few hours, but it’d only felt like moments.
“Cole?” I asked.
“We couldn’t find them,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Marley.”
I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around him, knowing he needed as much comfort as I did, if not more.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said. “We won’t give up hope. Paulette and Rosie are strong. We just have to meet them halfway.”
Cole’s ribcage expanded, then shuddered as he sobbed. I knew his tears weren’t from sadness but from frustration and heartbreak. The tears of a leader who felt he’d failed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Between their strength and our stubbornness, we’ll bring our friends home.”
We had to believe that if we were going to make it through this. I had to believe it to make it through the danger I could feel barreling straight for my mate.
Chapter 14
Cole
I was so grateful for Marley. Without her help, I didn’t think I would have been able to keep things in balance. Every time I had the urge to tear out of our house and go searching for our missing members, she reminded me that we had a shift order put together and that we didn’t constantly need to be at our wit’s end.
The New Middle Bluff police had been about as helpful as we’d expected, which was to say they were hardly helpful at all. A few of Ginger’s friends came to pitch in when they were off-duty, helping us organize our efforts more efficiently, but we lacked the full support we needed. So, after running it by my parents, I made a call to Georgia.
“How many people do you think are coming tonight?” Marley asked. “Should I make dinner, or should we order something?” She sat at her laptop, combing over the maps of the region, noting where we’d been and where we still needed to go.
“I think I’ll just order pizza, keep it easy. Gramps didn’t tell me how many he planned on bringing out. Whatever we don’t eat tonight, I can take to the search party of the day and let them polish it off.”
Marley nodded and looked back down at the screen. I watched the light shift as she clicked to another website—to order pizza, I was sure.
I’d learned a lot about Marley’s talent as a coordinator in the week that had passed since Rosie and Paulette’s abduction. Every time I talked to her about something needing to get done, it was done a few moments later or had been set in motion. For every complex action I said I needed to take, she was in the background, facilitating the whole thing. If I told her I was getting hungry, she either had food delivered or cooked something for me. If I had a headache coming on while discussing a plan with someone, she materialized some shifter-strength ibuprofen and a bottle of water. When I told her I was having a hard time keeping track of where we’d been and where we needed to go, she’d been keeping track without even telling me. She’d printed a set of maps and handed it to me a few minutes later.
It was strange to consider, but I felt like this whole situation was making our synergy and rightness for each other all the clearer. I felt in sync with her in a way I’d never been before.
