The Lost Mate

Max

At sunset, I exited the pack, and found Nash waiting for me outside. He looked as disreputable as ever with his well-worn clothing and habitual twitch. “Where to next?” he asked.

“The nearby human city, I guess. Where the disappearances have been happening.”

He nodded agreeably, clearly happier to be putting distance between himself and Rustknoll than any other pack we’d encountered, and that was no small feat. “You okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

His shifty eyes told me that he didn’t want to discuss it further. Together we headed towards the human town.

We stopped at a truck stop and had a meal where I let my phone charge and searched for information on the local cases of missing people in the last few years. Other than the recent famous case of a lost politician’s daughter and the missing eighteen-year-old Marissa, it was mostly hikers, or a few people who had fallen between the cracks of society. A missing homeless person or a hitchhiker here and there was harder to prove, and certainly did not garner attention like the cases the media seemed focused on.

All in all, there weren’t so many missing person cases that I could say it was not coincidence, and the alleged victims were so different that it really did not form a consistent pattern. Still, I was increasingly convinced that it was above the average for a reasonably peaceful human population. The city had a fairly low crime rate, and the wilderness around was not overly risky in terrain, nor did it have high populations of dangerous animals.

I highlighted a few leads we would check the next day, especially involving Marissa who had indeed gone missing roughly a month after my mate. For the night, Nash and I retreated back into the wilderness to sleep in our wild forms.

As I relaxed, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was getting too far removed from my original mission. I felt bad for the humans, but the odds of this being related to Lillian really were low. The disappearances could be malicious, either supernatural, or just a psycho human. Or, they could be unrelated coincidences. Or connected by an alternate, non-malicious cause. Really the only thing that connected them was that they were disappearances of humans in the general area.

Lillian was neither a human, nor had she disappeared around Rustknoll as far as I knew. Hannah had gotten separated from her sister and father not even a day away from Stonemason in the confusion after a run in with rogues, and while she’d tried to find them again, she had quickly lost their trail.

I’d visited the location they’d been attacked and separated with Hannah after I finally located her months after it happened, but I had been grasping at straws since by then any clue or trace of my mate had been long obliterated.

Again, I was probably wasting my time, and I’d be better off to return to Glenshadow and recharge, until the next time. The end was already certain, more disappointment, another instance of my wolf’s hopes raised only to be dashed again.

But that spark refused to die. I was already here, so it wouldn’t hurt to spend a day or two checking out the possibilities before heading back. I wasn’t about to become a volunteer investigator of human affairs, but I did feel bad for the humans who were disappearing, and if there was a possibility I might uncover something that the hunters did not, it was worth a few days of my time. Those humans had undoubtedly left behind people they cared about. There was no need for a mate bond for a person to be hurt by such a loss.

So I’d see if the humans had understandably missed any supernatural component, and then Nash and I could head home to rest.

—————

Nash and I wandered the city, checking out different places and all my potential leads. Most of the humans I spoke to were helpful, although some were wary, thinking that I was asking questions for media purposes. Apparently the most recent disappearance had brought the spotlight onto their town and some people were still quite upset with the media vultures that had descended with it.

I did my best to navigate without arousing suspicion, but by the end of the third day, I was almost ready to give up. I wasn’t finding anything among the humans. As always, I missed Lillian more as I began to accept that this search, like all the others, was futile, and I was starting to miss my pack. If I couldn’t have my mate, I wanted to go home and lick my wounds.

But what if she was just another inquiry away? What if a clue about her whereabouts was in the next place I would check? What if my travelling companion knew something that I did not and something here might trigger his memory? He was with me, so I might as well utilize his knowledge of the area. It would disturb me later if I didn’t check every possible lead. If I didn’t find Lillian, it couldn’t be because I didn’t try my best.

I turned to Nash. “This isn’t going anywhere. Can you think of any places in the wilderness worth checking?” I asked Nash.

“A few, maybe. Haven’t been around here in ten years.”

So we wandered the wilds in our wolf forms while I followed Nash around to anywhere he thought might possibly be of interest, but I had no more luck than I’d had anywhere else. My wolf was increasingly quiet in his despair. Maybe it was time to quit, and give up, and accept that she was lost, at least unless a lead presented itself to me. Maybe Will had been right, and if she really wanted to be found...

But she might not be able to find me, even if she wanted to. I didn’t like imagining the horrible things that could have happened to her, could still be happening to her that might prevent her, but they existed. And because of that possibility, I couldn’t just give up.