Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 212458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1062(@200wpm)___ 850(@250wpm)___ 708(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 212458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1062(@200wpm)___ 850(@250wpm)___ 708(@300wpm)
This feels right.
***
My truck breaks down outside the village of Arcana Falls. Home. It stalls out and won’t restart. It’s just a couple months old, so I’m baffled.
My phone keeps dropping calls and text messages fail on me, so I leave my phone and clothes in the truck and shift so I can run to Riley’s.
But something goes wrong. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say I get lost. And it makes no sense.
I spent four years out of town for college, but this is home. It has been home all my life. I know every inch of the area both in and around both Arcana Falls and the nearest town, Drowsy Hollow.
How is it I can get lost in a place I know as well as I know the layout of my own house?
As idiotic as it seems, the road home never ends. The same mile of trees and road is on repeat. The moon is too large. The stars don’t even look right. The smells are wrong, too. The air, the ground, all of it.
It should take ten minutes tops to run to Riley’s house from where I broke down, but for what feels like hours, I’m running on the same mile of road as wolf, trying also as man, switching to and fro, while feeling like I’ve got the worst case of brain fog I’ve ever had. This goes on until I become so exhausted I have to stop to sleep.
***
I wake beyond parched. I’m disoriented, rousing under a tree just a hundred feet or so from the four corners of town. I’m still wolf, my back leg being nudged by a boot. I look up. Lincoln.
My head still feels fuzzy, and there’s an unfamiliar scent hanging in the air. Tyson Savage. And his mate.
His mate?
“Mase?”
I shift to become man and scrub my eyes with my palms, confusion rolling through me.
“What are you doin’ here?” he asks.
“Broke down,” I manage to say, mouth feeling like it’s filled with cotton.
I don’t feel right. The feeling I woke with last night is back and it’s stronger. But it’s more like an extreme sense of … doom. I think. I’ve never felt anything like it.
“Where have you been? We’ve been lookin’ for you. Didn’t sense anything was wrong,” Linc says.
“Truck broke down; couldn’t get a signal. Decided to shift and run to Riley’s.”
Fuck, I feel groggy.
“You smell that, Linc?”
“Smell what? You?”
I assess the scent. What is it? Why is my heart racing? Why am I sweating so profusely?
“You told Rye you were on your way home Friday night, Mase. Where were you?” Linc asks.
“Just told you. I broke down.”
“When?”
“I left in the middle of the night. Broke down just before dawn.”
Lincoln frowns. “Dawn Saturday?”
I look at him. His eyebrows are furrowed.
“Man, it’s Monday,” he says.
“Huh?” My eyes sweep the landscape around me. Nothing smells right.
“Where were you all weekend?”
“What?” I ask.
“You feelin’ okay, Mase?” He squats, nose wiggling as he takes my scent in. “You don’t smell right.”
I’m not feelin’ right. What the fuck?
“Where’ve you been?” he asks when I don’t answer because I’m trying to find my fucking bearings.
“Here, I guess. I don’t fuckin’ know. What do I smell like?”
“Like… not you. Like… an herb and something else. Someone else? Something…” He sniffs. “Can’t place it. Is that basil, maybe? Dunno. You haven’t been here though, man; I’ve been here. Spent yesterday out tracking and never caught your scent even once. Your truck’s parked five minutes up the road. Key fob’s in it.”
“What? Who were you tracking?”
“A rattlesnake. Long story. Let’s go to Roxy’s for some food and I’ll fill you in. Wait… where you goin’?”
I hear him, but the words don’t fully penetrate because I’m shifting, nose to the ground, following a scent. I follow my nose, Lincoln firing questions from behind me. But I’m unable to multi-task because a scent calls to me so strongly I can do nothing but focus on it.
I run.
Linc is behind me.
***
I’m at the clinic, smelling not only that scent but also my long-lost packmate, Tyson. And he’s definitely mated. The scent is unmistakable. His scent. And hers.
They’re no longer here. They left by car.
My body bucks, then I’m vomiting all over the grass by the door. That scent. The scent of them together. Her scent on him, his on her, my guts contract as I repeatedly retch, long after my belly is empty.
Linc calls my name, but my head is filled with static. So is my nose. Things don’t smell right. Nothing does. Because my nose, my brain, they’re filled with the scent of Tyson’s mate with his scent on her and it’s making me violently ill. And angry. Why?
I shift and open the door to the clinic even though I know no one’s here.
Cat was here recently, so was Tyson. I know that scent as well as I know my own. Just like my co-alphas. His scent belongs with us; we all sensed it the day he returned, the day we saw his massive black wolf, even larger than mine and mine has been the largest in the pack since I matured.