182
182
182 Lucas: Ghoulish Discovery
LUCAS =
Who the fuck steals burning bodies of the dead?
The motive is completely unfathomable.
Angry flames lick at the night sky, smoldering remnants of what should have been a sacred night, with souls returned to the embrace of the Moon Goddess.
Instead, there are eighteen disturbed mounds, with no bodies to
be found.
Nude after my shift, my bare feet sink into the sodden earth as I move closer, mud squelching between my toes.
י
"Alpha." Kellan's voice cuts through the haze of my thoughts. He holds out a bundle of clothes, emergency spares we keep on hand
for situations like this.
Grabbing only a pair of jeans, I pull them on with a vicious yank, fury boiling just beneath my skin. The breeze, cool and oblivious to the undercurrents of the night, is almost soothing against my heated skin. Around me, my wolves move through the clearing, noses to the ground as they try to parse out any lingering scents. But there's nothing. The air is too clean, too pure. It's as if someone took a giant eraser and before us.
"I don't understand," I mutter, more to myself than anyone else.
"How can there be no scent? It's like the area's been sanitized."
Kellan frowns, his brow furrowed in concentration. "It's not just the scents of the offackers that are missing. I can't even catch a whiff of Ava"
been erased
16. 16.
frustration. The disturbed heaps continue to burn, casting an eerie glow across the clearing. My wolves
there's nothing. No scent, no trail, no sign of the monsters responsible for this atrocity. It's as if they never
searching I order, my voice rough with emotion. "There has to be something we're
even as the words leave my lips, I know it's futile. Whoever did this was meticulous, leaving no trace
probably the vampires. But if it's not, we risk a war that will take too
run crimson beneath our silver moon. A true war hasn't come to any
It's real.
ICCS Devery
many have already died, but
much as my life revolves around her, Ava alone
It feels like we're all being led to one conclusion, like sheep to slaughter, Closing my eyes,
Deep.
Slow.
misstep. There's no more
rely on me for
so soft not even the wolves near us would be
connection I share with my
knowing how much this
me rebels against the idea of establishing any sort of connection with those
wait around for the scraps any
1. us.
keep
my eyes again, I
wolves. They're looking to me for guidance now more than ever before. And I
"is everyone accounted for?"
still missing." Ryder reports, ever the responsible delta as he strides toward me. "I've already updated Vester at Blackwood, and they're on full alert. I have two groups out
mind is reeling, grasping for answers that refuse to
did we let ourselves become so vulnerable? So exposed? The
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