Hunt Me! I Crave the Chase (Spooky Boys #3)

“Where’s Mutt? Is he okay?”

“He’s…fine. He went home.” He urged me back down the driveway, but he looked guilty as hell.

“Okay, well, is he coming back?—?”

“Yes. Now go. Please.”

Okay. Rude.

Fuck.

In a daze, I made my way toward Richard’s car. I knew Theo had been acting weird as hell, but I did as I was told anyway, because what the fuck else was I supposed to do? Wasn’t like I could storm a house full of werewolves. I’d start an interspecies incident. And even if I could, what was the point? I didn’t even have my weapons with me, as my truck was still in the shop.

I knew Theo had said Mutt had gone home…but…sitting still made me feel like I was going crazy.

So instead of biding my time, waiting patiently, I enlisted the help of my favorite goth-twink and his golden-retriever-gigantor vampire boyfriend, and we continued searching for Mutt anyway. With every day that passed without word from my wolf, I felt like I sunk just a little deeper. I understood Lydia in a way now, because I’d never felt insane till Mutt disappeared.

We searched and searched and searched.

Searched downtown Elmwood.

Searched inside the club where I’d met him in his humanskin for the first time.

Searched the woods around Mutt’s house, and gotten chased off by Theo.

Searched Benji’s, where we’d had our first unofficial date.

Searched the beach where we’d played the night that changed everything. I even knocked on the door of the nearest house, despite how manic and unhinged I was certain I looked. Though, calling it a house was kinda a stretch. More like huge-fucking-mansion.

When a familiar-looking, tattoo-covered asshole opened the door and pretty much immediately slammed it in my face, I wasn’t even mad. Because this had been a long shot. All of this had been.

But still, I couldn’t settle.

“He’s probably home like his brother said,” Blair tried to reassure, his painted fingers tapping on the back of the seat as he swiveled around to face me.

“Yeah,” I replied, because he probably was.

Just…

Something just…didn’t feel right.

I could sense it.

Like there was an empty Mutt-sized hole inside me that hadn’t been there before.

I was so obviously out of it, that I didn’t even notice when Richard started driving. I just kinda sat there, shaking, and trying to figure out how to breathe again. Blair had twisted around to face the front again, his feet on the dash—the same way Collin had put his feet up in my truck when we’d had our little talk, and he and Richard chatted in low tones.

Familiar with each other in a way that ached.

I pressed my forehead to the cold glass, and pinched my eyes shut as the skies opened up above us and water spilled down the chilled glass. Fog trickled across the mountaintops, decorating the roads much the same as it had the night I’d crashed.

And I ached.

And ached.

And ached.

The party was loud. Bright. Crowded.