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

He didn’t ask for either item back, and I didn’t think to give them over—my head was too tangled, thoughts of Jeffrey spinning, spinning, spinning.

He needs me.

Hurry, hurry.

“Thanks,” I grunted out before I dove out of the alley and ducked down the street, back the direction I’d come from.

I wasn’t sure why Butters was out and about. Probably out on a snack run, or doing…Butters-y things, like hunting squirrels (a hobby we both shared) or trying to wrestle the biggest men he came across. He preferred his wolfskin like I did, so it had been more than a little lucky that he’d been out and about wearing clothes at all.

Jeffrey needs me.

Jeffrey needs me.

Jeffrey needs me.

Too slow, too slow, too slow.

I picked up the pace, bare feet pounding the pavement as Butters clothes clung to me like a glove. We’d always been similar in size. Similar in appearance too—though he was broader faced, and blonder than I was.

It made sense, as we shared blood—but still.

So close?—

Just gotta round this corner and then?—

There.

There.

He was still there.

Suddenly, I could breathe again.

Jeffrey was where I’d last seen him, in an alleyway several blocks away from where I’d hunted Butters down. His broad shoulders were curled in, tight with tension, his body minutely quaking. If I was human, I probably wouldn’t have been able to see it. But I wasn’t human.

I saw the way he was holding himself together as tightly as he could.

Saw his cracks and splinters.

My beautiful love who reeked of anguish-lonely-scared, though his body language projected nothing but calm to the untrained eye. The coppery bright scent of blood filled my nostrils, and I scanned him quickly for injuries, standing like an idiot in the mouth of the alley, terrified.

He’s hurt.

He’s hurt.

He’s—

There.

My eyes narrowed when I saw the state of his hands.

Knuckles bloodied, scraped raw.

A wounded sound escaped me, unbidden—and Jeffrey startled, twisting around to look at me as I stood motionless, shocked. I took another sniff of the air, certain I must’ve missed something, only to realize that I had not. The only person that had been in here aside from Jeffrey was me.

So why…were his hands like that?

It didn’t make sense.