“Ye’ll find her. She’ll be safe,” Odhran said, and I closed my eyes and nodded, letting those words of truth move through my head like a mantra to calm my beast, or at least try to placate him for the moment.
I will find her. I’ll make it safe for her, because she’s never leaving my fooking side.
I looked to my left, then my right. The hallway was empty, quiet. I could have done this in a professional manner, picked the lock, which would have been easy enough with the flimsy construction, but instead I gripped the handle, my impatience riding high.
I turned the knob with a quick, firm twist of my wrist, breaking the handle right off, and the door swung open, the lock disengaged.
I stepped inside and instantly stilled as I inhaled deeply, smelling my mate’s scent for the first time. It was sweet like candy, hitting the back of my throat before rushing down and filling my belly with sustenance. It was the only thing I needed to survive.
I took in the small, sparse confines of her apartment. Although I didn’t know my female personally—not yet—I could imagine these aesthetics fit her perfectly. A small, green velvet couch that looked a little worse for wear was to my left, the coffee table made out of pallets in front of that.
The kitchen was catty-corner to the “living room,” small and compact, the appliances and cupboards from the ’70s. But my mate had clearly made this her space, with woven colorful tapestries hanging on the wall and a few potted plants placed throughout the boxlike room, which upon smelling deeply once more I realized weren’t real.
I could have never imagined living in the city—too many people, nowhere to run free, no wilderness for my beast to be let out. But as I stood there among my female’s things, taking in her scent, I realized I would’ve stayed anywhere with her and been so grateful, so thankful that a higher power had given me the gift of having my other half.
There was a framed picture sitting on the pallet table, beside an old boxy TV. I found myself walking toward it before I realized I was moving. I picked it up, the light, silver-colored frame looking old, oxidized. The picture was of my female and Darragh, but it couldn’t have been taken too long ago as both females didn’t look much younger than they were now.
The sun was in front of them, the bright glow casting fierce light across their faces. Evelyn had a hand lifted to her brow to block some of it, her smile big, her long, dark hair seeming to be caught in a gust of wind as it was suspended in a veil of black behind her, a snapshot of beauty.
She was all I could focus on.
I couldn’t see her eyes because she squinted from the glare of the sun, but I remembered how bright and big they’d been as she stared at me with shock and a hint of awe.
I set the picture down, and I closed my eyes, letting everything just wash through me, these new and powerfully pleasing sensations moving into every single part of my body.
Although I’d gathered any and all information I could on Evelyn on the plane ride over, I’d also had Rory, the resident Lycan hacker and tech genius, do an even deeper dive on who my mate was. But now that I had her scent ingrained in me, memorized and tattooed in the very essence of my DNA, I’d find her no matter where she was.
They didn’t call me the greatest Lycan tracker for nothing.
I let all my thoughts coalesce on my mate, on who she was, until it coated my skin and caused this feeling of finally having purpose, of being home, to reverberate through me.
Evelyn Williams. Twenty-three years old. Human female who started working at the tender age of sixteen. Mother was a junkie, father unknown.
She now worked at a small hole-in-the-wall bar called Bosco’s, and this small apartment was what she called home, or close enough to what that word meant. Before she’d become an adult, she bounced around foster homes. She’d met Darragh in those same foster facilities, where the two women had become tightly knit.
She was a fighter, my female. She was a survivor.
My eyes were still closed as I sensed Odhran moving around Evelyn’s apartment. I opened my eyes and looked over at him, my hackles rising as possessiveness slammed into me at the thought of another male in my mate’s space.
Odhran made his way to the kitchen, his big body dwarfing the already small space. He walked down the tiny hallway… toward my female’s bedroom. A fierce growl ripped through me before I knew it was happening, the walls shaking from the force of the primal sound. He froze, his back tensing as he looked over his shoulder at me.