by Alexis Davie
He didn’t want Cora to go anywhere. He didn’t want to pull himself away from her.
He wanted her to stay and to be with him until the end of their days.
“Stay,” he whispered. Or at least, he thought he did. He was too tired to know whether he had said it out loud or if he had only thought it to himself. Either way, sleep overcame him before he could hear Cora’s answer… whatever it might have been.
3
When Grayson woke up the next morning, Cora was already gone.
A mixture of emotions began to swirl inside him, and they were stopping Grayson from feeling anything at all. He sat up on his bed, looking down at the bedsheet covering him up to his waist while he struggled to focus and regain his thoughts.
She’s gone, he told himself. He knew this was a likely scenario to happen, of course. Cora had mentioned that it would be her last night in Evergreen Grove; she had said that she liked to move around and not stay in one same place for too long. Grayson had known this; he had.
And yet he had hoped, after last night, that Cora would stay. That she had felt the tug and pull Grayson had felt, that she had felt the chemistry between them, that she had felt that same need Grayson had felt to be with her, the need to be with each other. He had hoped to wake up and find her still by his side so that he could nuzzle her neck and caress her smooth skin and kiss her awake.
Now, he would never see her again.
Just my goddamn luck, Grayson thought, running a hand down his face. He lay back down on the bed with his arms above his head. He didn’t want to get up. He just wanted to spend the entire day—the entire flipping weekend—in his apartment, not caring about anything, not thinking about anything. Let the days pass him by before he had to go back to his ridiculous job and the missions Sam sent him on and the general mess that was his life.
The sound of his phone ringing startled him, and he reluctantly crawled out of bed to look for it. By the time he found it in the pocket of his discarded pants—still on the floor since last night—the phone had stopped ringing, but before Grayson could put it back where he’d found it or turn it off, the device dinged with a new text message from Sam.
Pack meeting in twenty minutes. - S
Grayson groaned to himself. The last thing he needed was a pack meeting, where Sam went on and on about their responsibility to keep Evergreen Grove safe and to keep a low profile. He would probably still be angry with Grayson after the argument they’d had a few days ago. He didn’t want to deal with that nonsense today, much less in twenty minutes.
His phone dinged with another message.
Don’t be late. - S
Well, Grayson thought with a deep sigh, better listen to the boss, I guess.
It would end up being worse for him if he just ignored Sam’s explicit orders, and he figured that a few minutes of listening to him talk wouldn’t kill him.
Grayson put on some clean clothes, pocketed his phone once again, and did his best to ignore the ache and the emptiness in his chest as he made the way to his door, trying not to think about Cora.
* * *
“Grayson,” Sam said, as he opened the door to Sam’s place and stepped inside. The rest of the members of the pack were already there, occupying the various plastic chairs and sofas Sam only brought out during pack meetings. “So glad you could join us.”
Grayson nodded in acknowledgment and sat down next in one of the only empty seats left in Sam’s living room. Honestly, he didn’t pay much attention to what his alpha was saying—he could tell by the faces of most of the werewolves in the room that Sam had made a similar speech many times before. He heard something about having to be more careful when they went into the woods and to always go hunting in pairs, just in case something happened to one of them.
After he had gone on for some time, Sam asked, “Do I make myself clear?”
The present shifters mumbled their agreement.
Sam let out an authoritative growl. “I said, do I make myself clear?” he snarled, his eyes glowing yellow.
This time, everyone shouted their answer.
“Good,” Sam said with a nod of his head. “If no one else has anything to add, this meeting is dismissed.”
The air was immediately less tense as the meeting came to an end and tranquility reigned over the place once more. The members of the pack began to pile out of Sam’s apartment, saying and muttering their goodbyes and shaking hands and promising to bring snacks or at least some beer to the next meeting.
Grayson remained while everyone else walked out the door. Now that he had come all the way to Sam’s place, he might as well apologize for their argument. There was no use delaying the inevitable, and the pack worked so much better when there wasn’t any lingering tension between its members. Apparently, Sam had a similar idea, because he closed the door as the last shifter left, leaned back against it, and turned to Grayson.
“Gray, listen,” he began, rubbing the back of his head. “About the other day… I just wanted to say that I’m—”
“I think I found my mate,” Grayson interrupted him.
It was only when he saw the expression of shock on Sam’s face, his eyes wide in surprise and his jaw falling open, that he realized what he’d said. Those weren’t the words he had planned to speak out loud. It was too late to take them back though, so he didn’t.
He actually didn’t think he had found his mate in Cora—he knew he had. He hadn’t wanted to think about that because he was aware of how impossible it was to be with her, but he couldn’t deny it to himself any longer. And he certainly couldn’t keep it hidden from the alpha of his pack.
“Are you sure?” Sam asked him. “Finding someone you love is one thing. Finding your mate is entirely different.”
“I know,” Grayson said. A werewolf finding his mate was definitely not unheard of, and of course it’d happened before; it just didn’t happen often. It wasn’t something that could be faked; it wasn’t a connection that one could pretend to have with someone else. It was obvious to every werewolf who witnessed it. Once a shifter found his mate, it was for a lifetime. “And yes, I’m sure.”
Sam had pulled Grayson into his arms before he could realize it, laughing at the top of his lungs. He let go of him and then clapped his hands against Grayson’s shoulders, as if Grayson had won some sort of award.
“Grayson, that’s wonderful!” Sam bellowed, still laughing. Grayson had never seen him this happy. “How long have you known this woman? We hadn’t heard anything about her! I assume you’ve already told her about you? The sooner you do, the better! Is she someone we know? Well, that doesn’t matter, you’ll still have to formally introduce her to the pack, you know how it is! Old traditions and the like!”
“Yeah, well…” Grayson cleared his throat. “That’s gonna be a little difficult, since she was only in town for one night.”
He could literally see how Sam’s mood dropped, how his demeanor immediately changed, and all joy he had felt at the news vanished in an instant, replaced by confusion and disbelief.
“What do you mean, she was only in town for one night?”
“I mean,” Grayson answered, “I met her last night when I went to that bar you love for some reason, even though it’s gotta be one of the worst bars in all of Evergreen Grove. She told me she was leaving town, and I still took her back to my apartment. When I woke up this morning, she was already gone, and now she’s only God knows where.”
Sam seemed to be at a loss for words, which was… unusual, to say the least. Grayson didn’t know what he had expected by telling him about Cora. Maybe a magical solution? Maybe for Cora to appear simply because he had told someone else about her? Maybe to miraculously feel where she had gone so that he could go look for her? He hadn’t expected his alpha to remain silent.
“All right,” said Sam after a moment, his hands falling from Grayson’s shoulders. He crossed his arms over his chest like he had done during the pack meeting. “Then I guess you’re screwed.”
Grayson waited for Sam to continue speaking. After waiting for a few seconds, however, it was clear that his alpha had said everything he intended to.
“That’s it?” he demanded, as his hands tightened into fists at his sides. “That’s all you have to say?”
“What do you want me to do, Gray?” Sam asked in response, shrugging his shoulders. His eyebrow was furrowed in what Grayson recognized as disapproval and disappointment. “Even if I knew who she was or where she’s gone off to, it’s not like I can just make her come back. If anyone in this room can actually do something about it, that’s you. Grayson, you found your mate, and you’re just gonna let her go? Just like that?”
Grayson was going to reply that he had tried to make Cora stay, but he realized that… he hadn’t. He should’ve talked to her last night. He should’ve asked her to stay with him. He should’ve tried to convince her to remain in Evergreen Grove if only for a couple more days.
Jesus Christ, he should’ve done something.
“I have to find her,” he murmured to himself. Then, louder, he repeated, “I have to find her. Sam, I have to find her.”
The frown in Sam’s expression, as well as his disapproval and disappointment, vanished as soon as Grayson had finished speaking, and he nodded—with a smirk on his face.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “And if I were you, I’d hurry. Don’t want to risk your mate disappearing off the face of the planet.”
That was all the incentive Grayson needed. Sam stepped aside so that he could get out of the apartment, and Grayson ran down the stairs to the main entrance of the building. He didn’t have a lot of places where he could start looking for a woman who never stayed in one place for too long, but he did have a few ideas.
The only thing he knew for sure was that she couldn’t have gone far in only a day, and Grayson was determined to find her if it was the last thing he ever did.
4
Grayson should have known that searching for someone named Cora on social media would throw hundreds of thousands of results back at him. He didn’t even know her last name, or her exact age, or her profession. Having so many profiles to look through was about to drive him insane.
He didn’t even know where Cora had come from, or how long she had been moving from town to town, or if she had ever been in Evergreen Grove before. Maybe she didn’t have any kind of social media, especially if she kept traveling from town to town all the time. He didn’t know anything about her, other than her name and the fact that she was his mate.
After almost a week of having no luck whatsoever, he had ended up calling Sam to ask for any suggestion he might have.
“Believe me,” Grayson said. “Anything is better than trying to find the Cora I’m looking for amidst the hundreds of thousands of women named Cora online.”
“Maybe social media isn’t the answer,” Sam told him. “Maybe your best bet is to be a bit more… old-fashioned.”
Grayson usually didn’t like using his shifter abilities when he was a human. Having the power to track someone, or even something, by following their scent was useful when he was trying to find prey to hunt. But if a shifter started abusing his abilities while he was still in his human form, it could end up making said shifter violent; sometimes it ended up making them too dangerous to remain in their pack. Grayson didn’t want to go down that path.
“You’re not abusing your abilities,” Sam argued. “There’s nothing wrong with using them once in your life to track down your mate.”
“Yeah,” Grayson agreed. “I guess you’re right.”
Cora’s scent was not that difficult to pick up inside his own apartment. She hadn’t left anything behind, but the bedsheets, and even Grayson’s clothes, still smelled a little of pinewood. Grayson let his nose do the job for him, following the trail he and Cora had taken that night. He navigated the streets they had driven by during their cab ride, looked at the buildings he had been so focused on so that he wouldn’t just kiss her and take her right then and there.
I feel like I’m a goddamn hound, Grayson groaned to himself, but he knew Sam was right. It was his best bet when the smell of pinewood and a name were the only legitimate leads he had to find a complete stranger he’d last seen almost a week ago.
Eventually, the trail brought him back to the bar where he had met Cora, which was to be expected. As far as Grayson knew, it was the last place in Evergreen Grove where Cora had been, and it was the only place where he might be able to find some clue that would guide him in the right direction. Unlike Grayson’s expectations though, Cora’s trail seemed to have started at Rain and Drizzle, because he couldn’t identify where it had come from or where it had gone after Cora had left his apartment that night.
Then again, it had been almost a week since she had been here. It was a miracle that he had been able to track her scent this far back.
I’m gonna have to ask around, Grayson thought with a resigned sigh. See if anyone had ever seen her before last Friday or if anyone knows her.
Rain and Drizzle was quite empty when Grayson walked through the door, compared to how many people had filled the establishment the last time he had been here. He could see a couple of tables scattered throughout the place, and he supposed that they were moved around or put away at night to turn that area into a dance floor.
He went up to the empty barstools, where the bartender seemed to be putting various bottles and glasses away. Grayson hadn’t paid attention to the bartender who had been working while he and Cora had talked, but it couldn’t hurt to try asking the guy in front of him now.
“Excuse me,” he began, leaning his hands on the surface of the bar. The guy immediately turned to him, and his expression told Grayson that this was the last place he wanted to be.
“What can I get you?” he asked, though he didn’t sound too enthusiastic about the prospect of Grayson ordering a drink.
“I was actually wondering if you worked the night shift last Friday?”
The bartender narrowed his eyes at him. “Who wants to know and why?”
Grayson introduced himself. “I’m looking for someone who was here that night. Her name’s Cora. Beautiful, brown eyes, long, curly brown hair?”
“Dude,” said the bartender with a tired sigh. “You just described like half of the female population I see every single day. And that’s not even at night.”
“She was wearing a red dress.”
“Doesn’t really help your case, dude.”
Grayson held back a frustrated growl. He knew that just describing Cora’s physical features to a guy who probably saw dozens of different faces in a day and asking him to remember specifically one person was insane. God, he didn’t even have a picture of Cora that he could show him.
The bartender sighed again.
“The name does sound kinda familiar,” he added, and Grayson hated the way his breath caught in his throat. He couldn’t get ahead of himself. “I can’t say if she’s the same Cora you’re looking for, but there was a Cora here two or three days ago. I’ve never met a Cora before, so the name stuck with me.” The bartender started wiping at a spot on the counter with a rag he’d had hanging from his shoulder. “She was here with another girl called… Laura or something like that? I think I heard them say they’d drop by tomorrow, but that could’ve also been a couple from yesterday who spent way too much time just sitting here without ordering anything. Now, if that’s all, I gotta get back to work.”
Grayson couldn’t believe his luck. If the bartender was right, and Cora had told whoever this Laura girl was that she would come here tomorrow, this was his chance. It was his chance to confirm that Cora was his mate, that he hadn’t imagined their connection, that they had met almost a week ago for a reason. What if this was a clue Cora had left him? What if she had hoped he would come back here? What if she wanted him to find her?
Then she wouldn’t have left that night, a small voice told him, but Grayson forced it to be silent. He had been ready to give up th
e morning after, and he probably would have if it hadn’t been for Sam.
Besides, what was the fun in a game of hide and seek where the other person didn’t even try to hide?
“I wouldn’t look for Cora, if I were you.”
Grayson turned his head towards a young man sitting a couple of barstools away from where he was. The guy was looking at a half-full glass in his hand, swirling the liquid around it. He seemed to be Grayson’s age, or maybe a few years older than him, like Sam, but there was something about him that made Grayson uneasy. It wasn’t the way he held his glass, like he would throw it at whoever happened to anger him in the next two minutes, nor was it the way he was frowning, like it was his default expression.
Perhaps it was the way he had said Cora’s name, almost as if Cora was not her own person but rather an object that belonged to him.
Grayson wanted to get away as far away from this bastard as he possibly could, as fast as his legs would allow him.
“And you are?” he asked instead.
“Cora’s taken,” the man said.
The words sent ire surging through Grayson’s body, sending a shiver down his spine.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” he snarled, holding back the urge to let his fangs show. He also tightened his hands into fists so that his claws wouldn’t come out. He couldn’t help wishing Sam were here. His alpha always helped him keep his temper in check.
I don’t need Sam for this, Grayson thought to himself. He wasn’t a stupid, reckless teenage werewolf anymore; he could deal with an asshole like this guy on his own. Who was he, anyway? Some crazy ex, maybe? Some weird, creepy stalker Cora didn’t even know?
The stranger finally turned to glare in Grayson’s direction. “I’m not interested in answering your questions,” he snapped. Even his voice—rough and scratchy, as though he had spent his entire life yelling at others—was annoying. He stood up from his barstool and closed the distance between himself and Grayson, and once they stood in front of each other, Grayson could see that the stranger was actually a few inches taller than him. He had to force himself to remain in place; he wasn’t going to be intimidated by someone who was all bark and no bite.