His White Luna

Nathaniel Black

I could smell her, from a mile away, I could smell her. My wolf had grown stronger, and I flexed my hand as I drove through the city, trying to see if I could shift my hand into claws. I would have been happy with one claw, but I frustrated and disappointed to see nothing but a human hand grasping the steering wheel.

My phone began to ring, and I pressed the answer button on the centre console – I was proud that I’d linked my car to my phone. Alice would be proud of me when I told her…

“How are you tracking?” Jamie asked, his voice coming through the car speakers and cutting the music off.

“I’m in the city, currently following my nose,” I said, which was true, I’d driven past the point where I said I’d meet Jamie.

“I figured, I can smell you in the city now, where are you? I’ll catch up.”

I craned to see a street sigh, “Lower George Street,” I said spotting one, “I think I’m heading towards the water.”

“Yeah, Patricia has teams going through the waterfront, they’re combing over every single building, but her scent is too weak for us.”

“Not for me, it’s not to me,” I said, pulling up outside an old warehouse looking building. I unplugged my phone from the car and walked around the building, “her scent is strongest here,” I said to Jamie.

“We’ll be there is five,” Jamie said, and I could hear him starting to run out of what ever building he had been in.

I could smell no one, hear nothing. There was only the buzz of the city behind me, I had never loved the sound of the car, the pollution and the filth left to scar the lands. While this, this was the biggest human settlement in my territory. A single Pack house towering in the middle of the city, actually it was a mixed used building – filled with apartments, offices, every person inside the glass tower was a werewolf. Yet this part of the city was nothing like the clean streets around the pack house.

The warehouses looked like they were in a state of disrepair, corrugated sheet metal falling off the walls, fences covered in graffiti and rust staining the patchwork of concrete. I scrunched my nose as I walked past a pile of trash that reeked of death and feces. I lifted the garage door open and was shocked to see another building built inside the external shell.

I cautiously walked around it, the faint scent of dog lingering in the air. I found the front door, and slowly opened it, finding a long corridor with an array of doors on either side. Who ever way here, they were here for a long time but left quickly. The walls painted a rich colour, and the floors covered in timber with rich Persian rugs running the length and each turn. I was in awe of the imitation artwork that hung on the walls in intricate golden frames, it was like being in a snobby museum.

Following my nose, I entered followed a room where her scent was strongest. The bed sheets looked lightly crumpled, and a rug looked like it had been removed from under it, the mirror shattered on the floor. I walked over towards the white gown tossed onto the lounge chair, picking it up I brought it my face and inhaled deeply, the scent of booked and flowers graced me sense. She had been here.

I looked at the fabric, running my fingers over the obscure choice in clothing, in sleepwear. Alice would have never chosen anything like this, not in a hundred years. Which is when I saw it, the fabric had been torn along the seam, ripping the front half of the dress nearly in half, there were buttons in the front missing.

I felt my blood boil and my fingers lengthen into claws, fur spouting from my skin as I stared at the dress my mate had worn, a dress now torn. Yet I could not smell his scent, just that of wolf, we were being deceived.

I turned on my heel and left the building, still clutching the dress in my hand as I exited, Jamie appearing before me just as I slammed the front door behind me, making the entire structure shake and tremble.

He swallowed, “She wasn’t there, was she?” he asked, clearly out of breath as the sweat dripped down his forehead. He must have run here, in human form no less.

I shook my head, “no, but I found this,” I said, gesturing to the dress in my hands.

“They made her wear that?” he asked, and I held the dress up, making the tear in the front clear, and his face hardened, his eyes turned dark. “They wouldn’t dare,” he threatened.

“Where is Pet? I want her to hear to track them. She’s the best tracker after all,” I growled, and I dropped the dress onto the ground. It was going to do nothing but make me angrier now, I was going to tear every limb from that man’s body. I was going to tear apart each person who lay a finger on my mate.

* * * * * * * * * *

I looked out of the window, staring off into the darkness of the night from the penthouse suite of the pack house. The suite was larger than a house, with a private everything for the Alpha and Luna, my father had apparently once loved to frequent this part of the pack in his youth, before he took over and I was sure it was to avoid his father, my grandfather. I couldn’t blame him, in fact, I was sure Alice would have loved the view.

The pack house towered high above the other buildings, they were themselves a sea of dark rooms and twinkling lights at this late hour. But the dark blue of the sky and clouds as they rolled dramatically into the night, the way they loomed over the ferocious ocean as it raged against the beach. A storm was coming.

My bedroom door creaked and I snapped my neck around from the window to look at Patricia who stuck her head into the room, “I can’t sleep,” she said.

I gestured for her to come in and she closed the door behind her, sinking down onto the floor at my feet and rested her head on my legs, looking out onto the horizon as the first flash of lightning could be seen in the distance.

“Why didn’t you tell me she was back?” She said finally, breaking the silence in the room.

“Because I was afraid she would leave me again.”

“What about now?”

“I’m afraid I’ll loose her.”

“We’ll find her brother,” she said stroking my shin in an attempt to comfort me, “she’s family, no matter how many times she runs away or is kidnapped.”

I placed my hand on her head, I had been surprised at how much my youngest sister had missed my mate when she left. I was livid, mad, and going crazy, Pet was heart broken and upset, my mother said she cried for me, but I knew Pet was devastated that Alice never said goodbye. I don’t think Alice liked goodbyes.