Page 7 of Hunted

He looked down as tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. The sense of dread that had hung heavily in the air had taken up space in his chest, in the shape of the missing Abigail.

For a second, Luke couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t quite function. “No.”

He couldn’t accept Christian’s words as truth.

And that was saying a lot because the words—Abigail’s supposed words—had burrowed their way into his brain.

You need to find her.

The voice didn’t quite belong to him. Instead, it was an amalgamation of Abigail’s voice, and his wolf’s voice. The eerie sound of their combined voices echoed inside his head.

You need to find her.

You need to find her.

Find your mate.

Every instinct in Luke’s body screamed at him to find Abigail. Even if Christian’s words had now burrowed their way into his heart.

Into hissoul.

He strode out of the room before Christian could say anything and rushed downstairs. Luke needed to find her, and he needed to find her fast. He headed for his truck and slammed the door as he climbed into the vehicle.

Luke knew one way he could find Abigail.

Through the mating bond.

Yet what if his father was right?

What if Abigail wanted to reject him? Wanted to reject the mating bond?

That would mean the mating bond would be weakening. It would be weakening even as he stood there.

That doesn’t matter. You need to find her. It doesn’t matter if she’s upset with you right now. Once you find her, you can fix everything.

Luke began to formulate a plan.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed the number of a nearby pack alpha—the alpha he had just come back from visiting.

After twenty minutes, he had spoken with five different pack alphas, each of whom promised to look out for Abigail.

His last phone call was to a tracker—a wolf shifter who belonged to a neighboring pack. The shifter had the specific talent of finding lost shifters, especially children.

“What can you do for me?” Luke found himself asking, after he had explained the situation to the tracker.

“I’ll put my ear to the ground. But you should get out a map and mark down any places that she knows well. Scared wolves are more likely to stick to familiar places.”

Luke nodded, even though the shifter on the other end couldn’t see him.

Fear had swollen to a lump in his throat and restricted his airflow.

Come on, man! You’re the alpha! You can’t let fear overtake you!

But as much as he tried to swallow the terror, Luke couldn’t. He couldn’t let go of the fear that maybe his father was right, and Abigail was rejecting him, even when his gut instincts told him the opposite.

Right then, his fear was greater than anything his instincts could impart.

“Thank you,” he said fervently to the tracker before hanging up the phone.

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