Page 84 of Destined for Shadows
Chapter 25
Bartol
Something was wrong.
Bartol leaped out of his bed, searching for an unknown enemy. He found nothing. His gaze fell on the closed door to his room, and he rushed out of it to check on Cori. The blankets and pillow she’d used were set neatly on the side of the couch, but he could not find her. Panic rose inside of him. He checked the kitchen, bathroom, and finally the front lawn. She was nowhere to be found.
He went back inside and did a second sweep, paying attention to the smaller details this time. Her bag and other belongings were still sitting in the corner where she normally kept them. Nothing was broken or out of place. His gaze caught on a small sheet of paper lying on the dining room table, and he rushed over to it. Scanning the note, some of the tension faded from him as he saw Cori had gone to Melena’s house. It was only a fifteen-minute drive, and she’d written that she left after dawn, so it shouldn’t have been too dangerous. Something still didn’t feel right, though.
Bartol grabbed his cell phone and called Melena. “Is Cori there with you?”
“Um, no. Should she be?” the sensor asked.
“She was…upset last night. When I woke just now, I could not find her, but she left a note saying she went to your house not long ago.” He took a deep breath. “Perhaps she has not reached your home yet, but I feel in my gut something is wrong.”
Melena was quiet for a moment. “Why was she upset?”
“I may have…” He cleared his throat, wishing he could have kept this private for a little longer. “I may have marked her as my mate last night.”
“You what?” Melena shrieked.
Bartol pulled the phone from his ear to rub at it before responding. “I bit her. It was not something I planned or had any control over. It just happened.”
Melena let out a string of curses. “Why can’t you nephilim ask first before you do that?”
“I didn’t know what I was doing until too late.”
“Of course not.” She sighed. “Did Cori accept the mark?”
He paced the living room. “Yes.”
“That tells me two things. One, she was likely coming to me because she was scared and confused about what happened. Two, if you’re feeling something is off, it’s probably the mate bond warning you.” Melena’s voice turned grave. “We have to find her now.”
“I will begin checking the route to your home,” he said, pulling on clothes as fast as he could while holding a cell phone to his ear. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized he was still naked. It was just as well he didn’t have any neighbors to notice when he’d briefly flashed outside.
“I’ll start from the other direction and meet you along the way. The roads are slick from the snow, so maybe she just had an accident.” Melena paused. “But I’ll bring Sable just in case we need her.”
She meant in case Cori wasn’t where she was supposed to be. Bartol didn’t want to think about that or what it might mean. He had to find his mate. It was a driving need within him, and every instinct told him she was in deep trouble. Bartol might not have planned to bond with her, but she was his responsibility even before last night. He could not let her down.
“I’ll see you soon.” He hung up.
Putting his boots on as quickly as he could, along with a jacket since the humans would expect it, he flashed away. Bartol began along the highway not far from his home. He moved about fifty feet at a time, searching everywhere for any sign of Cori or her truck.
It wasn’t until he was a little over halfway to Lucas and Melena’s house that he caught tracks from where a vehicle had gone off the road. The falling snow had started to cover it up, but not all the way. Bartol followed the trail into the woods, quickly finding Cori’s truck not far inside the tree line. She’d slammed it against a tree. He flashed to the driver’s side door to check inside, though he knew in his heart she would not be in there. His soul felt empty, as if she’d been cut off from him. He found a few drops of blood, but otherwise no sign of her.
A vehicle pulled up close to the highway. Melena appeared on the trail a moment later, treading through the snow as fast as she could since it was deeper in the woods. Though it wouldn’t feel that cold to her either, she’d donned a blue Gore-Tex jacket and knit cap. Next to her, Sable kept pace, sniffing the snow in her lynx form. The cat had fewer problems making her way to Bartol.
“These prints couldn’t have been here more than an hour,” Melena said as she got closer.
“I agree, assuming the snow has been falling at the same rate during that time.”
She nodded. “It has. I was getting ready for work when you called, but I’ve been up since six this morning.”
It was almost eight o’clock now. Bartol took Cori’s purse and the phone she’d left in the console. They wouldn’t be much help under the circumstances, but once they found her—and they would find her—she would want her things back.
He stepped away from the door. “Tell your cat to sniff inside.”
Sable didn’t need prompting. The moment Bartol was out of the way, she leaped into the truck and began running her nose over everything. Cats might not normally be used for such work, but Sable had been trained for it, and her nose was nearly as good as a dog’s. The difference being she understood human languages, and she had more complex thought processes than normal animals. If Bartol had enough gold set aside to give the fae, he would acquire a shape-shifter cat for Cori as well. Unfortunately, they were rare and quite costly.
