Hunting Haven, Stone Mountain Shifters, Book 5

Chapter 7 - Missing

Remus

We make it to the cabin in record time with Tobias driving. I jump from the SUV before we are even stopped. I race to the door that has the lock engaged and kick it open. "Haven?" The cabin echoes my voice back. I look around the empty room at the squalor to which I had condemned her. Broken pieces of furniture lay upended. An old musty couch with the stuffing exploding out of it. It looked as though a family of mice had made a nest in it. I hear chittering in the ceiling and watch as rats run across the open ceiling beams. A thick coating of grime lay over everything and I sneeze as dust assaults my nose.

The one thing I could not find in this cabin was any trace of Haven's sweet smell. I close my eyes and remember her vanilla and peach nectar scent that is uniquely my mate. It is absent as if she never even entered the cabin last night. And, why would she ever enter it, it is vile.

Tobias comes up behind me. "She never unpacked the SUV; her things are still in it."

I take out my cell phone to call her and hear the ringing behind me. I turn as Tobias holds up her phone. "It was in the vehicle, along with the keys." I hadn't wanted to call her, I just wanted to come see her in person. I half-hoped she would be forgiving, kind and gentle as she has always been towards me. I never dreamed she wouldn't be here waiting for me to come rescue her. I am her protector...or I am supposed to be her protector. I failed her in that regard.

I drop to the floor as my legs can no longer hold up the weight of my body. "Where is she?" I look around in a stupor. "Get a team out here, now. I want no stone unturned in this area. Find out what happened to Haven. Who took her?  Where did she go?"

My elite enforcer team is onsite in minutes and scanning the cabin and SUV for clues. One of the enforcers has her belongings unpacked from the SUV and strewn out across the ground.  It doesn't look like any of her clothes or shoes were taken with her. Even the box of her beloved books had been left, unwanted and abandoned.  Ironically, that same feeling creeps over me, as if I too, am amongst her discarded items,  unwanted and abandoned.  My mind is so twisted up right now, I don't know what to think.  Has she been kidnapped or stolen?  Did she run away from me?  How?

Tobias steps up to me, "Alpha, we can find no scent of her at all outside the SUV. It's as if she has been abducted by aliens.

I am floored. My elite team is crawling all over and they can't find a trace? "Expand the search area!" I order. "Do a wider perimeter sweep."

"Alpha, I believe that is a waste of time. If we are not finding her scent near the cabin, how could we find it further out." Tobias disagrees. "More than likely, someone has picked her up in a car, right as she exited the SUV and driven her out."

"Who could have done that?" I ask in disbelief. "Who could have defied my Alpha Command?"

"I don't know, Alpha."

"She isn't close anymore." I state, rubbing my itching mate mark. Something is feeling off. "Now that I have regained my focus, she feels far away."

Suddenly, we hear a trio of howls from further up the mountain. Instantly alert, "They've found something." I yell as I race up the mountain towards the howling.

We reach the outline of a mountain meadow and find my lead enforcer, Kai Frazier, in wolf form with his nose steady on the ground sniffing. He shifts to the left and circles and then comes back to the same spot. Two other enforcers are racing around the meadow at opposite ends, sniffing aggressively.

"Report!" I command as Enf. Frazier immediately shifts to human.

"Alpha!" Enf. Frazier points to the spot where he had been sniffing only moments before. "We detected a faded scent of the Luna there. From what I can determine, it is from yesterday evening. We can find no other traces of it or any other shifters or beings for that matter. We can tell where animals have walked across the meadow over top of the scent, but there doesn't appear to be any older scents. The middle of the meadow here is wiped clean of older scents. I believe she used scent masking."