The Hunt

Chapter Seventeen

 

Mason's point of view  

When I got to the spot, I couldn't help but be angrier than I thought I would be.  

Another girl was dead. I recognized Thomas instantly, but I didn't care that he was dead. I just regretted that I hadn't been the one to kill him.  

There was one girl left... One girl that we knew he had. There hadn't been any reports of missing women, so I didn't think he had time to take any more.  

They were in a neat pile. This wasn't like the other girls. These bodies were meant to be burned. 

Emerson had been interrupted by the dead pack member during his disposal. I was confused about the whole thing. This was sloppy. He's never burned a body before.  

The smell of lighter fluid blocked out the smell of anything else.

 The death of another girl wasn't going to make Lex very happy.

She has something to be happy about, the wolf said within me.

She did, but that wasn't enough. The pregnancy would be hard on her, hard on her wolf. She needed something to get away from that.

The pack surrounded their member who was down while I walked to the bodies. They were all probably in shock about what had happened. The reality that they weren't immortal beings was starting to hit home.

In other packs, these wolves probably wouldn't have made it long. The rules were very relaxed here. That's why Emerson and Thomas had gotten away with what they were doing for so long.

The lighter fluid burned my nose. There wouldn't be anything I could smell for the rest of the day.

"Who was his partner?" I asked as I kept my eyes on the bodies. I knew who the partner was; I just wanted to make sure no one was lying to me.  

"I was." Jamison's voice suggested that he was sad, maybe a bit regretful.  

This had been a hard time for Jamison. I still didn't agree with the alpha’s decision to let him out. He needed to be on lockdown with someone guarding him.  

The loss of a mate had sent a lot of wolves down a path of control loss that they never recovered from.  

"Where were you when your partner was killed?" 

"I was close." It had been the truth, but something was off. He was leaving something out.  

I turned a scrutinizing eye to him. There was something. "And you couldn't sense that something was wrong before he died?" 

It could have just been the guilt, or it could have been something more.  

"He was always calm. I didn't sense anything until it was too late." Jamison looked down at the body. "Maybe if we had been wolves we could have caught him." 

I shrugged and looked away from him. "Everyone made their choice, including the two of you." I would figure out what he was hiding.  

Once the bodies were loaded up, we took them back to the alpha’s house. Lex was asleep, probably from the excitement of the day, so I didn't bother her.  

I hopped into the shower and tried to clear out my sinuses. All I could smell was that lighter fluid. I didn't like being one sense down.  

It would take an hour or so for the doctor to go over the bodies, so I lay down on the bed and was immediately attacked by a sleeping Lex.