Diary of An Unnatural (BOOK #2)

Missing

          William

Angelina and Victor walked through the door carrying bags of groceries. Surely they held food we didn't need and supplies that were barely any use to us. I leaned back further into the couch trying to hide from the inevitable questions.

"Where's Ava?" Angelina asked, looking around the room as if she expected Ava to be leaning up against the wall or sitting on the couch next to me.

"I thought I heard you two..." She made a clicking noise with her mouth. "What happened?"

I sighed, sinking lower into the couch. "Sometimes, Angelina, things don't work out. Blood bonds don't always work. Not on everyone. Not in every situation. Especially the abnormal and impossible..."

Angelina dropped her bags in the foyer and slowly walked towards me, her footsteps echoing against the hardwood. "She stormed out on you, didn't she?"

"I'm not going to talk about it, Ang. Alright?" I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to erase the memories of our fight. "She's out hunting. Or at least, that's what she said. I really don't know anymore. It's been a few hours. Unless she traveled halfway down the coast, she should've been back by now."

"Aren't you worried?" She came over and sat on the arm of the couch beside me. "She could be lost right now. You know her sense of direction isn't exactly superb. You should've seen her wandering around the woods the night we found her. What if she went back home again? Back towards the hunters? Isn't that what you didn't want to happen?"

I shook my head. "No. She wouldn't do that."

But then I remembered how she begged for me to let her go home. She thought she could make me feel guilty enough about fully turning her--making her my "mate"--that I would relent and let her go. I never was, though. Not with the danger that the Hunters brought. Not while I knew she could easily be captured by them if she made the wrong move. That she could die.

"Look, William." Angelina shot me a classic Angelina Larson expression--black eyebrows raised and eyes full of humanity. "We both know Ava enough now to understand just how stubborn she is. And damn persistent. She does what she wants. What's to make us think that telling her 'no' would do the trick this time around? I guess she and Jane have more in common than we would ever care to commit."

And then a voice interrupted our private conversation. Feminine, furious, accented.

"The only thing Jane has in common with that Newborn is the fact that we have nothing in common." Jane stood at the foot of the staircase with her blonde hair looking messier than usual. Altogether she looked somehow worse than the irritating Jane I was graced with on a daily basis.

Angelina didn't even bother glancing in her direction. "I mean the fact that both of you know what you want and won't let anyone get in the way of it." Then she finally turned around and looked over Jane's disheveled appearance. "Where have you been anyway?"

Jane chewed on her lip--such a human gesture especially for her. "Looking after the human, which I see you two have decided to neglect."

"Hey, I bought him Pop-Tarts," Angelina snapped. "That's not neglecting, that is being friendly. Something you naturally seem to lack."

I found it odd how girls could go from being the best of friend one day to calling each other out the next. It was one thing they didn't lose in the humanity department. That and their love for being right.

Jane ignored her and turned to me. "Luke said Ava ran out this morning."

"Yes," I said. "I talked to her after she did. She was just getting worked up, no big deal."

"And..." Jane looked around the room pointedly. "Where is she now? Out still cooling off after her Newborn mind told her not to drain her friend of his blood?"

Angelina was the one to stand up from the couch and retorted back. "That's actually what we were talking about before you came in and interrupted. William had a fight with her, and she ran."

"And you don't know where she went?" Jane's pale green eyes were on me.

I shook my head. "She told me she was going for a walk."

"And we think she went to Newberry," Angelina pitched in.

Jane's expression didn't waver and neither did her stare. "Then you're going after her, aren't you? I thought that was what this whole blood bond meant. That you two would be together. And I'm pretty sure that means actually being in the same town." Then her eyes narrowed. "Unless, it's different for you two. Unless one of you doesn't feel it."

I stood up from the couch, wiping my hands on my jeans. "Jane, I'm not talking about this with you or Angelina or anyone. It's business between only Ava and me. Everyone else is out of the picture."

"So, you aren't going to get her back?" Jane asked me.

The question hung in the air for a lengthy sixty seconds. Of course, I wouldn't leave Ava to fend for herself when she was at match with hunters. I wasn't the one who didn't feel the intensity of our bond. I still had the ability to feel anything and everything for her.

"I never said that," I told Jane. "If she's not back by midnight, I'll go to Newberry. Maybe she really is just clearing her head."

No, she wasn't. She would be back by now. If she was smart. If she wasn't off making another mistake. Or if the Hunters hadn't come for her after all. But there was still hope--hope that she would walk through that door any moment. I could, at least, have hope at this moment.

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