The Hunted

Fifteen

Red

It took a week for Henry to look at Red without anger in his eyes. One more week after that until Henry stopped waiting for Blake to come back, leading a secondary invasion of hunters into pack territory.

The guilt over releasing Blake was abated only by the knowledge that she was safe from whatever threat lurked within the Sanguis Ridge Pack. Though there were probably other threats to her life now – vampires and ghouls, pixies and fae and vengeful spirits – because if he'd learned anything about her it was that she was a fighter and was likely already on her way back to hunting all of the creatures that went bump in the night.

Red tried not to linger on those thoughts. If Blake was hunting, she was in danger. And if there was one thing Red was having problems with these days, it was controlling his temper while thinking about his Mate being in danger and he not having any idea how to reach her.

So intense, these heightened emotions. It was as if all of his cells were on high-alert, finely attuned to that glimmer of a Mating bond between them. If it could even be called that.

The bond was nothing more than tattered ribbons fluttering in a breeze. Weaker than it had been when Blake had been on pack territory. Then it had been like a one-sided bridge – even if the bridge had been a rickety thing made out of wood and rope. Still more stable, more real, than what remained.

Yet somehow the bond's weakening hadn't decreased Red's hyperaware emotions. The opposite had happened, actually, leading him to surmise that it was a form of self-preservation. Similar to a warning signal, an inherent six-sense screaming at him to find her. Protect her.

It was an effort every day to ignore the summons. The pull to her. But it didn't give him an indication of where she'd gone and Red was sure he didn't want to know that information. If only so that he never had a reason to go and bring her back against her will.

He might, he'd realized on the third day after he'd watched her walk away from him. Even if she hated him, even if he hated himself, for it – he might find her just to quiet the roaring in his veins.

Red threw himself into the investigation instead. A distraction from thinking about her, remembering her. And perhaps it was a selfish drive, too. Because if they ever did happen to meet again, Red wanted to be able to look Blake in the eye and tell her that he'd done what he'd promised. That he'd figured out who was slaughtering humans just outside of his jurisdiction and that they'd been brought to justice.

And maybe he wanted to prove to himself that they weren't all monsters. That he could tell a monster from a friend and do the right thing.

He'd been pouring over crime scene photos and victimology when the knock sounded at the door to his office. Red glanced up, muttering at whoever waited beyond to come in, only to see Henry appear on the other side.

Though the iciness between them had thawed these past few days, Red could still feel the tension lingering. The disapproval coming from his friend who, as Red's superior, felt as if he'd been slighted in the decision-making process to release a valuable prisoner.

There was something different in Henry's scent this time though, lingering touches of emotion in his eyes as he said, "You need to go to Denver as soon as possible. There's been another murder.

*~*

It took him two hours to get to the crime scene but when he did, he found that the body had already been carted away. Likely off to the morgue where the humans would investigate it, attributing the death to gang violence.