10. Chapter Ten
~Felix~
As soon as we were back outside, I pulled up short. “Alpha, I’m going to catch Darius up on everything we know so far. Go ahead and get some rest and we’ll hit the ground running tomorrow.”
The older man gave me a grateful nod. “You can see now why we’re so frustrated. We appreciate you being here, and hopefully, we can figure this out together. See you in the morning.”
He and the other members of his team walked away, all except the guards who remained in place outside the door, and I pulled Darius a safe distance away where we could speak without being overheard.
“There’s some kind of invisible creature inside that building right now. We’re going to follow it back to its realm.”
He blinked at me so slowly, I wondered if I actually short-circuited something in his brain. “Come again?”
Like most werewolves, Darius never cared much about other supernatural species. Unless it attacked us, it didn’t concern him. I was going to need to go back to basics.
“You ever heard of elves? Fairies? Lord of the Rings doesn’t count.”
He scowled at my teasing. “What about them?”
“They live in a parallel dimension to us and there are portals through which they can access our world and vice versa. When they visit us, they’re invisible to everyone who’s never visited the fae realm.”
I made it sound as though this should all be common knowledge, even though I hadn’t put all the pieces together myself until speaking with Calista the day before.
“The thief seems to be one of these beings, and he or she is inside the building right now, counting the grains of salt I dropped on the floor.”
Another long blink followed before he squinted over at me. “Is this supposed to make sense?”
“It doesn’t need to. All you need to know is that when I ask the guards to open that door in a little while, our invisible friend will probably sneak past us to return to the other realm. We’re going to follow and go through the portal with him.”
“We’re going to follow an invisible man?”
His look shifted from confusion to concern, as if he feared that staying up all night had messed with my head.
“Yes, but right now, he’s only mostly invisible because I squirted some paint on him.”
Darius’ eyebrows raised so high, I thought his forehead might snap. His mouth opened and closed a few times, as if he couldn’t figure out what question to ask first.
I put him out of his misery. “Never mind. Just do what I say when the time comes, alright?”
He shrugged, too tired to ask any further questions.
Well, almost too tired. He did ask one more: “This sounds more like Calista’s kind of thing. Why did you want me here?”
Fuck. With my excitement over potentially catching the thief, I’d almost forgotten about my mate.
“There’s someone else I need to find, someone other than the thief. I think… well, I think I might have found my mate.”
His eyebrows shot up again, but this time in appreciation. “That’s awesome, Felix.” A second later, his brows dropped and scrunched together instead. “Wait, what do you mean you think you found her?”
“I smelled her, and my wolf recognized the scent. He told me it was her but I didn’t actually see her. I tried to follow the smell, but I couldn’t find her. You’re here to help me figure out where she went, but it’ll have to wait until after we catch the thief.”
His expression didn’t clear. If anything, his face wrinkled even further as his lips pursed.
“Let me get this straight. We’re going to track an invisible being who’s stealing from this pack.”
“Right.” At least I’d managed to get that much across successfully.
“And you smelled your mate, but didn’t see her?”
“Yes.”
He stared at me meaningfully and I returned his gaze, uncertain what point he was trying to make.
When I didn’t say anything further, Darius sighed. “Really? You don’t see any connection between this elf or fairy being invisible and you not seeing your mate?”
“What are you…”
I paused, something clicking into place in my head.
“That’s…. that can’t be…”
I couldn’t even force a complete sentence out of my mouth as my brain finally connected the dots that I’d been too close to the subject to see. What Darius suggested actually made an awful lot of sense.
What if I didn’t see my mate because she couldn’t be seen?
What if my mate wasn’t a werewolf at all?
“I thought it might be some kind of trick,” I admitted when I regained the power of speech. “I didn’t consider she might be another species.”
Darius shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, obviously, but that’s what I hear you saying. Wolves do get mates from other species. Not often, but it happens.”
I knew that. Humans were the most common ones. Occasionally, I heard about the odd witch or vampire, but someone from the fae realm? I’d never come across that before. How would that even work? We lived in completely different worlds, quite literally.
“Well, whoever’s inside that building right there is not my mate,” I stated with confidence, about the only confidence I felt at that moment. “I don’t smell anything from this one. Let’s deal with them first and worry about the rest later.”
We waited another twenty minutes or so, until I felt pretty certain that the creature would have had time to count all the salt and be free of the trap I set, before I approached the guards.
“I need you to open the door in a minute,” I told them. “Don’t go in, don’t do anything other than open it.”
They exchanged baffled glances, but their Alpha had told them to do as I said, so they didn’t argue. Darius and I went into the surrounding trees and shifted to our wolves, ready to follow the intruder when he or she fled. Dawn had just begun to break, the light barely streaking across the sky overhead, but in the darkness that still lingered, our wolf vision would be better for tracking.
Per my instructions, the guards unlocked and opened the door, standing out of the way, and we almost missed the small splatters of paint that seemed to float through the air. In the rush to get something to use, I hadn’t been able to follow Calista’s suggestion for glow-in-the-dark paint.
Luckily, I made the right call in asking Darius for help and he picked up on the movement just in time. Darius’ gaze flicked between the floating paint splatters and me, eyes wide with surprise. Even he couldn’t deny that something beyond our understanding was happening. Follow me , he instructed in my head.
Together, we moved quietly through the trees, stalking our invisible prey without giving ourselves away. Branches swayed as invisible limbs brushed against them and dewy footprints formed in the dirt in front of us, making it clear we were on the right track. It took several minutes before we reached a familiar spot, familiar only because of the scent I’d left there earlier.
The thief was heading straight for the spot where my mate vanished. That couldn’t be a coincidence. She’d disappeared, which meant our thief was likely about to do the same. Following them might lead us straight into a trap; what if we weren’t able to return?
There were risks, without question, but the alternative was losing our chance to get any answers about both the thief and my mate, and I couldn’t accept that. Remembering that Calista said we needed to go through the portal accompanied by the fae being, I gave Darius the order. Now. Catch him.
We both sprinted forward, abandoning our stealthiness, barrelling straight towards the specks of paint that picked up their pace at our approach. The cold air bit at my lungs as I propelled myself forward with every ounce of energy I possessed.
My fur brushed up against something solid in the empty air and I heard Darius’ low growl beside me as the world around us rippled. Colours blended and blurred together like oil on water, and in the blink of an eye, the forest disappeared.