This is the consequence. And it’s a fucking light one, considering. I’ll do everything I can to make sure she’s comfortable.
We spill out of the car as Tristan pulls up, Jax flinging himself out before the car’s even stopped. Tristan curses as he fights to unbuckle himself. “Jax! Get back here!”
Jax is gone, the front doors left open as we pound up the steps behind him.
Gray and I tangle as we reach the door, Tristan shoving us through.
Jax has disappeared, and I can hear him calling out for Sienna. He appears at the top of the stairs, his hair wild. “She’s not here.”
Tristan looks around, like she’s magically going to spring out from a corner with a party blower. “That’s not possible. She has to be here.”
I head down for the nest, shoving the door open. There’s nothing. I check my studio, Gray’s office and the bathroom on my way back up the hall, but there’s nothing.
As I walk back up to my pack, I pick up on something I missed the first time around. My head lifts as I sniff at the air. It smells like iron. Almost… metallic?
Now that I’ve noticed it, it seems to grow until the scent is pushing up my nose unpleasantly. Grimacing, I turn to Gray. “Can you smell that?”
He sniffs, shaking his head. “You’ve got the best nose.”
“It’s weird. Smells like metal.”
Tristan walks out from the kitchen, his face tight. He’s clutching the paper bag in his hand that he brought home this morning.
A sick feeling enters my gut. “Was it open?”
He shakes his head. “It was on the floor. Something’s not right. I can feel it. We need to find her.”
“I’m checking the gardens.” Jax shoulders past Tristan. “She’s not in the house.”
I move to follow him. “I’ll help.”
“We’ll do a second run around the house, in case we’ve missed anything.” Tristan nods to Gray and they turn for the stairs as Jax throws the patio doors open. “You take that one,” he points to one of the two main paths branching off. “I’ll do this one.”
“’Kay. God, I hope she’s alright.”
“She’ll be fine. Shortcake’s tougher than we think.” But his brows crease in worry as he jogs away from me.
I follow the scent of my nose. That weird metallic taste is back, burning the back of my throat as it grows in intensity. Coupled with the discomfort in my chest, my instincts are screaming at me to find Sienna.
Shouting her name, I run down every single path I come across. This whole place is a damned maze, a leftover from some rich bastard who had this place before we bought it. If Sienna is out here, she could easily have gotten lost. We don’t even know how far back it really goes.
We even have a few outbuildings scattered around. She could be in one of them. I stop off at Jax’s bike shed, scanning it quickly before ducking back out. There’s a shed at the back, but it’s secured with chains around it that Jax bought last summer to stash some of his pricier bike parts.
I nearly stride past it, but something niggles at me, enough that I slow to a stop, my eyes scanning it.
She can’t be in there, not with the chains fastened to the door. But something stops me from moving on, enough that I take a few steps towards it.
Enough to catch the faintest, sharpest hint of raspberries. But it smells wrong. Off.
I take rapid steps to the doors, rattling them. I have no idea where the key is, but that scent is growing stronger, the sickening in my stomach telling me that something is really fucking wrong here.
I pause, and that’s when I hear it.
A whimper.
50
SIENNA
