CARVER
“Carver, answer the damn door!” Lila demanded from my front porch. She rattled the knob hard enough to tear it off. “Since when do you keep your front door locked?”
My attention zoned in on Lila’s pregnant silhouette falling over the blinds.
If it was anyone else at my door, I wouldn’t open it. But this was Lila.
“Fuck,” I muttered beneath my breath as I approached. If she scented Ruth, shit would hit the fan. But I couldn’t keep Lila locked out. She lost Case too.
I opened the door to find my twin’s mate on my porch, her eyes swollen and bloodshot from crying, looking like a different woman than she’d been last night.
“Carv…” Her voice shook and threatened to crack. “Oh, Carver. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, Lil. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Her brows gnashed. “Like hell! I let that bitch get away! I should have gone after her.”
My chest tightened with a complicated mess of emotions. “You did the right thing for the baby. Casey wouldn’t have wanted either of you hurt.”
“Yeah… Yeah, you’re right. I keep trying to tell myself that.” Her voice was raw and scratchy. Fresh tears started to spill down her cheeks before she quickly wiped them away with a swipe of her hand. “Anyway, I brought your truck back.”
She held out the keys, and I took them with a weighted sigh. “You didn’t have to do that. You should be back at the pack house, resting.”
“I can’t just sit around. Not when I know she’s still out there.”
Lila flicked her gaze toward the tree line, and I wished like hell the horrible feeling in my chest would go away. “Last night, you said you would join the Hunt.” She whipped her attention back to me. “What happened to that?”
“I… I lost the girl’s scent.”
Lila’s eyes narrowed, and the ache in my chest spread. “You’re the best tracker in the pack.”
“I’m the besthunter,” I corrected. “Give me a gun, and I can feed the pack all year round. But you know I’m not the most potent in my wolf form. My wolf doesn’t… Uh…” My hand rubbed the back of my skull. “My instincts don’t really work thesame way everyone else’s does.”
Lila frowned. “Yeah. Casey mentioned something about that before. Says your beast doesn’t talk to you.”
“It did last night.”
“Oh?” It seemed like she wanted to follow that up with a congratulations but bit her tongue. Lila probably assumed my wolf spoke to me because of Casey’s death. I didn’t correct her—it was less complicated than the truth.
“Look. It’s okay. We’ll find her.”
“Y–yeah.”
“Lie better, or she’ll know you’re full of shit.”
The wolf had awoken.
“I’ll get my claws in her, Lil. I can promise you that.” At least that wasn’t a lie. “For now, you should go back to the pack house and get some sleep.”
She nodded in agreement, and the next thing I knew, she was flinging herself into my arms.
Every muscle in my body tightened as she buried her face into my chest. I resisted the instinct to push her away before she picked up on Ruth’s scent. Instead, I held her as she cried and waited patiently for her tears to subside.
After a few minutes, she pulled back, her nose wrinkling. “You smell weird.”
My heart stalled out.
“It’s probably just the pregnancy nose.” She dismissed that with a sigh. Her attention flicked to the fresh dirt mound in my yard. “So, you buried his head?”
