“Okay.I guess we should probably get back, huh.I need to get ready for our big Pride gathering,” El said.
“Okay.”
“Did you find any sign of Leilani?”
“No, nothing that hasn’t already been tracked.Her scent is all over these woods because she spends most of her time out here.”
“Maybe Ryan’s right then and this is just a ploy.”
“I hope so because if not and someone took her, they were damn good at making sure we had no way of finding her.”
“We’ll find her, regardless of how she left, we’ll find her,” El assured him.
Trip nodded.
“You walking back naked?If so, I have to tell you, it’s going to be a long damn walk,” he said with a wink.
“No, I’ll shift.I think then I may actually have a chance at making it to the gathering on time and looking decent.”
“Isn’t it fashionable to be late?”he asked.
“Not if you’re showing up to be punished for breaking a Pride Law.”
“Ryan won’t come down too hard on you.”
“Whatever it is, I just want to get it over with, so I can put this debacle behind me.I want to start trying to fit in here, and whatever I need to do to make that happen, I’m for it.”
Chapter 13
Trip
Trip didn’t wantto alarm El, so he kept the questions that were nagging him about the scent she followed to himself on their trip back to the house.Trip hadn’t smelled anything at all, and he had spent his life becoming the best tracker the Pride had.The fact that El had caught a scent strong enough that her lion followed it without question was concerning.Most animals can catch scents even on their first time out, but to catch something and track it for as long as El did was a bit more uncommon.
Trip was also learning that anything with El seemed to mean something.He was hoping he’d be able to gather the men to tell them what happened before the gathering, but based on the sun’s descent down the mountainside, he didn’t think it was looking promising.
Once they were back, they shifted and got dressed.El raced up to her room to get ready in time, and once Trip heard the door shut behind her, he went to find Ryan.He was surprised that Ryan wasn’t in his study, and even more surprised to find that Ryan wasn’t where they kept their wet bar either.
Trip scented him out and found him in Marcus’ old room where Shawn was now residing.
“Find anything?”Ryan asked, nonchalantly when Trip walked in.
“No, I followed the same dead-end trails the others did.Honestly, I think they’re old.It’s like your mom ran around the entire Pride perimeter for several days before disappearing.”
“She probably did,” he scoffed.
“Something did happen, though.El caught a scent, and she followed it for two miles, I’d say.”
“She caught my mom’s scent?”Ryan asked for clarification.
“No, I don’t know the scent, I couldn’t smell anything, but she did, her lion hunted it, almost to the perimeter line on the Northeast side.”
“Excuse my ignorance, but shouldn’t her lion hunt?”Shawn asked.
“It may seem like an instinctual thing, and in a way it is, but it takes years to be able to track the way El did today.We start teaching our cubs when they’re young to track, and they won’t truly be any good at it until adulthood.El’s basically only a couple of weeks old, and she tracked as good as I did, maybe even better because I never did find the scent she had,” Trip explained.
Shawn nodded as he digested what Trip had said.
“I told her if she catches that scent again—no matter what—I wanted to know immediately.I have a bad feeling about it.It seems like anything with El means something.”
