He slid lower, disappearing beneath the comforter, and when his mouth found me again I gasped, the sound seeming to echo in the silence. Pleasure shivered up my spine and I arched into his touch, worries and anxiety and fears slipping away as he touched me. The real world could wait until tomorrow.
***
Morning came far too quickly. Not even morning, actually, since the sun still hadn’t risen when the alarm on Donovan’s phone went off. I’d fallen asleep held securely in his arms and I woke up the same way, our legs tangled together and a bit of drool on his chest, which I quickly wiped away before he fully woke up.
“G’morning,” he rumbled, eyes at half-mast.
“It’s still night.”
“Yep. Time to get up, anyway.” He yawned so widely my jaw ached in sympathy.
I tried to kick my brain into gear, but the short rest and lack of caffeine made it difficult. “I’ll call Ori,” I said, reluctantly sliding out of our warm bed.
“I’ll call Will. I texted him and Chief Cornell last night. She’ll help coordinate the search party.” Donovan’s years of experience with screwed up police hours came in handy and he already looked energized. I, on the other hand, still stood in the middle of the room trying to remember what step came after ‘get out of bed’.
Luckily for me, Donovan steered me to the dresser and opened the drawer.
“It’s supposed to be cold today and that snowstorm isn’t swerving, so dress warm.”
“Yes, sir,” I said with a nod. Okay, I could handle getting dressed.
“Let me know what Ori says? I left my phone out in the living room, so I’ll plug it into the charger out there while I call the chief.”
Right. Get dressed, call Ori.
The first part went well enough. Living in the mountains meant keeping cold weather clothes on hand pretty much all year and learning how to layer properly for maximum warmth. I dressed on auto-pilot, focusing most of my attention on what to say to Ori if they answered the phone.
My phone lay on the nightstand, so I dialed Ori’s number and put it on speaker while I tugged on thick socks.
“Hi, Alex,” they said, answering on the third ring. It didn’t sound like I’d woken them, at least. “I’m a little busy at the moment.”
“Hey, Ori. I’ll keep it quick,” I promised. “I just had a question. Is the DeVor family part of the… other community?”
There was a beat of silence before Ori replied. “Why are you asking?”
“Jean DeVor reported his son Landon missing last night. Donovan and Will are organizing a search party to go look for him, but I guess Jean wasn’t very helpful. I just wanted to know, so I have an idea of what we’re getting into with this.”
“Wait, what?” I heard some fumbling, then rustling, like Ori had put their hand over the microphone. They said something, too muffled for me to make out, and I realized they weren’t alone. I didn’t get a chance to linger on that realization before they were back on the line. “Landon is missing?”
“Yeah, they haven’t seen him since yesterday evening. You said that people like us don’t usually like police and it just made me wonder.”
“Fuck,” they hissed. “Yes, they’re part of our community. They’re shifters. Landon will stand a better chance out there than a human teenager, but if he hasn’t come home on his own by now, that’s not good. I’ll round up some volunteers and we’ll look, too.”
“Thank you, Ori.” Surely, even if humans couldn’t find him, a shifter could, right? I didn’t know how any of that worked, but animals had better senses than humans usually, so that meant one of them would find Landon. It made sense in my head, at least.
“Don’t thank me until we’ve found him,” they warned. “What about you?”
“What about me? I’m going with Donovan to search.”
Even through the phone, I could almost see Ori rolling their eyes. “I still say your power is finding the lost, something that would be really useful right about now, I’d imagine. Have you tried?”
“You might be right, but I still don’t know how it works and I don’t have time to waste figuring it out when I could be out helping in the search,” I protested, weak as it was.
“If that’s what you have to tell yourself. Whatever, do what you’d like. I’m going to make some calls.”
The line abruptly disconnected, leaving me standing in my living room even more confused than I’d already been and a little stung by Ori’s curt words.
“Was that Ori? What did they say?”
