Something vile and burning spreads throughout my body, but I remain still. I don’t blink; I don’t breathe. She has a mate. She had a mate. Where is he? Why isn’t he with her? I can hardly stay away from her. How could he?
I thought, I thought this is what mates would be like... the connection gets stronger than this?
“Milo and I were planning our mating ceremony about two years into college, and the night before our big day, he was murdered.”
“How was he murdered?” I ask. I hate the way it came out, all dejected and shit. My heart has fucking dropped, and my soul nearly left my body when the word mate left her lips. Mate. She had already found her mate. She was going to mate her soul pair, and he died.
I’ve been flirting and imagining a future with a woman who lost her soul mate. Her one true love is dead, and here I am, following her around like a lost damn puppy, hoping maybe she’ll see me differently.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Wait a minute, she doesn’t know? Then how does she know he was murdered? How does she know that was her true mate?
“I woke up the morning of our mating ceremony to his side of the bed cold and his stuff completely cleared out. He disappeared off the face of the earth, and his murderer made sure there would be no evidence, no trace, nothing besides a used empty teacup sitting on the counter.”
My eyes switch from Willow to Layla, then back to Willow. “Do you know how he was murdered, Layla?”
“I know it sounds crazy. Trust me, I know, but something is weird here. Things don’t add up, and now that I’ve thought about it, him being murdered is a real and high probability. Milo was a family man, as most bear shifters are, and he wouldn’t up and leave Willow. He wouldn’t leave Mom and Dad either. Something is going on.”
I don’t know if I’m being crazy jealous over a woman I barely even know, but I don’t know if I believe this man was murdered. Why would a murderer take all of Milo’s stuff? Clean out his closet, drawers, and everything?
Even if I don’t believe this story, there is no way I’m letting Willow see any sign that I don’t. People must have brushed her off, and that must be why she’s here and not wherever her hometown is. I have to be careful about this.
“Okay,” I say, my gaze switching between the two women sitting beside me. “Was there a body?”
“Yes, but the body wasn’t found until weeks later and was barely identifiable.”
“Who identified it?”
“My parents did, and they did it by scent. It smelled exactly like Milo,” Layla explains, rolling her shoulders. There’s a possibility he wasn’t murdered; scent could be easily masked. Milo’s clothes and blood on the corpse would make the body smell like him. Maybe Milo’s in trouble, or was kidnapped, and even then, how could I tell his...soul mate... who believes he’s dead that he might not be?
Even then, how does this explain Ghost and all the coincidences that have happened since Layla began her search for Milo?
“So, we need to find out why Ghost is sending the notes and who it is that hired him to attack Willow. The only place to go from here is to examine the notes.”
“Let me go get them.” Willow jumps up and sprints off to where she must keep her notes. I can hear her slippers shuffle on the floor as she goes. The steam from my tea is touching my face, as if in a calm spa, and I try to focus on keeping calm.
I’ve never been heartbroken before. Not if it feels like this. My chest aches as if a knife has been stabbed there, and it’s stuck. It may be there the entire time I’m here, or forever even, but I can’t leave.
They need me. I still need Willow. I can’t walk away from her scent, from her smile, her presence. I’d rather wither away in pain and still be able to see her than walk away and heal my wound.
My wound will reopen every time I see her, and I’ll have to accept it because there is no damn way I can leave now. It’s probably a good thing her mate is dead ’cause he’d have to kill me to get her away from me.
“I should go get the notes I got, too,” Layla says, disappearing into the hallway. I wait for them to come back, and Willow is the first one I hear, though her steps are slow, too slow, and calculated. She takes a couple of pauses before she makes it back to the kitchen.
“Willow?” I call out. She’s right outside the kitchen, standing out of sight with labored breathing. Shit, she’s hiding. I stand to meet her. She’s got her curls in a loose bun on top of her head and has taken off her jewelry. A harsh blush covers her face and neck, and her bottom lip is at the mercy of teeth. She carries what could be a hundred notes, and all her cuteness falls to the shock that takes over my mind as I realize the amount of notes she has.
“When the fuck did you get all these? I thought it was only one.” I take her pile from her arms and turn to spread them across her small round table. “How long has Ghost been after you?”
“These aren’t from Ghost. These are fromM. I’ve never had a physical encounter withM. The majority are from right after Milo’s death. I spent months searching for anything that would prove he was killed, and these notes were my biggest piece of evidence. I showed them to his parents and mine, but—” She stops. Her eyes search up at me, waiting for some sort of sign that I probably don’t believe her, but I do. I may not fully believe that Milo was killed, but something is wrong here. No one sends this many notes without hiding something fucking huge—something on the level of murder.
“What did they think?” I ask to urge her on. I need every detail, no matter how small or large, if we are going to figure out who is behind this.
“They think—they think I made these myself.” She lets out a harsh breath as she sits back down at the table. I quickly follow suit, sitting right beside her. I grab a note; all of them are on note-card-sized sheets of white construction paper. Black lettering covers the center of each, with different messages ranging from “Stop Looking” to “He’s Gone.”
The lettering was made with a thick Sharpie, and the handwriting is messy. It sends a chill down my spine. Willow hardly touches the notes, seeming more content with watching me go through them. Layla comes back with her notes. She keeps them in her hands, separate from all of Willow’s notes, but the paper, marker, and handwriting are the same between her and Willow’s notes.
“When did the notes start back up, and how many have been sent recently?” I ask.
