Page 121 of The Other Side

Will staggered and did a good impression of someone about to collapse.

“Are you okay?” The policeman stepped towards him.

“Do you think you could help me back to my car?”

Before the officer had resumed his post and Will had driven away, Luke and Kit had returned to Osian. They’d brought a bloodstained cushion with them. Osian’s heart thumped hard. The three of them made their way to Luke’s vehicle.

“The blood is mostly dry,” Luke said. “But there’s plenty of scent left.”

“He was carried from the cottage,” Kit said. “No sign he walked out himself.”

“Was he alive?” Osian swallowed hard.

“He was at that point. I need to shift. I can follow the trail.”

Luke nodded. Kit shed his clothes, slipped his phone into a waterproof pouch around his neck, and let his body collapse forward. Within heartbeat-fast moments, bones reconfigured. Osian tried not to gawp. He had expected a massive, terrifying wolf, but what stood next to them was a lean, wire-haired lurcher—a medium-sized hound built for speed and endurance. A dog, not a wolf.

Before Osian could even process the transformation, Kit was gone, a grey streak disappearing into a field.

“He’s the best tracker in the pack.” Luke gathered up Kit’s discarded clothes and tossed them into the back seat as they got into the car. “The scent will fade with distance. When Kit has gone as far as he can, he’ll call. Then the rest of us will shift and search with him.”

“Thank you,” Osian said quietly.

Luke huffed, shifting the car into gear. “Thanking me, Faery? You must be truly desperate.”

“I am. I love him.” Osian let out a heavy, ragged sigh, staring out at the darkening countryside. “And I’m not built for waiting.”

“There’s nothing else you can do right now.” Luke’s voice carried a sliver of gruff sympathy. “We have no idea if he’s still in the county or halfway to London or on a plane.”

Or dead. Osian was grateful he didn’t say that.

The tires crunched violently over the gravel as they pulled away, chasing something they couldn’t see.

“They want him dead,” Osian muttered.

“But he wasn’t killed at the scene.”

He bit his lip. “Maybe they want him to disappear but I don’t get why they’d leave signs that he’d been hurt.”

“It could be that they didn’t mean to but Drum fought back. Kit is good. If Drum can be found in these hills, Kit will find him.”

He gunned the engine. “We might as well drive the way he ran. He’ll be on their trail and I doubt they doubled back.”

When they reached a desolate, three-way crossroads, Luke slowed the car, rolled down his window, and tilted his head into the early evening air.

“Left,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “You hear that?”

Through the rush of the wind, a faint, high-pitched howl echoed across the valley. It wasn’t the deep, chest-rumbling bay of a wolf, but the sharp, urgent cry of a hunting hound.

“That’s Kit.” Luke threw the wheel to the left and slammed on the accelerator.

“What is he saying?” Osian asked, his hands gripping the dashboard.

“He’s still on the trail.”

Hope surged so suddenly in Osian’s chest it felt like a physical blow. “And? Does he have a direction?”

“And nothing. We keep going.”