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Reece
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I dragged my feet slowly up the stairs. Each step seemed to take its toll on me mentally, telling me I was getting further and further away from where I needed to be.
I didn't want to go to my room. I would find no solace in there. My room was a place of solitude and loneliness. It was the prison I had sentenced myself to for years.
I turned left at the top of the stairs, away from my room. I followed the scent that lingered from my mate, the smell that drove my wolf wild and made everything seem right with the world. I trudged along, down the hall to her room.
It hurt, opening the door and seeing her room empty. She wasn't there to brighten the s.p.a.ce. But smelling her scent so intensely did help a little.
I was actually starting to feel really tired, now that I was here. I walked slowly to her bed, the bed we shared so recently. The bed where I had learned so much about her body. I felt a hollow ache inside me when I thought about those nights, and how she wasn't here for me to hold now.
I grabbed her jacket as I pa.s.sed the chair it was hanging on. The soft blue cloth held so much of her scent trapped in it's folds. I kicked my shoes off next to the bed and pulled back the covers. I crawled into the middle of the bed, but I didn't bother to pull the blankets around me, I didn't need them, I just needed to smell more of my Little Bunny's scent where it was trapped in her pillows.
With my head resting on the soft pillows, holding her jacket close to my face, I closed my eyes. I didn't expect to fall asleep so quickly when I came to her room, but I was more exhausted than I thought.
I started to drift into an uneasy sleep. All I could think about was finding my mate. Finding my Little Bunny. Finding Trinity.
I felt myself walking as if on air. The feeling was disconcerting but I paid no mind to it. I was focused on what I was seeing. I was walking through the woods toward an old run down house, approaching it at an angle. It was clearly built in the late 1800s, there was a stone foundation under the dark wooden construction.
The front of the house had two windows and a door, and had a slightly taller pitched roof with two chimneys. The side of the house I could see had four windows, two upstairs and two down. There was a second portion of the house in the back, all one floor, with a small porch set back into the house, walls from the house closing it in on three sides. There were cellar doors near the front of the house, leading down to what was likely to be a very old bas.e.m.e.nt.
I didn't know why I was seeing this place, why I was here, but I continued walking toward the old house. I thought it would be dilapidated, void of all life, but it was clear that people were here, either living here or coming here frequently.
I saw footprints, drag marks, and scuffs in the dirt and dust around the house. Whoever was here had only started coming recently. I wasn't able to smell anything, at all, and that was disconcerting. I couldn't smell the dirt, the trees, the old rotting wood of the house, nothing. But I could feel how cold it was here. It felt like I was covered in ice, I had to resist the urge to s.h.i.+ver.
I hadn't heard the sound of any animals since I had been here. Not a single bird, no mouse scurrying in the woods, it was silent. Until I got to the front of the house. Then I heard the sound of someone screaming, long drawn out sound like someone was in immense pain. It sounded like my Little Bunny.
I whipped my head side to side trying to find out where the scream was coming from, where the sound was most intense. She sounded so close to me, yet so far away.
"Trinity?" I called out to her. "Where are you?" I ran through the house just as the screaming started to fade. "Where are you Little Bunny?" But there was nothing but silence now. The sound of her scream was still ringing in my ear. I searched every room but I could not find her.
"Trinity?" I called out for her several times but there was no answer.
I heard a slamming from somewhere outside, and several voices laughing. When I ran outside I saw no one, but the voices still echoed. The only place the voices could have come from was the cellar.
I threw the cellar doors open and bolted down the stairs. The stairs went down farther than I expected. The long narrow staircase was dark, no light penetrated to help guide you down. Thankfully I didn't need the light to make my way down.
When I emerged I was in a stone room carved out of the rocky earth. It was square, maybe twenty feet long per side, with only a lamp on a small table to light the room. One chair was sat in the middle of the room on top of strange black likes. And there in the corner of the room, was my mate.
She was unconscious. Blood had dried on her face even though it looked like it had been rinsed off somewhat, there was blood on her clothes, like it had dripped down her face onto her jacket, s.h.i.+rt, and pants. I could see red marks around her neck and wrists like she had been tied to something and then thrashed around a lot. Bruises were starting to show on her face, neck, and wrists.
My heart ached seeing her hurt like this. I ran to her, I wanted to hold her in my arms, to take her home with me. To protect her, keep her safe. To make everything better again.
"Little Bunny." I cried out as I reached her side.
I stretched my arms out to her, intent to scoop her up and hold her to my chest, but my arms pa.s.sed right through her. I couldn't touch her. It was like I wasn't really here. It explained why he couldn't hear any sound besides her scream and the voices outside, or why he couldn't smell anything.
"Is this where you are?" I asked her. "Is this real Little Bunny?" I tried to get an answer out of her, but she couldn't answer me. "I'm going to find you."
I felt myself being pulled. Like there was a tether attached to my navel, pulling me backwards. I pa.s.sed through the ground, then the foundation and floor of the house. Once I was through the walls, I started moving faster, rising higher and higher.
I saw the area around the house. It was a farmhouse with a barn, but it was surrounded by trees on all sides. Once you went past the yard it was trees for at least half a mile or more in every direction. There was a small town nearby, the biggest building in it was an ornately decorated church with a bell tower that looked out of place in the tiny town.
As I got higher, I saw cliffs off in the distance. Black cliffs. There was only one place I knew that had cliffs that looked like this, the Black Canyons. But where at? Where is this house near the canyons?
Could they seriously have taken her this far? It was almost a six hour drive from the university. Why bring her all the way here. What was the purpose?
I woke to the sound of someone knocking on the door.
"Reece, are you in there?" Mom was calling me.
"Yeah, Mom, I'm in here." I said sitting up and sliding to the edge of the bed as she came into the room.
"Sweetie, what are you doing in here?"
"You told me to get some sleep, so I did." I yawned as I spoke, showing how little rest I had actually gotten.
"Doesn't look like it helped at all."
"I was plagued by strange dreams."
"What kind of strange dreams?" She seemed concerned, but I wasn't ready to tell her what I saw. Not until I found out if that house was real.
"Just my worries, coming to bother me."
"Reece, have you told her how you feel yet?" Mom asked me. My head snapped to the side, my eyes open wide in surprise. How did she know, I hadn't told my mom how I felt about Trinity, the only one who knew was Noah. She laughed at me before she spoke again. "Reece, I'm your mother. I may have been asleep for seven years, but there's still no one who can read you like I can. I know you love her."
"No, I haven't told her yet. I was going to before I left, but Noah got in my way."
"He is rather protective of her isn't he?"
"He's like a brother to her. I'm actually grateful he was there for her. Did you know he actually punched my in the face for how I treated her?"
"Now that's one brave man." Mom was laughing again. "I know that with the two of you working on it, we will find her. You both love her very much. Her mate and her brother working together, what better way to find her?"
"You know he's not really her brother right? He's her cousin."
"He's one of the only two brothers that girl will ever have. He's her oldest brother now, he may legally and genetically be her cousin, but that boy has always been her brother." Mom smiled. "And now that you're not in denial, you will always be her mate. The two of you will find her, I know you will." She seemed so certain that it was making me more confident as well.