Eziah stumbles out of the tent. He is trying to pull on his camo shorts and falls flat on his face in the dirt. Casen nudges me and nods toward him, and I chuckle.
“You right, princess?” I ask him. I blow a kissy-face at him. Eziah flips me off before he gets back to his feet and yanks his pants up.
Another point for Jonah. Eziah, yeah, still zero. Ha, take this.
Casen nudges my side again, pulling my attention from the little miss perfect. As I return my gaze to him, he has already set out the map. The search teams are all over the forest, in every direction possible, yet somehow I am stuck with Casen and Eziah.
I shake my head to get rid of the thoughts that slowly consume me. I look over the map at all the highlighted sections. We have been radioing in all coordinates from each camp in our pursuit of her.
At first, I thought this search would be a piece of cake, given how openly we communicate and ensure every area is covered, but I was in for a surprise. This forest is the size of an entire state, and in two weeks, we hadn’t even made a dent.
“I want to search this area.” Casen announces, pointing to the map. I frown at him. He is trying to move us back somewhere where we already were. We searched that exact area yesterday and found nothing.
“We did yesterday.” I remind him, just to ensure he isn’t losing his goddamn mind.
Casen shakes his head and sighs. “I fucking know, but my wolf wants me to go back there, so that is where we are going first,” he snaps at me.
Eziah appears by my side and joins me in watching Casen’s outburst. It’s so out of character for him. His shoulders slump and he sucks in a deep, shaky breath.
I exchange a glance with Eziah. I slap Casen’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, dude. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Casen glances at me. The poor guy looks broken, absolutely fucking devastated, and I fear to even think of how he feels in this situation. I know he’s apologetic about the outburst, but the last thing I need is for him to actually say the words out loud. I squeeze his shoulder a little. “All good, bro. We have been stuck together for weeks; it’s fine.”
Eziah nods his head in agreement. For once, he understands he has to stand behind me and support the shit I say. It doesn’t matter what Eziah or I might say, Casen is the one we need to worry about now. Just like we worry about Rose.
“I know she was upset, but she didn’t have to run,” Casen whispers as he hides his face behind his palms. I bite my lip, thinking if I have the right to offer any words and stop myself when I see him rub his hands down his face. Clearly, he thinks there have been enough words already.
Both me and Jax wonder if Casen would ever elaborate on this argument they had. Only he knows why she ran, and yet he has told us nothing, just that they had a fight. “I’m a fucking idiot,” Casen says, shaking his head.
Now, this looks like he might give us some inside information, so I take my hand off his shoulder and raise an eyebrow. “Care to elaborate?” I ask him. Casen’s eyes flick to Eziah for a second, and I glance between them, but Eziah quickly looks away.
“I can’t, I just can’t lose her,” he mutters as he places his head in his hand. Yeah, that’s not much of the answer I sought, but I guess I need to cut the guy some slack.
“You won’t. We will find her,” I tell him.
Casen has already lost so much. First, he lost his family. All he had left was Vince.
However, since Vince went missing about a year ago, Casen was left completely alone. Vince just up and left without saying a word or leaving a warning, and nobody has seen him ever since. Every time I asked dad if he could send out scouts to look for Vince, dad shut me down and said the same thing – he would come back once he was ready.
“I shouldn’t have told her. Your father told me not to. But I was an idiot. I couldn’t resist, so I did. And now, because of that, because of me, she ran from me.” Eziah and I stare at him for a second, both acting like our lips are glued shut.
As I turn my head and glance at Eziah, I wonder if he already had one of his grandiose visions again. He shrugs, so I turn back to Casen, but he gets up, chugging the rest of his coffee and dropping the mug next to the fire.
I raise an eyebrow as he walks off, wondering what he wants me to do next. “Let’s go,” Casen says as stomps off among the trees. I chug down the rest of my coffee and jump to my feet to follow him.
I feel like I am breathing in water. If it isn’t water, it has to be some liquid of unknown origin, because whatever it is, it’s fucking hard to breathe, though.
That’s exactly how steamy and hot the forest feels right now. I have no other option but to shrug off my shirt and tie it around my head to stop the goddamn sweat from getting in my eyes and burning away the remaining bits of my vision.
It is already lunchtime as we still try to navigate our way through the trees. Casen is running ahead of us while we follow him like shadows. I still don’t want to shift yet, and neither does Eziah. First of all, if anything were to happen, I need Jax at his best to ensure we can get out alive, and besides, we are running low on clothes.
The thing is that usually, when we shift, we stuff our clothes in logs, but when we return, all of them are missing from where we know we leave them. Not only that, I am worried about Jax eating something. My stomach has been turning all day, and the last thing I want is to throw my guts up to bring up whatever he chews on. I swear, sometimes Jax is lacking in survival instincts. The moron would gladly munch on Legos. Eat a brick, build a ship in your gut.