The Other Animals

Chapter 33

The room was painfully silent, aside from Nikolai's heavy breathing as he anxiously paced back and forth across his bedroom. Grappling for his phone in his back pocket, he tapped the screen to check the time yet again- ten forty. With a growl, he pulled up Oliver's contact for the fifth time, putting the phone up to his ear after pressing the call button yet again. The line rang and rang, Nikolai growing more unhinged when it went to voicemail. He was worried sick about his mate, and swore if that man came strolling in after putting Nikolai through all of this- he was going to be fucking furious. But there was still that little voice in his head, however, that taunted him and incited a feeling of dark dread deep within his soul. The voice that said Oliver was in trouble, or hurt, or. . . dead. He knew the last one may have been a bit far out there, but his nerves were sky high at the moment, his mind conjuring up endless possibilities in its frantic state.

"Shit," he hissed, bringing his phone away from his face to try calling Katie. He wasn't sure what he was expecting as he listened to the line ring until it eventually directed him to voicemail, given that she was still working and didn't have her phone on her. He quickly typed out a message:

Saturday, 10:43 pm

Did Oliver leave? He hasn't made it home and I'm losing my fucking mind. Call me.

With a deep breath and his phone clutched tightly in his hand, the werewolf stormed out of the room. He wouldn't dare put his phone away and risk missing a call or text.

His shoes banged against the wooden stairs as he stomped down to the foyer of the pack house, the loud thumps resonating throughout the building and turning heads from every direction. The other werewolves could feel the tension and panic exuding from their usually calm and collected Alpha. Only one thing could make a werewolf lose their sanity that bad- something must have happened to Oliver.

"Put that shit down, NOW!" He roared, bursting into the recreation room as the door slammed into the wall. All eyes from the people playing pool were on him as they froze mid action, including William, whose head jerked around to peek over the back of the couch in curiosity, some crab walking across a coral reef playing on the TV. Donovan was bent over the table, arm stretched out and ready to hit the pool ball, while Jackson and the other warrior wolves gathered around the table were slack jawed.

"Nikolai, what the hell?" Jackson seethed, shocked that his best friend used that kind of tone with them. The tall blond man set his pool stick down, striding over to the fuming Alpha. "What's the problem?"

"Oliver hasn't come home, and you all need to drop everything immediately to help search for him. I want every goddamn inch of road from here to the restaurant covered, including the woods," Nikolai barked, his attitude instantly forgiven given the news they had just received. Oliver was missing.

The warriors went rushing out, one of the women pulling her curly brown hair up as she ran with an elastic band clenched between her teeth. Oliver wasn't quite aware of it yet, but the pack thought of him like another Alpha, one of their leaders. Being mated to Nikolai put him at a very high position in the hierarchy, and the warriors wouldn't stop searching until they found answers.

As he followed behind the wolves out of the room, the shrill tone of Nikolai's phone ringing erupted from his hand. Immediately, he fumbled with it to look at the screen, Katie's name appearing at the top in bold letters.

"Nikolai? What the hell is going on?" she asked frantically after Nikolai had accepted the call. The Alpha brought a nail up to his lips as he strode over to the foyer.

"Did Oliver leave work?" He gritted, slamming the front door of the pack house behind him. Warriors were piling into some of the cars lined up on the side of the pack house, heads poking out over the tops of the doors, waiting anxiously for Nikolai's final command.