Forgotten Ties (Ties, Book 3.5) | ✓

Chapter 9

Nim spent the entire day at school distracted by thoughts of Skye, which was both weird and annoying. Skye was just so hard to figure out; every time Nim thought he had a handle on him, Skye would throw something new at him, leaving Nim puzzled all over again.

After school, he walked through the front door, planning to sit down and have a long chat with Skye, but Joanne stopped him before he could get to their room. The worried look on her face told him something was wrong.

"Skye's missing," she said.

"Missing?" Nim repeated. "What does that mean?"

"It means we went to check on him when he didn't come for lunch and we couldn't find him. We're not sure how long he's been gone. I looked around the neighbourhood and asked some people, but no one's seen him."

"Shit," Nim murmured.

"Don't worry, I'm sure he's okay," Joanne said quickly. "Maybe school was just too much for him. Could you help look for him? I know you can't go around the neighbourhood as a wolf, but your sense of smell should still be useful in this form, right?"

"Yeah, maybe," Nim answered. "I've never tried tracking someone before, but I'll give it a go."

The whole house carried Skye's scent, but as soon as Nim stepped outside, the smell became more difficult to trace. Even if his sense of smell was decent in this form, he couldn't exactly put his nose to the ground and sniff around without drawing unwanted attention. He went to the park not because he could track Skye there, but because it was the only nearby place they'd ever been together.

It took a few loops around, attempting to discreetly sniff trees in case Skye had climbed them, before Nim discovered a picnic table that definitely held Skye's scent. He'd eaten tuna there. At least that chased away any fears of unlikely scenarios in which Skye had been kidnapped from their home, but Nim didn't really know where to go from there.

He wandered the neighbourhood, searching and sniffing the air, hoping to find something. Had Skye decided he'd had enough of them? Had he just... left? Surely he'd at least say goodbye. Surely Nim deserved that much. But it was Skye, after all, and he didn't always do what might be expected of him.

For hours, Nim's search proved fruitless, and then, when it got dark, he looped back to the park. He sat at the picnic table that smelled of Skye while he waited for the last straggling dog walker to leave, then he stripped, hid his clothes under the table, and shifted.

In this form, with his nose to the ground, it was much easier to catch traces of Skye's scent. He soon found the direction Skye had headed in when leaving the park.

For a while, it seemed like Skye had meandered up and down streets just like Nim had been doing for the last few hours, but then Nim traced his path down a long road, and he finally lifted his head as he caught a hint of Skye's scent in the air. In front of him stood a construction site for an apartment block.

Nim shifted and jumped the fence. Once he was on the other side, he sniffed the air and lifted his head to follow the scent. It was too dark to see much, but Skye was definitely here.

Skye's scent was all over the scaffolding, but Nim wasn't about to climb that unless he absolutely had to. He couldn't survive a fall like Skye could. He headed inside the barebones building and found that the interior stairs had already been built. He headed up.

A few floors up, scrunched up on the stairs, he found a pair of workers' pants covered in dried paint and put them on. They weren't long enough for his legs, but whoever their original owner had been must have been large in other ways, because they fit around his waist. He continued up the stairs.