Love & Loss

Chapter 24

Nico's POV:

I rested my head against the back of the elevator as it rose to my floor, fighting off the headache that had died down ever since that woman and I parted ways.

She would not shut up.

And because of that, the date that I was aiming for to be no longer than an hour and a half ended up being double that.

Needless to say, I was majorly annoyed and wanted nothing more than have the actual girl I want to be with in my arms.

With that being my last goal for the night, I sped to my room as soon as the elevator opened.

I kind of hoped she was already asleep but wasn't willing to make any bets. She seemed very determined to stay awake before I left.

I opened the door, confusion quickly coming over me when I didn't see her, and even more when I didn't catch her scent in my room, nor on my balcony.

It was a little past 1 am. She was always in the room after 11.

Where could she have gone?

I quickly came to the logical conclusion that she had gone off somewhere and accidentally fell asleep.

My guess would be the library.

I walked back out of my room, intending on following her scent and bringing her back.

Except when her scent lead me past the library, I began to become skeptical.

In fact, the hair on the back of my neck shot up as soon as I realized this.

There's no other logical place she could be beyond this point.

All the lounging areas, I passed on my way here, and the other possibly logical places were supposed to be locked up by either Lily or Marcus hours ago.

I hadn't even seen anything to make me feel like this but every instinct I had was screaming at me that something was wrong.

There was nothing in this castle that could be of any threat to her, yet one thing was certain in my mind.

I needed to find Khloe. Now.

I followed her scent as quickly as I could, my skepticism becoming greater when It lead me to the doors of the kitchen.

She was definitely in there.

In the kitchen that was long since supposed to be locked up for the night.

Lily never forgot to lock up.

I hastily opened the door, relieved to have immediately spotted her sitting at the bar, her head resting on her arms.

According to her heart rate, she was sleep.

Ok... this whole thing was definitely weird, but she seemed fine.

Yet despite that, my instincts were still telling me that everything, in fact, was not fine.

I quietly approached her, trying to decipher how this whole scene happened.

Lily was nowhere to be seen, no one's scent was present or recent, and the lights were still on.

The only thing I could fathom was that Khloe came here and fell asleep, but there's still no way that Lily would have just left her here-

My thought came to a halt the second a stinging scent hit me out of nowhere, surprising me enough to make me stop dead in my tracks and flinch away, covering my mouth and nose.

Alarms started going off in my head when I recognized a portion of the scent from when I was a doctor.

Part of it smelled like Rohypnol, a common date rape drug that I had seen the effects of in a handful of my patients.