Half of a Whole

Tears

CARSON 

Carson couldn't find Nelofer anywhere in town. 

She was sick? Bullshit.

Her small share house room didn't have a recent scent trail at all. She hadn't been in her room for days.

Following her freshest trail brought him to an abandoned werehouse on the outskirts of town. There was a car parked right outside and it had Nelofer's scent all over it with another set of scent: a human male. His wolf growled in his head, hating the idea of his mate with another male.

The inside of the werehouse was a mess. It looked like a crime scene. Utter chaos. Rubbish everywhere, moss growing on the charcoaled walls. A big hole on the ground caught his attention. On closer inspection there was blood was on the ground and on a broken chair inside the hole. When he realised it was Nelofer's blood, his control almost snapped. His wolf was howling and going crazy. A black, full face mask with the male's scent laid a few meters from the hole. Somebody had hurt his mate and she was nowhere to be found. 

Nelofer's scent and the male's scent just vanished altogether after the werehouse. The whole place put his wolf on edge. It was likely the work of powerful black magic. At this point keeping his composure became a monumental feat. He raked his fingers through his hair, gripping tightly on the sides. Something really bad happened to Nelofer. And a witch was involved.

Carson went in circles around the whole fucking town. It was like she just disappeared from the face of fucking Earth.

The beast inside him felt restless without knowing where their mate was. In the back of his mind, he couldn't help but assume the worst. She might have died already. He was too late to help. Dead. Just a month after meeting him.

Still, he couldn't give up on her. He wouldn't stop searching until he found her dead body.

Looking up at the sky, he groaned. It was almost nighttime of a full moon day. All werewolves would soon turn into their wolves. Carson walked deeper into the woods. At one point his bones started crunching and popping, rearranging themselves as he changed shape. He couldn't turn back human, not until morning when the full moon was over.

He raced on his paws. Just running and running deeper into the forest. The trees and vegetation a blur in his peripheral vision. He reached a clearing. A lake in front of him, the silver moon reflected on the calm waters.

The wolf howled his pain up to the moon. Asking for his mate back. He pleaded for her to be safe until he found her. He begged the goddess above to show him the way to her, to stop his curse from hurting his mate. She didn't deserve to suffer. Just because he existed and she was unlucky enough to be his mate.

The big grey wolf spent the night howling in agony and sorrow. He vowed to kill every single person responsible for her disappearance.

When the sun rose, he went turned human again, with a newfound purpose.

He called Ivan, his hacker teammate and him check Nelofer's contacts, phone calls and text messages, nothing relevant there. 

CCTV footage of her kidnapping however, was a different story. His blood was boiling as he watched a man press a cloth to Nelofer's mouth. The man was wearing a full head and face mask with only small slits for his eyes, like those worn by bank robbers in movies. Nelofer fought against the man's grip, but the attacker was bigger and stronger and tightened his grip on her mouth even more. The moment Nelofer's eyes closed and she collapsed to the asphalt ground, Carson growled and punched the wall. He was frothing at the mouth from rage watching the masked man kick Nelofer in the head, then throw her inside his car.

That car's plate number lead him to find out it was stolen. Information about the smugglers and buyers of the car was trickier to find, but not impossible with Ivan hacking for him. Trailing the car before it got to the werehouse on CCTV tuned out to be a waste of time, it disappeared after 3 hours of rewinding. They must've changed colours of the car and gotten away. The kidnapper was very thorough, he had to give him that. Carson spent a whole day taking the car to different car buyers within 10 miles radius to try and track the transaction and passing of the car from one person to another.

It took him a long time to track the robbery and then an hour of beating the shit out of an ugly bastard of a thief to get the name of the buyer of the stolen vehicle. Carson was thoroughly confused when he found out the waste-man who bought the stolen car was related to Nelofer, her brother to be precise. It was even more shocking that the scent of the man in the werehouse matched her brother's scent and the kidnapper's mask's scent.

The guy was locked in a mental hospital, restricted in a straight jacket, strapped to a hospital bed so he couldn't move. It didn't make sense to Carson. Why would Nelofer's brother kidnap her? Carson had never seen her family with her in Pitterdam Port. He knew she lived in a sharehouse with her work friends. Was she not on good terms with her family then? Enough for them to want to hurt her? 

Carson stood behind a male nurse and pressed on the pressure point on the back of their neck. They fainted on him in 3 seconds flat. He wore their scrubs, mask and borrowed their hospital ID to go into Nelofer's brother's room. All that effort was a waste because the guy couldn't understand anything, much less form any coherent answer. But Carson was still glad he went to see him because he became sure of one thing: the dude stank of dark magic, of a horrible hex. The putrid smell was making Carson's stomach churn. Walking out the room, he didn't feel sorry for Nelofer's brother. If the guy hadn't already been severely cursed, Carson would've killed him for touching his mate.

.................

Still, Carson wasn't any closer to certain answers. He didn't know who had Nelofer. He didn't know what happened to her. He decided to go back to Pitterdam Port and follow the other lead. Who called in sick for Nelofer at work, because she wasn't sick, she had been kidnapped.

As he was driving there, he suddenly stopped on the road. Walking down the sidewalk, there was someone who looked exactly like Nelofer. She was wearing wide trousers, long sleeved tight top and a black headscarf.

For a second he thought that wasn't his Nelofer. This girl was walking with her eyes plastered down to the floor, her head bowed down, as if the whole world's weight were resting on her shoulders. The Nelofer he knew was confident, someone with a big smile and an infectious curious glint in her eyes. This Nelofer looked broken. He cursed himself for whatever happened to her.

Firstly, he needed to be sure, was she even real? He got out of the car so quickly, he almost broke the car door. Quick, big strides brought him right in front of her in less than a second.

He took a deep breath. Sunshine and honey. Her scent immediately calmed him down. Cupping her face, he made her look up to his face. He could've kissed her from the relief. She was well and alive. He rested his forehead against hers and sighed "Nelofer."

'I have the urge to kiss you senseless right now, but this will do. This will do' he thought pressing his forehead against hers. He held the back of her neck with one palm to support her head and his other arm wrapped around her waist, cradling her closer to him. The wolf inside him was beyond elated to be with his mate, it was running around, wagging its tail and howling.

"Are you ok?" Carson's voice turned soft, all the edges gone, like he was talking to a wounded puppy. It took even him by surprise that his voice could sound like that. He pulled back to inspect her face. She just looked back at him, dazed.

"Say something" Carson was worried she might disappear anytime now "Anything."

Suddenly, her eyes welled up with tears. His chest constricted with pain in reaction to the sorrow he could so clearly see through the two windows to her soul. "No. No" he didn't know what to do, he wiped away the waterfalls with the pads of his thumbs. He felt like her tears were burning his soul "Don't cry, please. Tell me who did this. I promise I'll make them suffer greatly for it."