"Aleksandr." Leo's face had concern written all over him. "Something happened that night. Maxim ran all the way to the lake. I can sense that you're going to leave soon, as well. Will you tell me what's going on? What has happened?"
Aleksandr could see that Leo's patience was running on its last thread. He wanted answers now. And Aleksandr knew it wouldn't be fair of him to leave without saying anything. And he had to leave.
He had less than thirty minutes left of the one hour he had arranged for himself after coming to Mologa, primarily to introduce Leo to his parents so they could get him settled in, in a new territory without Aleksandr there to help. He wanted to be there for his mate but he had duties as the pack Alpha first.
"I need to tell you something else first before I tell you about why Maxim came to see me so urgently." Aleksandr took a deep breath. He leaned back in his chair and spoke quietly. "About five weeks ago, a boy, his name was Rurik*, disappeared."
Leo's brows drew together.
"What do you mean disappeared?"
Sasha looked at him. "Exactly what I mean."
The room suddenly felt colder.
"He was coming home from school, one day."
Leo waited. Sasha continued. "He usually walked with his friends. However, that day he had stayed behind because he had forgotten a notebook or something."
"So, he was alone?"
"For a few minutes."
Leo had gone still somewhere between he disappeared and he was coming home from school. "A few minutes?"
Sasha nodded once. "Da, a few minutes. All the roads are mostly monitored by traffic cameras but he was kidnapped right from that one blind spot on the road where there's no surveillance for a few minutes. Which indicates that it was a planned kidnapping."
Aleksandr's father, Ivan, spoke then. "We found his school bag near the east woods." Leo's eyes shifted toward him.
"Just his bag? Was there any blood? Or any smell of blood?" Leo's mind whirred as he asked these questions. He felt the need to know every little detail for someone he had never even met.
"No."
"What about any tracks?"
Sasha's jaw tightened. "Some."
"What does that mean?"
Aleksandr let out a humorless laugh. "It means every tracker in the pack nearly tore their hair out."
Leo frowned. "So, there was a scent."
Aleksandr looked toward the windows. "Yeah, there was. But nobody could recognize it. Nobody can recognize it, even now."
Leo stared confoundedly. That wasn't possible.
Pack wolves knew scents. They knew family scents, neighboring scents, patrol scents, rogue scents, anything. Wolves could identify individuals years later.
Leo checked again, "You mean nobody at all?"
"No one."
Leo's chest tightened painfully. He was just a boy. How could anyone kidnap a boy?
"Maybe it was a rogue." Leo tried.
Aleksandr shook his head immediately. "No."
"You seem certain. Why not?"
"Because rogues smell like rogues."
Leo blinked. "What does that even mean?"
His mate glanced at him. "They smell like bad decisions. Like those guys we encountered at the lake."
"Yes! Them!" Leo shouted suddenly. "Maybe they know something. Maybe they're the ones who staged this whole thing."
Aleksandr's face was grim, "Maybe. But I didn't smell anything on them that indicated that they're connected to the smell we first inhaled at the kidnapping site."
Aleksandr continued further, "The only other time I've come remotely close to experiencing that scent is when we were at the Wolfhound, that place where I first heard you sing."
Aleksandr's expression softened and an emotion Leo could not name crossed Aleksandr's face. It was pure and raw, it made his eyes shine. "Your voice is mesmerizingly beautiful, Lev. It has captivated me ever since I heard it."
Leo blushed instantly, involuntarily. He waved a hand in dismissal, this wasn't the time for such things. "So, that's why you left so suddenly that night."
The corners of Sasha's mouth had flattened into a thin line as he nodded, his jaw had gone rigid beneath the warm light hanging over the table. Leo noticed his mate's hands tightening into knuckles once before settling as if he had physically bitten back something he didn't want to say.
Aleksandr had gone quiet. And not the comfortable kind of quiet Sasha often carried around him, the steady, calm silence of someone content enough to simply exist beside people he loved.
This was different.
This silence sat heavily around his shoulders and his eyes seemed hollowed out, the shadows beneath his eyes darkening.
Leo had never seen his mate like this, so serious and worried. He always seemed to have an easy-going nature when he was with Leo, carefree and confident enough in his presence, the kind of confidence that stated that any problem would be crushed before it even touched Aleksandr, any situation handled and any worry sorted out easily.
However, for the first time that evening Leo realized that Aleksandr wasn't just recounting a story to him.
He was remembering it.
Remembering every empty hour, every search party that he must have lead into the woods, every disappointed expression of every wolf that must have looked back at him when another trail led nowhere.
And beneath all of that, hidden under the Alpha's composure and carefully controlled expression, sat something Lev had rarely seen on Sasha's face.
Guilt.
Because, now there was another.
####
*Rurik is the Russian form of Roderick.
What do you think of the disappearance guys? Let me know in the comments.
Happy Reading!