Bound by Flame & Fang

Episode 6

Damian POV:

In my room I stare in disbelieve and admiration. I still couldn't believe that a mare human could dump me after a night of passtion. My lips curved up as I said.

“You want to run from me, little human? That is not possible, nobody runs from me. You are mine from now on.”

I said it like a promise and also a warning. The words tasted like iron.

I pushed off the bed. Anger coiled through my muscles. I moved to the window and looked down. The street pulsed with morning traffic. Her scent should have been loud as a bell by now. But for some reason It wasn’t. I couldn't smell a thing.

“Where are you?” I said in a low voice. I was talking to the empty air. I suddenly felt a weakness.

My wolf was hungry and thirsty. A hunger that made my teeth itch. He wanted blood. He wanted scent. And most of all he wanted her.

I knew I had to find her or I will go crazy,so I quickly dressed. I dressed in leather jacket, dark jeans and boots. No tie. No patience. I didn’t look at the bed again. I couldn't let memory slow me. Memory was a trap.

Outside, the city blurred. I walked fast, each step a drumbeat. I kept my head down and my nose open. My senses stretched for her, for that little thread of human sweetness. The trail was a lie. It vanished like smoke.

“Damn it.” I spat. “Who runs and erases herself?”

I called my secretary while sliding into the car. “send me the bar footage from last night now. All angles and every exit cams, pull them up and bring it to me.” I said with authority.

“On it, sir,” came the calm reply. Calm like a rope cutting skin.

The car ate up the road. My hands were fists in my lap. Every red light was a slap. I wanted to leap out and rip doors from their hinges.

The office smelled of coffee and fear. People looked up when I slammed the door. They read the hunt in my face and shuffled into motion.

The secretary already had the monitors ready.

“Play it,” I said.

The screen flickered. Last night event coming into live. The video showed me,Drinking with a Glass. And how she laughed. The arm that brushed mine. The camera at the exit caught her coat in hand, heels in one hand, quick glance over her shoulder. She stepped out.

The sidewalk in the next frame was empty.

I hit rewind. Frame by frame. My jaw hurt from clenching. She existed. But She left. The world ate her, even the camera was not showing her full face.

“Rewind again,” I snapped. “Zoom. All the cameras on that corner.”

The feeds rolled. I watched her across different angles until my eyes burned. Every feed showed the same thing. Her leaving and then nothing. No taxi. No shadow. No second person. Just a slice of sidewalk that swallowed her like a bad dream.

Fk, “Check street cams up to two blocks away,” I ordered. “ Also, taxi logs. Parking cams. CCTV from the bakery, the bank, just fueling to check everything.”

“Yes, sir.” Fingers flew. Voices were small. They moved fast. But to me, it was not fast enough.

My wolf paced in my chest. “You want to run from me?” I murmured to the empty space in my head “You will not run.”

“Sir,” one of my men came to me. He said with a tight voice. “There was interference on the public feeds. Signal dropouts around that time.”

“Interference?” I repeated. Sounded thin. Dangerous. Convenient.

“Pull the plates from any taxi that passed through in the thirty minutes after she left,” I said. “Find anything that moved close to her frame. Question every driver.”

I barked and they obeyed. They always obeyed.

I walked into the office like a predator, the room shrinking until the monitors were my world.

I watched empty sidewalk after empty sidewalk like a furious man at prayer. My wolf snarled. The room hummed. Phones rang. People spoke in clipped commands and names. I answered with orders. I gave them teeth.

“My scent,” I said to the screens, to the men, to whoever would listen,“ My scent is not erased. Something masked it. Something took it.”

“Something?” the secretary whispered. His eyes slid at me like he expected an animal to spring.

“Yes. Something.” My voice was icy. “Find it.”

They dove into search. Every second they lost was a second my wolf grew louder. He bared his teeth at the world. He wanted the chase. He wanted the hunt.

“Bring me everything,” I said. “Every camera. Every taxi. Every witness. I want the second she stepped off that pavement. I want the moment the world tried to hide her from me.”