Flutter by Amanda Hocking Page A

me, so sometimes I was almost tripping over
him.
    Ezra would risk anything for Peter, but he didn’t
feel the same way about me risking everything. In the hotel today
before we left, he asked if I wanted to stay behind. I said no, but
he continued recommending it until I refused to talk about it
anymore.
    We were going back to the exact area the lycans had
warned us away from, but that had to be where Peter was, assuming
that Peter was still alive.
    “Shouldn’t we be calling his name or something?” I
asked when the silence and the search became too much for me.
    Ezra shook his head, and I ducked underneath a
low-hanging branch. The one thing I could say for this was that I
was getting a lot more nimble and agile. I wasn’t getting as tired
out as I used to, and I hadn’t been quite as hungry. If nothing
else, this would get me through vampire boot camp.
    “I just don’t think we’re doing that much,” I said,
keeping my words hushed. “We’re just wandering around the trees.
How are we supposed to find Peter? You have this carefully
calculated plan of where to look, but when we get here, we don’t
even do anything.”
    “They can’t know we’re looking.” Ezra was barely loud
enough to be heard over the crunch of our boots in the snow.
    “I get that, but Peter has to know. Or how else will
we find him?”
    “Smell him. Hear him. See him.” He shrugged but
slowed, almost pausing to look at me. “Can you still… feel
him?”
    Whenever I had been around Peter before, my body
automatically pulled towards him. My natural inclination had been
to be with him, and that would be really helpful in a search
party.
    “I don’t know,” I said, although I didn’t think
so.
    If I thought about Peter or talked about him, I
didn’t get all fluttery and intense anymore. I have a bond with
Jack, and I feel things like that for him, which means that I
probably can’t for Peter anymore.
    “Oh well.” His pace picked up again, and I scampered
behind him to catch up. “We’ll find him anyway.”
    We passed over the river where we had met the lycan,
and my heart skipped. He glanced back at me, and I hated that he
could hear my heart. I could tell he was about to ask me if I
wanted to turn back, but I shook my head and insisted we plow
ahead.
    Hopefully, Ezra tracked better than I did, because I
couldn’t even smell the lycan anymore. They smelled of animals that
lived outside, like reindeer but not. There was something edgier
about the lycan scent, like livestock and… road kill.
    A branch cracked loud enough that even a human could
hear, and I whirled towards it. Ezra moved in front of me, his
posture defensive.
    It had been an hour since we passed the river, so we
were well into their territory, and we had yet to see any animals.
I inhaled deeply, but I could only smell the cold. Snow. Trees.
Dirt. Maybe an owl…
    A flap of wings followed by the rustle of branches,
and I saw a large owl take flight in front of the moon. Relief
washed over me, but Ezra didn’t relax at all. If anything he tensed
up more, and then I heard something else too.
    The soft crunch of footsteps in the
snow, softer than hooves, softer than shoes. Barefoot .
     
     
    - 7 –
     
    In the moonlight, I saw the lycan. Several yards
ahead of us, he walked towards us with his hands held up, the sign
of surrender.
    It was Leif, the kind one with large brown eyes. He
wore the same clothes he did the other day, and they appeared even
dirtier. Ezra, on the other hand, looked dapper for a midnight
hike. He wore a black cashmere sweater with a thick collar, but in
most ways, Ezra appeared to be an entirely different species than
Leif.
    “I’m alone,” Leif announced as he got closer to
us.
    Leif stopped a few feet in front of us, but that was
still much closer than I’d like. Ezra kept his body partially
blocking mine, shielding me.
    “I am alone. I know you don’t trust me, but it’s the
truth,” Leif said.
    He sounded American or maybe