The Tracker's Mate: Sunderverse (Mate Tracker Book 1) by Ingrid Seymour (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

gotten messages out to two clients and canceled our appointments. She’d also cleared my schedule for tomorrow since we didn’t know what effect today’s tracking might have on me.

When I finally gathered the courage to get started, I went into the bedroom. Three more days. That was all Stephen had. I’d gotten all the rest I needed. Now, it was time to act.

“Should I expect Jake bursting through the door?” Rosalina asked as I made myself comfortable in the middle of the bed.

I shook my head. “He’ll stay away. I told him I would call him.” I glanced at my phone on the night table. “He might get impatient and call before I’m done, though. If he shows up, please make sure he stays away while I’m recovering.”

Rosalina gave me a raised eyebrow and placed her hands on her hips. “I can’t stop that man if he decides to come in here. I tried before. He was like a freaking tornado tearing through the apartment.”

I laughed. “I’m sorry. I told him he was out of place, but he should be better now that he’s getting what he wants.” That made him sound selfish, so I added. “He’s not a bad guy.”

I don’t know what made me say that. For the past year and a half, I’d thought of him as nothing but selfish and low. Why did I feel the need to defend him now?

“Girl, don’t let his hotness get in the way of your judgment.”

“Do you think I’m doing that?”

It was an honest question. I felt I couldn’t trust myself around Jake. When he looked at me, it was as if he’d cast out a net, and I, like a stupid fish, got caught in it every single time. His spellbinding eyes seemed to pull me to him and turned me into a little moon that revolved around his entire world. It was pathetic.

“Honestly?” Rosalina’s face pinched tightly as if she didn’t want to answer.

“Honestly.”

She put a hand out and tipped it from side to side. “Kind of.”

I deflated. “I swear I’m trying my best, but I don’t know what it is about him. It’s been like that ever since I’ve known him, which is pretty much my entire lifetime. I would see him walking down the halls in school, and I would forget whatever I was doing. Like he was a damn, mental eraser. Whoosh, everything gone.”

“Was there drool?”

“Definitely.”

We both laughed.

Rosalina sat at the edge of the bed, growing serious. “Is it because he’s a werewolf? I’ve heard shifters can be... I don’t know... entrancing to certain women.”

“Maybe, but why me?” I whined, punching the mattress with closed fists. “Hand me that cufflink. It’ll take me out of this misery.”

It would send me into a different type of misery, but at this point, I honestly didn’t know which was worse. Rosalina pressed the cufflink into my palm, closed my fingers around it, and patted my hand. “Try not to go too deep, okay? Pull out if it’s taking too long.”

I nodded and watched her leave and close the door behind her. Nerves stirred in my stomach, making me feel nauseous. Maybe eating all those pancakes had been a bad idea.

The cufflink poked my palm as I tightened my hold on it. I closed my eyes, trying to focus, but the ball of dread that had made itself comfortable in my chest since I decided to get involved grew to epic proportions as I tried to push myself into the trance.

I opened my eyes, confused. I never looked forward to this, but this dread was unlike anything I’d ever felt. Was I afraid of the aftermath? Or of what I would find out?

What if Stephen was dead?

I had tried to track a dead person once before, and I never could forget how it felt to go in and find nothing. Nothing at all. The vast, unending blankness had stripped me of all my emotions until I felt raw with the knowledge of only one thing...

Cold, unforgiving emptiness.

I didn’t want to feel that again. It was one of the reasons I preferred to be a mate tracker. There was always someone out there who could make another one happy, so I never had to face that emptiness.

I shook my head.

He’s not dead.

If he was dead, they wouldn’t be threatening to cut his head off, would they? They wouldn’t be making demands that Ulfen couldn’t meet. There seemed to be a hole in that logic, but I had to believe he was still alive.

I sighed. No use in postponing the inevitable. I had already agreed to this, and I wouldn’t back out. I clasped my hands together around the cufflink and let my power flow. Green magic sprang from my fingers and whirled around my hands. This was different from mate tracking, easier because I had something of Stephen’s.

I closed my eyes. This time there was no glittery world, just blackness. No potion, no sparkles. Gradually, I released my senses... Scent first, as always.

Immediately, a pleasantly sweet, warm scent surrounded me. The smell was familiar in a way, yet I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, which bothered me the more I tried to pick up its subtleties. Underneath this scent, I tried to find others, but this one was overpowering and made it hard to identify anything else. I struggled for several long moments, knowing that the longer I went, the longer my food would taste like cardboard—smell made such a huge difference when trying to enjoy your grub.

At last, the hint of a few other scents took shape: vanilla and cinnamon and maybe also lavender. Those were the scents I could put a name to, and they could be anything: someone’s perfume, a cinnamon roll, a vanilla latte. They didn’t help.

Frustrated, I released my sense of hearing next, and the usual cacophony of sounds assaulted me. I listened for several beats, waiting for the racket to die down as I sifted through the different sounds. The noise barely