Sebastian stood in the middle of Rachelle's pink-and-flower-decorated living room like a sore thumb. Champagne flute dangling from his fingers like a broken thing.
The party buzzed around him: shifters laughing, humans flirting, music thumping, and Beatrice giving him some flirty, seductive looks. But all he could hear and feel was the silence where Lucas' voice should have been.
"You look like shit, Seb. Are you still taking breaks? I heard from Timothy that they had reached out to other tribes in case Lucas went to theirs," Maximus, who was munching on one of the pink donuts in his left hand while sipping soda from his right, asked.
Sebastian looked up, his eyes sunken, evidently deprived of sleep since Lucas's departure. He smiled bitterly at him, muttering a low, "I feel like it."
Lucian looked at the vampire and smiled thinly.
"We'll find him. Timothy had already been asking different packs if they had seen a light brown lone wolf."
"Oh yeah, he also had to spread his pictures around those packs, just in case he would be in his human form."
Max added, trying to ease the tension for Sebastian. It wasn't working.
Sebastian could barely utter a word as he slowly took a deep breath. He smiled tightly at Max and nodded his head.
Lucian, who had been watching his reactions, tapped Max and nodded his head towards Timothy's direction.
Quietly muttering, "We need to go," towards Max.
Sebastian took a sip of his drink.
The champagne had gone flat.
He followed his gaze to the empty chair in the corner, the one that Lucas had always claimed, tucked just close enough to the group to not seem rude, just far enough to bolt if he needed to.
Someone had left a cupcake there, the pink frosting sweating in the heat. "He's not coming?"
The question came like a screeching halt to Sebastian's ears.
His chest ached again. Not from the bond, which had gone quiet, like a TV left on mute. No, this was just… him.
His ribs were pressing in too tight. His lungs were forgetting how to work right.
He wanted to see Lucas.
He wanted to see for himself that Lucas was alright. That this was just some sort of a prank that Lucas and Shane came up with last minute.
"I called him," he said, his voice filled with restraints, as if trying to mask the sadness that lingered for a long time.
"Twice. No answer, just went straight to voicemail."
Rachelle's mouth twisted.
Silence felt flat between her and Sebastian. Usually, she would've mocked him whenever anything related to Lucas popped up. But now, she didn't have to.
Across the room, Beatrice laughed at something some guy said.
The sound was too bright. Wrong. Lucas would've rolled his eyes at it. Would've caught Sebastian's gaze and shared the joke without words.
Now there was just silence where he should've been.
"Rache, I think I need to—"
"Go?"
Sebastian set his cup down on the table near him. Liquid sloshes over the rim, alcohol splashing on his fingers.
"Go. I wouldn't mind. Try to contact him again. Maybe that mongrel already had his ass out of the gutter and already had the courage to answer."
He didn't look back as he left. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing away the music, the laughter, and the empty chair.
Outside, the air was cold, chilly, some might say, against the skin of the cold one. Sebastian stood on the porch, taking his phone out of his pocket.
Lucas's last text was still there, sent days ago.
You're lucky; you are my imprint.
He took a deep breath and tried to dial Lucas' number again.
Three beeps of an unanswered call rang back to him.
Sebastian felt the anger in his chest as he smashed his phone onto the gravel. "Fuck! Where the hell are you?"
He went back to the meadow that once belonged to him and Lucas. The lavender scent that surrounded it slowly clouded his mind.
Outside of the forest, a car alarm went off. A dog barked. Someone shouted, and life kept moving.
Sebastian?
He closed his eyes and wished Lucas were there to comfort him.
—
Sebastian dropped onto the grass like a stone.
He didn't care that the dew would soak through his jeans. Didn't care that someone might see him, a 700-year-old vampire, sitting alone in a meadow like a lost child.
The lavender pressed against his palms, crushed and fragrant, and he hated how much it smelled like Lucas.
He pulled his knees up and rested his forehead against them. His breathing came shallow, fast, and wrong.
"Imprint," he thought, and the word was a knife. You were supposed to be able to feel your imprint across any distance.
Supposed to know if they were safe, if they were hurt, if they were alive.
But the bond had gone quiet days ago, and Sebastian didn't know if that meant Lucas had found a way to sever it or if the distance had simply grown too great.
Both possibilities gutted him.
"You're being pathetic," he muttered to himself. His voice cracked on the last syllable.
A twig snapped somewhere behind him.
Sebastian didn't turn.
He already knew the footsteps, measured, patient, and annoyingly calm.
Lucian sat down beside him without asking permission.
He didn't speak right away. Just pulled a blade of grass and twisted it between his fingers, watching the moonlight catch the pale length of it.
"You broke your phone," Lucian said finally.
Sebastian laughed, a short, humorless sound. "I noticed."
"Max is on his way back to get it. He's very concerned about your contact list."
"Max is an idiot."
"Mm." Lucian leaned back on his palms. "And yet he's the one currently digging through gravel while you sit here wallowing in self-pity."
Sebastian lifted his head.
His eyes burned, not from tears, he told himself, but just from lack of sleep. Just from the cold air. "What do you want, Lucian?"
The shifter tilted his head, considering.
"I want you to tell me the truth. Do you really think he left because of you? Or did he leave because of this?" He gestured vaguely at the world around them.
The party still thrumming in the distance, the expectations, the politics, and the crushing weight of being the alpha's heir or being the vampire's imprint.
Sebastian opened his mouth. Closed it.
That was the question he'd been too afraid to ask himself.
Lucian nodded slowly, as if Sebastian had answered anyway.
"That's what I thought."
He stood, brushing grass from his trousers, and extended a hand down to Sebastian.
"Come on. You can borrow my phone. Try him again."
Sebastian stared at the offered hand. His chest ached—that hollow, gnawing thing that had taken up residence there three days ago.
He took it.