Rain clung to them on the way back.
It soaked into fur, into skin, into everything that had just happened, but it wasn't enough to wash away the scent.
Marco.
It lingered in Ithilien's mind like something lodged too deep to ignore.
They shifted back just before reaching the house.
The silence between them wasn't empty. It was heavy, stretched thin by the same thought neither of them had spoken yet.
Ithilien was the first to move.
She didn't wait. Didn't look at Kidd.
She pushed the door open too fast, the wood hitting the wall with a dull thud as she stepped inside.
"Marco?"
No answer.
The house felt wrong immediately.
Kidd stepped in behind her, slower, his senses already moving ahead of him, scanning, measuring, catching details she hadn't even registered yet.
Ithilien moved through the living room quickly, her steps uneven but urgent, her eyes flicking over everything—nothing out of place, nothing broken, nothing that explained the feeling tightening in her chest.
"Marco!" she called again, louder this time.
Still nothing.
Her pulse picked up. She turned toward the hallway, moving faster now, almost running as she checked the first room.
Empty.
The second.
Empty.
The bathroom door stood slightly open. She pushed it wider.
Nothing.
Her breathing was no longer steady.
Kidd stayed a step behind, not stopping her, but watching more carefully now, his gaze narrowing as he began to pick up what she hadn't said out loud.
There was no scent of struggle.
No blood.
No signs of forced entry.
But something had changed.
Ithilien reached Marco's room and pushed the door open.
It creaked softly.
The bed was untouched.
The window was closed.
Everything looked exactly the way it should.
And that was the problem.
"He was here," she said under her breath, more to herself than to Kidd. "He was here."
Kidd stepped closer now, his attention shifting to the air, to the faint traces left behind.
"I can smell him," he said quietly. "But it's… old."
That word hit harder than it should have.
Old.
Ithilien turned sharply.
"What do you mean old?"
Kidd didn't answer immediately. He moved past her, stepping further into the room, his focus narrowing as he followed the scent trail toward the window.
"He hasn't been here for a while," he said finally.
The floor seemed to drop beneath her.
"That's not possible," she snapped, too quickly. "I left him here."
Kidd crouched slightly, his fingers brushing the frame of the window, then the floor just beneath it.
No damage.
No forced exit.
Nothing obvious.
Which meant—
He straightened slowly.
"Either he left on his own," he said, turning to her, "or someone took him without a fight."
Silence.
Heavy.
Ithilien shook her head once, sharp and immediate.
"No. He wouldn't just leave. And he couldn't—" she stopped, her breath catching as the thought finally formed, fully, completely.
The blood.
On the creature.
Her stomach tightened.
"He was here," she repeated, quieter now, but with something breaking underneath it. "He was here when that thing—"
She couldn't finish.
Kidd didn't need her to.
His expression hardened, the last trace of anything soft disappearing completely.
"That wasn't a coincidence," he said.
Ithilien's gaze snapped to his.
"No."
Her voice dropped.
Cold.
Focused.
Terrified.
"It came from him."
The words barely left her lips before the realization hit in full.
The creature hadn't just been near Marco.
It had been on him. With him.
Maybe—
because of him.
The room felt smaller. The air heavier. And for the first time since the fight ended, Ithilien's fear shifted into something sharper.
More dangerous.
Because Marco wasn't just missing.
He was already part of whatever this was.
Rain followed them from the house.
It clung to their skin, soaked into their clothes, blurred the edges of scent and sound, but it wasn't enough to wash anything away—not for Ithilien, not now. The moment they stepped beyond the threshold, something in her shifted completely, as if whatever had held her together inside those walls had finally snapped under the weight of what she now knew.
Marco was out there.
And whatever had touched him—
had come into their home.
She didn't wait for instructions.
Didn't wait for Kidd.
Tauriel surged forward the moment they cleared the trees, her body answering instinct faster than thought, her mind narrowing into something sharper, colder, more focused than it had been in days. The rain didn't bother her like it would have before; if anything, it carried the scent further, stretched it thin but wide enough to follow.
It was faint.
But it was there.
Behind her, the pack moved as one.
She could feel them more than hear them—the rhythm of their movement, the quiet coordination that didn't need words. Kidd was at the front, his presence unmistakable even without looking, Adrahill cutting through the forest with a confidence that reshaped the space around him. He didn't rush blindly, didn't chase the scent the way she wanted to; instead, he controlled the pace, adjusted their direction with small, precise shifts, pulling the pack into formation without ever slowing them down.
It frustrated her.
She wanted speed.
She wanted to run until she found him.
But she knew better than to break formation.
Barely.
The forest stretched endlessly around them, dark and wet, branches heavy with rain, the ground slick beneath their paws. Every sound felt amplified—the crack of a twig, the rush of water, the distant echo of something moving far too quietly to be natural.
Tauriel pushed forward anyway.
The scent changed gradually.
Not stronger.
Clearer.
And then—
something else slipped into it.
Metal.
Sharp.
Cold.
Ithilien slowed just slightly, her head lowering as she focused, forcing herself to separate the layers instead of drowning in them. Marco was still there, but now it was tangled with something artificial, something clinical, something that didn't belong in the forest at all.
Chemicals.
She felt it before she fully processed it—the way the pack adjusted, the way Adrahill shifted direction just enough to intercept her path before she could push too far ahead.
He knew.
Tauriel circled back half a step, irritated but not reckless enough to challenge him outright, and for a brief moment their movements aligned perfectly—hers faster, sharper, his heavier but controlled, both following the same thread.
Zane broke off to the side first.
The shift in his movement was enough to pull attention, and a second later he slowed, lowering his head toward the ground. The rest of them adjusted instantly, the formation tightening as Kidd brought them to a controlled stop.
The forest fell quiet around them.
Ithilien shifted back before the others did, the need to see—to understand—outweighing the instinct to stay in motion. The cold hit her skin immediately, rain soaking into her hair as she stepped closer, her eyes already scanning the ground.
Tracks.
Fresh enough to still hold shape in the mud despite the rain.
Levi crouched beside them, running his fingers along the edge where rubber had cut into the earth, his expression tightening slightly.
"Too clean," he muttered. "Whoever did this wasn't in a hurry."
Ithilien didn't answer.
She was already following the rest.
There—just beyond the tracks.
A smear.
Dark.
Diluted by rain but still unmistakable.
Her breath caught.
Marco.
She knew it without needing confirmation, without needing anyone else to say it out loud. The scent hit her harder here, no longer just a trace but something that clung stubbornly beneath the chemical overlay.
He had been here and not long ago.
Kidd stepped closer behind her, his presence solid, grounding, but she barely registered it.
"This way," he said quietly.
The pack moved again, slower now, more deliberate, their focus shifting from pursuit to tracking. The energy changed with it—less urgency, more precision, every step calculated, every movement controlled.
Ithilien followed.
But inside, everything in her pushed against it.
Because the trail was too clear.
The tracks too visible.
The blood too easy to find.
And even through the fear, through the anger and the rising panic that sat like a weight in her chest, one thought began to surface—quiet, unwelcome, impossible to ignore.
This wasn't a mistake. This wasn't random. Someone wanted them to follow.
The realization settled slowly, cold and heavy, as the forest began to thin ahead of them and something darker took shape between the trees.
Ithilien didn't slow down.
Even when she knew—
they were being led somewhere.