Alpha Orion
The smell of humans slammed into him, perfume, fried oil, burnt sugar, but he cut through it, desperate to isolate her scent.
Then faintly, he caught it. Lyra's scent, sweet and familiar, threaded now with panic... and something foreign, the raw stench of chemicals.
His blood went cold as real fear threaded through him like a virus he couldn't seem to shake off.
Orion stalked forward, following the trace of her scent through the thick crowd until he found her pink backpack half-buried near a snack stall, the zipper half open and their photos strewn all over the dirt, but her stuffed rabbit was missing.