MasukIt took us three hours to process the elk and clean up the butchering room. By then, it was a little past midnight. Tomorrow morning, I’d have to wake up early to clean the manor, even earlier than I used to wake up for school. I graduated this past June. David wanted to keep me on an early schedule so I knew I was going to be tired, especially since I felt exhausted tonight. Colt walked me back up to my bedroom, his gloves and apron gone and now wearing jeans and his dark blue t-shirt. “Hey,” he said, grabbing my shoulder as I opened my door, “if you need anything, just give me a shout.”I hesitated.“Since you’re grounded,” he added.“Oh.” I wouldn’t be able to join in on trips to the grocery store. That was probably what he meant. “Okay. Thanks.”Colt grinned softly, taking his hand away. From the air whisked by his hand, a fresh wave of his piney smell hit my nose, rising directly off his skin. I breathed in and relished it, catching his eyes.He tilted his head.The desire to
Billie POV)My heart couldn’t stop pounding, my fists clenched as I swallowed the humiliation of Gavin’s rage. His harsh voice rang in my ears. Thinking about how his eyes latched onto me made the hair on the back of my neck prickle. Then, I was hit with a flash of David taking away my binoculars and grounding me. The tone of Catrina’s voice as she mocked me. It was all too much for me to swallow down like I usually did. Something wild roared within me, anger as electrical as the excitement I’d felt watching the hunt, as uncontrollable as my heartbeat. It swelled hotly in my throat and coiled in my head like a viper.What gave Gavin the right to talk to me that way? I hadn’t done anything except look at him.I wished desperately that I could fire something back, but I knew it wouldn’t matter what I’d say. I’d get out one, maybe two sentences before he would pick me up and crush my bones. I was helpless to assert myself, but that didn’t mean I didn’t deserve to be heard, right…? Or may
Catrina poured two glasses of red and handed one to me. “At least stay for some wine,” she said, trying to look unbothered.I didn’t take the glass. “I should get going.”Her eyelashes hung heavily above her eyes, giving me the same look she’d sometimes give me on nights when we were alone. “I can feel the heat in your blood. You’re still worked up. Relax a little.”“Worked up about what?” asked David.I didn’t like how sultry she acted in front of her father. It put me in a strange position, and made me feel exposed. I really didn’t like that she’d brought up the hunt again.“The others are trying to steal his kill. Gavin proved himself once again to be an unyielding force of nature while we took down that elk. He even made Colt bleed,” said Catrina, sipping from her wine and still trying to push the other glass into my hands.“Did he now?” David’s brows rose.I took the glass and set it sharply down on the counter. The glass cracked and wine spilled over the edge. My eyes hard
Gavin POV)The hunt had been a disaster. I was already furious about the mayhem I caused, so when I laid eyes on that scrawny wolfless girl in Hexen Manor, it was like she ignited a fuse inside of me. And the longer she looked back at me, the closer I was to detonating.My shoulders ached from carrying the elk up from the valley. There were no roads down there and too many trees to get a truck through, so we had to haul it all the way up to the house. A couple of the Dalesbloom wolves carried the back legs, but Catrina wasn’t one of them. Of course, she didn’t help. She just trotted along beside me, swooning over my show of dominance during the hunt. It pissed me off even worse that she encouraged my loss of control. I thought once the hunt was over, I could relax and try to forget what happened.Instead, I walked inside to that Jesper runt gawking at me like she knew every terrible thing I had done. I couldn’t hold back my anger. “What the fuck are you staring at, runt?” I snarled,
Colt POV)By mid-October, I had gathered all the wolves of Dalesbloom that chose to remain. There weren’t many of them left. What used to be a pack of forty strong was reduced to about ten, including myself and Kiara. Most of them were either captured and relocated by the Mythguard, killed, or fled. The same had become of the Inkscales. None of them lingered, and most worryingly, Kipling had disappeared after the ritual. There were no dragons left in our home, just the remnants of my once great pack. But we would become great again—alongside Grandbay and Eastpeak, and our packs would flourish. It would just take time.The sun shone on a clear Saturday morning when my pack was gathered in the yard behind Hexen Manor. The surrounding forest had turned vibrant shades of orange and yellow in the encroaching autumn, the grass beneath our feet brittle. Ravens fluttered in the boughs and cawed distantly while a gentle breeze carried a mixture of our scents through the yard. Not just ours but
Flash backLocked up in Hexen Manor, I was supposed to be working instead of birdwatching. Still, when that cloud of sparrows burst out of the trees beyond the backyard, I couldn’t help my curiosity. Lately, the call of the forest had become irresistible.With my binoculars hanging from a strap around my neck, I got up from the floor and opened the porch door. Immediately, I was hit by a potent coppery smell that made me nauseous, reminding me of meat and iron; it had to be blood. My feet took me across the yard and into the tree line without even realizing it. The deeper I went into the forest, the stronger the smell became, fusing into a mixture of sour fear stench and animal musk. One smell reminded me of dogs. The other was grassy, fresh… tantalizing.The air suddenly sparked with vicious growls and bays of hungry predators. I pressed closer to the sound, navigating through the trees in my bare feet until bright sunlight glistened out of the leaves up ahead. Pushing through, I fou







