Knotting the Hunter

Noah

Three weeks I've been hunting this wolf, and tonight, finally, he does me the courtesy of holding still long enough to kill.

Big of him.

He's at the tree line where Northgate's fence gives up and the real woods start, and he's shirtless.

Obviously. He almost always is.

Cold's got nothing to say to a wolf, so it's not survival, it's advertising, and the only customer out here at this hour is me.

Lucky me.

I line up the crosshairs under his left shoulder blade.

The heart's right there.

I let half a breath out, slow, the way Dad drilled into me before I could spell my own name.

Silver tip. Wolfsbane on the broadhead. Forty feet. No wind.

This is the part I'm spectacularly good at.

Maybe the only part lately, but let's not open that file.

One of my tattoos, the one Lillianna swears cost her three days of her life, and me a favor she still hasn't called in, peels the human mask off anything wearing one.

So I'm not looking at a twenty-year-old reprobate out for a midnight stroll.

I'm looking at the thing under it.

The wrong angles.

The animal sitting inside the man like a fist inside a glove, waiting for a reason to burst out of his skin.

Monster. Target. Same word in my family. Has been since before I had molars.

Three weeks of watching this one buy oat milk at the Loblaws and coach a room full of teenagers at the gym he runs downtown like a guy with nothing to hide.

Most of them hide.

They den up, go quiet, learn the word careful.

Not him.

He walks around bare-chested, inviting everyone to take a good, close look at him, and a grin that says catch me if you can, and somewhere in week two I decided the grin by itself was reason enough to kill the bastard.

My finger takes up the slack.

The bolt goes into bark with a sound like a dropped book.

And the wolf is not where the wolf was.

Motherfucker.

"You keep missing on purpose," says a voice directly behind my ear, warm and amused and far too close.

"I'm starting to wonder if I should read into that. I guess it is flattering that you keep following me like a puppy hoping for scraps."

I don't turn around.

Turning around is how you hand a predator the last thing you've got, which is the half second where you still look dangerous.

I’m strong. I doubt many humans could win a fight against me. I could take out some of the lower designated werewolves too.

But this asshole is an Alpha. He’ll tear me to shreds in spite of the protective runes tattooed on my skin.

"Stand still next time," I say.

"I stood still a whole minute. Generous, honestly."

A hand closes over the crossbow.

Over mine.

Not gripping hard enough to be uncomfortable.

Just there, the way a wall is there when you walk into it.

He lifts it out of my grip like I'm a toddler who brought a toy to a board meeting.

"You're getting worse, Hunter. Three weeks and you still aim where I was instead of where I am."

Hunter.

He emphasizes the name the way other people deliver a punchline they've been sitting on all night.

A hunter whose surname is Hunter.

He got that out of me on run-in number two, back when I was dumb enough to be carrying a wallet, and I have been paying that bill ever since, daily, with interest.

I turn around.

Bad idea.

Still better than the alternative, which is keeping my spine to an Alpha and calling it a plan.

Up close he's worse, which I knew he would be, which is somehow also insulting.

Gold eyes, the wolf swimming around behind them, looking at me the way a thing looks at you when it's already calculated the odds on which of us is faster and found the answer amusing.

My crossbow hangs off one of his fingers by the trigger guard while he decides whether to give it back or mount it on a wall with a little brass plaque. HUNTER'S. FAILED, REPEATEDLY.

So I go for the knife.

Of course I go for the knife. It’s the only close-quarters weapon I have on me.

I don't even see it happen.

One second I’m grabbing the blade from its sheath, and the next my back's against a pine hard enough to empty my lungs, bark chewing through my jacket, his forearm a bar across my collarbones, and the knife is somewhere in the dark behind him having a lovely time without me.

He isn't breathing hard.

I am.

We both notice. I can see the smirk in his eyes as he files it.

That's the other thing about him I can't stand.

Being a monster is at the top of the list, but more than the grin, and the way he keeps getting the better of me, is the quiet way he catalogs me like I'm a report he gets to read and I don't get a copy of.

"Don't," he says gently.

Which is so much worse than a threat I could actually be mad about.

This close I can see there's a thin scar through one eyebrow. Not surprising for a beast who lives a violent life.

If they didn’t heal so damn fast he’d be covered in scars. Like me.

Instead he has vast acres of smooth, perfect skin that he delights in putting on display.

"You pull a blade on me, the night stops being fun, and then I go home in a mood and have to explain it to Finn. You don't want me in a mood."

"Get. Off. Me."

"You're shaking."

"There’s a 200-pound werewolf pressed against my chest."

"That's not the shaking I mean."

He leans in and breathes me in, slow, right at the hinge of my jaw, and something flashes across his face.

And here's the part I'll be lying about by morning, so let's get the official version down now, while it still sounds true.

Whatever he’s smelling is caused by fear.

A body dumps everything it's got when there's a predator pinning it to a tree with no clean way out, and yes, everything includes whatever's going on lower down, the warm sick rush of it, but that's chemistry.

That's plumbing.

That's my nervous system freelancing again. I know what fear does to a chest and a pulse and the rest of it.

This is fear.

Decided. Filed. Closed before he gets to read past line one.

He eases off the second I stop fighting, which I didn’t expect, and cold comes pouring into the space where all that heat just was.

And I hate, with my whole tactical heart, that for a second I want him to lean closer again.

My phone goes off in my jacket.

Heidi's tone.

The dumb little marimba she set for herself, bright and obscene out here in the dark with a wolf holding both my weapons.

I don't have to look to know what it says.

Home safe? Text me. Two x's. Every night I'm out.

And every night I lie to her by leaving the read receipt off and telling myself that's a different thing than actually lying.

His eyes drop to my pocket. The grin holds, but something under it goes flat and a little ugly.

"Girlfriend again?" he asks frostily, and there's a sour thread in it I can't name and have zero intention of trying to.

I should have left the phone at home too, but it’s too dangerous to risk being without it in an emergency.

He ransacked all my belongings last time.

He knows more about me than he ever should have.

"Knife. Bow. Now."

"Or what." Not a question.

He's already turning the crossbow over, already bored with this interaction.

For a second the relaxed expression drains out of his face and what's under it looks a lot older than twenty.

"You want a monster, Hunter, you're three miles from where you should be standing. People are going missing out of Tamarack. It isn't us. And it isn't nothing."

He tosses the crossbow at me, and I catch it against my chest.

He drops the knife at my feet, which is somehow the most insulting part of the entire interaction.

"Count the missing persons sometime," he says. "See if the number sits as wrong with you as it does with me."

Then he's gone.

Over the fence, no run-up, no effort, from human to a big white wolf in the blink of an eye and then just darkness where the shape was.

I'm left standing in the woods with my crossbow biting my ribs and my pulse doing something it's got no business doing.

I push that away and wonder about his words.

Three miles from where I should be. Count the missing persons.

I shouldn't.

I've got a girlfriend texting me kisses and a family that'd disown me for talking to the enemy instead of killing it.

A wolf doesn’t get to hand me an assignment.

Fuck my life.

I'm going to investigate.