Chapter 1 – Sight Picture

Noah

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

Big of him.

He's standing at the tree line where Northgate's fence ends and the real woods start, and he's shirtless. Obviously. It's October and I'm wearing three layers, but werewolves don't feel the cold, so this one walks around half naked like he's doing the rest of us a favor.

His name is Dax Holt. He's twenty, he's the Alpha of the Tsintah pack, and my father's files call him the strongest wolf this country has seen in a very long time.

I don't plan on using his name. Getting on a first-name basis with something I'm about to put down seems like a bad habit to start.

I settle the crosshairs under his left shoulder blade, right over the heart, and breathe out halfway, the way Dad drilled into me before I could spell my name.

The bolt's tipped with silver and there's wolfsbane on the broadhead. He's a dozen meters away and there's no wind, so I've got no excuses.

I'm very good at this part. Lately it’s the only thing I’m still confident about being good at.

Anybody else would look at him and see a guy out for a midnight walk. I don't get to.

Lillianna, the witch who did all my tattoos, put one on me that shows me when there’s something hiding under a human façade. She says the magic cost three days of her life, and I still owe her a favor for it. She brings that up every single time I see her.

That’s the reason I can see the animal inside him. It's enormous, and it's staring out at the dark like everything in it already belongs to him.

My family has a word for that. Monster. I learned it before I learned our phone number.

And this one doesn't even bother hiding, which pisses me off more than anything. Most wolves keep their heads down and stay out of town.

This one buys oat milk at the Loblaws. He runs a gym on the edge of town where he coaches teenagers, and half the population of Tamarack waves at him on the street.

He grins the whole time, too, this big catch-me-if-you-can grin, and somewhere in the second week I decided the grin was a good enough reason to shoot him.

My finger takes up the slack on the trigger.

The bolt hits bark with a dull thunk, and the wolf isn't standing where he was anymore.

Motherfucker.

"I'm starting to think you keep missing on purpose," he says, right behind my ear, warm and amused and way too close.

"Should I be reading into that? It's kind of flattering, the way you follow me around like a puppy hoping for scraps."

I don't turn around. My heart is trying to climb out through my throat, and if I turn around he gets to see that on my face.

The tattoos make me stronger and faster than a normal human, and I've put down wolves before. None of them were Alphas. If this one decides he's done playing with me, the runes on my skin won't even slow him down.

"Stand still next time," I say.

"I stood still for a whole minute. I thought that was pretty generous of me."

His hand closes over my hand on the crossbow for a second, then he lifts it out of my grip like he's taking scissors away from a toddler, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.

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

A hunter whose last name is Hunter. He thinks it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. He got my name out of my wallet the second time we ran into each other, back when I was stupid enough to bring one, and he's been having the time of his life with it ever since.

I turn around, since the only thing dumber than facing an Alpha is keeping my back to one.

That's a mistake too, because up close he's so much worse to look at. Gold eyes, messy blond hair, a thin scar through one eyebrow, and about an acre of bare chest that I'm not looking at.

Wolves heal so fast they hardly ever scar, so whatever gave him that one must have really meant it. Or they used silver.

If I healed like he does, I wouldn't look like somebody's used cutting board.

He gets to walk around with all that perfect skin on display, and he knows exactly how good it looks. I think that might be what I hate most about him.

Second most. Obviously what I hate most is the monster thing.

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

I go for my knife.

I don't see him move. One second my hand is on the hilt, and the next my back slams into a pine tree so hard it knocks the air out of me. His forearm is across my collarbones. My knife is in his other hand, and I never felt him take it.

He isn't even breathing hard. I'm panting, and he notices. I get to watch him enjoy it.

"Don't," he says gently, which I can't stand. I could work with a threat.

"If you pull a blade on me, tonight stops being fun. Then I go home in a bad mood and Finn makes me talk about my feelings. I hate talking about my feelings."

"Get off me."

"Say please."

"Get off me, please, before I find out if silver works on your balls."

He laughs, right in my face, like I've made his whole night.

"Your heart's pounding."

"There's a two hundred pound werewolf leaning on my chest. What would you like it to do?"

"Sure. That's why."

He leans in and breathes me in, slowly, right at the hinge of my jaw. I feel it on my skin. When he pulls back, he looks surprised, and then he looks so pleased with himself that I want to break his nose.

My whole body goes hot, all at once, from my face down to places I'm not going to list.

It's fear. I'd like to get that settled right now, while I can still think it with a straight face.

A body does all kinds of stupid things when a predator has it pinned to a tree. The heart pounds, the skin heats up and the blood goes wherever it wants. Yes, some of mine has gone south. That doesn't mean a thing. I've been scared plenty of times and I know what it feels like.

It has never once felt like this, but I'm sure that's a coincidence.

I stop fighting him and he lets go of me right away, which I wasn't expecting. When he steps back, the cold rushes into the space where he was, and for one second I want him to come back.

I hate that so much I'd like to shoot something, and he's holding my crossbow.

My phone goes off in my jacket.

It's Heidi's ringtone, the cheerful little marimba she picked for herself, and I don't need to look at the screen.

Home safe? Text me. Two kisses at the end.

She sends it every night I'm out. Lately I leave it unread until I'm back in my truck, and I tell myself that isn't the same as lying to her.

His eyes drop to my pocket. He's still smiling, but it's stopped being friendly.

"Is that the girlfriend again?" he asks, and he actually sounds annoyed about it.

I've got no idea why a werewolf would care who texts me, and I'm not going to waste time wondering. My phone was in the same pocket as the wallet, so he knows a lot more about my life than I'd like.

"Give me the knife and the bow. Now."

"Why? So you can lose some more bolts trying to kill me?"

He turns the crossbow over in his hands, already bored with it. Then the cocky smile disappears.

"You want a monster, Hunter? You're about five kilometers from where you should be standing. People are going missing out of Tamarack. It isn't us doing it, and it isn't nothing either."

He tosses me the crossbow and I catch it against my chest. The knife he drops at my feet instead of handing it over, and somehow that's the most insulting thing he's done all night.

"Count the missing persons sometime," he says. "Tell me if the number bothers you as much as it bothers me."

He's over the fence before I can answer. He doesn't take a run-up. He just jumps it, and somewhere in the air the man becomes a huge white wolf, and after that there's nothing but dark where he was.

My heart’s still pounding, and there's nobody leaning on my chest to blame it on anymore.

Five kilometers from where I should be standing. Count the missing.

I shouldn't. I've got a girlfriend texting me kisses and a father who'd disown me for having a conversation with a wolf instead of killing him.

And I'm definitely not taking orders from a wolf who disarmed me twice in five minutes and sniffed me in between.

I pick up my knife.

Fuck my life. I'm going to go count them.