LOGINNoah"If you fidget one more time," Dax murmurs, "I'm letting them eat you.""I'm not fidgeting.""You've checked that crossbow four times. It was loaded all four times."Two hours crouched in the same patch of wet bracken, close enough that the heat rolls off him into my side, which is its own specific punishment.The quarry road runs below us, a pale scar of gravel between the rail cut and the treeline.No man's land.The seam where nobody's territory touches anybody else's, which is exactly why the wolves doing the taking use it, and exactly why no one's ever watching when they do.Until tonight."Your vampire said two to four," I say. "It's quarter past three.""He's not my vampire. And he's never wrong about this stuff, it's the whole reason he's insufferable."Dax shifts his weight silently, a big man who moves like he weighs nothing."Give it time."Time.Sure.Time crouched in the dark with the one person I'm not supposed to want, the one person I definitely lied to my girlfri
Dax"Stop looking for it," Noah says."How am I supposed to kill it if I can't look at it?""That's the whole problem."Fantastic. Love that for us.Twenty minutes in the trees behind my gym, hunting something that vanishes the second you point your face at it, with a hunter who delivers bad news like he’s reading a grocery list.The wolf is up on his feet inside me, hackles raised, turning in anxious circles.Behind us. No. Left. No, behind.He keeps losing it too, and he does not enjoy losing things.I don't like this. I want to know where the teeth are. I always know where the teeth are.Not tonight, buddy.One of my members, Priya, runs the wooded loop behind the complex most mornings.Two days straight she came back grey and shaking and couldn't tell me why. Just that something paced her in the trees the whole way and she could never once get a proper look at it.Priya does cage fighting for fun. Priya is not easy to rattle.So I closed early and told Finn I had a thing, which he
NoahMy sister fights dirty, and I taught her that, so technically every bruise is my own fault."Dead," Tori says, pressing the blunt training knife against my ribs.We're in the Pattersons' empty barn, where we've trained in secret every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from five to seven in the morning for two years.All she’s ever wanted was to be a hunter, but our father decided the family obligation lands on sons.Daughters should be seen and not heard.My sister decided otherwise. And I’m not letting her go out there without knowing what she’s doing.There are female hunters, but they’re few and far between, and treated with open disdain.I think it’s bullshit. Tori’s twice as bloodthirsty as I am."That's twice I’ve gotten a touch on you today. You going to tell me what's wrong with you, or do I keep stabbing you until it comes out?""Nothing's wrong with me.""Three weeks ago you'd have had my wrist pinned before the knife cleared."She steps back, resets her stance, long ponytai
DaxRule one of vampires: don't.Rule two, if you absolutely have to: never owe one anything.It's eleven at night and we're about to break both rules before closing time, and it was my idea, which is the part Finn's going to dine out on for a decade."Explain again why we're doing this," Noah says.We're parked across from Vintage, the wine bar on Caldwell that doesn't advertise and never seems to go broke."Your words were, and I quote, I'd rather lick the highway.""Still would.""And yet.""And yet somebody carved a fresh receipt on my fence, your witch can't ask questions until the dark of the moon, and the thing about Maxim Drake is that he's two hundred and twenty years old and has turned secrets into a business model.”Just thinking about the damn leech gives me a headache.“Nothing moves in this county at night without him hearing about it. He's the shortcut."I crack my neck."He's also the most punchable creature alive, and he's not even alive, so keep your mouth shut and l
Noah"You smell like you’ve been rolling in it," Lillianna says, before I'm even through the door.No hello.She's at the table with a mortar and pestle, and the cottage smells like rosemary and woodsmoke and judgment this time around."Rolling in what?""Wolf."She grinds something with a small vicious twist."Last time you'd brushed against it. Now it's in your skin like smoke in a curtain. Sit down before you fall down, boy, you look like a man who's been sleeping in shifts."I sit. Arguing with her has the same success rate as arguing with weather."I need you to look at something please."I put the paper on the table.Drew it myself on paper, twice, because she doesn't read curses off what she calls a lightbox, and those of us who occupy the twenty-first century refer to as a phone.The nested lines went down wrong both times, like the shape resists being copied."She carves it where she takes them. We've found four now. Three old, one fresh."That gets her full attention.She wi
DaxThe heavy bag is losing, and it's still not helping.Six in the morning.Gym's not open for another two hours.I've been down here since four because lying in bed listening to the wolf was worse, and the bag's seams are starting to give, and my knuckles healed twice already, and none of it has touched the thing sitting in my chest.He ran, the wolf says, for the hundredth time. Not angry. Worse than angry. Bewildered. We gave him our name and he ran.It wasn't our name, I tell him. It was his name. I said HIS name.Ours. His. He took it with him when he ran. Go get it back."Morning," Finn says from the doorway, holding two coffees, taking in the bag, my hands, and the fact that I've apparently bleached the entire mat area at dawn like a crime scene."Oh no.""It's fine.""You cleaned. Voluntarily. At sunrise."He hands me a coffee like he's feeding a zoo exhibit."What did the mats see that you’re trying to bleach away, Dax?""Plenty.""I hate this job," he tells the ceiling. "I
NoahSparring with a werewolf is the dumbest idea I've had since taking this job, and I took this job."You're holding back," Dax says, circling me on the mats. Gym's closed, blinds down, one bank of lights on over the open floor. "Stop insulting me.""You heal in an hour. I bruise for a week. Forg
Dax"Office," Finn says. "Now.""Funny. That's how the last guy started.""I can smell how it ended, move your ass and don’t get any ideas."Noah's already grabbing his jacket off the hook by the desk, ears red as exit signs, not looking at either of us."Shift's over," he announces to a wall. "I'm
NoahThe whole building smells like him.Nobody warned me about that part.Twenty steps into Apex Fitness at nine sharp on a Monday and it's wall to wall Dax, sweat and burnt sugar twined with cherry tobacco and warm animal, soaked into the mats, the air, probably the drywall.Eight hours a day. In
NoahTonight I'm doing something no Hunter has done in the history of ever.I'm standing in the open at the Northgate fence, unarmed, waiting for a werewolf to show up.Dad would shoot me himself. Two in the chest, one in the headstone. HERE LIES NOAH. HE WAS ASKING FOR IT.Leaving it behind is a d







