LOGINNoahWalking alone down a murder path at midnight, wearing enough deer blood to season a butcher shop, waiting for a death omen to notice me.This is my life. I picked this.The plan is simple, which is what we said about the last plan too.I'm the easy prey.The thing hunts easy prey.Somewhere in the dark to my left there are three wolves moving without a sound, and I can't see any of them, which is the point, and I hate it, which is irrelevant.My earpiece is a burner phone on an open call in my chest pocket. Dax's voice comes through it barely above a breath."It's moving. Quarter mile to the west. Keep walking, gorgeous.""Don't call me gorgeous on an op.""Keep walking, extremely average-looking man."I'm going to kill him after I survive this.First one, then the other. I'm committed.The night is doing that thing where every sound is a monster.Branch.Water.My own stupid heart.And then all of it stops at once, every frog and cricket in the county going silent like somebody
NoahThe river path smells like mud and pennies, and the print I'm crouched over is bigger than my spread hand.Front paw. Canine. And wrong.I've measured a lot of wolf prints in my life.I've measured werewolf prints the size of dinner plates, and I happen to know in intimate, career-ending detail exactly how big the biggest werewolf in this county is.This is bigger.The stride's wrong too, way too long, and every print drags four furrows behind it, like the thing can't be bothered to lift its claws clear of the ground.Not a wolf.Something in my chest unclenches so fast I feel light-headed, and then the rest of my brain catches up and points out what I'm actually looking at.Which is proof that there's a brand-new monster the size of a small car walking around Tamarack ripping people's throats out, and my first reaction was relief.Great.Really healthy stuff happening in my head lately.The police tape is fifty yards downstream, cops going through the motions around a tarp.Anim
Dax"Nobody crosses the fence line. Not for work, not for supplies, not to settle a bet. Nobody."Half the pack is standing in my yard and most of them started arguing before I finished the sentence."I've got a job in town, Alpha-""Call in sick.""For how long?""As long as it takes.""My sister's got a dentist appointment on Thursday-""Reschedule it. I'm not risking her life over a cleaning."That lands about as well as you'd expect.The yard goes loud again, everybody's problems talking over everybody else's, and I let it run for a few seconds.They'll settle faster if they get it out.Old Hennig hasn't said a word.He's leaning on the porch rail with his arms crossed, watching me the way he's watched me since I was a kid, and when I catch his eye he gives me one slow nod.That nod does more for the yard than anything I've said.Hennig buys it, so it must be real.The arguing drops to grumbling, and grumbling I can live with."A man is dead in town with his throat torn open," I t
NoahCorben's been walking the east fence since first light, and I've spent the last hour watching him do it with my heart in my mouth and my face set to bored.He's not supposed to be here.The second truck covers the north gate.But there he is, on foot, hands in his pockets, strolling the wire like a man looking for a reason.Twenty feet from where she sat."Coffee's still hot," Pruitt says beside me."I'm good."I'm not good.I haven't slept and every time my eyes land on that stretch of fence I see her against it, and the fact that there's nothing there now doesn't help as much as it should, because I know exactly why there's nothing there.She sat out here all night, right in front of where I'm parked, and in about six hours I'm going to write the word uneventful in a shift report.That's the job now. Lying in ink about a girl who deserved better than every single thing that's happened to her since spring.Pruitt sips from his thermos lid and watches the treeline the way he alwa
DaxI take the last curve fast enough that the truck complains about it, and the wolf has been pacing the inside of my skull since the word body.'Someone left death at our fence. On our ground.'Working on it.'Find out who. Open their throat.'Working on that too. Let’s just find out first what exactly is going on.Noah's voice keeps coming through the phone, low, talking me through turns I've known all my life.He needs something to do while he waits.I don't stop him.My lights hit his truck.Then him.He's put himself between her and the road.I'm out and moving before the engine dies."Dax. Before you look, I need you to-"I look.My brain does the stupid thing brains do, where it refuses the whole picture and grabs one detail instead.The gap in her front teeth."No," I hear myself say."No, hang on. Hang on.""Dax.""I know her."My voice doesn't sound like mine."Noah, I know her. That's Mary. Mary Masterson, she's... she was..."Nothing else comes out.I've got a photo of th
NoahMy phone is in my hand and I don't remember taking it out.Training did that.A lifetime of drills and protocols, and somewhere in there is a page that covers this.Hunter finds a body, hunter calls it in, hunter secures the area and waits for backup.My thumb is already hovering over Dad's number like the good soldier I was raised to be.One tap.That's all it takes.One tap and I can hear exactly how it goes.Dad's voice answering sharply on the second ring.The council pulled out of bed.Trucks on this road within the hour, floodlights, every hunter we've got standing where I'm standing, looking at her throat and saying obviously a damn werewolf did it.The body’s three hundred yards from their fence.By breakfast, the report I spent twelve days building is worthless.By lunch there's a vote, and it only goes one way, and by tonight my father finally has the war he's been polishing his knives for.Everyone behind that fence pays for it because a werewolf is the same as all wer
DaxFor the last hour I've been telling myself I'm only out here to keep the idiot from getting himself killed.It's a good lie.Responsible.Very Alpha.The kind of thing my father would've said with a straight face right before going off and doing exactly what he wanted.Truth is, I caught his tr
NoahThree miles from where you should be standing.The asshole could have at least given me a direction.Fortunately, I’ve learned to trust my instincts.Hunters don’t have any inherent magic, but our senses are more developed than those of ordinary humans.So here I am.Three miles out from the N
DaxThe wolf wants to turn around.He's wanted to turn around since I cleared the fence, and he isn't being quiet about it, because quiet isn't a thing he owns.He just keeps shoving the same word into the back of my skull like a toddler with a doorbell.Ours.Ours, ours, ours."He's a hunter," I t
NoahThree 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 sa







