LOGINNoahThe sign says CLOSED FOR PLUMBING REPAIRS, and some idiot (I’d bet my right hand it was Finn) glued it to the window.I'm the one scraping it off the glass at eight in the morning, which feels about right.Takes a liar to retire a lie."Missed a corner," Finn says from the doorway, supervising with a coffee he has not offered to share."You could help.""I could. But your paperwork says general worker. I checked. Front desk, some cleaning. This is cleaning."Days ago I had a name that opened every hunter’s door in this county.Now I have a paint scraper and a boss who texts me from thirty feet away.My phone buzzes.Gym.I should really fix that now.Tell Finn the mats go down before the weights or he'll do it wrong on purpose."Mats first," I call inside."He texted you? I'm standing right here. He can see me.""He says you'll do it wrong on purpose.""One time," Finn says, deeply wounded, and goes to get the mats.There’s something I wasn’t prepared for about excommunication.M
Dax"You can be furious and carry boxes at the same time. I believe in you."Noah shoves the tailgate up and doesn't look at me, and I take the box he's not handing me anyway.We've been doing this for an hour.Moving his entire life into my house in perfect, poisonous politeness.'Ours is here,' the wolf says, turning a happy circle. 'Ours is here with all his things, to stay, forever. Why are you ruining it?'Because he sat in a holding room all night. That's why.Because there was a chance this would have ended with him dead and he didn’t tell us.His father stood over him and voted to put him down like livestock.The whole time, his phone was in his pocket, and he chose, on purpose, with that big tactical brain, to not let me know what was going on while I sent joke texts."You want to know the part that really pisses me off," I say to his shoulder blades."It's not even about not telling me immediately. It's that you had a plan for me. Same as you had a plan for them. You gamed o
NoahThe photograph goes down on the council table without a sound, and somehow that's worse than the head was.Same table. Same water stains. Same eleven men bent over it.The last thing I put in that spot was a frozen penanggalan head. The room passed it around like a bowling trophy, laughed at my jokes, told me I hunt like my grandfather.Now they're studying a picture of me kissing a werewolf, and nobody's laughing.I stand where I always stand to give a report.Force of habit.Some part of my brain is still trying to run this like a briefing, like any second now I'll clear my throat and walk them through the evidence.Here we see the subject, pinned to an Alpha's mouth at six in the morning.Note the hands.Any questions."Is that you?" Aldous asks.He's got his glasses down his nose and one dried-out finger holding the photograph flat.He asks it with hope layered over the open disgust, like the right answer might still exist and I might still give it.Like it’s not clear as day
ToriCorben's truck pulls in late, and he doesn't sit in it.Just pulls in and opens the door immediately.The man usually idles in our driveway the way other people go to church.Tonight he's out and moving before the engine's stopped shuddering.He’s carrying a large brown envelope under his arm, and his expression is equal parts fear and anticipation.This can’t be good.I'm in the closet with my ear flat to the wall before the side door's finished closing.Cursing the courier service for not having delivered the stethoscope I ordered yet.The meeting is nothing like the others.Corben's voice comes through first, pitched high and fast, sentences climbing over each other.Excited.Really excited, and trying to sound solemn about it, which might be the most disgusting combination available to the human throat.Then an envelope tearing.Then nothing.During the other meetings, Dad's voice runs underneath the whole time, low and even, the sound of a man steering.Tonight there's just.
Gavin"Read me last night’s log again."Corben flips back through his notebook like the answer might've improved since he wrote it down."Nothing really happened. Gate stayed shut after dark. Two of them walked the inside of the fence around midnight, same as the night before. No vehicles out. No vehicles in."Nothing.Five trucks sitting in the treeline every night, good men going without sleep, and the wolves have never behaved better in their lives.The council would call that reassuring.The same council that couldn't find its trucks in an empty lot.An animal that knows it's being watched behaves. That's all good behavior is. Proof they know we're there, and proof they care that we are.You don't guard an empty safe."They're being careful," Corben says, like he's worked this out himself and wants a treat for it."They are."He sits forward in my chair the way a dog sits when it thinks food is coming.Eager man, Corben.Useful, the way eager men are useful. Point him in the direc
NoahTwelve hours ago there was a hole in his shoulder I could have put my fist into.Now there's a stripe of skin two shades too pink, and by lunch there won't even be that.Must be nice.My ribs are going to bill me interest every time I breathe for the next week, and his body just hits undo.He's at my window with his back to the bed, thinking I'm asleep, and he's doing the thing he does when he figures nobody's looking.He lets his face fall.About a foot.All the swagger drains out of it and what's left underneath is a guy standing in his boxers watching the parking lot like he's contemplating deep and complex emotional issues and not even seeing it.I've decided not to have feelings about that.Going great."You're staring," he says, without turning around."I'm asleep.""You breathe different when you're asleep.”He turns, and he's all easy confidence again. The cracks plastered over and hidden from view."Morning. How are the ribs?""Attached.""Sexy."He crosses back to the b
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
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







