A New Identity

“Freya! Freya, Wait please.” Freya heard him but she didn’t stop. She continued to walk. He met up and grabbed her, but she yanked herself free with a force that made him stumble. “Behave Lucian, you don’t matter like you think.” Her eyes were devoid of emotions as she said this. Even Lucian was dumbfounded as his blue eyes narrowed at her dazedly.

Without another word, she turned and continued walking back to her father’s empire, grateful that he stopped following. She felt relieved more than pained. Just now did she realize what she felt for Lucian was out of mere duty.

He was a hunter too, and her father had betrothed her to him since he was young. And when his parents, who were good friends and also co hunters to her father died, her father, Garrick, had taken him in and trained him along with other hunters.

She never liked him more than a friend, but was forced to. If anything, she felt powerful now. She could now concentrate on the mission ahead while she bailed herself out of the one-sided union with Lucian now that she had a reasonable excuse for it.

She waited until the next day to tell her father. “You must be delusional if you think I will call off your wedding because of that.” 

Her father disappointedly said to her face that afternoon, after telling him she caught her betrothed together with her best friend.

“What? Are you joking now, Dad?” A shaky short chuckle left her lips as she spoke, but Garrick didn’t look fazed. “My little daughter, in our world, a woman doesn’t decide who she marries, her father does.”

“Bullshit,” She almost choked on her spit as she said that. She turned her back on him, not wanting to hear more and started to walk out of his vast living room.

“Step out of that door, and your mission will be canceled. You will be stripped of your dignity as a hunter, and be sent away, defenseless, and forgotten. Don’t try me.” Her father’s threat terrified her that she was forced to halt.

But a voice in her head pushed her. That voice that always tells her things. She didn’t know what it was. Her thoughts shouldn’t sound so loud in her head like that. “Leave Freya, we have a mission to fulfil.” We? She didn’t waste a moment longer, she would rather listen to the voice in her head. She felt hypnotized by the voice. 

She could remember sharing with her father about the voice that spoke to her and he had dismissed what bothered her by saying that was how lunatics start. 

“You need to start practicing more intense hunting training than you spend time with yourself, before the voice in your head makes a lunatic out of you.” He had bluntly said to her.

She had been shocked to her bone, but not like she could be very surprised. Her memories of her with her father had been a bruised one. He had trained her with utter coldness, no tenderness.

“You have to be stronger than the ones who murdered your mother, or you will be a prey in this cold world of ours where werewolves are thirsty to swallow us that are not their kind. They only see us as meats. In this world of ours, it’s either you or them.”  She chose her.

Outside felt cold, lonely, and unpredictable. She checked her phone and it was already past 10pm. “Where do we go now?” She asked, hoping that the voice would speak to her again but she heard nothing. Had she made the wrong choice to move out?

Just as she was about to find a church nearby and settle there for the night, the first sound of gunshots erupted in the air and her entire body jolted. It was rare. Normally, if there were to be a fight between humans and werewolves in Hollow Vale, werewolves never use guns. So these were probably not werewolves.

She had a gun. As humans began to fall out of their homes, a feminine voice shouted “The wolves are killing us! We need the hunters’ help.” 

Freya’s became more alerted, tugging her gun from her belt and holding it to her side in her right hand. Her blue eyes scanned the area. The part she was in was still safe for now, it was the other part. 

Should she step in? She couldn’t be stupid. There was no way she could outmatch wolves with guns. She crossed the street and ducked behind a crumbling stone column at a plaza and peered out. She was now in the chaos scene, but she hid herself and peeped from where she was hiding. Her mouth fell open as she sighted one of the men rough handling a lady who looked scared to death.

“Please, please, don’t kill me.” Her voice shook with deep fear. The scary looking man who looked not more than his mid twenties bared his sharp teeth and fangs dangerously close to the woman who was now on the floor. 

“Strip her!” He ordered, and another who was flanking him crouched down and rough handled her till she was stripped naked. The woman was crying now. Freya knew that werewolves were brutal. She had hunted them along with her father and their team before, but werewolves humiliating a woman and stripping her naked in public while tons of street lights hover over them? That terrified her.

“Your kind killed our Alpha’s brother. You are all good as dead, because now, you all would be shown how useless your lives are as you serve under the Alpha like common slaves you humans are all meant to be.” He now had his hand wrapped around the woman’s throat in a choke hold. Looking around with widened eyes, Freya spotted that they were stripping every woman they were able to catch and tying them together. They were all naked.

That petrified her. She would be stripped if she was caught too? Her ego as the daughter to a top hunter flared. No fucking way.

They were not stripping the men, just beating them and tying them together too. Her eyes flicked to one who was fighting them. The wolf didn’t spare him as he digged his fangs into his jugular and tear off his throat. Freya gasped out loudly, and they looked her way. Her eyes widened. She had forgotten that the beastly creatures could hear from afar.

“Catch her! She’s a hunter,” Damn it, they recognized her. She bolted without hesitation. Eyes scanning everywhere. She heard gunshots nearing her but she didn’t stop running. The area was quiet already. People had run to protect their dear lives. Suddenly, she halted to catch her breath and noticed she was beside a beauty shop. Its large double doors were open, and she didn’t think twice before slipping inside.

Judging from how the inside of the beauty shop was scattered with makeup kits on the floor and some of the chairs that were in tumbled positions on the floor, she could decipher that the workers here had ran too. Where could she hide? She looked up to see a bold designed text written on the wall. “Let’s do your special effect makeover” Whatever that meant.

“Close the door, Freya.” It was that voice again. She was more than glad to hear it in her head again. She did as told while making sure no one was in sight to see her. Then she retired inside. Now what do she do? Hide? “What do I do next?” She hadn’t realized how terrified she was until she spoke, hoping the voice in her head would answer. But just as usually unpredictable at it was, it didn’t lend its voice again.

“Damn it, I’m alone.” Freya muttered in frustration. There was no way she was risking being caught. They would strip her naked just like they were stripping the women out there. That would be great humiliation for someone of her kind. And the fact that they recognise her would make her own punishment worse. Heck, they would kill her. She sighed as she turned to put off the light in the saloon, but then, her eyes came in contact with the huge mirror in the saloon and a realization set in as she looked at her beautiful feminine reflection.

She could disguise. If she go out there looking like a man, she wouldn’t be stripped naked, and luckily, they might not even find out. She should disguise.

Without dwelling on the thought, she started looking around the make up room, searching and grabbing what could be useful. She grabbed a pair of black contact lens and fixed it on her natural blue lens, then she grabbed a scissors and hesitated for a second as she stared at her long hair in the mirror. 

She closed her eyes and started cutting it till it was short and was right around her neck. She grabbed a pair of the male wears hung in the closet there and quickly changed into it, after tying a scarf around her chest to make her quite gifted breasts look less visible. The cloth must have belonged to one of the staffs here. She thought. Thanks to him.

After plastering a moustache she saw as part of the special effect kits, she grabbed a beanie and wore it over her head, she checked her reflection in the mirror again. Even she could not recognise herself. She barely had time to make corrections when the door to the saloon suddenly sounded with a bang. They were here.

“We can smell your presence in here, come out or we pull you out and give you a merciless death.”

This was it. Freya closed her eyes to regulate her erratic breathing, then put away her gun. She needed to step out.