009

HUNTER: Alpha of nightfall pack

I was standing at the window when Michael came in.

I didn't turn. I knew his walk, quick and uneven, the steps of a man carrying something he couldn't wait to set down. The door clicked shut behind him.

"Alpha. You won't believe what I heard." He was breathing hard, like he'd taken the stairs two at a time. "The rumors have been circulating since this morning. Everywhere."

I said nothing.

Outside, the trees moved against the dark, black on black. Along the wall below me, two shadows passed in their slow, even rounds, spaced exactly how I'd taught them. Nothing in my territory moved without my knowing it. I liked it that way.

Michael waited. He was smart enough to know that when I stayed quiet, he should too. He was also nervous enough to forget it.

"Alpha..."

"Speak up, Michael."

I heard him swallow. "Words has spread around about a female who entered Bloodfang territory." It all came out in a rush. "Everyone's talking about it. And she's... Blade has her. She's in his possession."

My shoulders stiffened. Only for a second, a muscle pulled tight, as my breath held a beat too long. Then it was gone, and I turned from the window like nothing had touched me.

I walked to my desk, unhurried, and pulled out the chair. I sat. Then I raised my eyes slowly and settled them on my right hand man.

"Is it true?"

"I would never bring you fake news, Alpha." He nodded once. "It's true."

I leaned back.

For years, I had gone over the same numbers. Dates, death counts, the places where the records stopped. Every time, the figures refused to close. There were too many gaps, too many women unaccounted for, too many names that simply vanished from the page.

"Then my calculations were right," I said. "There are still women out there."

Michael's face lit up. "Then we should look, Alpha. Perhaps we should go out there and search."

"We'll do no such thing."

"But they're out there. If Blade found one, there have to be others." He hesitated, then pushed on, because he was loyal and sometimes stupid. "Don't you want one for yourself?"

I looked at him.

I looked him dead in the eyes and I didn't blink.

"Want one for myself," I repeated, quietly. "Is that what they are? Something you pick up and keep?"

His mouth opened, then closed.

"Are they a possession, Michael, that you can ask for one?"

"No, Alpha. I didn't—"

"No one is searching." I let each word fall slowly. "Not a single man in this pack leaves the territory to hunt for a woman. If I hear of anyone out there looking, I'll have him executed on the spot."

His breath hitched.

He knew me too well to wonder whether I meant it. He had seen what I did to men who tested my word. It was never loud and it was never slow. Brutal. Clean and final.

"Yes, Alpha." He bowed low, backed toward the door, and pulled it shut behind him with a gentleness that told me exactly how badly his hands were shaking.

I watched the door long after it closed.

A female in Blade's territory.

How impressive.

My brother, of all people. I almost laughed. For years, nothing, and now a miracle fell right into his lap, as if the Moon Goddess had been saving it for him.

I wondered what he would do with her. Whether he'd hold her like something fragile, or whether he'd walk the same road our father had. It would be so easy. Fear, a lock, an excuse. Our father had always had an excuse.

Our father.

The man who had helped erase women from the world and left our mother to die in the middle of it.

I'd been a boy when I watched her go. I remembered the quietness. How a room could go so still that the silence had weight. How no one had come.

If I had known then everything I knew now, I would have gouged out his eyes before I drove the dagger into his chest. I'd have taken my time. As it was, I had done what I could and I felt no regret. None. I'd looked at his body, and I'd felt nothing but a cold, clean peace.

Then I'd walked away and left the throne to Blade.

Not because I couldn't take it. If I had wanted that pack, it would have been mine. Blade was no match for me, and we both knew it, even if neither of us ever said it aloud. But I had no interest in ruling a ruined pack. In building on land already rotten to its roots, under walls that still carried my father's name.

So I left. Years ago.

And I built my own from nothing. From dirt and blood and stubbornness, from men who'd had nowhere else to go, until the name Hunter made grown wolves lower their voices when they said it. Until we became one of the most feared territories alive.

I stood from the desk and crossed back to the window.

Somewhere out there, miles away, a single light burned in the dark. Bloodfang. My brother's house. The pack I might have taken, the one I had chosen not to.

I would see how this turned out.

Maybe more females would come out of hiding. Maybe they'd been waiting all this time for someone to be the first. Or maybe she was the last, and the world was about to watch her get passed from one cruel hand to another until nothing of her was left.

Either way, I would find out what my brother did with her.

I'd see how it went.

A smirk pulled at my mouth as I stared at the light across the dark.

Turning my back on the window, I crossed the office in a few strides and out the door. One of my men caught the cue instantly, falling in right behind me as I headed down the corridor. I didn't bother slowing down or glancing over my shoulder.

"Get your arrow," I snapped. "Now."