All Chapters of Knotting the Hunter: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

255 Chapters

Chapter 1 – Sight Picture

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 say to a wolf, so it's not survival, it's advertising, and the only customer out here at this hour is me.Lucky me.I line up the crosshairs under his left shoulder blade.The heart's right there.I let half a breath out, slow, the way Dad drilled into me before I could spell my own name.Silver tip. Wolfsbane on the broadhead. Forty feet. No wind.This is the part I'm spectacularly good at.Maybe the only part lately, but let's not open that file.One of my tattoos, the one Lillianna swears cost her three days of her life, and me a favor she still hasn't called in, peels the human mask off anything wearing one.So I'm not looking at a twenty-year-old reprobate out for a midnight stroll.I'm l

Chapter 2 – Heel

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 tell him, out loud, because we're alone in the dark and there's nobody around to decide I've finally cracked."He’s literally trying to kill us with silver and wolfsbane. On purpose. He's got a whole little routine about it."Ours, says the wolf, who could not possibly care less.He always misses, the wolf says fondly, like that's the best thing about Noah fucking Hunter. Some kind of cute inside joke.He could stop missing, he adds, after a second. We could let him land one. See what he does after."We are not getting shot to find out what he does after."He'd feel so bad, the wolf says eagerly. He'd have to make it up to us. At length. Thoroughly."Jesus. Stop that!"For hours, says the wol

Chapter 3 – Sign

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 Northgate fence, flashlight clamped in my teeth, doing a wolf's homework like the obedient idiot I've apparently decided to become tonight.If Dad could see me taking field assignments from an Alpha, he'd disown me, dig up dear old Grandpa to disown me a second time, and then bill me for the shovel.I’m currently crouched in the dirt off the Carrow Creek trailhead, reading a story I'd pay good money not to be true.It's the kind of spot people actually use.Gravel lot, a wooden sign with the map scratched off, a trash can nobody's emptied since the last mayoral race.There’s a bus stop half a mile back.Right where the lights give up and the trees take over, and if you wanted to lift a person

Chapter 4 – Downwind

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 trail at the fence and the rest of me made the call before the part that's supposed to be in charge got a vote.Closer, the wolf says. He's right there. We could be right there."We're staying in the trees."Why.Good question.I keep him downwind, forty feet back, and answerless, which is where I've kept most things about the hunter since this whole mess started.He works the trailhead like he was built for it.He has real skill, I'll give him that, and it costs me something to give him anything.Crouched, flashlight in his teeth, reading the dirt with that intensely focused face.The one that isn't sneering at me for once.All economy, no wasted motion.I wonder if he even knows how to crack

Chapter 5 – Carrion

NoahThe wolf hits it like a truck, and the thing barely rocks.Wrong.Two hundred pounds of Alpha at a dead run should fold anything with a spine.This rotten thing takes the hit, slides back a boot-length in the dirt, and swings an arm the size of my leg.The wolf has to wrench sideways midair to keep his skull where he likes it.So that's the night I'm having.The crossbow's up before I tell my arm to move.Sometimes it feels like the only reliable thing I own. Silver tip, wolfsbane on the head, the whole bedtime prayer Dad beat into me.I put the bolt through its throat.It doesn't care.Doesn't slow, doesn't flinch, doesn't bleed. The head grinds around on a neck that sounds like a boot in gravel, and two eyes find me and throw my flashlight’s shine back at me, flat and green and bored.Right. Wolfsbane's for wolves. Silver's for wolves. I packed for the wrong monster.Eighteen years of training and the family curriculum somehow skipped the chapter on the unkillable thing in fron

Chapter 6 – Tells

DaxThe thing's in pieces at our feet and my body's still waiting for round two.I never come down off a kill clean. My blood's still up, ears still straining, every muscle still voting to hit something else.I don’t think it’s a werewolf thing. It’s an adrenaline thing.So when the wolf decides to change the subject, I'm in no shape to win the argument.He worked the whole fight like a pro. No drama. Kill it, take it apart, done.Now the thing is down, and he turns around, takes one long look at the hunter, and loses his entire fucking mind.Ours, he says, like the last twenty minutes were a date. He held. He didn't run. Ours. Bite him. Claim him."He's a hunter."A brave one."A dumb one. He knifed a corpse in the kidney and looked betrayed when it didn't drop."Ours, says the wolf, who has never once been talked out of anything.Great. Real productive. Glad we got into it.Then I make my biggest mistake, which is breathing.The wind shifts and I get a full pull of him, and the figh

Chapter 7 – Blind

NoahThe black stuff won't come off.Three washes, dish soap, the stiff brush I keep for the broadheads, and my jacket still smells like a sewerage grate someone opened and forgot to close.The water in the sink runs gray, then runs clear, and the smell stays exactly where it was, unbothered, which about sums up the whole night.I should bin the jacket.I won't.You don't throw out gear that took a hit and still brought you home.Dad'd be right about that for once and being agreed with by my father in my own head is its own special way to start a day.So here's me at seven in the morning. Hunched over the sink scrubbing a twice-killed dead man off my sleeve, having not slept, waiting for the part of me that's supposed to feel normal to clock back in.It's running late.The smell isn't the problem. I've smelled worse. I was raised on worse.The problem is the part of last night that never touched the jacket.I shut my eyes and it's right there, helpful as ever.A hand on the back of my

Chapter 8 – Headology

NoahThe track to Lillianna's cottage doesn't appear on any map, and I'm half convinced it moves.Same woods I've hunted my whole life, and I still missed the turnoff twice.That's not me being tired. That's her.The forest between the road and her door does what she tells it, and what she tells it is: no visitors who aren't very determined to see her.I park where the track gives up and walk the last stretch.The runes settle as I get close.Not hot, not cold.Quiet, the way they only go quiet here.Like birds returning to their roost.Her cottage sits in its clearing looking like a postcard and feeling like a checkpoint.Smoke curls from the chimney.Bundles of herbs are drying under the eaves.A goat is standing by the path, regarding me with the sort of flat contempt usually reserved for family.Most witches live in town.Normal houses, on normal streets, with coven meetings marked on their phone calendars and all modern conveniences at their fingertips.Lillianna chose the forest

Chapter 9 – Cover

DaxHere's a fun fact about lying to your whole pack in the heat of the moment.You get maybe four seconds to pick your story.I spend three of them thinking about his mouth.Great instincts. Real display of leadership quality.The trees open and they pour in, six of them, half-shifted, eyes glowing in the dark.Mato's already got fur down his arms.Reena's circling the corpse with her lip curled like it insulted her mother.Which, fair. The smell alone is a war crime."Alpha." Mato's voice comes out half growl. "We felt the fight. What the hell is that?""That," I say, "Is a dead guy who didn't stay dead. Dark magic brought him back for a second hurrah. He came out of the trees swinging."True. All true. Look at me go."And the hunter?" Reena's nose is working. "There's hunter all over you. All over this whole clearing."Four seconds, remember. Cut me some slack."Crossbow guy showed up mid-fight."I shrug like the shrug is doing paperwork."He took a shot at the thing, it didn’t wor

Chapter 10 – Terms

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 deliberate choice.If I show up armed, we do the dance, he takes my weapon, I lose my temper and self-control.Safer to just skip to the end.I left the bow in the truck and I feel naked, which is a word I should not have thought, because now my brain's serving up a slideshow from last night I never ordered.The single glimpse I allowed myself of his entire physique.I wonder if all werewolves are endowed like that, or if he’s just lucky.His chest under my hand. His hair in my fist.Adrenaline. A scent trick. His fault.Locked. Buried. Paved over.Stop. Fucking. Thinking. About. It."No bow tonight?" His voice comes from behind me, naturally. "Should I be flattered or insulted?"I refuse to

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