《Knotting the Hunter》全部章節：第 1 章 - 第 10 章

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

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

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

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

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