All Chapters of Knotting the Hunter: Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

DaxThey step out of the trees taking their time about it, upslope, downslope, coming at us from every direction.Big rangy wolves with their heads low and their tails tucked.Frightened animals, walking toward us anyway, in a ring that closes one slow step at a time.'Get him out,' my wolf snarls. 'Get ours out NOW.'Where? Show me the gap and I'll use it.There's no gap. They planned this perfectly."Noah."I keep my voice easy, like we're discussing the weather."When it opens, you run downhill and you don't stop.""No.""That wasn't a suggestion.""Then use your scary voice, see what it gets you."His crossbow tracks the nearest wolf without a tremor in it."I'm not leaving you. Ask me again and you're sleeping on the couch tonight. You can stay on there with the throw pillows until noon tomorrow."That surprises a real laugh out of me.Finn's a bright streak of fur at my left, hackles up, showing every tooth he owns.Mato's got his back to the big spruce, wearing that terrible ca

ToriFinn never calls me. He texts and send memes, because we're not animals.So when his name shows up on my phone before seven in the morning, I know before I pick up."Who?" I ask. It comes out exactly like a person trying not to throw up."Tori-""WHO?""It's Noah. He's alive. But it's bad, and you need to come. I'll meet you behind the gas station in twenty minutes."I don't remember getting dressed.I remember texting Mom something about staying at a friend's.I remember thinking my hands looked like somebody else's hands.Then I'm under the fragrant blanket in the truck bed with a box of protein powder for company, and the ritual that's always been funny isn't even slightly amusing anymore.Finn talks while he drives.He tells me about an evil witch. The one behind the disappearances. She's got a werewolf that works for her. They ambushed the pack outside the fence.There’s no room in me for anger that they didn’t tell me sooner."And Noah got the worst of it," I say through th

NoahSomebody’s screaming, and it takes me an embarrassing amount of time to work out that it's a bird.Outside. Possibly in a different zip code.There's also a fly somewhere to my left with the engine of a small aircraft, a tap dripping in a room I'm not in, and a heartbeat hammering away at top speed that I really hope isn't mine, because anyone listening can hear the anxiety in that beat.It is mine.Okay.Assess.That's the job when you wake up somewhere wrong. Count the exits, find your knife, figure out what hurts.Except nothing hurts, everything's too loud, and the part of me that does the counting isn't picking up.'It's a fly,' somebody says. 'Stop panicking. You're embarrassing us.'That voice is coming from inside my head, and my first professional instinct, I'm not proud of this, is to reach for a weapon to use against my own brain.'Oh good, he's dramatic,' the voice says. 'Days of waiting and I get the stupid, dramatic one.'The bite.Ezequiel.The cold, the blood, Dax

Noah"I’m not an Omega."My words are hanging in the air, and Dax's glow is dying in front of me.I hate that almost as much as being told I’m an Omega."They’re the weakest of the wolves."My voice stays level but inside I’m having an existential crisis."Omegas aren’t fighters. They’re useless. It’s the one designation you've never even met. I remember the whole conversation you had with Cody when he said they take the Omegas somewhere else. Even the witch has no use for them."His face empties of color."Noah. I never said they’re worthless. It’s true that fighting isn’t exactly their strongest ability, but-""I’m not mad at you."I say that fast, before the fury in my chest can sharpen his old words into a weapon."You had no idea I’d be one. You answered a question a scared kid asked. You told the truth. It’s not your fault. Ezequiel probably planned it this way. Fat lot of good it does that I have werewolf strength and it’s barely more than I had before. And I can’t even touch s

NoahThere's a very calm woman on our porch holding several bags, one of which contains my underwear.Calm, on Reena, is the dangerous setting.She comes inside and sets it on the breakfast table between the coffee and the eggs. Then another, larger duffel bag. Followed by a ziplock the size of a pillow with two hoodies and several pairs of sweats folded inside like evidence."I found nine parcels of clothes before breakfast," she says. "I combined them and stopped collecting after the ninth one, figuring it would be best to cut this off at the source."Dax doesn't even have the decency to look caught. He looks proud."You missed the one in the creek fork, then.""No. I left the one in the creek fork. As a monument to whatever is happening to you. Everyone can go and look at it to see this is the day their Alpha lost his ever-loving mind."I choke on my coffee.I woke up this morning feeling fully rejuvenated. All the muscles that were screaming at me yesterday back to peak physical c