All Chapters of Knotting the Hunter: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

NoahThe whole building smells like him.Nobody warned me about that part.Twenty steps into Apex Fitness at nine sharp on a Monday and it's wall to wall Dax, sweat and burnt sugar twined with cherry tobacco and warm animal, soaked into the mats, the air, probably the drywall.Eight hours a day. In here. Breathing this.Great plan, Noah. Airtight."You're late," Dax says from behind the front desk, feet up, eating a banana like it’s a sacred ritual."It's nine exactly.""It's nine oh one. I'm docking your pay.""You haven't even told me what you're paying me.""And now you'll never know what you lost."He swings his feet down and slides a folded shirt across the desk. Black. APEX across the chest. "Your uniform. There's a mop in the back with your name on it. Literally. Bex made a label."A teenage girl on the rowing machine waves at me with both hands, delighted, like I'm a zoo animal that just did something."That's Bex," Dax says. "She's seen your employee file.""I don't have a fi

NoahSparring with a werewolf is the dumbest idea I've had since taking this job, and I took this job."You're holding back," Dax says, circling me on the mats. Gym's closed, blinds down, one bank of lights on over the open floor. "Stop insulting me.""You heal in an hour. I bruise for a week. Forgive me for pacing myself.""Excuses." He feints left, lazy, telegraphing it on purpose. "You wanted to know how wolves fight up close. This was your idea, Hunter. Number twelve, if we're counting attempts on my life."It was my idea. That's the worst part. Four days since the office, four days of never again holding up beautifully, and my genius solution to the crawling charge between us was: let's touch each other for an hour and call it training.Tactical preparation. That's the official story. I've nearly died to an Alpha once already this month, and next time it won't be one who catches me and flirts with me. Knowing how they move is survival.The story has held up for about nine minutes

Noah"You smell like you’ve been rolling in it," Lillianna says, before I'm even through the door.No hello.She's at the table with a mortar and pestle, and the cottage smells like rosemary and woodsmoke and judgment this time around."Rolling in what?""Wolf."She grinds something with a small vicious twist."Last time you'd brushed against it. Now it's in your skin like smoke in a curtain. Sit down before you fall down, boy, you look like a man who's been sleeping in shifts."I sit. Arguing with her has the same success rate as arguing with weather."I need you to look at something please."I put the paper on the table.Drew it myself on paper, twice, because she doesn't read curses off what she calls a lightbox, and those of us who occupy the twenty-first century refer to as a phone.The nested lines went down wrong both times, like the shape resists being copied."She carves it where she takes them. We've found four now. Three old, one fresh."That gets her full attention.She wi

NoahMy sister fights dirty, and I taught her that, so technically every bruise is my own fault."Dead," Tori says, pressing the blunt training knife against my ribs.We're in the Pattersons' empty barn, where we've trained in secret every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from five to seven in the morning for two years.All she’s ever wanted was to be a hunter, but our father decided the family obligation lands on sons.Daughters should be seen and not heard.My sister decided otherwise. And I’m not letting her go out there without knowing what she’s doing.There are female hunters, but they’re few and far between, and treated with open disdain.I think it’s bullshit. Tori’s twice as bloodthirsty as I am."That's twice I’ve gotten a touch on you today. You going to tell me what's wrong with you, or do I keep stabbing you until it comes out?""Nothing's wrong with me.""Three weeks ago you'd have had my wrist pinned before the knife cleared."She steps back, resets her stance, long ponytai

Noah"If you fidget one more time," Dax murmurs, "I'm letting them eat you.""I'm not fidgeting.""You've checked that crossbow four times. It was loaded all four times."Two hours crouched in the same patch of wet bracken, close enough that the heat rolls off him into my side, which is its own specific punishment.The quarry road runs below us, a pale scar of gravel between the rail cut and the treeline.No man's land.The seam where nobody's territory touches anybody else's, which is exactly why the wolves doing the taking use it, and exactly why no one's ever watching when they do.Until tonight."Your vampire said two to four," I say. "It's quarter past three.""He's not my vampire. And he's never wrong about this stuff, it's the whole reason he's insufferable."Dax shifts his weight silently, a big man who moves like he weighs nothing."Give it time."Time.Sure.Time crouched in the dark with the one person I'm not supposed to want, the one person I definitely lied to my girlfri