All Chapters of Knotting the Hunter: Chapter 291 - Chapter 300

Dax"Got it," Noah says.It takes him less than a minute this time. One second he's squinting at the spruce at the dead end, and the next he's walking straight into it like there's a sidewalk under his boots.Before I follow him, I turn back. Lillianna's at the edge of the gravel with the town witches, scowling at the trees."Thank you," I tell her. "All of you.""Stop dawdling, boy. My knees don't like standing around in the damp. Go and get your mother."I'm sending that woman flowers when this is over. She's going to hate them so much.The whole pack follows me into the trees in the dark. Nobody talks. The only sounds are boots and branches, and somebody's stomach rumbling, since none of us could eat a thing today.'She's not fighting us,' Noah says through the link. 'I can see her magic all over this road, but it's just lying there.'She wants everyone to have a front row seat to this challenge. Walking in this easily should feel like a relief, and instead it puts me even more on

DaxI'm losing.Lake water goes up my nose and down my throat, and Ezequiel's whole weight is on my back, grinding my face into the stones.Whenever I get my head up for a breath, he shoves it under again. My lungs are burning, and there's so much water in my stomach it sloshes when I move.Somewhere behind me people are screaming and rifles are cracking, and I can't see any of it. All I've got is cold water, stones and the wolf on my back.His teeth are buried in my scruff and he's grinding them deeper. He's enjoying himself. My shoulder is a hot, sloppy mess where he tore it open. When I try to put weight on that front leg it buckles, which is why I’m face-first in the lake, unable to push to my feet.Half his face is hanging off and he couldn't care less. I've come second to this wolf in all the fights we've ever had, and I'm going to lose again.I'm starting to panic. My legs scrabble at stones they can't grip, and some stupid part of my brain has started counting how long a wolf

NoahThere's a girl kneeling on the stones beside me with my blood on her chin, and she won't stop saying sorry.She was a wolf a minute ago. Now she's naked and hunched over her knees, staring at the holes in my forearm like she's only just worked out where they came from.A few more of them are crouched around us, coming out of fur one painful inch at a time, and none of them will look at me."Did I do that?" she whispers."That wasn't you. That was her." I make myself smile, because she looks like she's about to bolt. "Hi. You're okay. I'm Noah Holt."It's a weird time for introductions, but I need her to stop seeing me as something she tried to eat."Can you help me?" I ask. "Put both hands right here on my leg and press. Hard as you can."She does it, sobbing, still saying sorry.Down at the water's edge, somebody screams.Turning my head takes forever. My sight's still dark, so all I've got are my eyes, and my eyes are telling me there's an old woman standing where Nyasia was.H

KellyDax holds my front door open like he's expecting it to bite me and he’s ready to take it down."I can manage a door, sweetheart.""I know," he says, and doesn't let go of it.Noah's behind him carrying Patricia's banana bread, which I could also have managed.Dax has been hovering since he came to fetch me from the hall, close enough to catch me if I fall over, which I haven't done once. My wolf's mended everything that hurt, and he knows it. He hovers anyway.I don't have the heart to make him stop. When Fletcher died, I disappeared into my grief and left him on his own for years. He could have refused to let me back in when I finally crawled out of the darkness, but he just wrapped me in his sunshine and welcomed me back.He gets to be worried and hover.The last time I walked through this door, I was going the other way, with Ezequiel beside me. Somebody's scrubbed my hallway since then, so hard the boards are paler than the rest of the house.Noah sees me looking. "Mato and

Finn'Tori's coming up the street,' my wolf says. 'On foot. She's nervous about something.'I'm on the couch in my boxers with a bowl of cereal balanced on my stomach and One Piece paused on the TV. That gives me maybe thirty seconds to turn into a man who has his life together.I make it as far as the jeans. The cereal bowl goes on top of the bookshelf, which is high enough that I don’t think she’ll be able to see it.She walked here. In the dark, with two cracked ribs. She doesn't have a car, and asking anybody for a ride is against her religion. I'll say something about that, and she'll bite my head off.I open the door before she knocks, which she hates, and she glares at me for it, which I love.Her hair's down. It's never down. It's always up in a ponytail, out of the way in case she needs to stab something. It makes her even sexier than she always is and every part of me sits up and notices."Hi," she says. "Can I come in?""You walked here.""Hello to you too. Yes, I walked. M