All Chapters of Knotting the Hunter: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Noah"You're a liar."I stop folding towels.My whole nervous system stops, actually, because that voice is supposed to be at school right now, forty minutes across town, learning fractions or whatever they teach you at fourteen.I can’t quite remember, it’s been a while.Leon Sweeney is standing in the doorway of Apex Fitness with his bike helmet still on.Platinum hair sticking out from under it. Same exact shade of cornflower blue eyes as his sister’s glaring at me.Holding a backpack he's gripping like it's a weapon, which, considering he’s also from a hunter family, isn't impossible."Leon. What the hell are you doing here? Does your dad know you're not at school?""You're a liar," he says again, louder, and his voice cracks right down the middle of the second word. He hates that so much I can see it.Great.Fantastic.The nine a.m. cardio crowd is comprised entirely of retirees and every single one of them just got very interested in their pace statistics.Dax appears out of the

Dax"I need to tell you something and you're going to be normal about it."Finn's picked closing time for this, which means it's serious, because Finn saves his confessions for after the witnesses have gone home.He's re-racking dumbbells that are already racked. Moving them around for no reason a sane person could name.Noah's still here too, wiping down equipment in the far corner.Officially the equipment needs it.Unofficially "after close" has become our hour, and we're both very committed to pretending we don't know that."I'm always normal.""You're never normal. That's why I'm asking in advance."The wolf perks up.Gossip."I gave Tori Hunter a guest pass."The weights go quiet. Across the gym, Noah's cloth stops mid-swipe like somebody unplugged him.Oh, this is going to be fucking delicious."There was a mocha incident," Finn says, like that's a sentence."It's really not a big thing. She said it was for surveillance purposes, which I think was a joke? Sixty percent sure it

Dax"Tell me again why we're the bait.""We're not bait. We're the advance team. And this was your plan.""Advance team means bait with a nicer job title, Noah."Midnight, the ridge above the southwest cut, and the plan is simple.Reena and four others hold the break line behind us, the pack's staged in pairs along the fire road, and me and Noah walk the heading with a radio and the county's best crossbow.Find the thing, mark it, fall back.Look, don't touch.My rules. Made them this afternoon. Already hate them.Noah's a shadow with a bow, moving quiet enough that even my ears have to work for him.Bolt nocked, breathing slow, eyes doing that sweep that never stops.Sexiest thing in this forest and it's not close.Yes, I'm aware there's a twenty-foot something monster out here, and no, that doesn't change the rankings.Focus, says the wolf, who's been pacing since sundown. Something's wrong with tonight.Wrong how?Listen.I listen.Nothing.Which is exactly why he told me to pay at

DaxThe wolf has opinions about my throat being bared.GET UP, he howls, throwing himself at the inside of my ribs.We do not bare our throat. We have NEVER bared our throat. We are the Alpha, we do not submit. Twenty years of never exposing our throat and you give it up to a human with one arm...Then Noah puts his mouth on it.Right on the pulse.Teeth first, then tongue, then this low hum, a man taking possession of new territory, and the wolf trails off mid-tantrum like somebody pulled his plug....oh, he says faintly. Oh no. I like it.Yeah. Been the theme of the year."You're shaking," Noah says, into my throat."Am not.""The whole bed's moving.""Earthquake. Very common around here. Look it up."He laughs. Against my skin, quiet and real.That's worse than anything his hands are doing, because Noah Hunter laughing in bed is a thing I’d bet my life very few people have ever heard and I'd start a war to stay on the list.He sits back on my thighs to work his own belt one-handed,

HeidiThere's a bone chip in my brother's arm that doesn’t belong to him.Yellowed. Old. Looks like part of a finger.Something from a century before either of us existed, and it just went plink into the soap dish like a lost button.Cool. Great. Normal Tuesday.Leon's sitting on the bathroom counter, same way he did for skinned knees when he was six, except now he's fourteen and the color of porridge and there’s a bit of a monster in his arm.Dad's still at the council hall, yelling at people. So Leon came to me."You should see Aisha," he says, going for swagger with a voice that keeps dropping the ball."Got knocked twenty feet. She's fine. Ish.""Ish?""Concussion. Her mom's at the hospital being loud about it. She says we had no business being out there, but dad says we have to learn sometime."I bite back the words I want to snap.Fourteen is too young for ‘sometime’."I’m glad somebody’s being loud about it. They can’t just blindly send trainees into danger. They should have ch