All Chapters of Knotting the Hunter: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

122 Chapters

Chapter 51 – Unconfirmed

DaxI’ve been watching Noah wash the same mug for three minutes now.I offered to do it, but he scowled at me and told me he was fine.I’m giving him another thirty seconds before I physically remove him from the sink.It’s not fun to watch him standing there, one-handed, splint braced on the counter, scrubbing the inside of that Bruges mug like the future of humanity depends on it."It's clean.""There's a mark.""There's no mark. You're trying to wash off memories of Belgium."The sponge stops.He doesn't turn around, though.He hasn't looked at me since he got up, and he got up BEFORE me, which never happens, because he sleeps like a barnacle and every morning so far I've had to peel him off my chest while he pretends he's still asleep so he doesn't have to own it.Not today.Today I woke up to cold sheets and the smell of dish soap.You want to know the pathetic part?I lay there for a solid minute with my hand on his side of the bed like a widower in a commercial.I could still f

Chapter 52 – The But

NoahShe picked the time, the place and the table.Grounded, half past two, back corner.The dead zone between lunch and the school rush.We don’t completely have the place to ourselves, but there’s nobody in our immediate vicinity.Heidi’s already sitting when I get there, hands around her mug, and there's a legal pad next to her, with a pen on top."You brought a notepad.""I brought questions."She nods at the chair across from her."Sit down, Noah. You look like you slept on a park bench."Close.I slept on my own couch, because the bed still smells like him without the added bonus of actually having him in it.And yesterday I walked a scrubbed crime scene with my father breathing down my neck.All in all, a zero out of ten day for me.The fact that Heidi looks like she’s about to take a deposition doesn’t bode well for today either.The splint knocks the table as I sit down, splashing some of her coffee over the edge.I’m really over feeling like a miserable failure at every aspe

Chapter 53 – Express Shipping

NoahMost of the gym lights are off when I let myself in, and Dax is at the front desk, not looking up.He heard the door.He hears my heartbeat from across a parking lot, he definitely heard the door.He's going to make me cross all the space I put between us on my own.Fine.I've earned that."We're closed," he tells the desk in front of him."I work here.""Two days, Noah. No response to my texts. Nothing but dead air.""I know.""Great talk so far. Really glad you came."I stop at the desk.His nostrils flare, because he can smell everything on me.The nerves, the want, the two days of stupid, and there's no point lying to that nose, so I don't bother trying."I saw Heidi today."That gets his eyes up.Gold, wary, and my chest does the drop it always does."How'd that go?""She brought a legal pad.""Ouch.""Yeah."My heart's slamming in my chest, but to hear me talking you’d think I'm reading a shopping list."She asked about you.""Me? Did she want to know the best way to murder

Chapter 54 – Three Speeds

DaxThe ring is snug at the base of my cock.I haven't even turned it on yet and I'm already renegotiating my life expectancy."Comfortable?" Noah asks.He's standing over me with his jeans gone and his splint held against his ribs, looking down at where I'm stretched out on the mats like he ordered me off a menu."Peachy. Why are you up there?""Because you're going to lie there and behave."He steps over my hips. Turns. Faces the dark end of the gym, his back to me, and my brain performs a full system shutdown, because oh.Oh."You said properly," he says over his shoulder. "This is me supervising."The wolf sits up so fast it gives me whiplash.‘Ours. On top of us. LOOK at him.’I'm looking. God, am I looking.He sinks down slow, one knee either side of me, and takes me in hand behind himself, lines up, and the first push of him swallowing the head nearly ends the whole night on the spot.Heat. Pressure. That tight, greedy give of his body letting me in an inch at a time, and I get

Chapter 55 – Guest Pass

ToriThe guest pass has been burning a hole in my jacket for two weeks, and today it earns its keep.Fourteen days.That was the deal I made with myself in front of a coffee shop, and my brother has spent all fourteen of them dodging me.Three texts, ignored.The barn, bailed on repeatedly. One phone call that lasted ninety seconds and contained the word "busy" four times, which is a record even for the new and unimproved Noah.So. Time's up. Surveillance phase over. Contact phase initiated.Apex smells like rubber and effort and, faintly, dog.I hand the crumpled pass to the kid at the desk, who barely looks at it, and sweep the floor the way Noah taught me to size up a room.Exits, two. Occupants, six. Werewolves, statistically at least half.And there's my brother.Far corner, by the cable machines, clipboard in hand, talking a middle-aged guy through a lat pulldown.Standard Noah.Boring Noah.Except he's holding the clipboard wrong, pinned against his ribs with his elbow like a

Chapter 56 – The Real One

NoahTori's sitting on the dead chest freezer with my old training crossbow across her knees, and she's loaded it."Relax," she says. "It's not for you.""That's comforting.""It's for whatever might've followed you here. You're neck-deep in something, big brother. I planned for company."The lantern's turned up high and there's a thermos on the workbench.My little sister is dug in like she intends to hold the place against a siege.I’m worried she may change her mind about who the crossbow’s for once I’ve told her all of it.She jerks her chin at the hay bale across from her."Sit. Talk. And I know your face when you're leaving things out, so save us both the editing."I sit.The splint drags at my shoulder the way it does by this time of the day, and for a second I just look at her.The ponytail. Dad's stubborn jaw. Mom's soft brown eyes with none of Mom's surrender in them.Those eyes are part of what makes her so dangerous.Gentle and inviting as a fawn’s, ringed with long dark l

Chapter 57 – Hostile Takeover

DaxTori Hunter is sitting in my chair.Not the guest chair.My chair, behind my desk, rotating it a lazy quarter turn each way like she's deciding whether to keep it.The wolf is beside himself.'A pup. In our seat. Remove her.'She's Noah's sister.'Then remove her respectfully.'Finn let her in twenty minutes before opening, which we will be discussing at his next performance review, and now he's hovering in the doorway holding a stack of towels nobody asked for.Noah's against the wall with the splint crossed over his chest, wearing the expression of a man who lost this argument in the parking lot and came inside to lose it again.He called me last night from his truck.Gave me the highlights in that clipped mission-report voice while I could hear how relieved he was underneath it.His sister knows.His sister is in.His sister would be coming to see me.He did not mention she'd be conducting the meeting from my side of the desk.There are two coffees in front of her. She isn't sh

Chapter 58 – Bloodless

NoahDoc Merrin is kneeling in wet grass over a girl the color of votive candle wax.The last time I saw this woman she was sewing my scalp shut and telling me my skull was the only quality part of me."Good to see you with some color," she says barely glancing at me. "How's the arm?""Still attached.""That's the spirit. Kneel on the tarp, not the grass, I'm not treating you for pneumonia on top of everything else. I’m supposed to be enjoying my retirement."I kneel on the tarp.You don't argue with a woman who’s this agile at seventy.The girl is bad.Skin like paper, lips gone grey, an IV line running up to a bag that Mato is holding at arm's length like it might drip on him.I didn’t think werewolves could get queasy over blood.Reena crouches beside me."Dana Voss. Twenty. Pulls nights at the diner, walks home along this road. Mato found her at first light."Twenty.Same as Dax.Don't think about that."Marks are on the left," Doc says."Have your look and make it fast, she's got

Chapter 59 – Foreign Nonsense

ToriDad's phone rings downstairs while I'm standing on his desk chair in my socks.I freeze with a book the size of a paving stone in both hands.His steps cross the kitchen.The ringing stops.Then his voice drops into the register he keeps for council business, the one that meant’ leave the room’ for my entire childhood.Can't make out the words. Don't need to.Noah said the medical report would reach the hunters by tonight.It's almost tonight.So while my father stands in his kitchen hearing about Dana Voss, I get back to robbing his study.The far shelf runs along the top, above eye level, which in this house is where information goes to die.The foreign volumes.Dad doesn’t place much stock in anything that doesn’t happen in our own backyard so to speak.I’m surprised he even bothered to have Noah memorize them before calling it all bullshit.Me, he never made memorize anything. Girls in this family get to dust the books, not read them.His mistake. I know exactly where everyth

Chapter 60 – Still Breathing

NoahDax takes the turn onto the dark stretch at a speed the truck was never built for, and I keep my eyes on the sky.Finn's howl came from the wrong direction.Not the woods. The road.The long empty climb between town and the trees, where nobody who knows what’s out there should be after sundown.I've called Tori twice. Voicemail, both times.Maybe her phone died. Maybe she's asleep. Maybe a lot of things.I don't believe any of them because despite recent evidence, I’m not an idiot."Faster.""If I go faster we arrive as a fireball," Dax says, and goes faster anyway.Then the headlights find the ditch, and everything in me goes cold.A bicycle on its side in the gravel, front wheel still turning.A russet wolf standing over my sister, hackles up, teeth bared at the sky.And above them, banking against the moon, the thing Tori told me about not so long ago.Tori's on her back in the dead grass with the training crossbow up.Aiming.Her arms are shaking so hard the bolt tip is drawi

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