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“We should trap a feral,” Jai says, and we all turn to face him. His shaggy black hair hangs over his ears, and some falls into his eyes, but it doesn’t disguise the jagged scar crossing through one and continuing down to his chin. His mismatched eyes, one black and one blue, glance to Lucien and me, an unspoken conversation going on before he turns back to our commander. “We can either use them as bait or torture the information we need out of them to hunt down the local packs. Despite being feral, they will know basic information that we would struggle to find since we are unwelcome and untrusted.” His voice is dark and low, measured.
Despite being smaller than both Lucien and me, Jai makes up for his lack of size in attitude and speed. He’s a brutal bastard and one of the best hunters I’ve ever seen. He also hates monsters, wolves especially, more than any of us. His thirst for blood may scare us at times, but it does come in useful.
“Vale?” the command callers, waiting for my response.
I lead our little team, so the choice is mine. He knows full well he can’t make my men do anything they don’t want to. They are loyal to me until the end. If he wants the pack he suspects is hiding in our area, then he needs my help.
“It is a good plan.” I incline my head. “We’ll get to work on it right away and report back.”
“Good, do that and come up with something or you’ll be back to trapping pixies,” he snaps, adding the threat to make it seem like he’s in charge when we all know he’s a washed-up hunter. Too many hunts, too many injuries, and age’s made him slow. He couldn’t survive hunting anymore, so now he leads and leaves it all to us.
One day, one of us will replace him as the head of the southeast hunters. Jai and Lucien want it to be me, but I prefer being out on the road, hunting. I suppose, though, when I get older, I might have to take the role just like he did. It’s the cycle.If you live long enough as a hunter, you become a liability when you’re old, which means working behind a desk.
It’s like being a soldier—our minds stay in the fight but our bodies betray us.
While the meeting disbands, I nod at familiar faces. Hunters stick to our own teams, since we’re highly competitive, but there’s one easy way to spot a veteran—the scars. We are all covered in them. If you are lucky enough to win your hunt against a monster, the odds are you’ll come out with a few more, but it’s the price for hunting the evil that lurks in the darkness and kills innocent humans.
This is the humans’ world, not theirs. We simply remind them of that.
Jai and Lucien fall into step at my side, and I tug my phone from the pocket of my cargo pants. “Are we trapping a feral?” Lucien asks, his voice deep and dark.
“Yes, tonight,” I respond without sparing them a glance. “He’s right. We need information, and we need it now. Jai, set the trap. Lucien, you’re the lookout.” I lift my head and grin. “And I’ll be the bait.”
Lucien spares me a narrow-eyed glare, and I raise an eyebrow in challenge. He knows better than to argue, and I would never order them to be bait. If I wasn’t willing to play that role, then I shouldn’t be leading them. When we first passed our training, I often argued that Lucien should lead since he’s the oldest and my brother, but he said he didn’t have the necessary people skills. It means he has to put up with my reckless ways, even if he hates it, because we all know he will always have my back.
“Tonight.” Jai nods, a cruel grin tugging at his lips.
“You know, man, if we weren’t friends, I’d be scared of you,” I say, putting my phone away. The crowd in the hallway parts as we walk, but we don’t spare them a glance. Everyone knows whowe are. Our hunts are things of legend. As one of the highest-ranking teams with the most monster kills under our belts, they know better than to get in our way.
“Who said you shouldn’t be anyway?” Jai retorts before wandering off.
Lucien and I share a look. “He’s on you. I told you he was a psychopath when we met him in basic. You called him inventive.”
Jai might be crazy, but only the monsters have to fear his fury.
“He gets the job done and doesn’t mind getting his hands bloody. It’s better to be crazy than a coward,” I remind him. “Besides, he’s just passionate about his work.” I sling my arm around him, or try since the bastard is huge. Lucien shrugs me off with a wince, hating to be touched, and for a moment, sadness fills me before I push it away. “Now, let’s remind them who we are.”
Crossing my arms, I present them to him in an X. Sighing, he presses his own against mine. “Hunters,” we say.
Hunters forever.
CHAPTER THREE
My pride is wounded. I hate losing, and I was so close to making him surrender.
I slink back in wolf form, my shoulders bunched in exhaustion and dejection. I foiled another mating ceremony, but it’s only a matter of time before they succeed. The only thing that can save me is becoming alpha.
Or the alpha’s word.
Sighing, I transform at the tree line, pulling on one of the loose shirts we stash around the perimeter for unexpected shifts. On bare feet, I pad across the grass as the pack comes back to life, those with children waking for the day. Little pups stuck in wolf form howl as their parents chase them. Shaking my head, I wave at those who greet me, ready for their day at work.
Most work here within the pack to keep our land and people going. We are sustainable here with our own food and water sources. We have hunters and trackers, defenders and feeders. There are also some who go out into the world to make us money and keep us connected. I am a mixture of both due to my beta position. I help keep the pack running and work at the alpha’s side, which often means leaving the safety of our land formeetings with other packs or to control the businesses we own outside of here that enable us to stay off-grid and protected.
Spread across our lands is housing for the pack. We do have one big pack house that the alpha and his mate live in, as well as any unmated females and betas if they choose, but most decide to build their own house somewhere on the land. I stayed inside the pack house until I turned eighteen, and then with the help of the pack, I built my own slice of heaven here.
It’s where I head now, needing the solace of my quiet place before the rest of the pack pry into what happened. I already feel expectation lingering in the air. They want to see if I’ve been mated despite my scent not changing. Wolves mate for life, and as a beta and the one vying for alpha, whom I choose is important.
That isn’t to say I don’t have fun and fool around. Wolves are inherently sexual creatures, and sex is as normal for us as hunting, like scratching a primal itch. Mating, however, under a full moon where you bind your souls, is something I’ve firmly been against. I want to stand on my own as alpha before I consider anything like that. Logically, I know one day, I will have to mate, but right now, I have bigger dreams than being tied down and forced to have pups.
