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Jai was doomed to live a short, painful life devoid of love and happiness. It will end the way it began—in bloodshed.
“Happy.” It’s the first word that comes to mind, and I smile. “I was never alone, and I hated being alone,” I tell him. “If it wasn’t my new parents, it was one of the pack members. They were always there. They helped me through my shift and wiped away my tears when I was hurt. They fed me, and we celebrated highs and lows. There is just so much love everywhere. Being a wolf isn’t just about shifting. It’s about pack mentality. We are one. If one of us is hurting, we all are. We take care of each other. We all have our roles, and you’ll always find help and caring hands. Even when I fucked up when I was a bratty teenager, they didn’t punish me—well, not too badly. They showed me why I was wrong and helped me understand. Here, we watch out for all the different generations of our people, from pups to the elders. We all live as one big family. Obviously, it’s not always easy. We do fight for our positions and shit happens, but we always have one another.”
“Must be nice,” he murmurs after I trail off.
“What was it like growing up as a hunter?” I ask, genuinely curious. It’s not like I’ll ever ask again. I’ll never be this close to a member after this.
“Scary,” he admits. “I never knew if they were going to drop me, but being dropped as a hunter means death. It means you don’t qualify. It was a lot like joining the military, I guess. We had drills and training since I was a teenager, and you had to graduate, which meant you got sent out on a hunt alone. If yousurvived, then you were a hunter. It’s all we knew. We were given teams, but no one wanted me. Vale and Lucien took me in, they saw something in me, and we set out to prove ourselves. You start at the bottom and work yourself up the ranks, but it was always scary. I never knew if I would die each day. We moved continually, never putting down roots. We couldn’t have friends or relationships, not that I wanted any, but it was a very lonely life. We put up with it because we thought . . . We thought we were helping people—the last line of defence between monsters and human extinction.” He laughs bitterly. “I guess in some ways, we weren’t wrong. We did save people, and that only gave us more motivation, but the older I got, the more I realised some hunters did it simply because they liked killing.” He turns to look at me. “Like me.”
“Sounds brutal,” I say. I guess I never thought about it. “It sounds almost like a cult.”
“I guess it is.” He chuckles. “I met a cult once.”
“Really?” I find myself grinning.
“Oh yeah. We got sent there because they thought they were witches, but it was just a very real human cult.” He shakes his head. “Crazy bastards. We ended up turning them over to the authorities, but we went undercover first, and they made me look sane.”
“Damn, it must have been crazy then.” I wink as he grins.
We lapse into silence, and I swallow when I realise we just had a normal conversation. No hatred, no threats, just talking.
“I’ll try to save Vale and Lucien.” I feel him looking at me. “Vale saved me the night my parents died,” I tell him. “And Lucien let me go when I escaped the night I tried to kill you.”
“Well, shit.” Jai laughs. “Bastards.”
I grin again, and feeling awkward, I try to get to my feet, but he catches my hand. “Can you stay a little longer? I’m going to die soon anyway, so can you entertain me for a while?”
“I’m not your joker. I’m your jailor,” I tease, my eyes going to his hand on mine. He lets go quickly, but I sit back down, not saying a word.
“How does it feel to change?” he asks.
“Like euphoria,” I reply with a wince. “It hurts like hell the first time, but then it becomes as natural as breathing and it feels like you take a full, deep breath for the first time. You and your wolf become one. It feels like part of your soul, and the freedom you find running? There’s nothing like it. Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he says. “I probably deserve this.”
We lapse into silence again.
“I still hate you, she-wolf,” he says randomly.
I can’t help but grin and meet his gaze to see him smiling softly. “I still hate you, hunter.”
Why does that sound like a good thing now? Like an endearment rather than a slur?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Slamming the man into his desk, I glare at him as he shakes and cowers. “Where is it?” I demand.
Ask nicely, Vale said, but this is nicely since he doesn’t have a knife in his chest.
Clearly, the townspeople are protecting the pack or unknowingly doing so.
We don’t have time to keep searching the records. We need to find them fast. The man behind city planning has to know. He’s an older man with a kind smile and moustache, but when we tried to bribe him, he threatened to call the police, and there was a knowing look in his eyes.
Too knowing.
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m going to call the police, you thugs! This is a nice town. Who are you?—”
I slam him down again as Vale gets into his face.
