Mated To The Wolf Hunter

I was going to die.

The thought accompanied by the cold air bit at my naked skin.

I opened my eyes as slowly as I could, feeling the air swirl around me but too tired to shiver. Where was I? What had happened?

I racked my brain as quickly as I could, trying to recall the events that had led me here. My eyes opened, and I took in the scenery: the thick trees, the darkened sky, the cold crisp leaves underneath my skin. It was nighttime; I’d been unconscious for several hours.

I tried to get to my feet, knowing inside me that there was an air of impending doom hovering in the air, but when I stood firmly on all four and my vision fully cleared, I realized I was in my wolf form. I tried to listen for any sound, maybe Emmett or Dalia was close by but all I could hear was crickets chirping away.

Fuck. Did the wolf hunters have them? My heart descended into panic. I needed to do something. If anything happened to them…

I made to move and a low growl tore out of me. What was that pain? I looked down. Blood surrounded me. Was that my blood? Then I saw it. My foot was bleeding. It came to me; I’d been caught in a wolf hunter’s trap and had forcefully torn my foot away, causing its sharp claws to drag into my skin.

It meant that I couldn’t walk, which meant I couldn’t get to my friends or my dad to warn them. The hunters were here and they were out for blood.

I heard a twig snap and my senses became alert. Since I was in my wolf form, I could only communicate to other wolves and not human. If that was a wolf hunter, I would be dead. I was too injured to move. This was it. This was how I was going to die, alone and separated from the rest of my family. My father, my betrothed, my friends, my grandmother, I would never see them again.

I wanted to cry. Slowly, I sank back unto the ground, changing back into my human form. Shutting my eyes, my nose pinched and I felt the moisture drip down my nose. The footsteps got louder and in no time, the hunter—the steps were too heavy to be a wolf’s—got closer.

I waited for the dagger to pierce my chest, waited for the darkness to overcome me but it never came.

Seconds later, a finger drifted down my arm, leaving goosebumps in its wake. I longed to open my eyes, yearned to see whose finger it was that awakened my skin and left a trail of fire but for some reason, I couldn’t.

“You’re so beautiful,” the voice, deep and soothing, murmured. My body jumped to life; my senses became alert.

That voice… I’d heard it before. Somewhere far, somewhere calm…

I snapped my eyes open and came face to face with the most handsome man I’d ever seen in my entire life. But no, that wasn’t what hit me the most.

His eyes were a striking green and he stared at me like he’d known me before, perhaps in some other life, some other universe. It was dark in the forest but I could see him clearly. A corner of his lips curled upward and I was almost compelled to return the action.

Then his gaze roamed over my naked form and I came back to earth, suddenly jerking away from him, especially since I had been right; he was holding a silver dagger and it was meant for me.

“Get away from me,” I cried, holding my arms to my chest and folding my legs under me in a sorry attempt to preserve what little shred of dignity I had left. “Please don’t kill me.”

Fear gripped me at the look in his eyes, rough, knowing, predatory. I was at his mercy and he knew it. “You don’t want to die?” he asked in a small voice, his digits circling the dagger he was holding.

I shook my head frantically, inching further from his prying gaze. It was weird that he didn’t seem dangerous but my father always told me that the worst wolf hunters were the ones who didn’t look like they knew how to kill.

“Beg,” he whispered.

“What?” I asked, stupefied.

“Beg me to spare your life.”

He was serious. The tears that ran down my face were warm, almost hot. I couldn’t fight back; I couldn’t do anything. That wasn’t true. Just like he’d said, I could beg for my life. Because I had to live. I had to go back and warn the rest of the pack about the danger that loomed ahead.

“Please.” My eyes drifted shut, shame filling me. “Please, don’t kill me. I don’t want to die.”

Here I was begging for my life, my heart in my throat, wondering what it was the moon goddess had in store for me and why Fate thought it was funny to play such a cruel trick on me.

No. What hit me the most was the fact that this man, this person who presently held my life in his hands and was about to take it, this wolf hunter... was my mate.

“I’ve been hunting werewolves since I was fifteen,” Eric’s words drawled in an almost drunken tone as he leaned back lazily against the leather seat that had suffered from too much wear. The noisy rattling of the train accompanied the sounds of his all too self-satisfied tales. “This is going to be a piece of cake. Once I find the chosen one from the prophecy and kill her, the rest of them are going to be begging for death.”

Kane shifted in his seat. He had joined the wolf hunters a year ago and so far, even though their methods were less than kind, he had not regretted it. Never mind that their leader, Eric, had an ego the size of a whale and talked about himself in third person, filling their ears with tales of his always successful hunts and how he had killed more than a hundred wolves.

Kane yawned again; it wasn’t anything they hadn’t heard before. Like now, the rest of the group listened on with half attention, the other half focused on the Blue Hounds, the wolf kingdom they were about to enter.

“Yeah, but you haven’t hunted any Blue Hound,” Fiona, another member of their group and Kane’s closest friend, interjected. “I heard they’re the vicious kind.”

Eric’s lips twisted in a deep frown. “All wolves are vicious. That’s why they shouldn’t exist.”

“I agree,” Phillip, another member, nodded. “But Fiona’s right. It’s why most hunters put off entering the Blue Hound territory; they’re the worst of the kind.”

Kane remained silent. Unlike the rest of the group, he knew next to nothing about the wolf kingdom they were about to enter. It didn’t matter to him how vicious they were or how cruel of animals they seemed to be. What mattered was that he was ready to kill as many of them as he could.

At first, killing werewolves had started out as an outlet for him, a way to escape the dark voices that tormented the darkest parts of his mind. Then after a while, it became almost like a second nature. He’d seen them kill, witnessed the damage they were capable of, how inhumane they were. Werewolves were dangerous monsters that threatened the peace of humanity and should not be allowed to live.

This was his first time venturing into a werewolf territory, unlike the rest of the group. The few wolves he’d killed had been rogues, who’d made the mistake of venturing into the human world looking for food.

“They killed my parents, you know,” Fiona said, her voice reduced to a whisper. “Werewolves killed my parents when I was twelve. It’s why I’ve dedicated my life to putting an end to them. I hate them so fucking much.”

Kane had an idea of how much Fiona hated wolves. He hated them too, but she hated them more. She’d told him the story a while back, how a rouge wolf had entered her house in the middle of the night, found its way into her parent’s room, killed them and had eaten them. She’d woken to their screams of pain, had tiptoed to their room in fear and found the horrible sight. In her own words, she’d been helpless then but she’d never be helpless ever again.

“That’s why the Blue hounds have to go,” Eric said. “I heard of a prophesy from a seer a long time ago. In the Blue Hound kingdom, there’s a powerful wolf descended from a long line of witches that can change the fate of the human-wolf world. In my books, that spells doom for us. The humans have no business with the wolves. We are the superior species. They are the abomination.”

The train did a little jump.

“That’s why we have to find the chosen wolf and kill her,” Eric said, a gleam in his eyes.

“How are you so sure it’s a female?” Phillip asked.

Eric shrugged. “The prophesy said so.”

“From whom did you hear this prophesy?” Fiona asked.

Eric stared into space for a second before meeting her eyes. “Another wolf-seer, just before I pierced a silver dagger through her heart.”

The train made another jump, this one more forceful than the last.

They wouldn’t say it out loud but Kane knew they were all thinking it; Eric was one heartless son of a bitch.

“What about you, Phillip?" Fiona asked, breaking the silence. “Why do you kill werewolves?”

Phillip shrugged. “It’s fun, but I also agree that they’re dangerous monsters who shouldn’t exist.”

Kane silently hoped no one would ask him why he’d made killing werewolves his profession because he did not have anything to say in response. Which was why he breathed a sigh of relief when the train made a loud cracking noise and then jerked forward to a stop, lunging everyone in it forward and then backwards.

“What happened?” Fiona asked.

Kane was sitting near the window so he looked outside and saw a blanket of white. “The trained stopped.”

“No shit,” Eric muttered, adjusting upright on his seat. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Kane stood and walked to the front of the train for a better view. When he saw the large mass of snow that covered the area in front of the train, he sighed. “Shit.”

“What’s happened?” Phillip asked.

“We got caught in a snow storm. It’s too thick for the train to keep moving,” he said, facing them. “We’re stuck here for now. We have to wait it out.”

Everyone sighed. It would take them a few more days than expected but they would get there eventually. Kane thought of the rogue wolves he’d killed. He knew the wolf strength lay in their numbers and a pack would be harder to kill than a lone wolf but he was looking forward to it.

He eyes the duffel bag that contained their weapons: bows, silver arrows, silver daggers. Everything silver, the secret weapon that could kill a wolf.

Kane smiled. Yes, he certainly was looking forward to it.

The Blue Hounds wouldn’t know what hit them.