by T. S. Joyce
The smile dipped from his lips, and with a quick look around, he pulled her toward the exit.
“Wait, where are we going?”
“Outside.”
“But I’m not ready to leave. I have to say goodbye to everyone.” She balked, locking her legs and skidding across the sticky wooden floor.
Chance grabbed her jacket and hooked an arm around her waist, then pulled her out the door. She was more pliable outside when there was no chance of saying a quick farewell to the others. He was mad. She could tell in the rigidity of his back and shoulders. Chance pulled her into the small alleyway between the bar and the next building and yanked her jacket onto her arms.
“I was just teasing,” she said, lurching from his grip. She could zip her own damned zipper.
“You can’t say shit like that to me, Emily.” Full name. Burn.
Emily rested her back against the cedar log wall, as far away from him as she could get. She glared at him. “You’ve joked with me all night, but you get sensitive about that?”
“You’re a fucking Hell Hunter. You can’t pull my wolf to you. You shouldn’t. That’s not what is happening between us. It can’t be. Do you understand? I have to be okay to find another after this. After you leave, I have to be freed up to find what Dalton and Kate, Vera and Tobias, and all the others have.”
“I don’t understand what I did wrong.”
“You’re binding me to you!” Dalton ran his hands roughly through his hair, paced away and then back. His eyes were only a shade darker than snow right now. In a ragged whisper, he repeated, “You’re binding me to you.”
“I didn’t know. I don’t know how this stuff works for you. I don’t know anything anymore. I’m being pushed and pulled too, Chance.”
“Don’t say my name right now. Not like that.”
“Like what?” she asked, too loud, too forcefully, because she was falling down a black well of confusion, and maybe she wouldn’t ever reach the bottom.
“I can see it. I can imagine it, Em. I was watching you up there on the bar dancing with all the people I love, who I protect, who mean the world to me, and I can see you fitting in so seamlessly. And it makes me want things I can’t have. We were supposed to be friends, at a distance, and you were supposed to observe us, to see that we aren’t the monsters you think we are.”
“You aren’t monsters—”
“But I’m different from you! We’re from two completely different worlds, and not just human and shifter. You’re trained to hunt us, aren’t you?”
Chest heaving, she nodded slightly. There was no point in lying. He’d guessed everything from the moment she’d entered his life.
“You’re trained to hunt us, and I’m putting you right at the heart of the only thing that matters. And you…you have this uncanny ability to blend in. You could take everything from me, and now you’re binding me to you?”
“And you don’t want that.”
Chance shook his head slowly as he backed away and rested his shoulder blades against the wall across the alley. In a tortured voice, he said, “I want it more than anything. Just not with you.”
She felt slapped. No, more than that, she felt gut-punched, slapped and cut off at the knees all at once. “Oh.” She swallowed hard and pushed off the wall. “I…” Care about you. Would never hurt you or the people you love. “It was nice to meet you, Chance Dawson.”
Feeling utterly numb, she made her way to her ATV and found the strength not to look back. She was tired. Tired of men toying with her emotions. Tired of the roller coaster she’d found herself on. Tired of herself and everything else.
At least she’d had one night of feeling normal.
At least she’d found this respite before she’d hunted the pack and done something she would regret. Something that would’ve poisoned her soul.
At least Chance had saved her from that fate.
But he wasn’t her wolf in shining armor, and she was no princess worthy of rescue.
He was right to cut them off now instead of allowing her to attach to him more. She already felt so strongly it was scary. Terrifying really, to care for someone so much after one good night.
From here on, she would be more careful, as the shifters had to be, with her heart and with who she trusted.
Chapter Six
The sound of voices woke Emily from the folds of bottomless sleep. Cracking her eyes open, she stared at the window that allowed the gray morning light into the bedroom. She listened harder. Was someone in here? She sat up in a rush and pulled out the long hunting knife she kept hidden under the edge of the mattress. She blasted out of bed, but skidded to a stop once she reached the living room of her dad’s old house. It was the receiver, picking up conversation between Dalton and Kate.
Shoulders sagging, she squeezed her eyes tightly closed against the monster hangover headache that was pulsing behind her eye sockets. So many bad decisions. They’d been fun at the time and would’ve been worth it if it weren’t for Chance’s complete and utter rejection to end the night.
Dalton asked Kate what she wanted for breakfast.
Uninterested, Emily stumbled over the cold floor boards to the bathroom and washed up. It wasn’t until her teeth were brushed, her face washed, and she was dressed for the day that a more familiar voice came over the receiver. She shouldn’t be eavesdropping like this. Everything was different from yesterday, and now she was riddled with guilt that she’d bugged their house.
She rushed to turn off the receiver, but Chance said, “No, Emily isn’t mine,” in a tired, hoarse voice.
Emily froze, finger hovering over the power button. She already knew this, so why was she hesitating?
“What’s wrong with you?” Dalton asked.
“I didn’t sleep last night.”
“At all?” Kate sounded worried.
The banging of pots and a fork scraping across a plate sounded. “Kate, breakfast looks good.”
“Chance, what’s going on? Is it about Emily?”
“I don’t want to talk about her anymore, okay? She was just a friend. She’s temporary, and I’m not looking.”
“For a mate, you mean, because I know that look, man,” Dalton said. “I saw it every morning in the mirror when I was bonding with Kate.”
“Emily isn’t my mate. Not even close.”
“Why not?” Kate asked. “I liked her. She was really nice and fun and the way she looked at you—”
“Kate! I’m serious. This isn’t up for discussion.”
“Why not?”
“Because she isn’t mate material. I can’t trust her, and what would a relationship ever be worth without that? Huh? She’s not it. Let it go.”
Emily huffed a pained breath and turned off the receiver. Emily isn’t my mate. Not even close. I can’t trust her.
Oh, she knew what she was, what she was trained to be, but she’d just cut herself off from the last of her family, even before Chance had given her the night of her life. If that didn’t earn a little trust, she didn’t know what did. He couldn’t see into her mind, though, didn’t know how horrible she felt, so she had to accept it.
She’d thought for a moment that maybe, in time, she could earn his trust, but he’d cut her off early, and she couldn’t blame him. Honestly, she would’ve done the same thing.
Somehow, that didn’t take away the sting of his words, though.
A Hell Hunter and a werewolf. She would’ve laughed if she didn’t feel like her insides were on fire. She’d been so stupid to think they could be anything other than this—worlds apart.
Blinking back the burn in her eyes, she pulled a pair of work gloves off the kitchen countertop and strode into the master bedroom. All of Dad’s things were still in here. She’d imagined going through them and keeping trinkets, then perhaps having an estate sale for his belongings that didn’t hold sentimental value for her.
But the truth of it was, she hadn’t ever really known him, and after his death, she’d realized
how uninterested in her he’d always been. Sure, he preached about the importance of her carrying on the Hell Hunter line. It was in their blood, after all. But he and Mom had never married, and he hadn’t shown the slightest interest in fighting for custody over her or even asking for more visitation. She spent a few weeks in the summer with him where he spewed hate for shifters and trained her in survival and killing. His hunting trips were always the same. Wolves, wolves, wolves, but that wasn’t what he was really teaching her to hunt. He taught her how to hunt shifters who shared the skin of a man. He’d trained her to be a murderer.
Nothing of his would hold sentimental value anymore.
She pulled the boxes out of his closet, down the steep porch stairs, and to the front yard. This would be the tinder for one hell of a bonfire because today she was saying goodbye, not only to him, but to a big part of herself as well.
She removed his shoes and the clothes on his hangers. She fought the urge to sniff one of his jackets to see if it still smelled like him. She pulled decorations off the walls and gutted the house, leaving only the things that she needed—that she could make her own in time.
The pile outside grew bigger and bigger through the day. She didn’t stop, didn’t slow, didn’t eat. Her forehead was damp with sweat and her muscles fatigued, but still, she cleared out everything down to the bare mattress in Dad’s room.
If she was going to try and keep this place, it couldn’t have any trace of him left behind.
And this fire…this fire would burn the last of the Hell Hunter from her. Determined, she hauled out the ancient anti-shifter books her Dad had read to her like bedtime stories growing up. The pages were full of drawings of Hell Hunters gallantly hanging wolf-like monsters and houses on fire with children screaming at the windows. Sick, sick shit that had never felt right, but she’d assumed was how the world worked. Why? Because the most important man in her life had brainwashed her to accept it.
There were three old, hard-backed texts on the history of shifters that she kept behind. If she ever saw Chance or the Silvers again, she would gift the books to them. She was only interested in destroying the Hell Hunter history books, not theirs.
With the last of the giant texts on top of the pile, she dumped gasoline onto it and stood back. With a steadying breath, she lit a match and tossed it onto his things. Her skin flushed with the instant heat, and she backed away slowly until her ankles brushed the bottom porch stair. She sat down heavily and wrapped her arms around her middle as the flames climbed higher and higher up the pile of her dad’s belongings.
“No more,” she murmured. No more hate, no more vengeance blackening her heart. This was the moment she separated herself from her fucked-up lineage.
The long, haunting note of a wolf’s howl lifted on the breeze, drawing chills up her arms despite the heat. It sounded close. She scanned the woods around the billowing smoke, but nothing moved, nothing stirred.
She hoped it was him—Chance. She hoped it was his song she was listening to with bated breath. That it was his notes calling to her heart and making her feel completely torn up by what she could never have.
The wind shifted, pushing the thick plume of smoke along the ground. And through the haze, a snow-white wolf with icy eyes trotted toward her like a ghost appearing from thin air. He held something in his mouth. His nose was black and his paws massive, but it was his body that held her stunned as he approached. He was much bigger than she’d imagined a werewolf to be with a barrel chest, long legs, head held high off his shoulders, ears erect, and those stunning eyes on her.
He stopped five yards in front of her and dropped her dirty cell phone that she’d left at the bar in the mud. Head low, he searched her face. She didn’t know what he saw there. Maybe her heartache was evident, or maybe it was just streaked with sweat and ashes.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “For the phone—and for everything else.”
The wolf ducked his head and turned away, then trotted toward the tree line. Near the fire, he paused and watched the flames for a moment before he cast a look over his shoulder at her.
She smiled, feeling empty. “I’m saying goodbye.”
A soft whine sounded from his throat as he loped toward her, looking uncertain. But right as he reached her, he changed his mind, turned away, and took off running with long, graceful strides. At the edge of the woods, he skidded to a stop. He stood with his back to her for a long time, but finally, he spun slowly and sat in a pile of remaining snow. Lifting his nose, he let off another howl, and this one sounded sad. She felt the sound down to her bones. She felt the hollowness and the despair. He was singing a song for her because her human vocal chords couldn’t do justice for what she was feeling.
She doubled over the pain in her middle and squeezed her ribs tighter, just to keep her heart from escaping as his song lifted and fell, then lifted again.
He was giving her a gift, and maybe it was the most meaningful one she’d ever received.
Chance’s wolf-song was the perfect goodbye.
Chapter Seven
Emily hadn’t even been afraid of him.
Chance turned his cell phone in his hands, end over end.
He’d approached her as a test, trotting closer and closer, and Emily hadn’t even smelled scared. She hadn’t flinched. She’d just sat there, smelling of sadness, her eyes full and her shoulders hunched like she was carrying the weight of the world.
Chance gritted his teeth and leaned back onto the wall behind his cot. He had to stop this obsessing. She was a Hell Hunter.
But…she burned her father’s things. And she swore not to hurt you. She swore.
Chance laughed harshly at his wolf’s ability to justify a relationship with a trained werewolf killer. If Kate and Dalton knew what she was, they wouldn’t be pushing a relationship with Emily. They would be just as wary as him. This wasn’t about his happiness, but about what was best for the pack. Link would back him up.
But you heard her last night. She called her trainer a liar on the phone. She said fuck his mission, like it was never a mission she chose. She was born with bad blood, just like us. Just. Like. Us. Not her fault.
Chance shook his head hard to punish the wolf. If he gave her an inch, she would take a mile. He could feel it, the elusive bond he thought he would never feel with another person. It was there in that first shock when their skin had touched at the gas station. Giving into the urge to connect with her could kill not only him, but the people he loved. His pack. The Silvers. Elyse’s boy cub and Nicole’s girl pup, the baby Kate was growing.
Emily could destroy everything, and he would have no one to blame but himself for letting her in.
But you saw her eyes. When she was burning her father’s belongings, you saw the look in her eyes. So sad. So betrayed. She isn’t a Hell Hunter. Not anymore. She’s ours instead. One of us.
As much as he hated admitting it, and as much as he wanted to fight it, his wolf was telling the truth about the look on her face.
She wasn’t just giving up the memory of her father.
She was giving up a part of herself.
What was he supposed to do? She was the biggest risk he’d ever encountered and he was actually considering this?
She’d done that fucking adorable dance on the bar top, then asked if he was falling in love with her. Those words had scared the shit out of him. In that instant, he’d felt the honest question, and his own answer was terrifying. Yes. With every moment he’d spent with her, watching her tease and laugh with the people who meant the most to him, he’d imagined her as his. He’d been proud to have her looking so devotedly at him all night. She was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen, and her attention was drawn back to him time and time again, like a paperclip on a magnet. And he’d bathed in that feeling, the sick fuck that he was. He’d reveled in her attention and the affectionate pets and brushes of her hand. They made him feel special and cared for. They made him feel stirrings in a heart gone cold long ago when he’d wa
tched Dalton wither under his ex’s poisonous love.
Emily made him feel.
Chance pushed the speed dial number he’d saved into his phone. Yeah, he’d stolen Emily’s number before he returned her cell phone, but she’d probably done way more reconnaissance on him, so he didn’t feel a single ounce of guilt.
It rang twice, then, “Hello?”
“Hey.”
Silence spanned three breaths. “Chance?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing. You’re terrifying, and I can’t trust you—”
“There are bugs.”
“What?”
“I put bugs in the big house and in the picture of you and Dalton you keep near your cot. You should take them all out. I heard…” She swallowed audibly.
“You’ve been spying on us?”
“Yeah. I just thought you should know.”
“Where are the other bugs?” he asked angrily as he ripped at the back of the frame of him and Dalton. There it was, a small bug taped to the back of the picture. Mother fucker.
“There is one in the back of the little cabin, underneath a rafter, directly in the middle.”
Chance felt around and ripped it off, then dropped it to the floor and crushed it with the toe of his boot.
“That’s all in your place. Now go to the big cabin.”
Without a word, he strode to Dalton and Kate’s cabin and removed the bugs one-by-one as Dalton and Kate stared at him in horror.
“Are there any more? No lies, Em. I can hear it.”
“No,” she said cool as anything. “There aren’t any more. I burned the receiver, too, in the pile of my dad’s stuff.”
“What did you hear?”
“I heard you and Dalton taking care of Kate when she was having morning sickness. It confused me. It made me angry because you weren’t how my family had described you all my life. I felt tricked and hurt, so I went for you at the gas station after you promised Kate to pick her up those pickles. That was as far as I got in my hunt.”
“Why did you ask me out for a drink?” he gritted out, escaping from Dalton and Kate’s confused stares. “Was it a trap? Were you baiting me? Seducing me?”