The Hunters Series

by Shiloh Walker

  “I know you like that,” he whispered. “Your heart rate just kicked up, and your scent changed even more. It keeps getting stronger the hotter you get. Like this.” And he buried his thumb inside, the lubrication that had slid from her vagina downward easing his way past the tight ring of muscle.

  Shocked, surprised at the abrupt, deeper penetration, she cried out. A lightning bolt seemed to streak from her ass, to her clit, to her womb and she bore down, and came around him in the span of seconds, and then started moving and whimpering and pleading for more.

  He shifted, pulled and they traded positions, her kneeling astride him, facing away, her ass open and exposed while he set her to rocking on his cock. He then gathered more of her slick moisture from her pussy and slid his index finger inside her anus. She heard him curse roughly and mutter, “So fucking tight. And soft. Soft as silk.”

  But she couldn’t concentrate. She rode him hard, forcing all her weight down on his cock with all her strength, until they were fucking each other with bruising force and she gloried in it. A second climax tore through her and he grunted, sliding a second finger inside her clinging ass while gripping her hip with his other hand, grinding his cock inside her every time she slid down.

  He cried out and bucked beneath her, lifting both their bodies from the cool tile floor, clenching his hand on her hip when she reached down to cup his balls. Tori rolled the warm, furred sac in her hand, before trailing her fingers down and stroking the bare, sensitive patch of skin just below his balls.

  His hands slid up her torso, closing over her waist, holding her still, and he pushed up into her as she stroked his sac again. Tori heard him moan and felt his cock jerk inside her, and she squeezed gently. He moved under her like lightning, shifting her onto her knees, him gripping her hips and pummeling into her, panting and swearing hoarsely, the rounded head of his cock passing over the bed of nerves buried by the mouth of her womb.

  He started to come, filling her with hot wet spurts of semen, and she went into spasms around his cock seconds later, drawing his climax out until they both thought it would kill them.

  Moments later, he collapsed against her back and eased to the floor, rolling them to their sides. Declan whispered into her hair, “When you come, with me inside you, your body gives off another scent and it marks you—marks me. We belong together, Tori. And I’m keeping you.”

  She had every intention of keeping him as well.

  He had ushered her into bed, drawing the curtains and cutting off the light that seemed unbearably harsh so close to mid-morning. For a while, he would sleep next to her, he had promised. So she drifted into a sleep deeper than any she had ever known, her belly, head and heart full.

  And the hunger inside was briefly sated.

  She could feed off the energy from sex as well.

  Not for long. It wouldn’t hold her the way a kill would. Or even a good steady feeding.

  But it had sated the monster inside her. Declan could scent it on her skin as she slid into slumber—the scent of deep, complete satisfaction—and he could see it in the small replete smile on her lovely face.

  Declan took some comfort in knowing there was yet another way to help hold the hunger at bay. Vampires were psychic creatures—it was the energy they took from the blood that kept them going, as much as the blood itself. Some could feed from emotion almost as if it were blood. All vamps required some blood to be at optimum and Declan was sure Tori would as well, no matter how different she was proving to be.

  She was tolerating the sunlight, food, taking sex without taking blood, and being sated with it.

  Different than other vampires. Aye, she was different. He had been friends with Elijah Crawford for years, and had met a number of vamps through Elijah who were just trying to live as peacefully as one who lusted for blood could. Damnation knows he had fucked a number of the ladies. It wasn’t an easy thing to admit, but he liked lovers who were other than human. Declan liked knowing that his strength and hunger for sex wouldn’t hurt his partner.

  And of those women, not one of them had ever been able to come without taking blood.

  That was one of the things he loved about a human lover. Though he had to be a little more careful, they had simple basic hungers. Sex. Well, the commitment word, but a smart man knew to avoid those women unless he was serious.

  Human lovers only wanted sex, a night of lovemaking, some companionship. Another shifter—especially another wolf—tended to start trying to lead him down the path of packdom. And vampires always wanted to feed.

  A guy only had so much blood.

  Tori still seemed a little human, though. She had been able to come without the taste of blood, had been able to shake off the bloodlust easier than a newly turned vamp could have managed.

  It wasn’t a big thing, not really. Hell, Declan didn’t mind spilling a little blood if the woman he was with was worth it. There was very little that could compare to a vampire lover, outside of another like himself.

  And he was a loner for a reason. Few of the other wolves he knew would dare risk their leader’s wrath by sharing his bed. It had been nearly four years since he had been with another shifter and that had been only one night, a werewolf from a pack out west. A true were—one who couldn’t fight the call of the moon.

  Alana had been one of the Alpha females, in a pack where the dominant females outnumbered the dominant males. The pack leader was a little nervous about letting too many strong men into his pack, fearful of any challenges that might come.

  He had known and trusted—to an extent—Declan for some time, and knew he wouldn’t make a challenge. So Declan hadn’t been the least bit concerned when Alana had leaped through his window in her silvery wolfen form, joining him in bed.

  Not concerned until Alana had started whispering what an extraordinary pair they would make. It would be easy to dispatch the pack leader. Or they could find another territory.

  Everybody feared an Inherent. They could rule as they chose, live as they chose, where they chose.

  Declan hated pack politics.

  Hated the werewolves and natural shifters who thought they could live by their own rules, hunt whom they chose, and never pay the price. There were far too many monsters among the shifters.

  Hated the stupid, primitive rules some Alphas expected their packs to live by. Hated how the stronger wolves had treated those weaker than themselves.

  He had his reasons for not running with a pack.

  Reasons he had walked away from his own.

  He made a call and spoke with Cy. Requested—and after much bullying—was granted some personal time. It had taken bribing his boss with his season tickets to the last of the upcoming basketball games. March Madness was very effective, when it came to getting the week he had requested.

  Seeing as how the Cards were winning, Cy had just about started crying with joy when Declan offered that bribe.

  He wasn’t leaving Tori, not until this was good and solved.

  It was far too early for Eli to be awake.

  And he couldn’t leave.

  Not with the feral still out there. If he decided to start looking for his new offspring, Declan had to be here when the sun set.

  She woke way before sunset, climbing from bed and yawning, rubbing the side of her neck, feeling smooth flesh where there had been scarred tissue only hours earlier.

  “Awake already?”

  She had known he was there. She woke smelling his flesh—that sweet male scent—and the spice of his blood that flowed beneath his smooth skin.

  Slowly, she turned and met his eyes. “Looks like. I feel…good. Well, as good as you can expect for somebody who has been dead for a few days,” she said, rubbing her arms.

  He smiled. “You are not dead, Tori. You’re just a little more than human now.”

  “And the man who did this?”

  “He’s not exactly dead either. But he’s no longer human.” He moved closer, grabbing a soft chenille throw from the foot of
the bed and draping it over her shoulders. “A true, full vampire doesn’t feel the cold of a late evening in early spring. Or the heat of a sultry night in August,” he told her, using the warmth of his hands to chase the goose bumps from her body. “They cannot eat food, even though the older ones can tolerate liquids. They cannot take sun as you did, not so soon, although the stronger ones can do it as they age.” Reaching up, he laid the pad of his thumb against her neck and said, “And a vampire’s heart can only beat so many times. It takes too much energy, and would drain him, if it beat as steadily as yours.”

  “So if I am not a full vampire, but a little more than human, exactly what am I?” she asked, reaching up and covering his hand with hers.

  “I imagine you are a bit like me,” he mused. Lifting his eyes, he met hers and said, “A hybrid.”

  He watched as her brows lowered over her eyes, as her mouth pursed briefly before she repeated, “A hybrid. Exactly what would make me a hybrid? And what makes you one?”

  “There are different kinds of shapeshifters…weres…those who rely on the power of the moon. And natural shifters. The strongest of those natural shifters are called Inherents. My mother had the blood of both werewolf and Inherent in her blood, but she was human—the gifts were dormant. She never did learn to change. My father was a werewolf born—the virus was passed to him through his father’s side. He was strong, able to control his form from the time he was thirteen. His father had been a were and the pack leader. When my grandfather died, that passed to my father.”

  Declan paused, his gaze taking on a far-off look as he stared at nothing in particular, lost to his memories. “He led them for many years, alone. And then he came to America on business, and met my mother. They fell in love and married within one week of meeting each other. She went to Ireland with him, was taken rather reluctantly into the pack. I was born three years later.

  “We left Ireland when I was ten. Ireland was too small for the pack. It was growing—even as rare as our kind are—it was growing. And Ireland still believes in myths and magic. It was getting too challenging to remain hidden. And too many people had gone missing. Da had a few ferals in the pack and he executed them. They had started hunting humans again—something that’s been forbidden for hundreds of years.”

  “After the execution, he felt it was wiser to move the pack. The pack was given the choice to go, or stay. The majority went with him. But one of his seconds decided after we left Ireland that we should have stayed and gone back to the old ways—hunting whom we choose, trying to infect as many as we could. His name was William. He was a smart son of a bitch, and he kept his wishes quiet. All the while, he worked on the others, trying to change their minds, telling them how Da wanted to make them all human…make them weak. Cursing him because he’d married a woman who was little more than human, and how they’d had a useless mongrel child. And one night, some of them ambushed my father.”

  Now he turned his head, staring at Tori with eyes that glowed.

  “They killed him because he wouldn’t live as an animal, because he took a human as his wife, and because I wasn’t a shifter. They thought.

  “The night they killed him, he was ambushed by men he thought were loyal to him. They also killed my mother that night. Broke her neck and left her lying in bed, like she wasn’t worthy of anything more.

  “I was sixteen, and I went to the pack’s hunting grounds to go camping with a friend. They sent only three of the younger Alphas to take care of us. I was just human, you know. No true danger—not against three fully grown weres. Two went after Cy, and one came after me.

  “Cy? Your partner, Cy? He knows?”

  Declan smiled gently. “Of course he knows…he’s one of us. They gutted him…Cy spent much of the summer recovering.” He paused, reflecting. “He managed to kill them, but they tore him apart in the process. And he lay there bleeding, and listening to a boy a scream.”

  “Oh, shit.” Tori covered her face with her hands.

  “Yeah.”

  “It was you.”

  Declan nodded. “It was me. One of the werewolves bit me. That’s how it happens, you see. It’s a virus, and it’s rare. All that time, I had it in me, but it was trapped. And when the werewolf bit me, it came tearing to the surface.”

  He sighed, stroking his hands down her arms. “Usually, the first few changes are slow, and hard. But the pack’s doctor thinks I’d been living in a state near shift for most of my teen years and that one bite was all I needed.”

  “There I was, going through my first change while Cy lay bleeding on the ground next to me and my mother was dead, my father was dead…I was completely alone and suddenly I was going wolf.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that’s more complicated than it sounds?” she asked warily.

  “Because it was.” He skimmed a hand back through his hair and shrugged. “I was alone, I was weak from the change, even though I was stronger than I probably should have been, and in just a matter of time, if any traitors in the pack realized what I was, they would come gunning for me.”

  “Why?”

  He looked down. “Because I was my father’s son…and my mother’s. I was next in line to inherit the pack. And I’m also an Inherent.”

  Tori closed her eyes. “Declan, I’m not tracking here. This isn’t making sense for me.”

  “Sorry.” He gave her a faint smile. “Being my father’s son, they would assassinate me the second they saw me—they’d tried once, and failed. But being my mother’s son…that was even worse. They wouldn’t trust that part of me. Werewolves in general don’t trust natural shifters—the Inherent wolf has so few weaknesses. The animal is his to call, as he chooses. It costs him little energy to shift—whenever—as often as he chooses. He doesn’t feel the call of the moon and if an inherent chooses, he can resist the change for months on end.”

  “And this is important because…?”

  “To resist the siren call of the moon is the ultimate power. The werewolves struggle for control—to control their impulses as the moon draws nearer, to resist the need to hunt. The need to hunt repulses almost as much as it entices. A natural shifter doesn’t have that battle.”

  “So which one are you?”

  “You’ve been with me on nights of the full moon before,” he reminded. And so they had, a number of times, meeting to exchange information or running into each other by chance. And once on a stakeout.

  “So you are a natural shifter—Inherent.”

  “I’m both.”

  “Both?”

  “Aye. Ma had the blood of a natural shifter from her father, and Da was a werewolf. I feel the call of the moon, but I can answer or ignore it as I wish. I control the animal at all times. It doesn’t control me.”

  “But you hadn’t ever changed before. What happened?”

  Declan smiled, rather bitterly. “I was infected. I fought back, and I was stronger than they had expected me to be. I fought and they bit me and I was infected.” He shrugged and added grimly, “I hadn’t ever been fully human, despite what we all thought. I’d always had the gifts inside me, but they’d been…locked away, in a matter of speaking. When he bit me—”

  “He tapped them. He set those traits loose, and you were able to shift.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he see what he’d done?”

  “He did…but I’d killed him about two seconds later, so it didn’t matter. The others were dead by Cy’s.”

  “I was found one of my father’s seconds. His name was Aidan. He was one of my father’s friends. He’d escaped to find me and he kept me hidden until William Murphy—the one who had betrayed my father—went to take his place as pack leader. He had the proof that he had killed my father, and he was under the impression that I had been done away with.”

  “Why kill you?”

  “As long as I was alive William couldn’t claim that he was rightful leader. Even though I had never changed, I was the son of the leader. Tradition and pack law were
things the pack lived by. If a wolf wanted the old leadership gone, he had to kill the leader’s entire blood family, from his mate down to the grandchildren.”

  “Killing children, lovely,” Tori whispered, grimacing. Her skin had gone pale again, and her eyes were wide and a dark, turbulent blue—troubled. “What proof?”

  “You don’t really want to know, do you?”

  “I think maybe I need to. I’m trying to follow this, and I know it’s unpleasant, but I think I need to know.”

  “His heart. They had torn the heart out of my father’s body. William would take it before the pack, let them smell—smell my father—and then he would eat it.”

  Tori blanched, wheeling away and pressing her face to the cool pane of glass as she battled nausea. Declan stood behind her, his clenched fists shoved deep into his pockets while he breathed slowly—through his nose, out of his mouth—battling down the helpless rage.

  “They met only a few days later. He wanted them under his control before the next full moon because he intended to lead a rampage. He intended to start hunting the way werewolves hunted centuries ago. Hunting humans.”

  He turned away, sighing. Reaching up, he rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, rolling it in effort to relieve the tension. “I was only sixteen, but I was my father’s son. He had been a good man, an honorable one. And he did his best to raise me that way. And I was still all too human. A lot of weres lose some of their humanity when they change. I never did. The thought of hunting people for sport, when the urge to hunt can be overcome, sickened me.

  “I had been in the shadows and when he started telling the pack how things would be, I wanted to go out. But Aidan kept me back. I’m not sure what he was waiting for, but he made me wait.”

  “And then William’s people brought forth this little Styrofoam cooler and took this bloody pulp from it. It was the men who had led the ambush when my father was killed—they all stood around, almost smiling—they were fucking proud as they held this bloody pulp like some prize. And I smelled it, my father’s blood. I lost control, well, maybe not lost. I never tried to stop it. I shifted and charged out of the shadows where Aidan was holding me and tore through the crowd. The pack scattered, and they all cowered. I killed them, the men who had ambushed my father. I think they thought I was my father. I saved William for the last…and I changed back into my regular form before I broke his neck. I wanted him to know it was the son of the man he’d killed who had ended his life.”