ELEVEN

The bugs were loud, their buzzing a never-ending hum as I walked the edge of the territory. The insects had come out to enjoy the hot and humid summer day. The crickets and cicadas sometimes even drowned out the songs of the birds nesting in the high treetops.

I couldn’t say that I enjoyed the weather much. My simple deer skin top clung to my body like a second skin, a layer of moisture between it and my body. It was sleeveless and left my midriff exposed, allowing cool air to kiss my skin when a gentle breeze rustled through the forest around me.

My hair was tied up into a messy bun atop my head, but the loose strands stuck to the back of my neck, my cheeks, and my forehead. Not for the first time, I wiped my brow clear of the sweat threatening to drip into my eyes.

This summer was hotter than those of years past, but then again, winter had also been especially fierce. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a premonition of things to come.

As I walked, I looked for signs of an intruder, like broken branches, footprints, or an out-of-place smell. It had rained yesterday, causing the ground to be mushy, which would be excellent for leaving prints.

“Makona!” I called out to the male with me.

He turned to me, and I gestured to the ferns that had been trampled.

This was an exercise the beta had set up for me that we’d done a few times before. While my senses were dulled, Makona told me that being human was no excuse for not having keen observation skills. And while yes, being a werewolf made it easier to notice things, I could still improve upon my sensory perceptions to a comparable level. I’d only rely more on sight and touch rather than sound and smell.

To prepare for my training exercise today, some other pack members had come out earlier this morning. Makona wanted me to find the signs of their presence that they’d left behind.

I removed the ferns to reveal a set of prints. Makona eyed the tracks, and I took that as confirmation to move on. I let the ferns drop back into place, but the beta only crouched down beside me and swept them back again.

His nostrils flared as he tagged the scent. The sharpening of his eyes alerted me that these were not supposed to be here.

“Not one of ours?” I guessed. He ducked his head in a nod. Giving a second look at the evidence I noted, “There’s only one set of tacks, so I’m guessing it’s a lone trespasser.”

Makona rose slowly from the tracks and tilted his chin up to try and catch the scent, revealing the direction in which the intruder had gone. He put out a hand behind him to still me. “You stay here.”

That was his only command before he set off eastwards. I bit my tongue to keep from asking if I could go with him. The beta had used a tone that told me not to disobey, or I would face dire consequences.

Remaining where I was, I blew out a breath and looked back over my shoulder at the tracks again. Squatting down, I traced the prints with my finger.

Something was not right.

They were paw prints, not footprints. Wolf tracks weren’t unusual to see as an indication of rogues, but often it meant that they were Wild if they were traveling in the body of their beast.

Shifting into a wolf pelt was not something that happened often. To shift forms meant giving up a substantial amount of control to the beast lurking within. This was why most only shifted to save their skins during a battle in which they were likely to lose. When the beast took over, they ran on instinct more than thought and easily lost control.

I had witnessed packmates almost killing each other because of it.

Usually, the beast and the person merged into one being during childhood, but there were instances in which the two separated later in life and constantly struggled for control until one killed the other.

That’s what happened when someone went Wild. Whatever pain they had gone through was enough to split the person from the beast, and more often than not, the beast would surpass their counterpart.

Still, even if this rogue was Wild, it shouldn’t have caused the churning feeling roiling in my stomach. My eyes slid from the prints before me to the ones Makona had left.

The wolf tracks were much deeper. As if many paws had walked in them.

I cursed under my breath as I realized what this meant.

There was more than one wolf. They had been following in the leader’s tracks to disguise their numbers. For all I knew, there could be two, but I had a gut feeling that this was a rogue posse looking for a fight.

And Makona had gone off alone.

I shot to my feet then, catching a sudden whiff of a mucky scent. It must have been strong, if even I was able to detect it.

Since I hadn’t noticed it until now, I knew that it only spelled out danger for me. There were a lot of them, and they were close by.

I scanned my surroundings, taking a few steps back from the foliage that had concealed the tracks.

My mouth went dry and I found it hard to swallow. I didn’t know where they were, and so I didn’t know which direction was the safest for me to flee in. All I knew was that I couldn’t stay here.

I was wide open to their attacks, and I would never even see them coming.

Picking a direction, I went east after Makona. I bolted into a full sprint, panic rising within me, making it hard to breathe.

I screamed the beta’s name, hoping wherever he was would be close enough for me to get to before I was ruthlessly slaughtered.

My call hadn’t even finished when the breath was knocked out of me. I was tackled to the ground, a large form colliding with me. Heat surrounded me, the maw of my aggressor opening wide to silence me in a bone-crushing bite.

I grasped at its jaws, prying them open and pushing them away from me as it tried to bite. Its tongue left ribbons of saliva on my hands and spittle splattered across my face. The smell of rotten carrion wafted on its breath.

My hands slipped, and I twisted my neck to the side on impulse, the wolf biting at empty air where my throat had been moments before. I grunted as I freed my arm and punched the wolf in the side of the head.

It howled in outrage and dug its claws savagely into my shoulder. Crying out, I tried to yank the silver dagger from my boot. It was a gift from Makona in return for the silverback coat I had made him.

With the weapon in hand, I plunged it into its rib cage. The sound of burning flesh from the touch of silver filled my ears before the smell hit my nose. The rogue yowled in pain, and I pushed it off me. I yanked out the dagger from the barrel of its chest and planted it in its skull.

Hot blood spurted out all over my face, neck, and chest.

I scrambled to my feet, ripping out the dagger as I fled. I turned just in time to see a sandy brown colored wolf sailing through the air straight at me.

I dropped to the ground and pulled my legs to my chest. When the wolf made contact, I pushed them out with all my might and sent it flying backward over me.

It landed on its back with a heavy thud. The wolf flailed around, getting to its feet.

My gaze snagged on the way the beast was slightly favoring its left paw. It growled, and my eyes snapped back to its face. The wolf raised its hackles and jumped at me.

I spun, dagger arm driving forward to bury the blade in its neck. The mangy fur at the scruff blackened as sticky blood fountained from the wound.

While it staggered from the pain, I slammed my weight into its left shoulder, wrenching it off balance, then smashed the dagger’s hilt down onto its injured paw. It yelped.

I shoved the blade through its ribs, and the animal went limp, but two more wolves sprang from the brush and started circling me. They planned on taking me together. I wasn’t going to survive, but I vowed to take one of them down with me.

They pounced at the same time, the tawny pelted wolf aiming for my injured shoulder, the other slammed into my side and sent me crashing onto my back, where the second wolf waited.

I fought like a cornered thing, swinging and kicking, slamming my dagger into fur and bone when I could, but my strength was bleeding out of me. They were bigger, heavier, faster. Their weight pinned me, teeth closing on my shoulder, hot pain exploding through my arm.

I screamed for Makona one last time, believing it would be the last word to leave my lips.

I was fading fast, consciousness slipping away with every drop of blood spilling from my wounds. My chest strained beneath the crushing weight of the monstrous wolf pinning me down.

A broken, gurgling breath left my lips as white light seared the edges of my vision.

Then the pressure vanished. The beast was ripped off me, hurled aside like a rag doll. I heard the thunder of paws, the clash of teeth, snarls turning to yelps. I stayed still, too weak to move, too lost in the haze of pain to care.

A carcass fell to the ground beside me, glassy eyes staring ahead lifelessly, the jaws snapped open, blood seeping from the muzzle of the wolf. The blood pooled in the grass, creeping towards me.

Another whine broke through the air as the last rogue was put down.

Then rough hands seized my shoulders, shaking me hard.

“Zikara! Zikara!” a voice barked, strained and desperate. “Dammit, Zikara, respond!”

I heard him, but the words blurred, distant, and meaningless. The shaking stopped for a heartbeat, and then his scent flooded over me, strong and familiar. His pheromones pressed against my senses like a command: You’re safe now.

I inhaled the smoky pine fragrance like it was more important than the air itself I needed to breathe.

It was okay now that Makona was here. He would keep me safe.

Satisfied with that, I finally let myself slip into the blackness.

TWELVE

Pain exploded in my shoulder, and a scream ripped through my throat. I tried to sit up, but I was held down by several pairs of hands.

“Relax, Zikara, they are only stitching your wound. It will all be over in a minute.” Makona’s voice was far from soothing, but it was the gentlest tone I had ever heard him use.

The soft-spoken words brought no relief from the searing pain in my shoulder. I thrashed against the hands as a needle stabbed through my skin, finishing the stitches before the thread was violently broken.

“Enough, girl. Stop moving!”

Large hands gripped my face between them, holding my head still so that I wouldn’t hurt my neck in my violent and agonized fit.

My vision blurred, everything muddy shapes and murky colors but a bright flash of red coming towards me had me jolting back. I tried to escape off the table and away from the burning knife.

“Hold her steady,” the shape to my right was saying to Makona.

The beta still held my face firmly, his voice hardening as he commanded me once more to cease moving and screaming. “We must cauterize the wound, Zikara. Their claws were filthy and probably infected you with something.”

“I don’t care!” I protested. “Get that knife away from me!” I kicked and screamed as the dark shape holding the glowing knife came closer.

My demands went unheeded as the knife came down to burn the flesh of my left calf. I was kept from bucking, pressure holding my legs down steadily.

My shouts morphed into tearful whimpers. My hand reached up and grabbed hold of Makona’s wrist in a death grip. Even though I was squeezing hard enough to turn my knuckles white, his hands stayed flat on my cheeks.

“Hold still, Birdy,” Makona murmured as they lifted the knife to the open wound on my torso. Had I been scratched just a little deeper, my guts would have been spilt all over the forest floor.

The knife came down, and the sizzle of my skin reached my ears. My back arched, but I bit back my tortured howl and only gripped Makona’s wrist tighter. I whimpered, tears leaking down my cheeks.

The beta’s thumbs stroked the skin under my eyes, collecting the tears. “That’s it, good girl.” His voice was low, so low I could feel the vibrations rattle through me.

With my wounds now stitched and cauterized, the healers set to their last task, applying a salve to all of my wounds. Most of them burned, a lesser pain than what I had just gone through, but unpleasant all the same.

My lips cracked open. “Did–” I stopped, my voice coming out in a croaked, unintelligible combination of sound. Wetting my lips, I tried again, forcing out the words from my throat, raw from screaming. “Did you kill them all?” The words were hardly understandable, air coming out more than anything.

Makona could guess what I wanted to ask him, though. “They’re all dead. I killed the last of them.”

The pain that was receding took away my blurry vision with it, the faces around me coming into focus, no longer clouded by my agony. Makona’s blue-grey eyes were the first thing I saw. His jaw was set firmly, his brows settled in a deep line. He wasn’t quite frowning, but there was a tenseness there that kept him from looking relaxed.

“Good.” I rasped, but it sounded more like a wheezed breath ending in a cough than an answer.

The hunter nodded. “That’s right, Zikara, good. You did good.”

I tried to muster up a smile, but I ended up wincing instead. “was dren…lin.”

The beta didn’t attempt to offer a smile in return, not that I had expected him to. “Not only the adrenaline. Though it certainly played a part.”

A groan drew from my lips as the healer massaged the salve too deeply into a wound, the bruising making itself known to me. I closed my eyes, panting a bit before managing another question. Talking, though taking a lot of energy, was keeping me awake. I didn’t want to pass out again. “Did my father come?”

“You already know the answer to that.” The male didn’t even hesitate with the blunt truth.

I huffed out a bitter laugh, then grunted, the laughter shaking my body and also jolting pain from the movement across my battered body.

When my eyes slowly cracked open again, I realized for the first time that I had been stripped of my deerskin top.

I didn’t bother to ask why. I knew that it had been torn to shreds when the rogues had mauled me, and also the healers needed to make sure there weren’t any wounds hiding underneath it. They’d probably needed to peel the bloody fragments from my gashes.

It would be silly to worry about my modesty at this point. Being properly clothed was far down my list of concerns at this moment. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone here cared much about it either. The healers were concerned with doing their job and saving my life, and Makona was never going to show an interest in me like that.

Ever the observant hunter, the beta caught my gaze, lingering on my bareness.

“Do you want a shirt? Now that the wounds have been cleaned and stopped bleeding, it’s fine.”

Makona was always serious, but something about his grave expression and the thick atmosphere around me had me longing to ease the mood.

Attempting at humor, I lifted the corner of my lips into a wry smile that only held for mere seconds. “I don’t care much, but if my nudity is making you uncomfortable then…”

I was rewarded with a rough flick to my forehead. “I was just being courteous, and here you are slinging your sass at me.”

“I’m injured enough without your abuse,” I muttered.

“If you’re well enough to give me lip, then you’re well enough to be punished for it.”

I blinked up at him. My hand still held his wrist in place on my face, but I didn’t want to give up the warmth passing through him into my cheek.

Makona’s expression was tight with concern, those blue-grey eyes stormy, anger and worry churning in them.

I didn’t try to smile again and instead let him see me as clearly as he was letting me see him. I didn’t try to hide my fear and pain. I didn’t need to hide my weaknesses from him. He was the only one who ever saw me as anything more than a frail human, and because of that, he deserved to see me when I truly was fragile.

Pain and fear weren’t the only things I let him see, though. I let him see my gratefulness, too. Again, he had saved my life. I didn’t give a damn that it was technically his duty to put the rogues down. He could have waited until they had ripped me to pieces before returning the gesture.

He hadn’t though. Again, he found me worth something. Why the beta of all people, someone who valued strength above everything else, was the one to have saved me twice, I couldn’t fathom. I was the weakest link of the pack, and I would do everyone a favor if I died.

Fate must have had a hand in it. There was simply no other explanation for the beta’s tolerance of me, considering he found even the other hunters bothersome.

But whatever the reason, whoever the cause, I didn’t care. All that mattered was that Makona hadn’t abandoned me. Never once had he left me from the moment the alpha had placed him in charge of me. For that, he had my loyalty.

My loyalty and my love.

Makona had become the most important person in my life. He was the only one I felt any sense of connection to. The shadow of his presence was enough to combat the deep longing I had for my father’s recognition, for any sort of relationship with the male who had sired me.

The beta had known for a while now that I loved him. I had yet to see him return any hint that he loved me, too. Perhaps it was too much to ask of him. If I never saw it, I would understand.

While I thought of Makona as family, he was under no obligation to think of me in the same way.

I wasn’t going to punish him for it either. Being bitter about it would only hurt me in the end.

So, I let the love shine in my eyes along with my pain, my gratefulness, my fear, and my loyalty. My deep brown eyes conveyed all I felt, and Makona’s grey-blue eyes let me see his anger, guilt, and concern for a few moments longer before they shuttered and his walls came back down.

A yawn pushed its way free. “’m tired.” I mumbled, my heavy lids dropping low.

Makona’s hand reached up to smooth back the hair on my head in a gentle stroke. With his touch comforting me, I found sleep easily and sank into its embrace.

THIRTEEN

By the third day of mandated bed rest, I finally managed to stand for more than five minutes before the burning in my leg forced me back down.

The wound on my calf had been worse than I’d imagined. Every careful movement, every shallow breath, demanded I hold my shoulder just so to keep the pain manageable. Maintaining that posture took all my focus.

Still, I knew I had to start moving my stiff limbs. I had to be careful not to tear any stitches; the last thing I wanted was to extend the healing time and postpone the moment Makona would let me resume training.

I had become a little obsessed with my lessons under him. Yes, I loved learning to fight, but it was more than that. Without training, I barely saw the beta.

He didn’t have an excuse to see me, and he wasn’t going to carve out time just to check on me when my own father hardly cared.

For Moon’s sake, the alpha lived in the same house as me but never once made the short trek to my room just to look in and see if I was even alive.

My eyebrows furrowed, and I shook my head to expel the thoughts of my father. Thinking about the alpha never brightened my mood, only soured it.

Gingerly making my way out of the house, I milled about the rows of cabins, using my hand to support myself against one of the buildings if needed. I made three trips, snaking through the rows.

When my legs began to tremble, I sagged against the unoccupied house. This last row of cabins, closest to the tree line, was used primarily as storage sheds. They were old, not even worth the cost of materials to repair the broken windows or the holes in the roof.

I peered through a shattered pane into the dim interior. Racks for tanning and hooks for hanging game stood in one corner, reeking faintly of blood and guts. They kept this stuff out here for a reason.

My gaze finished its sweep and snagged on a tall wardrobe shoved against the back wall. A clear path led to it in an odd, empty lane amid the clutter, and the metal chains threaded through its handles caught the moonlight.

Naturally, I wanted to know what was inside of it. I limped around to the cabin door and stepped inside. I made a beeline for the wardrobe, following the only path that wouldn’t require twisting and odd footwork to dodge through the clutter.

When I reached the wardrobe, the first thing I noticed was the lock dangling crooked, half-open. It hadn’t been clicked back into place. I fiddled with it on instinct, trying to snap it shut, but the latch just fell loose again. Without a key, or maybe because it was already broken, it wouldn’t hold.

Humming under my breath, I started unlooping the chains from the handles. What needed locking up in here? Whatever it was, no one seemed too concerned anymore if the lock had stayed broken this long. Maybe someone had forgotten to fix it, or hadn’t realized it was busted in the first place.

Either way, I wasn’t about to waste my chance. Curiosity burned hotter than common sense.

I swung open the doors and instantly slammed them shut again.

The smell made my stomach lurch, bile rising as I pressed my back hard against the doors. My breath came in sharp, panicked gasps. Every wound on my body throbbed in protest.

There was no doubt about it.

I knew that smell. Moon help me, I knew it. The sickly-sweet rot of decaying flesh. The metallic sting of blood. The rank musk of unwashed fur and death.

It was the same scent that had clung to the wolf that tried to tear my shoulder from its socket. The smell of the rogues.

But that couldn’t be possible. Makona had told me he’d killed them all. He wouldn’t lie about something like that. Besides, there was no reason for him to hide the truth from me.

Still, the thought clawed at me. What if one had gotten away? Not because Makona had let it go, but because he hadn’t known it was there? Maybe one had been lurking in the brush, watching the others attack me. Watching as Makona tore through them and slipped away when the chaos ended. Maybe it had been waiting. Waiting for nightfall. Waiting for another chance.

“Moon,” I whispered, shaking my head. I was being ridiculous. If there really was a rogue stuffed inside a wardrobe, it would have torn through the doors the second I opened them. It wouldn’t be sitting quietly, waiting for me to work up the courage to take a peek again.

I was projecting my fear, my trauma, into this situation, but I couldn’t afford to let my fears control me like this.

Swallowing thickly, I took a steadying breath and flipped around. I pressed my palms flat against the doors, sliding them down to the handles.

It’s fine. There’s nothing there.

Before I could change my mind, I yanked the doors open.

Relief hit first. There was no salivating rogue waiting to tear out my jugular, just darkness.

Then came confusion. The floor inside wasn’t a floor at all. A square hole had been carved into the base of the wardrobe, and a narrow set of stairs disappeared into the shadows below.

“What on earth…” I murmured, testing the first step with a shaky foot. Wood creaked beneath my weight. Solid. Real.

Indeed, I was not imagining them. There were stairs. Hidden stairs.

A chill crawled up my spine. Maybe I wasn’t paranoid. Maybe a rogue really was down there.

“Get Makona,” I told myself firmly. “Get another hunter, get a werewolf. Moon Zikara, get anyone, just don’t go yourself.”

I was lucky I had survived one rogue attack. Making it through another was highly unlikely.

It was a damn shame that my logic and I rarely agreed on anything.

Like the fool I was, I found myself suddenly looking around for a light source to use. Finding a halfway burned candle, I retrieved the emergency flint and steel from my pocket and lit it. Hobbling back over to the closet, I stepped into the wardrobe, wincing as I put my weight on my injured leg.

The wood creaked under my weight but, to my immense relief, did not give way underneath me. I eased down into the dark, one hand on the railing, the other clutching the guttering light.

The disgusting smell had increased tenfold by the time I reached the bottom. My body, having the sense to be terrified when my idiotic brain didn’t, began to quiver as I dared to raise the candle to see just what exactly I had walked myself into.

Rows of iron cages filled the space, three high and seven across, each too small for a full grown wolf to stand. Each crate held a wolf, muzzled and chained, packed so tight they could barely curl their paws. Blood crusted fur, raw rubbed skin, open sores weeping puss; urine stung the back of my throat with every inhale.

My hand jerked back when the sight first registered. Hot wax dripped onto my fingers, but the sting was nothing compared to the horror in the room. They were half-starved, filthy, riddled with mange and infection. I wondered how some of them were not already dead.

I couldn’t feel bad for them, though. If they were just ordinary wolves, I would have returned solely to put them out of their misery despite the consequences I would surely face for doing so. But these wolves were not just miserable creatures.

They were all rogues.

The smell confirmed it. The acrid, fetid stench clawed at the back of my throat, thicker and fouler than the waste that coated the floor. It was the smell of death itself, the kind that clings to flesh long after the body has stopped fighting to live.

Nearly fifty of them sat imprisoned in the dark, and I couldn’t fathom why. How had I never known about this? Some had been here for quite some time, and yet never once could I recall a time in which the hunters had hauled a rogue through the residential area and down into the basement of this house.

What was more, I didn’t think any of the apprentices not yet graduated to full-fledged pack members knew about this either. Perhaps even the lower-ranking werewolves in our pack were as ignorant as I.

Why was this kept as a secret from most of the pack? Was it to keep the young ones from letting their curiosity get the better of them and venture down here? What exactly was the point in having so many caged down here? What did my father use them for? Why risk the chance of them escaping? For training? Experiments? Torture?

The candle’s flame flickered, stirring the beasts. A few rogues lifted their heads, their eyes dull and yellow in the dim light. Some only turned away, too far gone to care. Others growled low in their throats, chains rattling as they tensed.

The fresher ones, newer captives by the look of their less matted coats, tracked my every movement. One licked its lips, its bloodshot eyes locked on me. My human scent must have been driving it mad. If even one of those locks broke, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

A chill shuddered through me, freezing me in place. My instincts screamed at me to leave, to climb those stairs and seal the door and never breathe a word of this to anyone. But my curiosity—Moon help me—was stronger.

My pulse hammered as I forced myself to move again, step by limping step, deeper into the corridor of cages. I told myself I’d just take one quick look. Just see what waited at the end.

The light of my candle flickered against something at the far end of the room. A faint glint of metal in the darkness. Dread clawed at my insides, warning me to turn back, but my need to know dragged me forward step by unsteady step.

As I approached, a massive cage emerged from the shadows. Iron bars reached from the floor to the rafters, thicker than any of the others, spanning nearly the width of the room. It looked less like a holding cell and more like a prison meant for something that could tear through steel.

I lifted the candle higher, squinting into the black void within. Nothing moved. No sound but my own ragged breathing filled the air.

Frowning, I glanced over my shoulder at the rows of rogues behind me, wondering why none of them had been confined here. Maybe this cage had been meant for one that had already died. Or maybe, for no reason other than cruelty, it had been left empty. A hollow reminder that there was always room for one more suffering soul.

The thought turned my stomach. Even if rogues were twisted shells of what they’d once been, they hadn’t chosen their fate. They were victims of something far darker: madness, trauma, and abandonment. They didn’t deserve to rot in filth until their minds broke completely. They deserved the mercy of death.

Clicking my tongue softly, I let the candle dip in my hand and turned to leave.

“Lycan,” a voice suddenly rasped.

I leapt back from the cage with a yelp, nearly dropping the candle.

From the far corner of the cage, heavy chains shifted, the metallic clang echoing off the walls. Shadows shifted as an enormous male uncurled from where he was crouched against the wall.

Then he stood.

The figure straightened to his full height, the iron links around his wrists dragging taut. He was massive. Taller than even Makona, broader than my father. The flickering light caught on skin that looked too pale against the grime.

He took a step towards me. “Raiken?” his guttural voice rumbled through the basement. “Kairen? Have you finally come back for us? Have you slaughtered those repulsive hunters?”

My skin prickled, and I took another step back as the male came up to the bars. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he clearly was no friend of the hunters.

His massive hands wrapped around the bars, the thick veins in his forearms straining as he leaned forward to peer at me. His eyes held a wild spark to them that wasn’t quite sane.

“No…you’re a female. Mika? Aiyana?” His gaze went glassy and distant. “Wisteria,” he breathed, the word almost tender. “My Wisteria.”

The affection in his voice turned my stomach. Love rang through his voice, but it was not echoed in his crazed eyes that only suited someone who was Wild.

He visibly inhaled again, and his whole body went still.

“No,” he hissed out, and I flinched back. “I thought I smelled my family on you, but now I can smell what you truly are. You hunter rat.”

Those insane eyes blazed with recognition and hatred. My knees weakened. Around us, low whimpers rose from the other cages. Even the rogues, beasts who feared nothing, could sense the danger pouring off him.

I needed to run. I had to get away from here, and yet I was frozen in place.

“Wisteria,” He said her name again, dragging it out like a curse. His lips pulled back from his teeth. “She is dead because of your foul race. My mate is dead because of your vile kind!”

My lungs refused to pull in air.

He wasn’t just Wild, he was something worse. He was not in his beast form, and he could speak. He could remember names, even if only in what seemed to be a state of delirium.

“You defiled her in front of me, had your dogs desecrate the symbol of our bond, tore my mark from her throat, and left her to die. You tortured me with the sound of those disgusting rogues gnawing on her bones. And you…”

My mind was screaming at my body to run, but I was powerless, trapped by the murderous look the male was pinning me with.

“…you shall pay for the sins of your pack in the same way.” His vow was like a set of shackles securing me in my grave.

There was a sickening crack. A massive hand shot through the gap, fingers tangling in my hair, and yanked.

I was ripped forward, my body slamming against the cold iron. The candle flew from my grip, extinguishing as it hit the ground.

The last thing I saw before the world fell into darkness was his wild, gleaming eyes, bright and hateful, as he pulled me closer through the bars.

FOURTEEN

The male had dislocated his own shoulder just to reach me. The chain at his wrist clanked uselessly, no longer holding him back. The pain that should have hindered him barely registered; he was too far gone for that.

His massive hand clamped around my throat, pinning my back against his cage as he crushed my windpipe.

I gagged, scrabbling at his wrist, nails catching on skin that felt more like stone than flesh. Each breath came out as a strangled wheeze. My flailing hands struck the cold iron more than his arm, the sound of my own panic ringing in my ears.

My legs buckled, refusing to hold me, and my boots slipped in the grime coating the floor.

Suddenly, his grip on my neck eased, but less than a second later, I felt blinding pain tear through me. Fire tore through my arm as he wrenched me sideways, shifting his hold from my throat to my forearm. The sudden movement yanked me flush against the cage, my shoulder twisted into reach.

And then—agony.

His teeth sank deep into my flesh, ripping through skin, muscle, and the fragile stitches that had barely held me together to anchor themselves into the muscles and tendons there.

I howled out my pain as he withdrew only to sink his teeth into me again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

He mutilated my shoulder, tearing out chunks of flesh every time he retracted, only to rip back into me like nothing more than a bloodthirsty savage animal.

I was going to die this time.

Truly.

I had escaped death more than once, and now Fate was coming to claim me.

Makona wasn’t here to save me this time. No matter how much I screamed, I knew I would not be heard.

Tears streaked down my cheeks, but they were not tears for me.

Somehow, these tears flowing from my eyes were not mine. They were the compassion of another for the male set on killing me.

He’s in pain. It is not his fault. The thought floated through my mind like a whisper on a breeze.

He’s killing me. I immediately rebutted.

That thought was countered as well.

He’s killing those who tortured him and his mate. He just wants to end it. He has suffered enough.

I wasn’t sure why, now of all times, I was having a battle of logic. Where had this rationale been before I had stupidly come down here? Perhaps it was my brain’s way of dealing with the shock. I was coming up with some sort of reasoning for why I was about to die.

Whatever his pain, though, it was not of my doing, and I would not die for it as if it were. This male had suffered enough; that much was true, but so had I.

I had suffered, and I would suffer no longer.

When his teeth sank into my ravaged flesh for what would surely be the last time, something hot punched through me as if his bite had unleashed something long locked deep inside me where I could not reach.

Claws extended from my fingers, replacing the human ones I had borne for so long.

I tasted blood, the coppery tang tingling on my tongue. My tongue swept across my teeth, and pointed canines cut into it.

End his suffering.

End yours.

The thoughts tangled together until I couldn’t tell which one gave me the strength to wrench free from the male’s claws. I barely felt the way his teeth tore through my shoulder as I twisted away.

My hand shot between the bars and closed around his throat. His crazed eyes flared brighter, and for a moment I thought I saw humor flicker within them.

His lips curled into a twisted smile, and a wet, gurgling laugh spilled from him even as I crushed his windpipe.

“For my peace and yours,” I said. The words came easily, as if they’d been waiting on my tongue.

Then I drove my claws into his throat. I held his gaze as the life bled out of him.

I watched the wild spark dull in his eyes, watched his sanity surface for a fleeting instant before death claimed him. In that moment, I thought I saw respect glittering there for me. Respect and recognition.

“They shall bring you home soon,” he croaked.

I didn’t know if he meant himself or me, but when the final breath left him, I felt it, deep in my soul, as though a thread that bound us had been severed.

A chill swept through me, wrapping cold fingers around my heart. I sank to my knees, lowering his body with me.

Up close, I could finally see him clearly. His skin was the same sun-bronzed shade as mine, his hair thick and dark, catching faint auburn in the light.

He looked like me.

My fingers brushed along his cheek, gentle now, almost reverent. My gaze drifted not to his face but to my own hands, to the claws, slick and glistening red.

“Impossible,” I breathed. “This cannot be real. I have no beast.”

“Oh, it’s real, little one.” An accented voice slithered through the darkness.

My eyes snapped to the left. A small female leaned casually against the bars of the neighboring cell, her arms folded, her bony shoulder wedged through the gap. Her hair was long and stringy, unwashed and hanging in clumps around her face, matted and snarled in many places. Her face was gaunt, evidence of her starvation, yet she hardly came off as weak.

My gaze flicked back down to the dead male. I could see him clearly, even though my candle lay snuffed out, wax ground into the dirt. I could see every strand of dark hair, the blood still slick on his throat, yet there was no light.

And yet I could see.

As if I could now see in the dark.

“You would not be who you are if you had no beast,” the woman murmured. “It just hates who you keep company with. It hides because it knows it would be slaughtered among them. But now…” Her cracked lips curled. “Now that you’ve met one of us…”

My pulse stuttered. “What are you talking about?”

“The same thing Cobalt was saying. You smell of our family, little girl.”

“No,” I snarled vehemently, “I do not know you or your friend.”

“So you say.” Her tone turned almost playful. “And yet you touch his face so gently.”

I jerked my hand away from Cobalt’s cheek, not even realizing I’d still been stroking it. My stomach churned.

Her words coiled around me, soft and venomous. “You’ve been claimed by us.”

“No.” I stumbled backward, shaking my head hard. “I—I don’t know what—”

A wave of dizziness washed over me. My hand clamped over my shoulder, still gushing with blood. I stumbled to my feet, knowing I had to get out of here.

The female cocked her head. “Icarus tells me that you are in trouble now that your beast has awakened. Staying here will no longer be an option for you.”

Her words barely registered. The world tilted around me as I staggered toward the stairs, each step sending fire up my leg.

Blood seeped through my fingers, the smell riling the rogues. They rattled in their cages, snarling and barking at the scent of my fresh and raw meat.

I ignored them. Somehow, I made it to the stairs, my hand slipping on the railing slick with my own blood. Halfway up, my foot missed a step and I slammed hard into the wood. Stars burst across my vision. My limbs were shaking so violently I could barely crawl, but I dragged myself upward one painful inch at a time.

I spilled out of the wardrobe and crashed into the wooden racks. They splintered under me.

The world was spinning now, fading at the edges. I clawed my way toward the door, leaving a slick red trail across the floorboards. My palm hit the frame, smearing it with red, as I used it to pull myself upright.

I didn’t know where I was going, only that it had to be far away from that basement, far from the female and the dead male imprisoned there.

My leg cramped and buckled beneath me, hurling me to the ground. The impact jarred my shoulder, but the sharp scent of grass and earth flooded my nose, washing away the stench of blood and decay.

I couldn’t stay down. Not here. Not this close.

Digging my claws into the soft dirt, I hauled myself forward, inch by inch. My blood slicked the grass, turning the path behind me into a crimson smear.

A terrified scream split the air.

I turned my head, vision swimming, to see a small boy staring wide-eyed at me.

“Mother!” he shouted, voice cracking. “There’s a hurt girl outside!”

His cry set the whole area stirring. Doors creaked open. Shadows shifted. Werewolves rushed from their cabins, eyes locking on the bloody trail I’d left behind.

“Someone find the alpha!” one of them shouted.

“Forget the alpha—get a healer!” another barked.

A shape knelt beside me, blocking the sun. “What happened?” The voice belonged to Vern, one of the senior hunters who often stood at Makona’s side, or my father’s. His sharp gaze followed my trail back toward the cabin.

“Someone forgot to lock it up properly,” I rasped. “I thought I smelled a rogue.” A cough tore from my throat, wet and painful. “Guess I was right.”

Vern’s eyes hardened. Then he vanished in a blur of motion, sprinting toward the cabin. His shout carried over the gathering crowd: “Get me Zartan and Jayda! Everyone, clear the residential sector now! There are rogues by the cabins!”

The alert of a rogue attack had all of those lingering to watch the situation unfold, scrambling out of the area.

None of them bothered to take me with them.

I groaned and rolled onto my back, pressing my palm to the torn mess of my shoulder. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. Sunlight stabbed my eyes, too bright after the darkness below. The air was humid, sticking to my skin that was already slick with blood. It felt disgusting and dirty.

Feet thudded past me, the werewolves arriving with more of their comrades to cover up the mess I had made. My father was among them.

The alpha didn’t even spare me a glance and instead approached the hunter who had taken charge. “What the hell happened, Vern?”

“She found the rogues.” Vern set the broken lock in my father’s hand. “We must not have noticed it hadn’t been properly locked.”

My father’s eyes flicked from the lock to the cabin beyond. “Did any of them escape?”

“No.”

The alpha’s jaw worked, disbelief flashing across his face. “Then why in the name of the Moon does she look like that?”

“The lycan,” Vern mumbled.

“The lycan is free?” My father roared, the sound shaking the air before the hunter could even finish.

“No, alpha. The lycan is dead. Your daughter killed him.”

“She–” Tarak Farrayn swiveled around. In two strides, he was beside me, crouching low. His calloused hand seized mine, lifting it for inspection.

He turned my palm over, examining the claws that had only minutes ago torn through flesh. Then, without warning, his fingers caught my chin, his thumb forcing my lips apart to inspect my teeth.

“The prophecy is real,” he murmured, almost reverently. Then his voice snapped like a whip. “Is there a reason my daughter is still bleeding to death on the ground? Get her to a healer, now. If she dies, you all die.”

The hunters froze, exchanging startled glances, none daring to remind him that only moments ago, he’d ignored me, too.

But their surprise was nothing compared to the jolt that tore through me.

My daughter.

He had finally acknowledged me.

For the first time in my life, my father, Tarak Farrayn, the Alpha of the Hunter Pack, had called me his daughter.

FIFTEEN

All I could smell was blood. It was sticky on my hands, drying on my face, and clumped in my hair.

All I could hear was the sound of my blood rushing in my ears. The steady pounding of my heart, thump, thump, thumping in my chest.

All I could feel was the hard surface of the cabinet I was hiding in, digging into my back. The wood was solid beneath my bare feet.

All I could see were the legs of a female. She was the only familiar thing around me. Everything else was not how it usually was.

She was the one who’d put me in this cabinet, whispering that I mustn’t come out until she returned. She’d spoken softly, even as chaos screamed around us.

Through the narrow beam of light filtering in, I could see the shadowed figure of a man approach the female. Her voice murmured something to him, but I couldn’t make out the words. I only wanted her to come back, to open the doors and wrap me in her arms.

If she hugged me, everything would be okay again. The world would make sense.

The legs of the male moved, only a little, but it was enough for my heart to thunder even more loudly than it had been. I pressed myself further into the back of the cabinet, curling my toes, keeping them out of the light. I turned my face away from the crack.

I mouthed a word I didn’t dare to whisper. Mother.

I repeated the word soundlessly, opening my eyes to look through the cabinet door once more.

A singular sound pierced through the furious staccato of my heart. A gruesome squelch echoed. Then she fell.

Her body hit the floor with a dull thud, black hair spilling out around her like a curtain. There was a hole in her chest where her heart was supposed to be. Her chocolate brown eyes were lifeless, no sign of peace in them, no sign of suffering, and no sign of horror.

Just emptiness.

I awoke with a start, bolting upright in my small bed.

It took me a moment to get my frantic breathing under control. My throat was sandpaper dry, my lips cracked and chapped. I licked them, but my tongue was just as parched.

I’d dreamed about my mother. A woman whose face I could never recall more than a shadow of. Yet in that dream, I had pictured her as if I’d seen her yesterday.

I had watched her die.

A shiver ran through me. I drew my knees to my chest and rested my chin against them, trembling.

Was that real?

Had it been a memory?

Or only a dream?

Swallowing down my panting breaths, I brushed my hair back from my sweat-slicked face and hissed. Pain flared across my forehead. My fingers came away wet.

When I looked down, I saw the blood.

And the claws, thick, white, and sharp, protruding from my fingers.

It was real.

All of it was real.

Those rogues. That woman with her strange words. My father calling me his daughter. And Cobalt…a lycan.

Lycans were the hunters’ sworn enemies, bred into our blood as surely as breath. There wasn’t room for two apex predators to stand at the top.

The lycans had kept that position for a long time, but then the hunters had taken it from them. The hunters had pushed them out of their thrones, out of their castles, and out of their kingdoms. Hunted to the very last handful that hid in the shadows, waiting and biding their time for the day they could rise again.

I didn’t know much about them. I only caught scraps from eavesdropping on the alpha and beta years ago. Obviously, the lycans were a topic reserved only for conversations among the high-ranking members of the pack.

Still, it was absurd now that I thought about it. Why weren’t we taught as children about the lycans? Their existence was the reason for ours. We breathed only to hunt them down until every last one of them stopped breathing. Yet it was a taboo topic that was only whispered and muttered about.

For Moon’s sake, there had been a lycan locked in a basement right here in the territory, and no one seemed the wiser.

Moon, and I had killed him. I had slain a lycan.

My stomach lurched at the thought. I scrambled out of bed and rushed down the stairs. The heat of the house suddenly felt constricting, and a surge of dizziness came over me.

I slammed into the door, my hand clawing at the wood to find the latch. When I couldn’t seem to get it open fast enough, I simply dug them into the wood and tore the door open with one savage pull.

I shouldered the door and stumbled into the cool night, dropping to my knees in the grass. The latch still dug into my palm. I sucked in ragged breaths of the damp air. The wet grass clung to my legs and hands.

With a snarl, I flung the wooden mechanism from my hand. My head throbbed, beating against my temples, each hammer like a solid punch to the side of my head.

Groaning, I grasped the sides of my skull, my claws digging into the scalp around my ears, where a rush of voices filled them.

I pressed my forehead to the wet earth and dug my toes in, bracing myself against the spinning voices clawing at my brain.

Kill. Kill. Kill.

The command looped through my head in a dozen whispering snarls until it became a single iron order: I had to kill them all.

The command repeated in a myriad of hissed voices demanding I kill them all. I had to kill every last one of them.

I threw my head back and howled my rage into the sky.

The smell of them surrounded me and burned my nostrils with every inhale. I could taste their blood in my mouth, the bitter taste of the poison they carried.

I hauled myself to my feet and staggered toward the house where the smell burned brightest. Every step felt leaden, but under my ribs, instinct drove me forward. I would exterminate the vermin that fed this hunger. I would not stop until the taste left my mouth.

Before I reached the door, the stench rolled over me again. Turning with a snarl, I had my claws lifted and ready to slash, only to be slammed against the ground, my wrists grabbed in a massive hand.

I howled, furious and trapped, the musk of poisoned blood flooding my senses. Vern’s grip didn’t slow me; if anything, it fed the fever. I thrashed like a rabid animal. I saw his face, and the sight honed me rather than calming me.

I sank my canines into his forearm. A bitter taste filled my mouth, something akin to the plants I had been forced to eat as medicine. I pushed the moisture that filled my mouth into the wounds I had created.

Vern lurched back, grunting out in surprise more than pain.

Pushing away from him, I somersaulted head over heels until I was on my feet. Hours of training had me moving by muscle memory. I vaulted over the male, my body feeling lighter than it ever had.

With my arm around his neck, I took us both down. Vern’s weight crushed me, but I refused to relinquish my hold. I went for his throat, ready to rip out his jugular, but the male bashed his head back into my skull.

Stars exploded. Pain seared, but I kept my hold as Vern pushed himself to his knees.

He ripped my arm away, and I flew across the yard, rolling to my feet, gasping for air. Vern came at me in heavy, pounding strides. I dove for his legs, claws out. I nicked one calf shallowly, but it was not enough to stop him.

A brutal kick to my stomach folded me over. I doubled, winded, tasting bile and iron. Then my arm was yanked away from his throat, and I was flying through the air over his head.

The strong assault sent me sprawling…and landing directly at the feet of another whose scent enraged me just as Vern’s had.

The older hunter hardly got out a word of warning before I had deeply embedded my claws into the second male’s calf.

He was smaller than Vern, younger, and less experienced, too. He would be the easier prey, making him my primary target. I hauled the back of his knee forward until he toppled onto his back, and for a breath I had a clear line to his throat and chest.

His eyes widened, horror making them huge. I raised a hand to drive my claws in—

—and a hard grip seized my wrist. I was yanked off the young hunter and slammed against a solid chest. Pine and ash filled my nose, a clean smell I’d always trusted, but even it had a metallic tang now.

I twisted and locked eyes with Makona. His face was stone: lips tight, storm-grey eyes cold. There was disappointment there, and something that looked like hate.

I hesitated when I saw the hatred, a sharp stab of pain piercing through me. But the red rage took over, and I moved.

Makona saw my attack from miles away. He stepped in like a wall, deflecting each wild hand with easy, brutal control. I had no surprise, no angle; he blocked everything like he’d expected me to move that way.

“I thought you wanted to be a hunter,” he said, calm and low, over the racket of my screams of frustration.

Hearing the very word hunter set me on edge and renewed the vigor with which I clawed at my mentor.

“Get ahold of yourself, Zikara. Push the beast back. Take away the control you’ve given to it.”

I let him talk. Let him focus on something other than my attacks, because the moment he got comfortable was the moment I’d find my opening.

“I taught you to be stronger than this,” Makona said, circling, his voice thick with authority. “Stop displaying such weakness and regain control, Zikara. You are a hunter. Make the beast see that. This is your pack. You are to protect them, not kill them.”

“Shut up,” I hissed, lunging to sink my teeth into his bicep.

Makona’s backhand came hard and fast. My claws, already raised to strike from behind, veered off course and slashed shallowly across the back of his neck instead.

He grunted, shoving me away.

I stumbled right into Vern’s grip. His hands snapped around my arms, wrenching them behind me and forcing them up high enough that my shoulders screamed.

Knowing that with these two powerful males, I no longer had the chance to kill anyone, I let myself fall still.

Head tilted, I studied Makona as he touched the back of his neck where I’d grazed him. It was barely deep enough to draw blood, but even so, the beta winced.

His eyes shot to Vern. “She has venom?”

“It appears so.”

Makona’s lip curled. “Females don’t carry the gene.”

Vern adjusted his hold when I twitched. “Well, it seems one of them does now.”

“This is a load of bullshit,” Makona snarled. His furious gaze locked on me. “She’s not even a real hunter. She has that disgusting ly—” He cut himself off, jaw flexing. “She can’t be one of us.”

Vern jostled me roughly when I drove my heel into his foot. “The evidence is hard to deny. While I too find it rather—”

“Vern, she’s going to—”

Makona’s warning came too late. I jerked my head back, cracking the underside of Vern’s jaw with my skull. He grunted, stunned, and I used the moment to kick his kneecap. The sharp crack was satisfying.

He dropped with a curse, and his grip faltered just enough for me to wrench one arm free, but then Makona was on me.

“Enough of this!” he snarled, fisting a hand in my hair and yanking my head back. “You are not weaker than your beast. Push it back, girl. Push. It. Back.”

The command struck like a hammer, the alpha-born dominance carried in a beta’s voice. It sank through the chaos in my veins and demanded obedience.

My rage faltered. My claws retracted. My body trembled, drained.

The bloodlust ebbed away, leaving me panting, hollow, and trembling as the world tilted and blurred around me.

There was no rancid stench driving me to kill anymore, but as that feeling ebbed, it gave room for my horror to rise.

I could finally see past the red haze of violence. The young hunter I had nearly killed lay sprawled on the ground. His calf was mauled, swollen, and bruised as if a wild boar had torn at it. He’d need to be off it for a while to give it time to heal.

Vern was scratched and bloodied. Some cuts ran deep, others shallow, but nothing fatal. He kept his weight off his injured knee, the same leg I had nearly shattered with my claws.

Then my horrified gaze turned upon the beta.

Mostly uninjured, yes, but my stomach twisted at the sight of blood streaked down his neck, green ooze mingling with the sticky red. I had done that. I had hurt him. I had used venom.

“Makona,” I croaked, raising a trembling hand. It froze mid-air when he turned away from me, his eyes stormy, unreadable.

“I… I don’t know why I…” The words caught in my throat.

The beta was not inclined to hear my pleas. “Take her back to the house. Let Tarak know about the situation. I’ll take care of the boy.”

Vern’s heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder, holding me in place, steering me away from the beta. I wanted to follow, to explain, to apologize, but my body felt numb, my head spinning.

“I didn’t mean to. I swear I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. Especially you, never you,” I whispered to myself, the words barely audible above the pounding of my own heart.

Vern steered me away from Makona, directing me towards the house. I numbly plodded across the wet earth, my head hanging low.

I had finally gotten my beast just like I’d always longed for, but I had also just lost Makona.

SIXTEEN

Numbness filled me. The blood under my claws no longer itched, the blood coating my face, my arms, and my hands no longer pinched my skin. The swelling of my cheek where Makona had backhanded me didn’t even prickle. Even my head had stopped throbbing. There was just blissful silence in my body.

No thousands of voices screaming at me to kill my own people. No intense hunger clawing in my belly to taste hunter blood. No hatred for everyone around me.

Just emptiness.

I was grateful for it. Terrified of the things I would feel if I let myself.

So, I sat on the couch, perfectly still, my hands in my lap as I stared ahead at nothing while Vern and I waited for my father to arrive.

The alpha often worked late, catching up more on the finances that came with running a pack than the politics he spent most the day engrossed in. I believed it was also a habit he had adopted from my younger years when I’d stay up all hours of the night for the chance to talk to him.

He had used work to avoid me and eventually I had given up, but my father had never altered his habit after that. Whether that was because he may very well believe that I still waited for him, or simply because he liked scheduling his work this way, no longer mattered to me.

When Tarak Farrayn finally did show up, he gave the broken door but a passing glance. Without a lock or handle of any sort, the door hung at a standstill in a slightly ajar position.

The alpha carried a stack of papers under his arm.

Bitterness filled my heart. When I was a child, I had often envied the files he always seemed to have, wishing my father would just give me an ounce of the attention he devoted to those stupid pieces of paper.

I sighed wretchedly to myself and slouched forward. My hands came up to rake my hair back from my face and stayed threaded tightly through the strands as I grasped my head.

“I passed Makona on my way here,” the alpha commented nonchalantly.

I peeked out of the corner of my eye at my father as he pulled out a chair from the small kitchen table and then dumped the pile of papers he was carrying onto it.

His cool gaze then settled on Vern. “Looks like she got Iram good.”

He didn’t need to say more.

The air in the room thickened with unspoken judgment. My father’s words carried weight far beyond the sentence itself: Iram shouldn’t have been hurt so badly by me. Vern’s apprentice of nearly three years, trained under the rigorous demands of the hunter gene, had failed to withstand my attack. The implication was clear—either Vern’s methods had been insufficient, or he had been too lax. Either way, he had not met my father’s standards, and this moment would serve as his only warning.

Vern understood this, his throat bobbing nervously, but he met my father’s sharp gaze without flinching. “It seems Makona has taught her well,” he replied evenly.

I would have grinned at Vern’s subtle cleverness if terror hadn’t rooted me to the floor, unsure how my father would respond.

My fingers slowly untangled from my hair. My hands hung limply between my legs as I lifted my head, finally letting my gaze meet the two hunters’ eyes.

By invoking Makona, Vern was subtly arguing that his apprentice’s defeat should be excused. After all, I had been training under the beta for nearly as long. Most of that training had been chores until recently, but I had still been Makona’s trainee throughout.

There was also the fact that I had been human until yesterday, whereas Iram had wielded his beast for years.

Still, it was fair to say that an apprentice guided by a stronger warrior would outperform one trained by a lesser mentor.

My father couldn’t refute that without either disparaging Makona’s skill or implying his own bloodline was weak. And now that he had finally recognized me as his daughter, he couldn’t take it back after a single day without looking a fool.

Knowing that Vern had laid a clever trap, I braced myself. Outsmarting my father might have earned Vern a point, but provoking the alpha could just as easily end in disaster.

I observed my father carefully. His eyes flashed in a silent warning meant to remind Vern of his place but he said nothing further.

Then Tarak Farrayn’s gaze slid to me.

Our eyes locked.

My heart leapt into my throat, strangling my breath. I dropped my gaze at once, clearing my throat in a vain attempt to steady myself.

I had forgotten how terrifying brown eyes could be. After spending so much time beneath the frozen weight of Makona’s blue-grey stare, I had almost come to see warmth in any color that wasn’t ice.

But the alpha’s eyes were not warm. They were earth and stone, unyielding, heavy, and suffocating. Under his gaze, I felt as though the ground might open beneath me, swallow me whole, and pack the soil down over my face until there was no breath left to steal.

Being frozen by Makona’s eyes would have been the gentler death.

The alpha’s stare lingered on me for a moment longer before he spoke again. “The moon reached its peak in the sky.”

I frowned at the randomness of his words and glanced toward the window. The moon was out of sight, but the pale wash of its light bled through the glass, painting the floor silver.

Vern understood before I did. “It’s nearly full as well.”

My father’s voice turned brittle. “The beast was trying to make its move.”

Vern sighed, crossing his arms and shifting his weight, his gaze sliding to me. “Not surprising. It reaches full strength during the full moon.”

“What…” I started, then sat up straighter, pulse thrumming. “What are you talking about?”

Neither of them answered. My father looked straight at me but spoke only to Vern. “It’s newly awakened and from spilling the blood of a lycan, no less. It’s obvious why it would be angry. It’s trying to make amends.”

The words struck like cold water down my spine. “You mean my beast, don’t you?” I demanded, forcing my shaking hands into fists. “Is that what happened to me? My beast took control, didn’t it?”

Both males turned their attention to me now, their expressions unreadable. I felt my claws dig into my palms until blood welled between my fingers, dripping to the floor in slow, thick drops.

The sound seemed loud in the silence.

“I thought beasts never act apart from their hosts,” I pressed, my voice carrying a low, guttural growl that vibrated in my chest. I cleared my throat, hoping it would get rid of it, but the sound wouldn’t leave. “That only happens if someone’s going rogue.”

I froze the moment the words were out of my mouth, and my brain caught up with that very scary thought.

My eyes darted between the two hunters, silently pleading for either of them to correct me, to tell me I was wrong, but they only stared at me like they had cornered an angry bear and were looking for the safest course of action to successfully take it down.

The look unsettled me more than words ever could, and I stumbled a step back.

“I-I–” I stuttered, “I’m not going rogue, right?”

Again, neither male answered me. My hands trembled, the shaking spreading up my arms until my entire body was quivering.

“Oh, Moon,” I whispered, sinking onto the couch, my legs giving out. “I am, aren’t I?” I snapped my head up, voice cracking. “You’re going to kill me now, right?”

The question came out too calm, like someone already preparing for the answer.

And maybe I was.

If I was going rogue, it had to be done. Better to end me now before I lost myself completely. Before there was a next time. Because next time I might not stop.

While I knew I didn’t owe this pack anything because they had done nothing but spit on me, I still would rather die. If I hurt people in this pack, it would disappoint Makona, shame him even, and I didn’t want to hurt him.

Not more than I already had tonight.

Moon, if I actually were to kill Makona, then I wouldn’t have anything left to make my life worth keeping anyway. Maybe it was arrogant to think I could even win against him, but the chance existed, and that was enough to terrify me.

The floor creaked.

The alpha took a step towards me, and Vern did so as well.

I flung out my arm towards them. “Stop! ” I snarled out. “If anyone’s going to kill me, it will be Makona. You owe me that much, father.” I sneered out the title with as much spite as I could muster.

Vern was taken aback by my blatant show of disrespect, but Tarak Farrayn only pinned me with a dark look. There was a hint of interest there, though.

“I didn’t realize how closely you cling to him.”

I bristled in indignation. As if the male knew anything about me. Speaking as if it were some secret that I had kept from him for years when it was so obvious if he had even just bothered to look at me for one damn minute.

“I do not cling to him.” I hissed out at the alpha.

If these were to be my last moments, I certainly wasn’t going to spend them quivering in fear or sobbing over my misfortune. In fact, this provided me the perfect opportunity to finally get it all off my chest.

My father was here with me for once, and he actually seemed to be listening. This was the perfect time to let out all of the pent-up rage and sorrow I felt, and it wasn’t hard to dip my fingers into the endless well of resentment I had for him.

“Maybe I depend on him, but it’s not like he couldn’t send me away if he wanted to. It isn’t your place to comment on our relationship, and quite frankly, what’s between the beta and me isn’t any of your damn business, Alpha.”

“Watch your tone,” Vern snapped, no longer able to tolerate my disrespect.

I sneered at him, the corner of my lip twisting up to reveal my teeth.

My father was across the room in a second, yanking my head back. He squeezed my jaw, keeping my mouth open to inspect my teeth.

He hummed, his eyes narrowing. “I thought I saw it on Iram’s leg, but I couldn’t be sure.”

I was released abruptly, but before I could lift a finger to massage my now sore jaw, he snatched up my hand and braced a claw between two of his fingers.

He pricked his finger on my claw and squished the bead of blood between his thumb and forefinger. He rubbed them together before bringing them to his nose.

“She has venom.” The alpha dropped his hand to his side and nodded his head. “Good. This is good. This is all very good.”

Vern’s furrowed brows said he didn’t hold the same opinion of his alpha. In fact, I detected a hint of concern from the hunter.

It piqued my interest, but before I had the chance to think more on it, I was given a command by my alpha. “Retract your claws, Zikara.”

I flushed, looking down at the claws I had been trying to make disappear for a while now. “I-I can’t,” I admitted. “I don’t know how to.”

He hummed, not seeming surprised, angry, annoyed, or anything really. As usual, it was impossible for me to tell what he was thinking.

“I can see that your beast is going to need breaking,” he muttered. There was an odd excitement in his voice that made my skin crawl.

He pinned Vern with a look. “Until the new moon comes, I want one hunter keeping an eye on her at night. Also, I want you to alert Yaga that she will be in charge of Zikara’s training until the next full moon. You can also inform Masuma that he will take her for the next moon cycle after Yaga, and should keep track of her progress with Yaga.”

Everything moved too fast. One moment, I’d thought they’d kill me, the next, they were handing out mentors and watchers. “Just wait a second—” I blurted. “I don’t need new teachers. I have Makona—”

The alpha rounded on me, fury folding his features at being talked over and by me no less. He flashed his teeth at me and snarled, “You will be silent.”

I pressed my lips together, more in an effort to keep them from visibly trembling than to obey him. I fought against the urge to run and hide from Tarak Farrayn. My eyes glued themselves to the floor and didn’t dare to glance up.

Vern’s feet scuffed as he left with his orders. The broken door squeaked, a draft blowing through the open gap.

My father’s shadow fell over me. I bit my lower lip and shuffled my feet.

“Zikara.” The way he said my name made me wince. “You are not going rogue, so don’t spout such nonsense again. All that is happening to you right now is to be expected. Your beast is born of your mother’s blood, and now that it has woken, so have its instincts.

“I will have you trained to be the master of your beast, but if you fail to meet my expectations within a given point of time, do not dare to assume that I will not kill you.”

I couldn’t conceal my shaking from him now. “W-what instincts?” I dared to ask, hoping I was wrong because I had to be. There was no way that I could be…that I was…

“Your instincts to kill the enemy, of course.” The alpha replied dully like that wasn’t an earth-shattering revelation that would turn my life upside down.

“Your mother was a lycan, and your beast is one too. If you do not learn to control it, it will control you and not rest until every hunter is dead or you are.”

SEVENTEEN

My new mentor, Yaga, was the most cantankerous bitch I had ever met.

There was a difference between strict and cruel, and that line had most definitely been crossed.

The female’s hatred for me was obvious. I wasn’t sure if she hated me because of my lycan blood or because she was jealous that I, of all people, was the first female hunter in existence. It was probably a mix of both, but it wasn’t like I’d had a say in either of those things.

Yaga was an even bigger slave driver than Makona had been. The female hardly allotted me a moment to eat or sleep. Though I had determined that my soul-draining schedule was not entirely designed by my new mentor.

The alpha was meddling in my affairs, having instructed the female to keep me from having even a spare second to seek out the beta.

The thought always had me grinding my teeth.

I couldn’t leave things between Makona and me as they were. Not with how our last encounter ended.

I kept telling myself he was only keeping his distance because I’d attacked him. Because I’d hurt other members of the pack. Because what I’d done was unforgivable… for now. That had to be the reason he hadn’t spoken to me since. It had to be.

Makona must have known what I was. He had to. He must have known my mother was a lycan and that the same cursed blood ran in my veins. He couldn’t have just found out because if he had, then his silence meant something far worse.

He had saved my life twice. He had taken me as his apprentice when no one else would. He had seen something in me worth shaping. I couldn’t believe that all of that, everything we had built, would vanish just because of the blood I was born with.

My blood couldn’t be the reason he cut ties with me.

It couldn’t.

Because if it was, then there was nothing I could do to fix it. And the idea that nothing I said or did would ever be enough to make him look at me the same way again was something I refused to believe.

“I told you to stop spacing out!” Yaga’s roar cut through my brooding right before her knuckles plowed into the side of my face.

I hissed, careening to the side, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth.

My eyes narrowed at the female advancing towards me with malicious intent.

The atmosphere crackling around her riled the beast inside me. Not for the first time today, I shoved the beast away, demanding that it just shut up and pretend like it didn’t exist, just like it had for sixteen years.

Yaga was on me in an instant, throwing punches and swiping with her claws. The female had a very simplistic approach to training: Beating me into oblivion until I couldn’t even breathe easily, much less move.

She offered no real technique refinement or even instruction of any sort. All I had were the lessons Makona had taught me and my own instincts.

Makona had once attacked me like this. Throwing his hits without telling me what I was doing wrong or how to avoid his attacks and counter them. It had been an exercise to sharpen my own astuteness in order to catch my own flaws and recognize my weaknesses and those of my opponents.

Although Makona hadn’t continued to hit me when I was down. He’d always allowed me the chance to get back to my feet, even if to just send me right back into the dirt.

Now that I could heal much faster, Yaga didn’t seem to mind how much damage she delivered. As far as she was concerned, my consciousness meant I still had the ability to fight. Which I supposed wasn’t a bad philosophy to live by for a warrior.

However, I was a sixteen-year-old child who, until just a few days ago, had been perfectly human. In no way was I any sort of seasoned warrior.

“Are you going to wimp out again and go unconscious from a few measly hits?” Yaga sneered, this time her fist drilling up into my gut.

As my own anger slipped its leash, unfortunately so did my beast. I jerked for the reins to keep control of my own body, but my beast had already seized them, shoving me away.

It wasn’t going to put up with this bitch anymore, and it had been thirsting for her blood since the first day of our training.

I struggled for control, but it was pointless. When my own emotions matched too strongly with the beast’s, it always managed to seize control, subduing my own consciousness.

I couldn’t deny that it felt good to go completely savage, to fight tooth and nail without regard for the well-being of my opponent.

Yaga screeched out her pain as my beast tore into her, and I couldn’t deny the small sense of satisfaction I felt in seeing her bleed.

My victory was short-lived, my mentor howling for the two other werewolves on standby to assist in putting me down whenever the red fever came over me.

The term red fever was coined for the moment a beast took control of the host’s body. It was something that I heard almost every day now since my beast had awakened.

Probably another reason Yaga hated me.

When I got tired of her antics, the beast within me usually clawed her up pretty good before it was put down.

Pried away from the female, I was put into a tight headlock that tightened little by little until all oxygen was cut off from my lungs.

I blacked out, only to awake again later to resume the same beatdown that somehow constituted as training.

It grew harder and harder for me to control my beast. My own will to keep it at bay was slipping away little by little with every passing day I was kept from Makona. I wanted to see him, I wanted to talk with him, to understand where we now stood. I needed to know what I had to do to fix this rift between us.

I rubbed at my bruised throat, the dark finger marks overlaying the yellow bruising from the day before that lay atop the faint red ones from the day before that.

Today, I managed to avoid the red fever. Mostly due to the fact that Yaga hadn’t managed to piss me off as usual. The scabbing scars on her arms and shoulders told me that she, too, was in need of a day or two to properly heal.

Deciding to test my luck because the prickly female actually seemed to be in a decent mood for once, I approached her while making sure to still stand a few paces away so as not to invade her personal space.

“Yaga.”

The female lifted her head from the clean white bandages she was wrapping around her split knuckles.

“Is there a reason you chose to teach me this way? I can’t really see how attacking me without rhyme or reason can teach me anything. I feel like I’m only fighting you to keep you from hurting me.”

“You are,” Yaga muttered, curling and unfurling her fingers several times to make sure the bandage was secure.

“It’s battlefield training,” she replied stiffly, “that’s what I excel at. There is a difference between being attacked with killing intent and simply for teaching purposes. You can’t teach experience in what it feels like to be in a life-and-death fight unless you’re actually in one. There are too many variables to account for. Fear, panic, being overwhelmed by malicious intent, your own beast trying to break free to preserve your life; it’s hard to simulate.”

My hand ghosted along the pink puckered skin on my stomach that had been an open gash a few days earlier. “Then all of your killing strikes weren’t feigned?”

The female turned her head and gave me a twisted grin. “Those extra werewolves are there to stop me every bit as much as they are there to stop you. My own beast tends to have a nasty temper.”

I swallowed hard, understanding that any one of her fatal strikes could have actually killed me if she lost control of her beast.

Yaga’s grin morphed into a scowl, and she turned back to stare at her hands. “You always lose control first, though, and let your beast do all of the hard fighting for you. It’s disgraceful, really. You should be able to control it better than you do. It’s hard to teach a coward to fight.”

I made a guttural sound in my throat, bristling at her insults. I could feel my beast stirring and stamped it down, unwilling to prove Yaga right. Hatred welled up inside of me, but it was not for the female; it was for my beast.

Why did it always have to fight against me?

Why couldn’t it just stay quiet and butt out of my life?

It caused nothing but trouble for me. Having a beast was supposed to be better for me. It was supposed to help me gain recognition, make friends, and finally have a normal life.

Instead, it did just the opposite.

Now, people only hated me more for it. Especially those who knew that my beast was a lycan. The other werewolves my age ostracized me even more now that I had been singled out as a hunter and put through a special training process that was granted to me and only me, even among the other hunters.

I stomped towards my cabin, my aching muscles in need of a massage and my stomach grumbling for a decent meal.

Too busy sulking over my misfortune, I hadn’t even scented the two males already in my house before I heard them. My hand paused mid-motion to fling the newly fixed door open.

“You will do it, Makona.” My father’s commanding voice snapped. By his tone alone, I could tell that this was not the first time the alpha had said those words in this conversation.

“You’re making a bad call.” Makona’s voice remained neutral despite his superior’s waning temper.

“Am I?” My father sounded almost amused now, but it hardened instantly, betraying it as sarcasm. “I think you’re the one who is allowing personal feelings to cloud your better judgment. You know what the big picture looks like. You know what has to be done.”

“I know that.” There was a hint of a growl in Makona’s own words now. “I’m just warning you it has to be done right, Alpha.”

“Why do you even care which road I take to get there if in the end the destination is the same?”

“Because if you don’t deal with this correctly, unnecessary blood will be spilt.”

I pushed through the door then. Whatever they were talking about, it didn’t seem they’d drop a hint big enough for me to understand.

The door banged against the wall, revealing me in the entrance. My arms folded, and I pinned the beta with an accusing stare.

I didn’t care that I was being rude or disrespectful. I was pissed off badly enough by the antics of my bitch of mentor, my father, and Makona that I didn’t give shit what consequences my attitude would bring.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” I managed to grind out, my gaze trained on the beta so there was no mistake in whom I was addressing.

“I know that.” Makona drawled while he made ready to leave. “But it makes no difference since I have no desire to speak with you.”

“You will speak with her.” My father’s words stopped him dead in his tracks.

It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t surprised that, for once, the alpha seemed to be helping me.

“I think you need to make some things clear.” My father gave Makona a meaningful look. The beta’s eyes flashed, and his jaw tightened, but he conceded.

Satisfied, my father took his leave, giving me a wide berth as he left the cabin.

I clenched my hands into fists at my sides, clenching my teeth to try and lessen the bite in my words that still came out hostile. “Do you really despise me so much now that you have to be ordered by the alpha to talk to me?”

There was a long enough pause, not one meant to make me squirm or annoy me, but a silence that gave him a moment to choose his next words. He was almost hesitant to speak, but then the blank, emotionless wall slammed down over his features, and I knew he had made up his mind.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about her?” I decided to speak first.

I already knew the reason Makona never said anything about my mother was because my father never had.

I didn’t really care about the answer. I was just trying to bait him into admitting he had known about it from the start and still decided to foster a relationship with me. It was in tatters now, but as long as my blood wasn’t the issue, I was hopeful that I could mend our bond.

“You were human, and the topic of that female isn’t something to mention passingly.”

“But you knew.”

The beta scoffed. “Of course, I knew. Irene had to be monitored closely, and there was only a select few delegated to watch her. I probably knew her better than your father ever did.”

I should have felt relief, but instead I only felt more distressed. From the way Makona was speaking, Irene had practically been a prisoner, and it made me wonder about my own situation.

“Did you keep her in those cages like the other two?”

Surprise flashed on the beta’s face, but it quickly changed into suspicion. “Why do you­–”

“Because I don’t understand why I haven’t been locked down there for sixteen years if I’m just another disgusting lycan to everyone!” I snapped, angry tears burning at the back of my eyes.

If they all saw me as the enemy, why weren’t they treating me like it? Why were they teaching me how to fight instead of using me like they used those rogues locked in the basement?

“You weren’t a lycan.” Makona bit out. “There was no need to lock up a weak human.”

“Well, I’m not just a pathetic human anymore, am I?”

I was aware that my growing anger did not belong to me. My beast was pushing its own emotions onto me, and I was beginning to suffocate on the anger I felt.

Makona also seemed to be reaching the end of his rope. “That’s right, ” he spat. “You’re a lycan and I had nearly forgotten that.”

The way he said the last word was like a physical slap to my face.

“Even if only a half blood, a single drop is all it takes to turn you into the same foul creatures as the rest of them.”

“You knew that before, and it didn’t stop you from saving my life and taking me on as your apprentice,” I argued. “If it didn’t matter then, why does it suddenly matter?”

It was unfair he was condemning me for it now.

“Because until now, you didn’t smell of them, and you didn’t have a beast that has control of your body nearly as much as you do. When you let that happen, you might as well be a full blooded lycan. You are nothing but the enemy in those moments, and I live to slaughter their kind. Your kind,” he hissed.

“They are not my kind!” I yowled over him, adopting my beast’s anger as my own. “I’m a hunter! I’m a fucking hunter, do you hear me? Screw you for calling me one of them. Screw you for hating me for something that I cannot control!”

My chest heaved in infuriated pants, my face hot from rage, strands of dark hair falling into my face.

“Then prove it.” The beta growled. “Because last I remember, you were fighting against three hunters to kill. Your beast is a lycan. It will only ever fight against you to kill us. It will be at war with you until one of you die. I don’t associate with vile lycans, so until you can show me that you aren’t one of them, then you and I will have nothing to do with each other.”

“Fine,” I hissed, swiping away at a stray angry tear that had escaped. Even though I wanted to howl out my rage at him, even though I wanted to hit him and curse at him and tell him to go to hell and just pretend like the past three years had never happened, I didn’t.

Because I had made a promise.

I had vowed to be loyal to him, I had sworn to Fate that I would never betray or abandon him, and I was not about to let my unwanted lycan beast get in the way of that.

My beast would yield to me, no matter what I had to do in order to control it. Even if I had to break it, I would because I owed that much to Makona for everything he had done for me.

He was right after all. I was a danger to this pack, and until I could prove to everyone that my hunter blood ran thicker than the lycan blood, I didn’t deserve any type of kinship with the beta.

EIGHTEEN

Water was trying to force its way into my lungs. My hands slapped at the ice, slick with the blood from my cut-up hands and torn up knuckles, beneath them. The icy water bit my face, a pressure building up on the sides of my head.

My head was ripped from the broken hole in the ice, a roar tearing from my lips.

My beast was in control, but I was aware of everything that was happening to us.

I yanked at the reins for jurisdiction over my own body, but I was weaker than the beast. It shoved me away, not trusting that the hunter holding me captive wouldn’t kill me and trusting me even less to get us out of this situation alive.

A full moon cycle had passed, and now I was under the training of Masuma. I had failed miserably in my training with Yaga. In the end my beast had always managed to overpower my own consciousness and left me just watching from the sidelines.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

A beast was supposed to be united with their host. Together they should have the same goals, the same emotions, the same mind and heart. Instead, I had to share a body with a lycan.

A lycan and a hunter, two enemies that agreed on nothing.

No, I couldn’t share this body. We could never coexist peacefully. I had to take full control, I needed to hold all of the power, break the beast to my will since it refused to bend.

That was Masuma’s goal.

He had one moon cycle to break my beast, and half of his time had already passed. He had subjected my beast to all methods of torture in hopes of making it cower, but he couldn’t do it alone. I needed to make every effort to do the same.

Masuma’s lips were close to my ear, his warm breath fanning my neck as he said, “Are you scared, Zikara? Are you going to let your beast fight for you? Are you going to give in to your disgusting blood or will you prove that you’re worthy enough to be called a hunter?”

His words made me push harder. I yanked at the reins of control, trying to subdue my own red fever. “Stop fighting!” I screamed at my beast as it thrashed our body against the large male.

It only growled back at me. The beast did not communicate in words. It could only project its emotions onto me so that I could understand it.

It was angry with me. It hated that I let filthy hunters touch me and abuse me day in and day out.

Masuma only shoved my head back into the icy water, holding me there longer this time. When he pulled my head back up, he only let my head rise enough that it was out of the water. I strained against his hold to look across to the alpha crouched down on the opposite side of the ice hole.

I was surprised to see my father there.

We were not on pack lands after all.

Masuma had taken me high up into the mountains to this snowy and rocky prison. If his brutal methods didn’t break the beast, maybe the unforgiving weather would. I had a fear of snowstorms ever since the day I nearly died in a blizzard. Perhaps for that reason, my beast held trepidation for large amounts of snow as well.

Not that I particularly enjoy this ice bath either.

To my horror, the beast snarled at the alpha, lips pulling away from sharp teeth to bare them in a sign of disrespect and challenge.

The alpha’s eyes only narrowed. “Disgusting creature,” he muttered before his eyes flicked up to Masuma. He didn’t say anything, but the hunter holding me down seemed to know what he had come for.

“Not once,” he said to my father, “from the moment we’ve arrived, I’ve only dealt with the lycan beast.”

My father’s lip turned down to show his disdain, the only change from his otherwise cold and expressionless face. “She’s still weak.”

His comment had my beast snapping its jaws. In reply, my father seized its jaw roughly and squeezed with bone-crushing force. Still, the beast refused to back down and glared at him with a gaze that spoke the words get your fifthly hands off me quite clearly.

My father flicked his fingers in a signal to the hunter. My head was once again submerged under the water.

When I was pulled up, my father’s face was close to mine

The beast growled, vision blurring with anger. It spat out the last of the water from its lungs onto the blood-streaked ice. The cold air stung at its bruised and bleeding fists, where it had banged and smashed the surface to get free and raise its head above the arctic water.

Unfortunately, the pain delivered to my body was felt by me just as strongly, even if my consciousness was not the one driving my body’s actions.

Again, my father waved his hand for Masuma to continue.

The beast thrashed under the water, trying to throw him off, but his grip was too tight, keeping it submerged until it began to lose consciousness. I seized my chance, fighting against it.

“Give it up!” I shouted at it as we wrestled for the reins that controlled my body. “You don’t belong here! I wish you had just stayed dead.”

Hurt stabbed through me. The beast was wounded that I kept fighting against it even though it was just trying to keep us safe.

That only ticked me off. What right did this monster have to feel that way? Where had it been all of the years when I had wanted its protection?

When I had needed its protection?

Now, when I’d finally started to earn my place here, when I’d just been finding the strength I needed to survive on my own, it showed up just to ruin it all.

“I don’t need you to protect me. I don’t need you anymore,” I snarled at it.

Anger hit me as the beast fought back against me with its own raging emotion. It hated that I was surrounded by what it saw as enemies. It wanted to run away from here to find the lycans.

“You’re so stupid,” I hissed at it, “do you really believe they will accept what you are? They would only see you as much a lycan as this pack sees me as a hunter. Don’t you get it? We don’t belong anywhere. We are nothing but an abominable hybrid of two bloods that were never meant to mix.”

My words made the beast pause, and it stopped struggling.

The sudden lack of motion had Masuma allowing me up for air, but this time neither my beast nor I was in control.

Both of us were standing on that threshold, neither one of us moving to grab that power. My body was just a puppet now, a sack of flesh and bones that couldn’t move without one of us there to pull the strings. My chest still rose and fell in a steady breathing pattern, and clouds of my breath puffed out from my lips, but beyond that, there was no movement.

I could still see out of my eyes. They were like a window that I could look towards or turn away from. The closer I walked to the light coming in from those windows, the closer I was to the reins of control. Now, though, I turned away from that and focused on the beast.

“I hate you,” I said to it.

A very animalistic whine slipped out of my lips, and my father cocked his head in interest but said nothing and waited.

“You have no place in trying to decide what’s best for us–for me. We aren’t lycan or hunter, but at least I can pretend to be a hunter. You though, you could never pretend to be a lycan. These claws and teeth are filled with venom.”

Another stab of hurt came from my beast.

I was merciless with my words. This was the truth that it needed to accept every bit as much as I did. Acceptance was unachievable for either of us. To the lycans and to the hunters, we would always just be seen as the enemy, but here they would tolerate me.

I had already earned a foothold, and my loyalties lay here with this pack.

With Makona.

“This is the life I have chosen, and if you can’t deal with it, then just go back to sleep. I survived without you before. I can do it again. All your defiance does is hurt me more.”

I felt grief and guilt from the beast this time. It had never meant to be the cause of my suffering. It had only tried to escape and kill the ones it held responsible for my misery.

But it was angry too. The beast hated that I had told it to return to hibernation. It was still enraged about the female lycan caged and now alone in the cage below the cabin. Constantly, the beast planned to release the female and run away with her, but I would never let that happen.

The beast made a lung for the reins of control, stirred up by the thoughts of the caged lycan, but I didn’t allow it a chance to grab them.

“You will obey me!” I yelled. “You are an extension of me, and you will yield to my will! If you continue to fight against me, I swear to the Moon that the second I steal control away from you, I will kill that lycan. Do you understand me?”

My father, Yaga, Masuma, Makona, and all of the hunters were right. Lycans had to be beaten into submission, and my beast was no different. It didn’t respect me or my decisions. It kept trying to push its will onto me, and I was sick of being seen as weak. For once, I wanted everyone to just listen to what I wanted.

For once, I just wanted to get what I wanted.

The beast jerked away from the strings of control at my threat. It could sense the seriousness in my words.

I would do it.

I would go that far if I had to in order to make the beast yield, but I would make it yield.

I sent an imposing wave of my consciousness towards the beast. Like how an alpha and beta used pheromones to make their subordinates submit, I was doing the same to this disobedient creature that refused to give in. My consciousness loomed over the cowering beast residing within me, and finally, finally, it bared its neck to me in submission.

I was the stronger one after all. I was the hunter, and that was the blood in me inherited from an alpha. By my own right, I deserved to be an alpha.

I could be an alpha. No, I would be an alpha.

I seized the reins of control, coming into power over my own body for the first time in weeks.

My eyes wander down to my knees and the bloodstains on the ice around the hole in the lake. Water dripped down my face, some beads having frozen to my eyelashes. My ears stung with the cold, and my hands burned from their wounds, the icy chill nipping at the open gashes.

I maneuvered my stiff and aching shoulders into a more comfortable position, but Masuma still kept a firm grasp on my hair, not permitting me to move my neck.

“Zikara.” It wasn’t a question.

He knew it was I who was in control.

I slowly lifted my eyes to meet my father’s piercing gaze. “It’s not going to be a problem anymore.”

He didn’t care how I had taken back control, only that I had and that it would be permanent.

“Good.” His words were as chill as the cold mountain wind around us. “Masuma,” he motioned to the hunter and rose to his feet. As he stood, his heavy cloak stirred up a flurry of the light snow that had begun to fall.

I was released without warning and nearly fell right into the jagged hole. My hands shot out and slapped against the surface of the ice, bracing my face inches above the black waters. Icy shards cut into my already scraped-up palms.

The alpha and his hunter left without a backwards glance or a word of direction.

No praise.

No acknowledgement.

Just nothing.

Nothing like always.

I inhaled the brisk mountain wind, the dry air burning my lungs. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pretended that the tears starti to fall were just water droplets trailing down from my half-frozen hair.

NINETEEN

My father and Masuma left me to find my own way back. It took me an entire day to descend the unforgiving mountains. When I finally reached the bottom, I was able to build a fire to cook the two snow hares I managed to capture.

It took another two days’ walk to the pack lands. I could have made the trek in one, but I needed the extra day to get my head on straight.

Everyone could tell I was a different person when I walked down that mountain. It was evident from the way people parted for me, making sure to avoid even brushing shoulders with me.

They stared at me differently than they always had before. Perhaps part of it was the stag slung around my shoulders. There were definitely some who gawked as I carried a deer that weighed the same as me.

It was a smaller buck than what was usually brought in, an adolescent who had not even shed his first set of antlers, but it was still a hefty haul for someone of my stature.

I walked the carcass across the pack to the beta’s home and knocked on his door. I knew he was in there since I’d followed his scent to where it was strongest. I ignored the crowd of curious werewolves that straggled behind me, keeping out of the way but too interested to not stick their noses into what was sure to be tomorrow’s gossip.

Makona opened his door but did not let me enter his abode. I hadn’t expected to be welcomed and simply slung the stag off my shoulder and laid it at his feet.

Laying offerings like that was usually a part of courting customs, but it was also customary for apprentices to present their first real hunt to their mentors.

I met his eyes for the briefest of seconds, just a single look that told him that I had mastered my wolf. The lycan was gone now, and all that was left was the hunter.

I swore I saw grief and guilt flicker in his blue-grey eyes, but when I blinked, Makona’s expression was just the usual stony wall.

Sure, I was just imagining what I wanted to see, I flicked my eyes away.

Why would Makona look at me like that? What would he feel guilty about?

With a duck of my head, I left the beta with my offering. It was up to him to take it or discard it. I just didn’t want to be there to see what he did.

Truthfully, I didn’t want to be around anyone.

I would have escaped my own skin if I could have.

But I couldn’t. Instead, I could only walk. So, I did. I walked into the woods, not having any destination in mind.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t deny that my beast was part of me. It was an extension of my own being, a set of baser and deeper emotions and instincts.

And I had broken it.

There was an empty space within me now. Sometimes my consciousness would brush up against it and only feel a gust of wind from the black pit. I knew the beast was in there, but it made no attempt to greet me.

Using my foot, I snapped a large branch in two and set it next to my larger-than-necessary fire before taking a seat on the forest floor. Perhaps I was trying to use the blazing heat to bring warmth to the cold part of my soul.

There was certainly no other reason for the fire. Not when it was still summer with weather that said as much, now that I wasn’t atop a mountain.

My eyes glowed in the light of the flame. Hot embers popped and sparked, but even as the glowing flakes landed on my skin, the fire did not touch me.

As I watched the fire dance, I realized the fire I had continually stoked and fed for years inside myself had been extinguished.

Yet I couldn’t even bring myself to care.

There was no need for me to burn with determination and desire anymore. There was no need for my spirits to remain ablaze. That had all been the foolish belief of a child longing to make a name for herself.

Now I understood I could never make a name for myself. My name would only ever be forced on me.

I could not afford to become someone I wanted to be. I could only accept the person this pack was molding me into.

I held no false notions anymore. First female hunter, daughter of the alpha, offspring of a lycan, the beta’s apprentice, all of those titles I watched burn in the flames before me.

I tossed everything into that fire until I was empty. What I wanted didn’t matter anymore. The needs of this pack came first, and as a hunter, it was my duty to become a warrior worthy of the title.

There were still lycans out there, and I knew my father had intentions of finding them and ending them.

It was a fate I could not escape. This is what I was now. It was better for me to have broken the beast inside me and with it the part of me that felt a connection with the enemy race. I wouldn’t be reliable if I held reservations in a fight against our greatest enemy.

I knew that I was only a pawn for my father. He would not hesitate to sacrifice me if it would benefit him.

It was a thought that filled my mouth with a bitter taste, but there was no need for me to be angry over it. I had already wasted years on such a pointless emotion, and I didn’t have any more anger to give. Numbness was all I had left.

My laced fingers tightened, my claws morphing in place of my fingernails. They dug into my skin, drawing blood as my grip strengthened. I bowed my head, my thick black hair falling in a curtain around my face.

The only way I could avoid being the alpha’s pawn was to make myself indispensable. None of us were more than pieces on his board, expendable for the sake of the pack. But if I wanted to escape that fate, I had to raise my value. I would need to climb the hierarchy until I was no longer the pawn but the queen.

A dark chuckle fell from my lips. The chuckle grew in volume until I was throwing my head back, a cackling laugh echoing through the forest around me.

I was right back where I had started then, my only desire to climb through the ranks of the pack until I stood and the top as something valuable. Only this time, I wasn’t deluding myself that reaching such a position would suddenly garner me the love I had always wanted from my father. It wouldn’t earn me friends or a sense of community in my pack.

Sobering, I pushed the heel of my palm into my forehead. “All of that is only worthless anyway.”

The whispered words were almost lost in the snapping of the fire. My eyes followed the flickering tongues of flame. A sudden change in the wind direction had the smokes blowing into my face, but the sudden ash was not the cause of the burning in the back of my eyes.

“Damnit, Zikara,” I hissed, bringing both of my hands to my face. “Stop crying. Tears never solved anything.”

The gaping hole in me yawned open, reminding me just how alone I was, and the darkness inside of me chilled my blood.

I hugged myself tightly and scooted closer to my fire, throwing more wood to the hungry flames. I wrapped my arms around myself, hoping to force my external warmth to seep into the nothing I felt inside.

Loneliness was dangerous for a pack animal. That’s why I had never been able to learn how to be content in being alone.

It would always be something that ate me up from the inside. It would always be a battle for me to resist the allure of just leaving all control to my beast and going rogue.

In going Wild.

I could drown myself in the loneliness, or I could drown myself in my efforts to rise up in the ranks of the pack. Doing that didn’t require these useless emotions and dreams I had.

My heart was something that I could no longer let lead my desires. My head was all I needed to accomplish a position of respect in this pack. I just needed to focus on that and sever all ties to emotion that would distract me from reality.

This pack didn’t need me to be anything but a hunter. My father didn’t want me to be anything but a mindless puppet who would wordlessly carry out his orders and bring an end to the lycans.

I had always wanted to find my purpose. Now I had, and it simply didn’t matter that I didn’t like what that purpose was.

TWENTY

My claws buried themselves into Yaga’s chest, fingers ripping through flesh and tendons. There was the squelch of blood as my fingers were sucked into the wounds.

The female didn’t even balk.

She grabbed my wrist and wrenched my hand from her ribs. Stepping back, she glared down at me. “What did I tell you?” Her irritation was evident. She hated having to repeat herself, and this was the third time this week I had made this very same mistake.

At least this time, I had remembered not to use my venom.

Not caring that pieces of muscle were still stuck to my fingers, I sighed and lightly pounded my fist on my forehead. “Aim between the fourth and fifth rib when going for the heart.”

“So why did you hit me between the third and fourth?” she demanded. “Not only that but you didn’t even manage to break through my ribs.” Her tone was condescending, not that I had expected her to be grateful for sparing her a painful injury.

This was life and death training and Yaga was not someone who shied away from pain.

Despite our rough start, Yaga and I had reached an understanding with each other. She wasn’t someone to be bested by a hunter just because she was a werewolf. Yaga was amazingly fierce. I would even dare to say she was stronger than some hunters despite lacking the gene herself.

She was one of the oldest warriors in the pack, having grown up with my father. She had fought by his side during the end of the lycan wars and had the scars and skills to prove it.

Technically, my time with Yaga had passed, but she never denied me a quick lesson when I asked her for one.

After coming down from the mountain, I had served out the rest of my apprenticeship under Masuma until the full moon. His lessons mostly involved putting me in stressful situations to see if I really had control of my beast.

No matter how close to death I seemed, no matter how angry he tried to make me, or how scared, my beast never surfaced.

I didn’t train every day with Masuma, so on the days I did not learn under him, I approached Yaga.

At first, she had seemed shocked I had even asked her, but in doing so, I had gained a modicum of respect from the prickly female.

Still, her respect did not save me from a bombardment of disparaging comments. “Even my blind grandmother would have better accuracy than you just demonstrated.”

“I couldn’t find a clear shot!” I protested.

Yaga was not interested in my excuses. “Then get a clear shot, fire ant, make me expose myself.”

That name, ‘fire ant,’ was one I had earned in the last few weeks and referred to my fighting style. Biting had become one of my go-to moves, and my venom burned just like the stings from a fire ant. Biting was something that most werewolves didn’t do unless it was a last resort. It was a very intimate attack and was also seen as juvenile.

However, I didn’t mind using it since it always caught my aggressor off guard that I even did it in the first place.

“I still wounded you,” I reminded Yaga. “You would have been hurt, and I could have made the shot then.”

“Maybe,” she conceded, but took a menacing step forward, making me take several back in return. “Or maybe your hand would have gotten stuck in my ribs.”

She advanced another step, “and since your claws didn’t pierce my heart, I am still very much alive and able to take advantage of your unusable hand.”

Before I could even blink, she held my hand against her wound to mimic what it would be like if my hand had gotten caught in her ribs. She maneuvered her body, pulling me with her. Her free hand smacked into my chest, where I should have struck her. Her claws punctured into my skin, but she did not make any further move.

Without removing her claws from my skin, she stared deep into my wide brown eyes. “So maybe you would have killed me, or maybe you would have given me the perfect advantage to kill you.”

She let her hand drop. “Either way, getting through the fourth and fifth rib is sudden death, ensuring that your opponent cannot kill you.” Yaga stepped away from me. “Don’t take unnecessary risks, fire ant. It will get you killed.”

With that, the female flicked her disheveled dark braid over her shoulder. Our session was now over, but she didn’t miss the chance to leave me with one more lesson. “Besides, how many times do I have to tell you that you’re too short for direct attacks like that? You’re better off taking me out at the knees first. Knock me off balance, get me down to a height where you have a better angle. Stop mirroring the attacks I use and find out which ones benefit you the most.”

Clenching my jaw, I gave her a stiff nod.

And so my lessons with Yaga were very much the same. Unless I did it perfect, it wasn’t good enough. Close enough wasn’t there, and gravely injured wasn’t dead.

I had to be perfect or I wasn’t worth it in anyone’s eyes.

I practiced even harder in my free time, sometimes asking other hunters if I could borrow their apprentices for practice. This helped me build a larger skill base and a better understanding of my skill level.

Even though I didn’t dare approach Makona since he hadn’t made any attempt to seek me out, I didn’t hesitate to proposition the other hunters. I had everything to learn from them, and none of them seemed to be prohibited from indulging me in a lesson or two.

I could tell that the other mentees hated when I spontaneously crashed their lessons, but they had no place to complain when I respectfully asked their teacher first for permission.

As the days progressed, and fall turned to winter and winter melted into spring and spring gave way to summer, I only got better. I learned from Zartan, a hunter who was deaf and also blind in one eye, how to use my other senses when one was out of commission. You never knew when a scratch to the face could suddenly leave you without an eye or a hard knock to the head could leave you with only a ringing in your ears.

Practicing with groups allowed me to learn how to handle multiple enemies at a time with varying skill levels. It taught me how to judge which opponents to take down first and how to quickly adjust my fighting style to best combat my opponents.

I didn’t just fight against hunters either. I fought against anyone who was willing to spar with me. I lost as many times as I won, but I was improving, and that was all that mattered.

Sometimes, I caught the beta watching me. We would lock eyes, but neither of us was willing to move. Makona would always just stare at me with his intense blue-grey eyes, his jaw clenched tightly as if he was restraining himself from coming over to me.

I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t just come and talk to me if he wanted to. There were obviously things I didn’t understand, but I refused to be the one to make the first move. I had given him my offering.

It was his turn now.

---

I trudged towards my cabin for a much-needed night of sleep. I needed a good bath and meal too, but my eyelids had been feeling heavy for a while, and my movements were sluggish.

I hadn’t slept soundly in some time. A recurring nightmare always left me breathless and exhausted when I awoke.

Slipping into my bed, I sent up a quick prayer to Fate, asking him to give me just one decent night’s sleep, but the moment my head hit the pillow, I was sucked back into the scene I found myself in most nights.

I was in the small cabinet, peeking through the sliver of the open doors, straining to hear my mother and some lycan. I could never make out what they were saying, their words always murky and far away. The vibrations and pitch were all I could use to determine that whatever they were talking about was a matter of urgency.

Then I would see my mother suddenly collapse with a gaping hole in her chest and those dead eyes staring right at me. Like always, a squeak escaped from my lips, and I slapped my hands over my mouth.

There was a moment of deafening silence before heavy footfalls came towards me. I watched those giant boots, the brown leather stained with blood splatters, come towards my hiding place. One foot in front of the other until they halted just before me. Then his shadow fell across me as he crouched down in front of the cabinet, a hand reaching out to open the doors.

Light flooded into the dark space, and I lifted a hand to shield my eyes and then…

I bolted up in bed with my hand slapped over my eyes.

Panting heavily, I gulped, looking around my room to see that I was no longer in that cabinet, Irene wasn’t dead on the floor, and that male was nowhere to be found.

Lifting a hand to my head, I sucked in a deep breath and then released it, steadying my breathing and my frantic heart.

There were still a few hours before sunset, judging from the position of the sun in the sky, which meant I still had the chance to bathe and eat without needing to worry about disturbing others.

Rolling my neck and then shoulders, I slipped out of bed and rummaged through the wooden chest against the far wall for a change of clothes. I bundled them in my arms and made my way to one of the quiet rivers to bathe.

Setting my clothes down on a rock, I stripped and waded into the river, my bare feet firm against the soft current and steady on the large smooth rocks that made up the riverbed.

I rose from the water, my hands pushing back my hair when I caught the rustling of shrubs and snapping of twigs.

I kept my back to the male, raising my chin to give the air a good sniff.

“Hello Hadrin,” I called dully before twisting to look over my shoulder.

The young hunter unashamedly took a seat on the riverbank and stared at me.

The male reclined, crossing his long legs in front of him with his hands placed behind him to brace himself up. The wind blew softly through his dusty brown hair. A few strands were stuck to his forehead, wet with sweat from the hunt he had just come from.

I could smell the game on him, cougar in fact.

I guessed they had finally managed to track down the animal that had been killing the deer in the area.

A straight and sharp nose was set between green eyes full of calculation. He wasn’t a bad looking male, in fact, he was one of the more successful ones when it came to females.

He seemed to realize I had just given him a once-over, though he mistook my appraisal for something else. His lips quirked up in a deadly grin. “Don’t mind me, fire ant. I will wait until you’ve finished.”

As I’d thought, he wanted something from me. He’d been watching me for the past few days, and it wasn’t hard to guess what he was about to proposition me with.

I sent him a flat look before turning forward while exhaling a breath. There was only one way to deal with males like him. Just ignoring them was the best way to unsettle them.

Nudity wasn’t really taboo. Plenty of people bathed unabashedly in the lakes and rivers without regard for whoever else may be nearby. Still, there was a difference between a peeper and someone who happened to be around and wasn’t trying to watch intently.

It was rude to come just to stare at someone’s nakedness.

But he was an idiot if he thought I would cower and blush at his antics.

Cupping some of the river water in my hands, I splashed my face a final time before wading through the river, stopping before the waterline dropped any further than my naval.

I wrung out my hair and left the wet strands to hang down over my shoulders and somewhat cover my breasts. It didn’t stop Hadrin from still glancing at them.

I crossed my arms and quirked a brow. “I’ve finished, so speak.”

His lazy grin only broadened. “You fight well.”

My raised brow furrowed down into a frown. “I don’t need your approval, but thanks.”

Praise and measly compliments were not doing him any favors. In fact, he was only hurting himself if he thought I was foolish enough to be swayed by such obvious antics.

A small scowl marred Hadrin’s features when his words did not garner the response he had been hoping for, but he quickly schooled his expression.

It shifted into a sly but cocky hooded look that suggested everything he wanted before he even said the words aloud. “I was hoping to find out if you wrestle as well in bed as you do in the sparring rings. I’ve always had fun with our bouts in the dirt, but I was hoping to feel those teeth sinking into my flesh in a way that didn’t cause me agonizing pain.”

He added the last part with a laugh, an almost genuine smile lighting up his eyes.

Straight to the point, then. I guess there was no need for me not to be direct either.

“I thought you and Dione had some sort of agreement in that regard.”

It was no secret that some of the males and females engaged in sex. While a mating bond was still something everyone respected and knew better than to betray, there was no stigma against skin-ship before a mating.

After all, for werewolves, mates were not nearly as revered as they were for the lycans, who only got one in their lifetime. For lycans, their mate was the other half of their soul. Lune had gifted them with a partner made for them, emotionally and physically.

For werewolves and hunters, that wasn’t the case. Most people encountered three or four possible mates in their lifetime. Fate only matched us with partners optimal for breeding, so some werewolves didn’t even bother waiting for a mate before selecting someone to bind with of their choosing.

Sometimes they valued the emotions they formed with their chosen partner more than the idea of strong children. Others were more interested in someone of the same sex and had no interest in having anything to do with their genetically compatible counterparts.

It wasn’t unheard-of for people to bond with someone other than a mate in the werewolf community, but that was something that varied from pack to pack.

Some packs required a mating between two compatible werewolves because they needed the strong offspring. Other packs, they couldn’t care less who you decided to bond with, mate or not.

For my father’s pack, it wasn’t a rule that we had to bond with a mate, but no one wanted to bear the humiliation of having weak offspring that would be sent away. So, it was rare to see a bond made without a mate.

Before bonding, however, it was normal for casual relationships.

Hadrin was someone who enjoyed partaking in casual sex partners, and he never seemed to have any trouble in finding a willing participant. I’d noticed he had a strange fetish for the females who beat the shit out of him, and since I had started sparring with the other apprentices, I was now included in that group of a select few females.

Unfortunately, he had the added experience of my venom, which made me stand out from the herd.

His eyes had been lingering on me longer as of late, and I had known it was only a matter of time before this confrontation would come to pass.

Yesterday, I had left him with a rather nasty, toxic bite on his hand. I guess that had finally spurred him to approach me. “Come on, fire ant,” he growled my unfortunate nickname playfully, “you know it’s nothing serious between Dione and me. It’s not like she’s my mate. I never promised loyalty to her or anything. Besides, she knows about Daphne and Rhea.”

“I’m not interested.” Not because Hadrin was unattractive. He was pretty enough, and he had the added benefit of a laidback personality. He was also one of the few hunters who didn’t try to hide the respect he had for me.

Hadrin was actually a pretty decent male despite the fact he had planted his ass down here to watch me bathe. But he was the type of guy who, once he had his mind set on something, tried everything to get what he wanted.

And usually, the females he went for liked the confident and straightforward type.

I myself couldn’t deny I appreciated such characteristics in a male, but Hadrin was younger than me, even if only by a few months, and still hadn’t outgrown his boyishness. I wasn’t attracted to him on a sexual level, even if I did find him cute.

“Come on, Zikara.” He groaned out my name, dragging the last syllable in a whine. He shuffled closer to the water, resting his hands on his knees and his chin on his knuckles.

“You aren’t even the littlest bit curious?” He eyed me suspiciously. “What are you afraid of? Do you actually buy into all of that saving yourself for your mate shit? ”

“No.”

A mate was the last thing on my mind, and I certainly didn’t feel like I owed them anything. My body was my own to do with as I wished. And that was exactly why I then said, “I just don’t want to.”

Because that really was the only reason I had in turning him down. I simply didn’t have an interest in sex at this point in time.

The young hunter scoffed. “What, you’ve got your eye on the beta or something?”

I crossed the river and had him by the throat before he could even scramble back.

I didn’t give two shits that I was completely naked, water droplets falling from my body onto the male. I seethed as I snarled in his face, “Shut your filthy mouth!”

My claws poised at his throat pricked the skin, but I did not inject my venom yet.

“How dare you disrespect my relationship with the beta. I will not allow you to make a mockery of my loyalty by turning it into some childish fancy. I will give my life for him, do you understand me? I will kill for him, and I would be just as willing to die for him.”

“Okay.” Hadrin raised his hands in an effort to placate me. “Okay,” he said again calmly, a hint of fear bleeding into his tone. “I’m sorry. I crossed the line. I’m sorry.”

There was enough seriousness in his eyes and sincerity in his words that I decided to back off with just his apology.

Striding over to the rock, I quickly dressed, pulling on the leather top and skirt before slipping on my moccasins.

Hadrin still hadn’t moved from where I had pressed him into the grass. His shifty eyes betrayed how nervous he was that I would change my mind and tear into him after all.

I left him there.

There was no need for me to smooth things over because I didn’t care what he thought of me. If he began to resent me because of this, then he would just be another among the many others.

Maybe I once would have tried to make friends with him, but there was no need for that now.

I didn’t need any distractions to keep me from rising to the top.