I’m two minutes out from town, and about three from the welcome center. I should be able to make it in time!
I trotted toward the last big curve in the road, my backpack smacking me with every step.
When I reached the curve, my hunter instincts slugged me in the gut.
I skidded to a stop and held my breath as I listened.
Werewolf hunters don’t have as good of senses as a wolf. Yes, we have fairly good night vision, but we don’t possess the amazing sense of smell the werewolves have. We do, however, have a kind of detection magic.
We can sense when werewolves are nearby, and how many of them there are. Typically, this was zero help for me. I lived with werewolves, there was no getting away from them. But there was something…off about this presence.
Werewolves were typically bright spots in my senses, and kind of minty feeling. This wolf was dim, and had a twisted feel to it.
I swung my backpack off my shoulders and clutched it so it didn’t make any noises as I stalked down the road as quietly as possible.
I stopped altogether when I reached the natural boundary where the forest thinned out around Timber Ridge.
Nothing. I don’t see anyone unfamiliar…
My eyes skated over the lumpy browns and vibrant greens of the forest boundary.
And then something moved.
I froze as a large wolf crept out of the tree line.
Although he was a little larger than a typical gray wolf, the werewolf looked rough. His brown and red mottled fur was patchy—as if he had mange—and he was so skinny he was almost skeletal.
Whoever that is, he’s not from the Northern Lakes Pack. All of them take pride in their wolf forms—they’d never let their fur get that greasy and dirty.
I pushed a tree branch back, and my heart stuttered in my chest when I got a better look at the supernatural.
His lips were curled back in a snarl, and there was something glassy and unfocused about his eyes as he stalked toward downtown with the saunter of a predator. Something was wrong with him. It was like he was sick, or his instincts had taken over and his humanity was in the back seat.
He licked his chops as he narrowed in on two little girls who were playing on a swing set in a park at the very edge of town.
He’s going to attack. He’s going to attack humans.
My phone felt heavy in my hands—I needed to call someone.
Aeric and Wyatt could take him no problem. I couldn’t. Hunters worked in families and focused on a single target. I was by myself, and I couldn’t even avoid werewolf hugs. Taking on a crazed wolf by myself wasn’t possible.
He’d kill me.
But can Aeric and Wyatt get here before this psycho hurts the girls?
My heart hammered in my chest as I looked from the creeping wolf to the two little girls, who were still on the swings, oblivious to the danger they were in.
Although my throat was tight with fear, I knew what I had to do.
I can’t let him hurt them—even if I can’t win against him.
I took a deep breath, tucked my fingers in my mouth, and blew off the shrill, specific whistle I used in lieu of a howl: three sharp blasts.
I ripped my bag open and pulled out my silver tipped daggers Mama Dulce and Papa Santos had gotten me for my eighteenth birthday.
I tossed my bag aside and stalked after the wolf, magic singing in my veins.
Sorry, Mayor Pearl. Looks like the welcome center is opening late today.
My hunter magic blew through my body, giving me a solid dose of adrenaline as it tried to prep me for this battle I was almost certainly going to lose.
Thankfully, the wolf hadn’t noticed my whistles—or perhaps that was unthankfully, as it meant there was something really wrong with him to not notice.
But the little girls had. They looked up, saw the wolf, and ran off screaming.
That was the wrong thing to do.
Like their wild counterparts, werewolves work together to get their prey to run instead of standing their ground. A running animal that is scared out of its mind is more likely to stumble and fall, and that’s when they strike.
The wolf tore after them with a throaty growl that had my heart leaping in my chest.
A bedraggled groan ripped from my throat as I ran after him, leaving the safety of the trees—wolves can’t climb, which made trees the safest place.
He passed the girls and started to circle around them, cutting them off from the city.
I threw my first dagger, which bit into the large target of his flanks and stuck out of it like a glittering marker.
The wolf swung around, and curled its lips so high up its gums to display its teeth that it wrinkled the skin on the top of its muzzle. It worried me that he didn’t show more of a reaction when the silver in the daggers should have been a burning sensation to him.