Hunted

by Samantha Stone

  Sebastian was about equal to Kiril in his rank, but Sophia wouldn’t put him in the position where he could show favoritism. No, she wanted to do this on her own, to earn the place where she belonged in their pack.

  She pulled on a pair of thick gloves, and then a thick coat, which she belted closed. Once she had her hat secure over her ears, she opened the door to brave the elements, for once not wishing she lived someplace warmer. Her fear of Kiril’s rejection numbed her to the cold. She tried to force the thoughts of possible humiliation to the back of her mind, but they kept resurfacing, making her wonder if this was a good idea after all.

  No, she thought, noting that the sun had only just set, this will work. Kiril always went out of his way to be kind to her, smiling at her, bringing treats to her house. He remembered her saying she liked Mary Jane candy bars, and even told her he would like to speak with her alone sometime, the statement that had given her the ray of hope she needed to ask him for what she wanted more than anything else.

  In front of the small home he lived in alone, his family having died a long time ago according to Sebastian, she stepped up to the door and knocked firmly. At least he lives near so many of us. He can’t be too lonely with so many packmates around.

  Halifax had such a small pack—some weeks Sophia felt she had hardly any time alone at all, with her friends coming over to borrow books and discuss who was allied with the weres versus those creatures who declared war, sometimes as openly as declaring parts of the city “their turf,” claiming they would hurt any weres who crossed into it.

  Of course, Sophia had been told not to venture toward that area of town, whereas the soldiers made a point to cross the line, proving their strength to the arrogant vampires.

  I’m over one hundred years old. Sophia knocked a second time. It’s time my pack stops treating me like a child. She was at an age where coddling her would only create the fear she’d so often seen in the other women’s eyes, fear she refused to succumb to.

  Finally, she heard footsteps. Kiril must have paused near the door, sensing her standing outside waiting for him.

  A moment later, she stood in an open doorway with Kiril before her, his bow tie hanging untied around his neck.

  He had the eyes of someone from Asia, but the height and coloring of a Viking, dwarfing her, making her feel small.

  The only thing about me that’s small is my body. This man wouldn’t allow her to join their army, putting his men at risk, if she didn’t believe in her own power.

  “Hello, Sophia,” he said, sounding surprised but pleased at her appearance. “Come in, you must be freezing.” He waved her inside his home, which looked to be a smaller version of hers and Sebastian’s. He offered her a drink after settling her by the crackling fire in his den, but she declined.

  She didn’t want anything to distract from the point she had to make. She took a centering breath and started to speak before she lost her nerve.

  “I want to be a soldier for the pack.” She forced herself to look Kiril in the eye. “I’ve been practicing my elemental powers with Sebastian, and I know I’m good enough, if you’ll just give me the chance to prove myself to you.”

  Kiril rose his blond eyebrows, but said nothing for several minutes. “You have fire, yes?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Sophia answered firmly.

  “Did you know fire is the most rare of all the elemental gifts? Earth elementals have about twice as many weres as we do.”

  “I didn’t,” she murmured absently. We? He has fire too. She’d had no idea, but the knowledge buoyed her. He would know firsthand how difficult the things she did were. He’d have to acknowledge that she had skill with her element.

  “Can I show you what I can do?”

  He smiled slightly, sweeping his long-fingered hand in the direction of the fire. “Be my guest.”

  Sophia stood, concentrating on the flames in front of her. It was far more difficult to control a roaring fire than it was a single flame, manipulating it into whatever she wanted it to become, but after a few painstaking minutes of mental coaxing, she gained control over the entire fire. Her first battle with the flames had given her a headache, and she knew she had sweat rolling from her brow and down her face and back, but she didn’t care.

  This was her chance, and she intended to use it to display every skill she possessed. If Kiril wouldn’t give her the position she wanted, it would be because she simply wasn’t good enough, not because she hadn’t given her all.

  As soon as she’d obtained the control she needed, she ripped twin ropes of flame out from the fire, whips that crackled as they flicked threateningly in Kiril’s direction. She pulled them back into the brick fireplace, where she diminished the fire until it was a single flame the size of a small carrot.

  It took a lot of her energy, but it was worth the expense. Most fire elementals considered the task of putting out their fires to be impossible—Sophia had learned from Sebastian that it wasn’t. Now she could extinguish fires more quickly than he could.

  She grew the flame into a roaring fire once again, bringing ropes from it a second time to write her name in perfect script that floated over a meter in the air. She allowed her name to stay there for a couple of minutes, long enough for Kiril to see that the words hadn’t expanded; she’d controlled the fire’s growth.

  Finally, she smashed the letters of her name together into a large ball, which she swung in a circle around Kiril’s head a few times before she pushed it back into the fireplace, where she diminished the fire slightly to make it just as it had been before she affected it.

  She let her sweat drip, allowed Kiril see her panting slightly. She was overjoyed at her performance—surely he would let her join the soldiers, so seeing her sweat like this would become normal. He’d think of her as one of his men, not as a dainty woman to be taken care of.

  Someday, women will be considered equal enough to men for me to be accepted as I am: a woman with strength, who isn’t afraid to fight for her people.

  But she didn’t mind Kiril thinking of her as a man, or anyone else from the pack thinking that way, for that matter. She’d never been interested in a single one of them, likely because they coddled her so much it had ruined any possibility for attraction.

  That, or none of them would ever be her mate.

  She set those thoughts aside, watching Kiril for a reaction, except…he didn’t have one. His mouth curved slightly, and his fingers tapped his chin, but she could imagine him making the same gesture when regarding a mildly amusing film.

  What is he thinking?

  “Sebastian’s been working with you, hasn’t he?” He folded his hands together, his expression thoughtful.

  “Not often,” she told him honestly. “Only two or three times in the past few weeks.”

  “I could reprimand him, you know.” His eyes glittered, as if this were a joke between them. “I won’t, but he’s not to train you in combat anymore—that knowledge is meant for soldiers.”

  Her heart sank. She felt small, insignificant and weak. “I could be a soldier,” she argued, but even to her, her voice didn’t sound convincing. She knew there was no hope of changing his mind now—she really wasn’t skilled enough.

  “You’re a woman.” Kiril moved from his easy chair to sit a polite distance away from her on his couch. He took her hands in his, patted them once. “You have no business being a soldier. You’d be killed within a year, and then your brother will kill me for placing you in peril. I’m going to speak to Cyr, see if he can allot more domestic tasks for you, to keep you from being bored.” Cyr was their Alpha, and an order from him was law to anyone except his soldiers.

  “You could hurt yourself from doing dangerous things with your abilities. Promise me you’ll stop and keep yourself safe.” Kiril wore a benevolent smile. He caressed her hair as he spoke, his smile growing when he pulled his hand away, damp from her sweat.

  Hearing Kiril’s words cata
pulted Sophia from feeling defeated to pure fury. She didn’t want domestic tasks, and she sure as hell didn’t want to stop learning her abilities, expanding what she could do.

  Kiril was her better, but she wouldn’t take orders from him even if he were her Alpha. Besides, she knew she was good, knew without a doubt that most weres couldn’t accomplish what she had.

  It was becoming clear that her gender was the reason she couldn’t be a soldier; her abilities with her element didn’t matter at all.

  “What would I have to do,” she asked, watching the fire rather than the man beside her, “to prove to you that I would make a good soldier?”

  “Create fire from the air.” Kiril grinned. “You do that, and I’ll make sure you’re in an even higher position than me.”

  Sophia wanted to create fire from the useless matter that made up his head, but she said nothing, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing how frustrated she was. Because he’d asked her to do the impossible: no one could create their element from air, not even Omnis. The element was meant to be controlled, not created—that was territory werewolves had never ventured in to her knowledge; although, witches were a different story.

  Sophia rose, brushing damp palms against her skirt before she put her gloves back on. There was nothing more she could say or do here.

  “Thank you for your time,” she forced herself to say, when she really wanted to call him every scandalous name she knew. It was nothing short of awful, teasing her the way he did, talking down to her as if she couldn’t understand serious conversation.

  Having gotten up when she did, Kiril held out her coat, but pulled it back the moment she would have slid her arms through the sleeves. “I think we have more to discuss,” he said quietly, replacing her coat back on its hook.

  “You’re mistaken, Kiril.” Sophia tried to reach around him for her coat, but he blocked her, crowding her away from his foyer and back toward his living room. “I want to leave, now.”

  “Sophie,” he said, using the name Sebastian sometimes called her. “I think letting you go would be a grave mistake. You can never be a soldier.” He laughed, like the idea was ridiculous. Sophia saw red. “But you can be my consort, maybe even my mate.”

  He reached for her when she recoiled away, disgusted.

  “You could take care of this house, warm my bed every night.” His spoke as if he honored her in allowing her the tasks, and Sophia knew the time had come to do away with politeness. Pack rules, written or not, never dictated that a woman should perform tasks for a man when she’d rather eat glass.

  Sophia would rather eat boiling glass and have it solidify in her esophagus than warm this cretin’s bed.

  When she told him so, her tone even, her eyes raised to his, the amusement vanished from his face. He swung his arm to hit her but she leapt back to avoid the blow, only infuriating him further.

  “I’ll have you, Sophie,” he growled, raising fire much like she had…but he had less control, the movements of the flames less precise than hers had been.

  She honed in on the element, barely pushing it back enough for the fire not to lick her chest.

  Just because fire was her element didn’t mean it couldn’t burn her.

  He shot flames at her, one after the other, his moves similar to what she’d practiced with Sebastian—and Sebastian had used more force. The first few balls of fire fell to the floor, where they burned the rug he’d placed over his wooden floors. He cursed, but kept hammering her, assuming she’d lose her strength.

  She didn’t.

  Instead, she pelted the flames back at him. She ripped his control away surprisingly easily, sending the fire straight to his chest, shoulder and calf. He actually yelled in panic at the sight of his burning clothes, sending her a look so full of hatred she knew that he’d never really liked her.

  There was so much disgust in his expression Sophia didn’t think he could like anyone.

  He gained the upper hand when he wisely gave up on fire and sprinted toward her, surprising her when he wrapped his arms around her in a confining, bruising embrace.

  “Use my element against me again and I’ll kill you,” he snarled in her ear.

  She struggled, but he was so much larger and stronger than her, she knew her only way to escape was to use her powers.

  He ripped her blouse, revealing the shirts she’d worn underneath, his hands roving for another place to tear, to bruise.

  I’m more powerful than him; I don’t have to let him touch me.

  Sophia brought the entire fire up into the air in a rush, and expended no energy allowing it to do what fire did best: spread.

  Once it was there, pliant and meek to her mind, she pulled the fire around Kiril, using his moment of shock to try and wrench out of his hold.

  He didn’t let her go, gritting his teeth through the pain of the fire burning its way through his clothes, into his skin.

  She felt the same thing, but only where their bodies touched. The flames spread over him, but they didn’t venture toward her. Still, she could feel her skin bubbling from her belly to her shoulder, where he had her pressed against him.

  “Put out that fire, you bitch,” he spat, finally letting her go.

  It was only out of loyalty to her pack that she let him live. He was badly burned, but his burns hadn’t quite reached the center of his back, and spanned from his sternum to his knees.

  It would take time, but he would heal.

  She spit in his face before she pulled on her coat, leaving it open, and ran out his front door with the rest of her gear in her bare hands. “Animal,” she shouted behind her, knowing he would hear.

  Others would too, and Kiril wouldn’t like it. He had a pristine reputation, but that was about to change. He might be in her pack, in a position that made hers seem measly, but he’d done something so abhorrent she was sure his position would be stripped.

  Women weren’t considered strong enough to be soldiers, but they were valued, treasured. No one would stand by Kiril’s actions.

  By the time Sophia reached her home her hands were blue, and the stripes of burns were screaming for attention. One glance down at her skin, bared to the cold, told her she would need help; they were too severe for her to mend herself.

  Sebastian had his back to her, leaning over a small copper kettle.

  “Bastian.” Only when she spoke did she realize she was crying. The tears had frozen to her face, but now that she knew they were there, her body was wrenching, hunching over, twisting the burns painfully.

  She cried out, sobbing convulsively, and all she could see were Sebastian’s feet as he ran to her, gasping at her injuries, pulling aside her clothes to better see the burns.

  “Did you do this to yourself?” he demanded. “Were you practicing without me, was the fire too much?”

  “No!” she shouted, jerking upright even as the tears kept falling. “Do fires bruise too?”

  “Who did this to you?” Sebastian asked in a low voice, his face a stone mask of fury.

  “Kiril,” she murmured. “He tried…I think he tried to—” a lump in her throat prevented her from saying, “rape me.”

  She didn’t wipe away her tears, but let them fall, knowing it would hurt her later if she kept the confusion, the anger, and the pain inside.

  Sebastian wrapped her in a fiercely gentle hug, rocking her back and forth slightly. “I just wanted to be a soldier,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “I’m better with fire than him. You’re better than he his.”

  “I know,” Sebastian said against her hair. His familiar voice soothed her, made her feel safe again.

  Her brother was the only home she’d ever had.

  “I’m going to go find Kiril,” he said quietly.

  Sophia knew arguing would accomplish nothing, but after his display of weakness, she wasn’t worried for her brother, especially given Kiril’s current state.

  In all likelihood, he was curren
tly unconscious. With a kiss to her forehead and a scowl, Sebastian had grabbed his coat and gloves and was out the door.

  No one believed Sophia had inflicted the damage to Kiril until decades later, when Cyr was dead and the new Alpha allowed Sophia to display her powers before the entire army of soldiers.

  The blame had been placed squarely upon Sebastian’s soldiers.

  Back then, Sophia had no idea that night would ruin their lives, separating her from her twin for one hundred years.

  Cyr had sided with Kiril, exiling Sebastian for further injuring an already wounded fellow soldier.

  The day she’d cleared Sebastian’s name, they ran Kiril out of the pack. It had been up to Jeremiah to fix Sebastian’s sentence.

  He never did.

  Incidentally, their current Alpha, Jeremy, was a transplant from Vale’s Asheville pack, bringing him to Halifax long before Sophia would ever meet his brother.

  Years after that night, when Sophia would miss her brother so much it hurt, she’d think of the last thing Kiril said to her before he left Halifax for good, wondering how he bore no scars from her fire.

  I’ll be back for you, and then you’ll have no one to run to, nowhere to hide from me.

  My powers will surpass yours.

  Chapter 11

  THE next morning, Heath woke to a note on his door.

  Its faint scent was feminine, but certainly not Sophia’s, so all he felt was annoyance when he plucked up the glittering paper. I’m sorry about your bike. I’ve left my car here for you to take it to the shop. Briony signed her name at the bottom in curling letters, punctuated by another daisy. She wrote in such bright pink, Heath had to read the note twice to be sure he’d deciphered the words correctly.

  No one in the pack had a pickup, so the witch had done him a favor. After his shower, he took the keys hanging precariously on the painting of a beach sunset that Mary had hung a few feet from his door.

  Once he took the pole down to the first floor, he realized Sophia was gone—she must have left while Heath slept. He’d spent the majority of the night guarding her bedroom door, only getting any rest once Sebastian had relieved him. If he’d gotten a few hours of sleep last night, it was a miracle.