A Hunter Within

by Anna Applegate

  I turned back around to face Henry and his father.

  “I realize the amount of information we are throwing at you is staggering. But, we must move quickly as well, Jules,” Mr. Thornton informed.

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “Meaning we’ll need to start getting you trained,” Henry said, standing beside me.

  “And we’ll need to address the hunters that remain and then,” Mr. Thornton added, “start making our way north.”

  I looked at them both, the questions evident in my eyes.

  “Jules,” Mr. Thornton said. “It’s about time you met your grandfather.”

  To Be Concluded in The Alliance of Power: Book 2

  ~Coming Soon~

  THANK YOU so much for reading A Hunter Within! If you have a moment to leave an honest review, it would be greatly appreciated! I love hearing feedback from my readers, and every review – no matter how small – helps immensely!

  If you’re looking for other books I’ve written, I currently have a paranormal romance trilogy out called The Ariya Adams Trilogy. Protected, Book 1 in the trilogy, is FREE. I’ve included a teaser on the following pages, as well as where to download your copy for free so that you can meet Ariya Adams and the gang!

  If you’d like to stay in the know on all my new releases, teasers and more, make sure you join Anna’s Reading Nook – my Monthly Newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/di6Zef

  or visit my website at www.annaapplegate.com to get connected to my social media sites! I’m always there.

  Thank you again for your time and I look forward to connecting with you again soon in the next book or online!

  TEASER FROM PROTECTED (BOOK 1 IN THE ARIYA ADAMS TRILOGY)

  I looked back to the ice to see if I could find James. He was still warming up, but he skated perfectly. Was everything he did perfect? He moved around on the ice like he wasn’t even touching it. He had a smile on his face the whole time, and watching him truly gave me butterflies. I was in trouble. All of the tough girl stuff was gone for a moment. I could pretend or try to pretend, but inside I had never, ever felt this way about a man before. I didn’t care what I knew or didn’t know about him. I felt like I had been hit on the head, and even though none of it made sense, I was crazy about him. I needed and wanted to know more about him. I just liked it when he was around. He looked up and we made eye contact, making the smile on my face even wider.

  “You’re screwed.”

  I glanced at Caroline, who was smiling in an annoyingly large and outrageous way. “Oh, be quiet,” I grumbled.

  The game started, and it was so much fun to be back and watching the sport we’d grown to love over the years here. The boys were definitely pumped up, and Riley scored in the first four minutes. They looked good this year. It remained 1 to 0 the rest of the period until James scored right before it ended. They all huddled up, high-fiving and hugging. 2 to 0 going into the second period wasn’t too shabby.

  The second period was much like the first with two more scores coming from Riley. James assisted on both of them, and I began to see what Riley was talking about. They were extremely good on the ice together. At the end of the second, it was 4-0.

  “I’m gonna run to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.” I got up to head out to the concourse. The restrooms were off to the side from where the students sat, a bit out of the way, so I headed towards the doors.

  I was finishing up, washing my hands, when I thought I saw a shadow cross the mirror. I glanced up but didn’t see anything strange. The lights must still be warming up, I thought to myself as I glanced up at them flickering. They had been switched off for the entire summer, after all.

  I grabbed the door handle to leave when someone’s arm shot out, slamming the door shut in front of me. Before I could even turn around, I was shoved up against the wall with a strong, rather large hand grasping my throat. I almost couldn’t breathe. When I opened my eyes to see I was staring straight into the face of Devon. I clawed at his hand around my throat, trying to gasp in what little air was able to get through my windpipe.

  “Not so protected now, are we?” Devon growled.

  His eyes were glowing like they had been the night of Ashley’s party, when I’d caught them behind her building. His voice was harsh and his arm muscles were bulging. I thought to myself that there was no way it was humanly possible for him to be holding me up like this.

  “Listen carefully, Ariya. You are going to do exactly what I say, or you are going to regret it.”

  He lowered me and released his hand from my throat, then shoved both of my shoulders hard against the wall again. It knocked the wind out of me as I felt my head hit the solid concrete wall behind me hard. He was strong, painfully strong.

  My vision started blurring from the impact. It felt almost unbearable to have that kind of strength pushing into my shoulders. I tried catching my breath, gasping as much as possible to regain some of the air that had been pushed out of my lungs so roughly.

  “What are you doing?” My voice was raspy and my throat was almost numb from the pain of having been strangled. The throbbing in my head was getting worse. How hard had I hit it? Sharp pain was causing even my eyes to hurt.

  “Shut up and listen to me. I’m tired of waiting for you.”

  There was something seriously wrong with this guy. He leaned into me, sniffing my hair, and I thought I was going to gag. How had I ever thought he was attractive?

  “You’re so beautiful.”

  He brought his lips close to mine. I wanted to back away, but he had me pinned against the wall. Pulling on lessons learned in my self-defense class, I made a sudden movement to try to bring my leg to hit him in the balls. He was too fast, though, and he grabbed my leg.

  “Shame on you, Ariya.”

  I started to scream, but he brought his hand up to cover my mouth.

  “Now, now. I’m not going to really hurt you. At least, not yet.”

  He punched me in the gut swiftly, pushing all the breath I had managed to get back a moment ago out of me again. My mouth was open, trying desperately to gulp in air. My legs wanted to bend, but Devon shoved my shoulders back again, keeping me from falling.

  “You are going to ditch Caroline, Nick, and especially James. You are going to come with me alone. Do you...”

  He was cut off from the rest of his threat when the restroom door flew open. It was Caroline. I tried to call her name to tell her to leave but had no voice to do so. Instead of being able to warn her and have her safe, I was trapped. She was going to be hurt if I didn’t speak. I tried again to say her name, but could only cough.

  Caroline was standing in the doorway, and I thought I could see Nick behind her as well. She ran through the door and rushed at Devon. “Let her go, you wretched animal!”

  She slammed into him harder than I would have ever thought possible. Devon roughly let go of me when Caroline ran into him. I crumpled down onto the floor. I looked up to try to warn Caroline and to tell her that Devon was really strong. Nothing would come out of my mouth, though, no matter how hard I tried.

  My mouth throbbed. My whole back began to ache from being slammed twice into the cement wall. My stomach felt like its insides were moved around in places they shouldn’t have been. How was Caroline keeping Devon backed against the wall so easily? Was this actually happening?

  Devon started grinning widely and opened his mouth. He lunged at Caroline like he was going to bite her. I saw a whirl of dark color, which turned out to be Nick. I could finally see more clearly since things had stopped blurring for a minute.

  Nick had moved Devon from the wall and was now holding him back away from Caroline. He had pulled Devon away from Caroline so quickly that none of it seemed real. It was like watching parts of a movie in fast forward. It looked strangely familiar, these blurs of color. I tried to focus on Caroline’s face to see if she was okay, but my vision was going in and out. From what I could see, she looked like she wasn’t fazed or scared at all. Was she sm
iling? Impossible. I brought my hands to my head to see if I could regain some balance.

  “That’s enough,” Nick growled in Devon’s ear.

  I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. It felt like my mind was not able to correctly process what was happening.

  “You’ve got your royal here to save her if she dies. Why not see if the rumors are true?”

  Devon must have said something horrible in that sentence to Nick because Nick reached down and there was a loud snap and a crunching sound. Devon screamed. My vision was so hazy at this point that I couldn’t see anything. My eyes were heavy and my body slumped again.

  Devon was done screaming and I could hear him say, “You’re going to be so sorry.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore. My throat was still hurting and my body was shaking. I was nauseous and dizzy. I didn’t even care that I was on a filthy bathroom floor. My body, my brain, nothing seemed to be working right. I fell forward onto the floor and straight into a black hole.

  I was drifting. Things were fuzzy. It was almost as if there was a black light pulsing somewhere, creating the flickering shadows I was seeing. I hurt. My back felt bruised. I could hear voices every so often. They were pieces of sentences that barely made sense.

  “How…”

  “She needs blood … heal her … make her forget ... protect her.”

  I tried to get the voices to come closer. What were they talking about? Who needs blood? Me? When I tried to focus to speak more and ask my questions, pain came. A shadow approached.

  Darkness enveloped me again.

  Download Protected for FREE on Amazon by clicking HERE!

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’m so grateful that I’m able to follow this dream with the support of such incredible people. A huge thank you to my husband and family for always encouraging me on this journey.

  Thanks to Lia at Finishing Touch Editing for perfecting the manuscript.

  To my beta readers, Stephenie Philipsen and Liz Handelsman, thank you for stepping in, once again and giving me your wonderful insights! I’m so thankful that I have two people I trust so much as a part of my writing process.

  The biggest, heartfelt thank you to my writing sisters – who I’m so lucky to have! To Patty Maximini, one of the best romance authors I’ve ever read, thank you for your motivation, your uplifting conversations and perfect suggestions. And best of all, thanks for your friendship! To Jen Durfey, a superhero at everything you do (writing, designing, formatting and the list goes on), thank you for your feedback and designing my amazing covers – seriously, check out Cover me Pretty for her amazing work. Thank you for your constant friendship and the laughter you bring. To my newest writing sister Laura Lee, you are fantastic and so generous with your time and knowledge. I’m so glad you joined us!

  And most importantly … thank YOU! Thank you for making all of this possible, for reading my work, for stopping by on social media to chat, for loving books as much as I do – I’m thankful and appreciative of each one of you. I can’t wait to continue on to the next book.

  Happy Reading … until we meet again!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Anna Applegate is a paranormal romance and urban fantasy author. She lives in rural Pennsylvania with her wonderful husband and four incredible children. She started out as an avid reader who kept finding that she wanted an extra scene, or alternate ending in the books she was reading. After being challenged to try to write her own story, the words poured out of her and she has pursued writing ever since.

  Anna loves reading, romance of all kinds, sappy chick flicks, paranormal literature, shooting stars, Disney, traveling, and having an imagination.

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