Alpha's Hunt

by Aimee Easterling

  “We’ll deal with Carl together,” he promised. “And, when the issue of heirs arises, we’ll figure out another way through the swamp.”

  Chapter 22

  I slept in Luke’s arms until long past dawn. Birds chattered above us, but the werewolf encampment remained silent. No wonder. I’d been the first to leave the festivities. Everyone else had many extra hours of dancing to sleep off.

  For our part, Luke and I had ended up sandwiched between a duffel bag I remembered from Wolf Camp and the damp fabric of the tent wall. Was it still a pup tent if an alpha werewolf denned inside?

  I smiled, soaking up the ambience. Warmth emanated from where Luke curved into the big spoon behind me. My own heat reflected back from his bag of clothes pressed against my front.

  And all around—cinnamon. Sweet cinnamon. Stale cinnamon. The barest hint of shoe-leather-tinged cinnamon. It’s a good thing I was a fan of the spice.

  I was a fan...but my throat now resembled sandpaper. I could barely swallow. So, carefully, I wriggled out of the sleeping bag and draped it over my tent-mate. Then I took my sword and my bare feet out through the door flap.

  Bleary-eyed, the clearing struck me as the aftermath of a battle. Bodies—lupine, human—were sprawled across the turf everywhere. They were breathing, though. Not dead. Just sleeping. I guess there wasn’t room for everyone inside the tents.

  And...a plastic jug of water sat on the ground no more than a foot from me. For a long moment, I lost myself in quelling a thirst that had been building for hours. Then I lowered the jug and caught sight of one wakeful wolf watching from the edge of the trees.

  He was that gray so common among wolves, a mottling of every shade from white to black that made an animal blend easily into a winter forest. From this distance, the four-legger could have been anyone...if there hadn’t been a perfect blaze of white running down the center of his snout.

  “Bastion?” Water splattered across my toes. I’d dropped the jug. I stepped right over it.

  That couldn’t be my cousin. Not here, in the hidden camp of skinless.

  Plus, he didn’t greet me. Instead, the gray wolf turned on his heel and trotted back under the shadows of the canopy. Within a second, he was out of sight.

  I NEEDED TO BE LUPINE and I needed my sword kept safe from token hunters. Too bad the urges were mutually exclusive.

  The solution, of course, lay behind me. Inside the pup tent.

  I tried undoing the zipper as quietly as I’d eased it open the first time. But my mind was on the gray wolf and my fingers fumbled.

  “Honor?” Luke’s voice was a half-asleep grumble. He didn’t open his eyes, though, and he didn’t sit up to greet me.

  Still, if he was nominally awake, there was no need to be quiet. I ripped off clothes, dropping my sword on top of them. “I’ll be back,” I promised. “Do you mind watching my sword?”

  I expected argument, but the run to and from Wolf Camp must have taken more out of him than expected. All I got was a sleepy nod as I swirled the pelt around my shoulders then sprinted for the trees.

  The watcher was Bastion. I smelled his scent trail as fresh as if he was right in front of me. But my cousin was fast. Even running flat out, I couldn’t catch sight of his fleeing form.

  Until, that is, I ran smack dab into him. No, not into him. Into his brother.

  “Honor.” Justice seemed cold and uncaring at times. Not right now. He lifted me up, despite the fact I was furry and muddy. Then he hugged me so tight to his chest that I’m pretty sure I totally ruined his bespoke suit.

  “Don’t ever leave us dangling like that again.” A punch on the shoulder, this time from Bastion.

  The latter had shed his lupine skin, and I struggled to follow suit. But my pelt was recalcitrant. By the time I shifted, there were three family members visible rather than two.

  “Honor. Your wardrobe needs work.”

  Of course it did. I was naked, save for my pelt. Still, I grabbed my twin and hugged her even tighter than Justice had squeezed me. “How did you find us?” I murmured into her hair.

  “It wasn’t hard.” This was Justice doing what he did best—relaying factual information. “Grace noticed the song on the radio when we spoke yesterday. It’s relatively uncommon. Only ten stations had it on their playlist during that hour.”

  My lips quirked. Trust Justice to make a gargantuan task sound easy. “And that was enough to track me down?”

  Grace shrugged, but she didn’t push me away. Instead, she let me keep on hugging her as Justice filled in the blanks.

  “We consulted maps also. Looked at radio broadcast coverage areas. Used aerial photos to hunt down places wild enough for a pack of skinless to hide. The process simplified once we decided Luke would want to stay close to his familiar territory.”

  I wanted to hold my twin close forever, but she was starting to tense up. Rather than pushing my luck, I squeezed her once more then let her go.

  “Thank you.” I grinned at each of them in turn. Two cousins plus a twin added up to a family. It was the kind of math I could have stared at forever.

  If there weren’t skinless in the wings, that was. Swallowing back bubbly happiness, I tried to make myself as business-like as Justice had been. “I have everything under control. But you can’t believe how good it is to see you. It means a lot that you’d come looking for me.”

  Justice’s brows lowered as if he didn’t quite get what I was thanking him for. “It’s what family does.”

  Bastion nodded. “Of course we’d....”

  His voice trailed off...then he was lupine. Standing in front of me snarling as another wolf sprinted toward us down the trail.

  “THAT’S JUST L—” WAIT. No. That wasn’t Luke. Instead, this beast’s fur was as pale as his hair was in human form. His snarl was all skinless wolf.

  I stepped in front of my family, ignoring my nakedness. This wasn’t Luke, but it was manageable. “Victor, cool it.”

  Luke’s cousin shifted upward, fury evident in every motion. “I smell a gun.”

  “And you’ll feel a bullet between your eyeballs if you’re not careful.” Justice was beside me before I could stop him. The same pistol he’d drawn in Central Park was leveled upon Aunt May’s growly grandson.

  Back in the Big Apple, a gun was illegal. Here, a gun was an affront to the alpha. The air turned electric as Victor’s wolf prepared to break back out of his human skin.

  “Victor.” I emulated Ruth and turned my voice whip-like. Wolf-like. My pelt wriggled in my arms.

  And that was what Victor looked at. “They gave it to you already?” His face pinched in confusion. “We haven’t had time to tan it. You accepted?”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “I can tan it myself.”

  And, just like that, Justice’s gun was forgotten. Victor grinned, all wolf-sharp teeth and leering satisfaction. “My brother’s skin will make a perfect token to initiate the Hunt.”

  At my feet, Bastion growled, responding to Victor’s manner even though he didn’t understand what was happening. I understood though. I’d been played. Had admitted ownership of a second item.

  Sword plus pelt equaled two tokens to be stolen. A third of the way to forcing an Alpha’s Hunt. Before Luke’s ankle was ready to let him run on it. With Carl in attendance.

  The math this time didn’t play so nice.

  But the damage was done. And this would, at least, give me a reason to wear my pelt openly...

  ...As long as Victor wasn’t present when whoever had been intending to dupe me presented the dead werewolf’s skin this morning.

  So it was time to ditch Victor. Get back to camp. Make a big show of being pleased at the gift of Easton’s pelt.

  “Did you guys come in a car?” I asked my family.

  Justice raised his eyebrows at the abrupt change of subject, but twin-sense was working between me and my sister. “Of course,” Grace answered. “How do you think we got here?”

  “We ne
ed it off the road.” I told her, thankful that she’d understood what I needed. “Victor will show you where to park. Justice, you can leave your gun locked inside. No firepower in Luke’s territory.”

  Victor took a step forward until he loomed over me. “I think you and I have other business to attend to.”

  “Oh? You plan to rip your brother’s pelt out of my hands? Too afraid to go for my sword in an honest challenge?”

  Afraid acted on Victor just the way I’d thought it would. “I’m not afraid of you, sword maiden.”

  “Then act like it.”

  For one long moment, Victor held my gaze and I held my breath. Then naked shoulders rose and fell in a loose-muscled shrug.

  “Today, tonight. Makes no difference. Perhaps I’ll take your sword and Easton’s skin too when you falter. I’ll cut off your hair to share with the others. I’m not the only one in the pack who thinks Luke doesn’t have what it takes to lead.”

  This time, I let Victor’s grandiosity stand. After all, he was doing what I wanted.

  Leaving my family to fend for themselves, I turned back in the direction I’d come from. It was time to deal with Easton’s pelt at camp.

  Chapter 23

  As soon as Victor was out of sight, I shifted and sprinted. Back through the forest. Back through a camp full of murmuring, waking shifters. Back into the unzipped tent where Luke was just beginning to claw his way up out of sleep.

  I pressed the tent flap closed, let my pelt slough off me, then faced the cinnamon-scented skinless I’d chosen to nibble on yesterday—or was that the day before? “Can you hear me?” I asked, peering into his eyes for signs that our mental pathway was once again open for business.

  “Of course.” He slid out of the sleeping bag, naked and filthy. Streaks of mud and spots of leaf litter dotted his rippling muscles. Running back and forth from Wolf Camp yesterday must not have been easy. Still, when my gaze dropped to Luke’s ankle, the day brightened.

  His injured joint actually looked better than it had last time I’d examined it. My finger trailed across significantly less swollen skin....

  Then Luke hissed and I flinched. “Did I hurt you?”

  That wasn’t what I’d meant to ask him, but the warmth of his hand pressing my fingers back against his ankle derailed me for one split second. “Never,” he promised. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

  His lips were so close I could almost taste him. Sweetness and spice. Naughty and nice.

  I blinked. Wow. Nursery rhymes?

  Clearing my throat, I lifted my hand away and blinked myself back into the present. Right. Victor. Pelts. Tokens.

  “My family’s here. And I’m about to make a very obvious mistake,” I told Luke, wrapping my pelt around my middle then pulling borrowed clothes on over top. “I need you to trust me.”

  He didn’t flinch, just nodded. “I always trust you. Care to share the details?”

  “Better if your surprise is honest.”

  Then I turned away and crawled out of the tent to track down Luke’s dead cousin’s skin.

  “HONOR!”

  Carly found me before I’d made half a circuit of the encampment. She clutched a bundle of fur to her chest while tear tracks stained her cheeks. Had she been threatened into this? Certainly not tricked into it. She knew the trap she was about to set.

  The question was, did Carly and whoever put her up to this realize Easton’s wolf pelt was more than a simple token? Did they realize I was a woelfin, unable to be parted from my own shed skin without losing my ability to shift?

  I couldn’t yet answer that question. All I could do was keep potential enemies close to me and play the skinless game.

  To that end, I smiled and took a step toward the not-so-innocent pelt carrier. “Carly.” She winced, so I nodded at the fur and did my best to make betrayal easy for her. “What’s this?”

  “It’s”—she swallowed—“Easton’s.”

  “A gift to welcome you into the pack.” This explanation came from a male I’d seen around but hadn’t caught a name for. He was older than Carl but younger than Luke. Nondescript. Was he the gray wolf who’d joined Easton and Victor when they tried to steal a token the day I’d first met them?

  Did it even matter when half the pack was lingering in our vicinity, clearly well aware of what was going down?

  “I’m honored.” If anyone noticed the pun on my name, they didn’t crack a smile. Instead, I was pretty sure everyone present held their breath as I reached out to accept the fur from Carly’s quivering arms.

  She cradled the pelt as if it were a kitten, and for a moment I thought she’d fight me for it. Then someone behind me growled. Carly jumped, releasing her hold in the process. And as I fumbled with a pelt that had turned ungainly during the transfer, Carly slipped back into the crowd, leaving behind nothing more than a whiff of remorse.

  Well, a whiff of remorse plus my second easy-to-steal token—a particularly gruesome one. The hide was still bloody where it had been hacked from Easton’s body. Someone had tried to wash away the worst of the gore, but they hadn’t done a very thorough job of it.

  This wasn’t the remnant of an animal. It was derived from an intelligent being.

  My gorge threatened to rise, but I forced myself to smile and drape the awful mess across one shoulder. “Thank you,” I said to the silent skinless arrayed around me. Turning, I hunted for the shifter responsible for Carly’s fright.

  Nobody met my eyes. Nobody smirked the way Victor had. Did that mean the obvious culprit—Luke’s power-hungry cousin—was the mastermind behind this? It seemed too much of a leap to assume he was also responsible for the bear trap and his brother’s death....

  Cinnamon warned me one second before Luke touched my neck from behind. “Here.” A snap as magnets I’d thought were gone closed the bloody pelt into place around my neck. “I raked them out of the fire.”

  For the first time ever, I flinched away from the brush of Luke’s fingers. Four tokens, not two. I couldn’t stop myself from peering up into his eyes, trying to understand why he’d shared the magnets’ existence so openly with pack mates who wanted to steal them.

  “Better they have something to steal before they begin hacking off pieces of your body.” His words came with a puff of cinnamon then were followed by a rewording of my own request from a few moments earlier. “About what I’m about to do...I need you to trust me also.”

  “Do you care to share the details?” I threw his own words back at him.

  I got the impression of a shrug even though his shoulders didn’t move. “It’s better if your surprise is honest. Don’t want them to think this is an unfair fight.”

  FIGHT. MY HAND FELL to my sword’s hilt even as Luke turned to address the crowd before us.

  For my part, I scanned the faces, looking for one in particular. Carl. He wasn’t present. As far as I could tell, none of his men were here either. Was that why Luke was being so overt about this? Trying to settle his pack before the stool pigeon in our midst returned from wherever he’d gone?

  Whatever the reason, Luke didn’t mince words. “It seems that an Alpha’s Hunt is on the horizon.” His voice was loud enough to be heard on the other side of the clearing. “I thought you might enjoy a warmup. A trial. A chance to show off the power of our clan.”

  “Draw your sword,” he warned, stepping away from me and drawing the pack’s attention with him. Surreptitiously, I followed his advice.

  “Carl and his men are very interested in a race against the best of my warriors,” Luke said as he paced. He was no longer the gentleman I’d met. Instead, he seemed larger. More powerful. No limp was in evidence as he strode back and forth. “I laid the trail last night, all the way from here to Wolf Camp.”

  The skinless, silent until now, began murmuring among themselves. They knew something was coming. So did I, although I couldn’t quite figure out what.

  Still, a trickle of sweat slid like unease down my spine. It would have been nice if
Luke had taken thirty seconds to clue me in.

  “Of course, it isn’t fair to send so many of you when Carl has only a handful to help him win the contest.”

  The louder the chatter from the crowd grew, the quieter Luke’s voice dropped. The tactic worked too. Soon, he was speaking into silence.

  “I could choose the best of you, but why not let my sword maiden do that job for me? Whoever can stand against Honor for thirty seconds will run this race on behalf of our clan.”

  He paused, turning slowly to meet eyes that dropped one by one to the soil. “And, of course,” he finished, “any token you take during that time is yours to keep.”

  Chapter 24

  They attacked without warning. Twelve at once. Most leapt into fur, shedding clothes as they barreled toward me. Three dove in armed. One with knives, two with swords.

  “Thirty seconds. You can do this.”

  Luke’s voice in my head snapped me out of the deer-in-a-headlights stance I’d been stuck in. Right. I was the sword maiden. Was this how Ruth had ended up with all those scars?

  One second before I fell beneath their assault, I lifted my sword. Slashed at a human nose. Sliced through a wolf’s ear. Clanged steel against steel.

  “Twenty-six seconds.”

  Luke’s count slid down slowly, gently, while I hacked and grunted. Fangs bit into my calf and I spun so fast my sword swept through bodies without regard for their humanity.

  Someone shrieked and fell. Had I killed him? I hadn’t meant to....

  “Not your problem. Nineteen. Eighteen.”

  The crowd around me thinned. Apparently, a berserker’s rage deterred all but the most bloodthirsty. I scanned the ground for signs of death during a momentary lull.

  Nope. Everybody I’d cut had been able to limp out of danger. Still I winced as I caught sight of Grace’s face at the edge of the crowd. She’d showed up while I was fighting and her expression suggested she was horrified by my actions. I—