When the Hunters Become the Hunted

~ Reghan

The door doesn't open.

It slams.

The impact carries through the walls of my office before the young wolf manages to speak, his breath uneven and control already slipping.

“It happened again.”

I'm moving before he finishes.

The chair scrapes back behind me as I cross the room. He turns immediately, hurrying to keep up as I step into the corridor.

“Where?”

“Northwest. Red Creek territory. One of their patrols found the house less than twenty minutes ago.”

Another pack, another house, another collection of dead hunters.

Months ago, the first call might have earned questions. Now it gets me out the door.

Wolves step aside as I move through the packhouse, the tension spreading ahead of me without anyone needing to know what happened.

Garron looks up as I enter the main room and reads enough from my face to push his chair back. Rhevik follows a second later.

“Thorik. Three warriors. With me.”

That's all it takes.

Chairs shift. Thorik is already crossing the room while Garron points at three wolves without bothering to ask who wants to come.

Within minutes, we're heading toward the gates.

Garron falls into step beside me. “Same as the others?”

“That’s what they think.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

Rhevik glances at me from the other side. “And they called you.”

“They know we’re tracking it.”

None of us says why. They know that too.

The first few incidents brought questions from the packs that found them. Hunters turning up dead on their land would make any Alpha pay attention, especially when nobody could explain who killed them or why.

Then the descriptions started matching.

Fast kills. Little damage beyond what was necessary. Houses and camps hit without warning. No wolves among the dead.

And sometimes, if I arrived quickly enough, one other thing remained.

Her scent.

We shift as soon as we clear the gates.

The run is fast and hard, carrying us beyond our borders and across the stretch of forest separating our territory from Red Creek. Garron and Rhevik stay close, Thorik and the warriors spreading naturally behind us as the distance disappears beneath our paws.

The bond has been quiet for months, but never gone. I would know if it disappeared.

Mostly it sits beneath everything else, a constant pull toward someone who made it very clear she intends to remain out of reach until she decides otherwise.

Every now and then, it changes.

Like now.

The pull tightens as we cross into Red Creek territory.

Orin lifts immediately.

- Mate.

- I know.

He's said exactly the same thing at every scene where her scent remained. He's also suggested we find her at every one of them.

So far, his contribution has been consistent if not particularly useful.

The Red Creek wolves are waiting when we reach the house. Their Alpha isn't there, but his Beta steps forward as we shift back.

“They’re inside.”

I pull on the clothes one of his wolves hands me and look toward the house.

“Anyone touch anything?”

“Patrol went in far enough to confirm the bodies. Came straight back out when they recognized what this might be.”

Good.

I head inside.

The house is too quiet.

The first body lies just beyond the hallway, collapsed beside a shattered mug. Coffee has soaked into the wooden floor beneath his hand. His eyes are open, and the knife strapped to his thigh is still secured in its sheath.

He never had time to reach it.

I crouch beside him. One wound. Deep and clean.

Rhevik stops behind me. “Quick.”

I rise and continue. The living room holds the other two.

One made it halfway out of his chair. The second reached the doorway before he went down. A crossbow lies beside him, but there is no bolt loaded.

“They saw it coming,” Garron says.

“Eventually,” Rhevik mutters.

I look around the room.

No overturned furniture beyond the chair. No damage to the walls. No sign of a fight.

Just three hunters who were all armed, but none of them managed to do much with it.

Then I smell her.

Everything else drops beneath it.

Eywa.

Orin surges forward so abruptly that my hands curl at my sides.

- Mate.

Months.

She's been gone for months, and somehow every trace of her still hits with exactly the same force.

The note she left is safely locked in the drawer beside my bed. I haven't read it again after I found it, but I remember every word.

Reghan,

I’m not running from you, and I’m not going back to them.

But I don’t know what I am yet and I won’t let anyone decide that for me again.

Not them. Not this.

Not even us.

I need to find it myself.

~ Eywa.

I understood why she left.

But that didn't make waking up without her any easier, and it hasn't made the months since particularly enjoyable.

At first there had been nothing.

No sightings or messages. No trail I could follow without deliberately ignoring what she asked of me.

So I waited.

Then hunters started dying.

The first time I caught her scent at one of the scenes, I told myself it could mean anything. By the third time, that became difficult.

Now I don't bother pretending.

“She was here,” Garron says.

I glance at the bodies again. “Yes.”

Rhevik crouches near the man by the doorway and presses two fingers against his neck despite the obvious. “Still warm.”

“How long?” Garron asks.

“Not long.”

The Red Creek Beta swears quietly behind us.

I turn to him. “Who knows about this?”

“My Alpha. The patrol. The wolves here.”

“Keep it that way for now.”

His expression tightens. “You think whoever did this is still in our territory?”

I look at him and his expression changes.

“You know who it is.”

“I think your hunters died recently enough that whoever killed them could still be nearby.”

It is all I'm giving him for now.

He doesn't look particularly pleased about that, but he nods.

“Search the area.”

Garron is already moving.

Rhevik follows him through the door. Thorik shifts outside with the warriors, and the Red Creek wolves split between them as the search spreads into the surrounding forest.

Within seconds the house empties around me.

I stay long enough to look once more at the room. Three armed hunters dead before they could properly defend themselves. No unnecessary wounds and no destruction.

Whatever Eywa is doing, she knows exactly what it is.

I step outside.

Wolves are already pouring into the forest. Garron and Rhevik disappear between the trees in one direction, Thorik and two of our warriors cutting farther north while the others spread with the Red Creek wolves.

I don't follow immediately.

The bond pulls harder out here and Orin goes very still.

The trees stand close together beyond the house, shadows collecting between the trunks despite the daylight. I let my gaze travel slowly across them.

Nothing moves and no scent reaches me, but the pull is there and for a few seconds, I have the strange certainty that if I knew exactly where to look, I would find violet eyes looking back at me.

- Find her.

My eyes remain on the trees.

“I’m trying.”

Orin is unimpressed.

I take another slow look across the forest before stepping off the porch.

The scenes are too clean, the targets too specific, and there have been too many of them.

Eywa isn't hiding.

She's hunting.

And this time, it isn't wolves she's after.