Page 3 of Hunted by Them (Primal Desires #1)

RYDER

The storm had teeth tonight.

It tore across the ridges and sank its sharp fangs into the valley, gnashing at the trees until they groaned and bent.

Rain hammered my skin, running down my tattoos and muscles like I was carved from the storm itself.

Most people cursed nights like this. They hid in cabins, curled up by fires, and waited it out.

But I…we…weren’t most men.

A storm like this stripped everything bare. It made the world honest and forced people to remember that there were things other than their fancy technology. That space between the stormy sky and the wild wilderness…that was where the hunt lived.

I’d seen her car first. The small, silver hatchback was parked in the furthest corner of the gravel lot like she’d tried to get it to disappear. Brave little thing, hiking alone into our woods with a storm stalking the horizon.

Brave or stupid. Maybe both. Either way, she was ours now.

From the ridge, I watched her stumble into the cabin.

Lightning lit her frame in fractured glimpses.

Long dark hair up in a ponytail, a bright red pack, and a matching jacket.

She opened the cabin door and closed it behind her like she already knew the rules of the game.

My jaw tightened under the deer skull, the bones shifting like they were my own.

Dash crouched at my feet, leaning forward to stare down at the cabin and our prey within.

“She’s skittish. Bet I can have her bolting in thirty seconds.” His voice carried a gravelly edge under the elk skull.

“Not yet.”

My eyes searched the forest’s edge near the cabin for Jaxon and just made out his shadow moving into position.

Dash chuckled, restless energy rolling off him. He liked the chase fast and a little too messy. Jaxon, though…he was all stealth, eyes on me, waiting. He was my shadow twin.

We didn’t rush prey. We let them simmer.

Fear wasn’t the point of the snap of a branch or the scuff of a boot.

It was the creak of an old tree, every second of silence making the air heavier.

It wasn’t the running that mattered. It was when they stopped running, and what they chose to do that counted.

“She’s not just prey,” I murmured. The rain dripped from my antlers, heavy lines tracing my silhouette. “She’s our Sweet Daisy. And our Sweet Daisy must crawl into the trap on her own. She’ll splay herself open and let us feast.”

Dash laughed, sharp and mean. “You’re naming them now?”

I tilted my head, watching the faint glow of her flashlight inside the cabin. Her shadow moved quickly, yet jerky across the boards. Already panicking. Already listening for us, like she was attuned to our presence and what that meant.

“She’s named because she’s ours.”

Dash looked up at me. “You want to keep her?”

I shrugged. “Maybe she will choose to keep us, but either way…there is something different about her,” I confessed, and Dash snorted.

“As long as her pussy is hot, ass is tight, and she screams like a wildcat, I don’t give a fuck what you call her,” he declared with a chuckle.

We slipped down from the ridge, boots sinking deep into the damp ground.

These trails had carried us through more hunts than I could count.

Hikers vanished in these woods every year.

Some the forest took, some the rivers swallowed.

And some…well…some learned that legends weren’t just stories told around campfires.

We gave them shape.

At the edge of the clearing, I raised my hand once, and we spread out. The cabin, broken and abused but still standing…barely. It was a false sanctuary.

Dash went first. He darted across the open grass and dragged his heel hard against the old porch, loud enough to carry. A deliberate scrape.

I watched the window. And there…movement.

Her silhouette whipped toward the sound, but Dash had already rounded the side of the cabin.

Lightning cracked loud, fracturing a tree in the distance.

For a second, I saw her peer out and smirked, just like a scared little mouse peeking its head out of its hole.

Good. She knew we were here.

Jaxon broke a large branch next. It snapped clean and sharp, the echo loud enough to reach inside the small structure. She ducked back down, the light beam shaking against the wall.

The storm hid our laughter from her ears, and our bodies just out of her sight. We circled slow, boots heavy on the rocks, pieces sliding and shifting.

I slipped closer and heard her moving around. The wood groaned when I pressed my palm against the cabin wall. Inside, she stilled.

I let my fingers drum once…just once…then pulled back.

Dash growled as the thunder rolled, and I knew he was restless. “She’s going to lose her mind in there,” he whispered.

“That’s the point.” I smiled beneath the bone. “We’ll twist her fear, and when she realizes there is no escape. That’s when she opens the door.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Dash pressed, eyes glinting in the dark.

“She’ll break. Everyone breaks.” I tilted my head toward the trees. “This place eats people. They just don’t put that part in the park brochures.”

He laughed. “Think she’s heard the stories? Death Gulch, boiling pools, hunters in the woods?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I adjusted the weight of the antlers and felt them shift like a crown of bone. “Tonight, she’ll experience the one about the cryptid that stalks women in storms. The one where she either loses herself or finds herself.”

Jaxon jogged over. “What next?”

I looked back at the cabin, at the silhouette trembling against the window as our Sweet Daisy stared out into the dark.

“Depends on how loud she screams,” I drawled.

We circled once more, letting her catch glimpses of us in the lightning. Bone masks white in the dark, muscled bodies, and painted skin that looked like the work of a demon’s paintbrush. Pieces of monsters, stitched by her fear.

Then we pulled back into the forest and waited. I wanted her to sit in it. Let her feel alone even when she wasn’t…because she wasn’t.

The storm howled, and I whispered into it, knowing the wind would carry the words to her walls. Even if she couldn’t hear them…she would feel them.

“Sweet Daisy…come out, come out wherever you are,” I teased, and then stepped back out of sight.