Page 33 of The Fated Hunter Wolf

She was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Violent tremors that made her teeth chatter so hard I thought they might crack.

“Don’t,” she whispered, trying to push me away. She had about as much strength as a newborn pup. Her hands pressed against my chest, and she went dead still.

Blood seeped onto her hands. The wounds she’d left from our forest tussle had opened up completely, dark stains spreading across my shirt where her fingers touched.

Her gaze locked on the crimson seeping through the fabric of my shirt, and she bit her lower lip. Goddess, how I wanted to feel those lips on mine, to sink my teeth into her and do what we had been called to do, no matter the logic my human brain tried to throw at me.

“Get off,” she said, but there was no fight in her. Her hands had stopped pushing and started tracing the bloodstains.

I tried to read her the way I’d been doing with pack members since I could shift. Tried to get inside her head, figure out what was going on beneath whatever mask she was wearing.

I hit a brick fucking wall.

Thick and solid, my instincts couldn’t crack it. I’d spent my whole life knowing how wolves worked, what they felt, when they were lying through their teeth.

Not her.

She flickered.

Just for a split second—so fast I might’ve imagined it. Her edges went fuzzy, like waves rising off hot asphalt. Like she wasn’t entirely there.

Her scent was changing. Underneath the wild honey and summer rain scent that had been driving me insane, there was a coldness, like metal. Silver. My wolf’s hackles rose, despite still pushing me to bite her.

“What are you?” I muttered.

That’s when she covered her face with her hands and whispered something to a ring I noticed on her finger. Silver, intricate as hell, pulsing with light that didn’t come from anywhere normal.

My instincts screamed danger just as she blew across her palms and flicked her fingers at me.

The ring dissolved into a thousand glittering daggers that caught the lamplight as they flew. They gleamed with an otherworldly shine, and I threw my arms up, but I was too slow.

The shards hit me like a swarm of hornets, burying themselves in my chest, my arms, my throat. Pain exploded across my skin as tiny silver blades found their mark.

I stumbled backward, hit a chair, and went down hard in the wreckage of the door. Blood bloomed across my shirt in a dozen places, warm and sticky and wrong.

My wolf howled, confused by her reaction and ashamed.

Lying there, bleeding and broken, as I stared up at the woman who was supposed to be my other half, one thought cut through the pain:

My fated mate is trying to kill me.

14

SABLE

Glass was still falling.

Tink,tink,tink.

Fragments skittered across the wooden floor, the remnants catching the light. Little slivers of regret.

The enforcers rushed in.

“Get out!” Rhys shouted with enough command to make them submit. They stood outside the door.

The silver was embedded deep in Rhys—thin, jagged slivers no longer than a fingertip, each one glinting as it caught the sun. Their angles were sharp and precise, like they belonged in a ritual circle, not in someone’s chest.

My fingers still hung in the air, half-curled from the motion of attacking him, while my chest rose and fell like I’d sprinted the Heraclid cliffs end to end.