Page 42 of The Fated Hunter Wolf

This is how it ends, I thought.Not defending my pack. Not finding my brothers. Just dying alone in the dark because I couldn’t accept what the Goddess gave me.

My vision started to blur, spots of black creeping in from the edges. My wolf tried to lift his head, but that was too much effort.I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t die. I would just lie here and wait for whatever was coming next.

That was when the scent hit me.

Faint at first, threading through the night air underneath the smell of my own misery. But it was there, and it made every hair on my body stand up.

Magic. Old magic. The kind that predated everything we knew about pack law and territory.

And underneath it—death.

My wolf forced his head up, ears swiveling toward the sound of footsteps. Deliberate. Purposeful. Whatever was out there wasn’t just passing through.

It was hunting.

Get up, I thought, even though I was exhausted.We have to move.

A figure emerged from the shadows between the trees. A human form, but moving with a fluid grace that screamed predator. Tall, lean, wrapped in dark fabric that seemed to swallow the moonlight whole.

My wolf tried to growl. All that came out was a pathetic wheeze. We were in no shape for a fight, but every instinct we had left was blaring warnings.

The figure stopped at the edge of the clearing, close enough that I could make out more details. Female. Ancient power radiated from her in a way that made my broken soul want to crawl deeper into the earth.

And her eyes—even in the darkness—they glowed with their own cold light.

“Poor little wolf,” she said, and each word wrapped around my spine like ice. “So broken. So very, very lost.”

She took a step closer, and another layer of her scent hit me. Something that made my blood slow despite the fire burning through my veins.

“You’re far from home, aren’t you?” Another step, slow and measured. “Far from your pack. Far from the little mate who shattered you so beautifully.”

My wolf tried to scramble backward, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate. We could only lie there, helpless, as she approached with the patient confidence of something that had never known fear.

“Don’t worry,” she said, crouching down just out of reach. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Her hand moved to her throat, fingers closing around something that caught the starlight and threw it back in fragments that hurt to look at. She was familiar, even though I couldn’t make out her face with that fucking pendant reflecting starlight in my eyes.

The pendant pulsed.

“You’re going to come with me,” she said, and her magic reached out like invisible hands. “There are things you need to see, little wolf. Several wrongs that are yet to be made right.”

Her power closed in, pushing visions into my head that put any words Sable had said to shame. I’d thought the agony of the rejection, of unfinished business for my pack, was the worst thing that could happen to me.

I was wrong.

18

SABLE

I’d never felt this weak. In my head, my heart, my soul.

My wolf was weak, too.

Everything was clouded in dense fog, like I wasn’t me anymore. My existence cut in half.

Before. After.

This was the after. A cold emptiness where warmth used to live. My body temperature had dropped so low that even under heavy blankets, I couldn’t stop shivering. The other side of my heritage was asserting itself now that my wolf was damaged, making me feel dull and predatory in ways that should have terrified me.