Page 85 of The Fated Hunter Wolf

Suddenly I felt another vampire approaching from the east. Another from the south. And another. Ivan hadn’t come alone.

A trap.This was all a trap.

“Stay in position,” Logan ordered, but his eyes were on me. “What are you sensing?”

“They’re circling. Coming from every direction.”

The forest went quiet around us.

The temperature plummeted so fast I could see my breath misting in the suddenly frigid air. The shadows began moving wrong—sliding across tree trunks, independent of their sources, pooling in impossible places where no shadows should exist.

It wasn’t human, and it wasn’t wolf.

“Orion, shift. Now.” Logan’s alpha voice brooked no argument. Rhys shifted beside me. I stayed in this form, my wolf submitting but knowing I was more useful to the situation like this.

We needed my vampire abilities.

I looked at Rhys, and the terror I felt must have shown on my face because his wolf form went rigid with protective fury.

Around me, the pack was transforming. Bones cracked and reformed, fur erupted across skin, human forms dissolved into their wolf shapes with violent efficiency. Logan remained human while Kenza’s small sand-colored hunter was positioning for an attack, with Killian and Blair and their enforcer wolves spreading into defensive formations.

I remained stubbornly human, both hands pressed against my temples as the supernatural radar in my head overloaded. Every vampire felt like a migraine spike, and there were too many of them. Too close. I couldn’t track them individually, and my wolf couldn’t emerge while I was so connected to them.

My hybrid nature was screaming warnings I couldn’t fully interpret, caught between wolf pack bonds and vampire territorial awareness in ways that left me dizzy and nauseated.

Shapes moved between the trees, flowing through the darkness with predatory grace. Their scent hit me—old blood,grave dirt, and something that whisperedsubmitdirectly to the deepest parts of my brain. I couldn’t tell how many of them there were—fewer than there were wolves—but that might not have mattered.

These weren’t vampires of the New World. These were apex predators who’d survived centuries by being smarter, faster, and more ruthless than anything else in the darkness.

The wolves formed a defensive circle, the pack bond guiding them into position with me as the vulnerable center they were protecting. Rhys was part of it, his wolf looking over his shoulder to check on me as the pack set themselves in place.

They’d claimed me as theirs to defend.

The vampires stopped just outside striking range, all pale faces and gleaming eyes, forming a perfect ring around us. Close enough to demonstrate their confidence. Far enough away to prove they weren’t reckless.

They were toying with us. Testing our responses. Gathering information for a real assault.

“Alpha Logan.” Ivan’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere, distorted by a power that made my vampire nature cower. “We bring an offer.”

“Speak,” Logan snarled, authority rolling off him in waves that even I could feel through the pack bond.

“We want the hybrid. Alive and unharmed. And your pack sees another sunrise.”

Hybrid.The wolves’ attention shifted toward me.

Through our bond, Rhys’s wolf rage spiked so violently it nearly knocked me over. Whatever doubts he might have had about my nature, whatever questions he had about what I was changing him into, none of that mattered when faced with creatures who were trying to take me away.

“Generous,” Logan replied, his tone carrying a deadly calm. “Here’s my counter-offer.”

Is he giving me up? Does knowing I’m a hybrid automatically make me an enemy?

Silence stretched between the predators, each side measuring the other’s resolve.

Logan declared, “Leave now, or I’ll decorate the forest with your remains.”

Laughter rippled around the clearing, cold and crisp as breaking glass. The sound made my vampire side want to bare its fangs and submit simultaneously.

“You cannot fight us all. We are speed, we are strength, and your pets would never be able?—”