Page 14 of Wolf Hunter

The tip of her boot meets my nuts, and the stars become full-blown supernovas.

“Fuck!” There’s no way I’ll be able to have children after this.

I catch a glimpse of her victorious grin before she darts toward me again, arching the dagger above her head in a graceful swoop.

Struggling to lumber closer to her, the only advantage I have right now is my wolf.

Not yet. I can’t release him yet.

Pink Hair’s own teeth are bared, and a violent, savage delight shines in her eyes as she swings her arm. Not to use the dagger in the traditional sense. No, she whips it across the same spot where she pierced me before, because she knows it will cause me more pain this way.

I could rip her apart easily. Take her down and put an end to what seems like a fight purely out of aggression and spite. Even though I’ve never met her before, this confrontation feels personal, and I’m brimming with questions. Believe it or not, I would rather talk to her and find out why she wants to kill me.

“Let’s go, wolf,” she snarls, adjusting her grip on the dagger. “Let’s finish this.”

“I’m still trying to decide if I have it in me to pay you back for the nut shot,” I call out to her.

“I hope I shoved them so far up into your body that you taste them.”

Now she’s taking things a step too far.

She also clearly expects me to bum-rush her. To use my brute overpowering strength to her advantage. So I do the exact opposite and step aside each time she makes a run at me, going on the defensive. Soon her growls rival that of my pack.

“Damn you!” she shouts. “Stand here and fight me!”

She’ll tire eventually. I don’t really have time to wait, but surely she can’t keep up the frenzied pace for much longer.

I glare at her and she charges me again, crying out. She whips her arm at me, but I reach out and absorb the strength of the blow before tossing her and that damn dagger to the side.

I can hear my father’s voice in my head now. Telling me to man up. Telling me to kill her and be done with it.

We’d miss out on harnessing her magic if I kill her now, but if I were my father, I wouldn’t care. He had no patience for the uncomplacent. He’d had no patience for anyone, really, not even his family.

My fingers flex, and when she runs at me again, I spin out of the way, lash out, and catch her by the hair. She screams as I drag her to me, but I quickly wrap my hand around her throat and slam her back into the trunk of the nearest tree. The force has her eyes rolling back and the knife falling out of her grasp again.

Once she realizes she’s caught, she claws at my arms, and terror transforms on her face as I loom over her.

I understand the feeling because, once, the roles were a little different. At one time, a younger me was pressed against a tree much like this, with my father towering over me.

This woman’s fear was my fear.

“You’re going to learn to be strong one way or another, Reid. Your mother wants you soft. I want a leader. Everyone will shit all over you unless you learn how to dominate them.”

I hated those lessons.

I especially hate that they come in handy now.

I purposely loosen my grip on her. Not enough to release her, but enough to let air enter her lungs.

“Let go of me!” she screeches.

“Not this time, sweetheart,” I whisper.

I let the power of my wolf slip past my barriers, just enough to lengthen my canines. Bending closer, I press them against the sensitive skin of her throat.

One bite is all it takes to inject her, to paralyze her, to take her down. A moment later, the pink-haired spitfire goes completely limp as I send her into a dark sleep. Cradling her into my arms, I turn back to my pack, who is holding witches hostage and waiting for my orders.

I catch Julius’s hard gaze across the clearing. Besides his long hair, he’s a spitting image of Father, and his temper matches too. He’s watching me intensely, surely wondering why I didn’t kill the witch the moment she attacked me; instead, now carrying her, unconscious but alive. And honestly, I don’t have an answer for him.

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