Page 6 of Cats and Dogs

"She's my daughter. And she's perfect."

And soon, she'd be perfectly dead. Their family would see to it.

"Miss, if I might say, I think you might need some medical attention..."

She did; she had a hard time standing straight.It took a hell of a lot to wound a shifter. Hunter moved to help her. Now he was closer, his nose picked up something else underneath all the blood. Something a lot more alarming.

“Gwen?”

She sighed. "I was shot. Pulled the bullet out, and the wound's all healed, but it was too late anyway." She confirmed his worst fear. "I have silver in my bloodstream."

His world stopped in that moment.

Dead. Gwen was dead. His beautiful sister was nothing more than a walking ghost.

There was nothing else, no one else, he truly loved in the world. And she was fading.

"Got to a witch. She slowed down the process as much as she could, portaled me here so I could speak to you. There's something I need to ask you. It's too much. But I have no one else to ask."

Her last words. His heart stopped.

"Just tell me. I'll do anything for you, you know that."

And then she told him what she needed of him. At the time it had sounded so impossible.

Afterwards, Hunter carried Gwen back to the hotel where he and Luther were staying, he made her as comfortable as possible. Luther ordered a feast, charging it on his credit card. Hunter grabbed his guitar and played all of Gwen's favorite songs, until she died.

It wasn't a nice death. Silver poisoning meant spilling blood and suffering until the last second. In the end, he was glad when her suffering was over.

After her eyes closed and her heart stopped, he whispered in her ear that he'd live up to his word.

He'd meant it then. He hadn't regretted it since the day those words crossed his lips, despite the fact that it had cost him his freedom.

Now in Texas, patrolling the pack territory, he still lived by those words. It meant living with people he despised and watching untold horrors without doing a thing to stop them.

Not that he actually watched. When it was time for the enforcers to round up the kids for evaluation, he always stayed away. But he knew what was happening. He knew those he never saw after that day had been killed.

And there was nothing he could do about it.

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