Page 24 of Heart Broken Mate

Mosquitoes and other bugs buzzed around me, and I dusted them off, trying to catch any secondary sound or smell that wasn’t natural to the woods. Earlier on, just after I crossed the river, I thought I saw someone move through the woods, but Ifigured it must have been my imagination. There was no one out there. I had killed the hunters that had caught up with me. I put the two of them out of my mind because thinking of them wouldn’t solve anything. I killed them because I wanted to survive—the natural instinct.

Besides, I am a predator, a natural-born hunter. Killing is supposed to be natural to me, but that didn’t stop the sick feeling inside my stomach. It was something I would have to learn with. The sparse forest led into an open field soon enough, and at the other end, the forest continued.

I thought about walking to the side of the forest just to see where it leads instead of going deeper inside it. I knew no matter how much deeper I went, I would come to a road. It might be close to the community, or it might be far, but it wouldn’t matter much. I decided to go deeper. Walking the sides wouldn’t take me further from the hunters.

Kris said there were about twenty of them, and I had killed two, so there are still eighteen more out there. That was a large number of hunters to come after just me. The simple thing would have been for them to band together and hunt me, but that would never happen.

As much as we like being in packs, we hate working together. A group of hunters like that would need a leader, which would be the first step in the descent into conflict. None of those hunters would want to be subjugated, and everyone would want to be a leader. That was why the dynamics in a pack are much easier. The alpha is the leader; no one would argue that.

So, I was sure they were going to attack me banded together. They might form some groups, like the two that came for meearlier, but majorly, they will come individually, making it easier for me to pick them off. I looked back into the woods, taking a deep sniff to get the composition of the air. I couldn’t smell anything foreign, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one out there. Some wolves are good at masking their scent. Besides, they might have wallowed through the river as I had, and that would dampen even their smell further.

I continued toward the field, though. I wouldn’t let uncertainty cripple me. I didn’t look back until I got to the other side of the field. But before I walked into the woods, I looked behind, and this time, I was sure I saw a shadow. Someone hid behind a tree just as I turned back.

I wanted to walk back and check them out, but if they were really after me, they would cross the open field and join me. I just had to pay attention closely to hear them. This new part of the woods was like the first one. It was dense and provided a lot of shade and trees to hide in. I walked on, listening sharply. I didn’t hear anything but my own feet crunching against the dead leaves, birds in the trees twittering, and the distant mating calls of animals for a long time, and once again, I was about to blame my overactive imagination when my senses picked up something.

But it wasn’t any of the senses I was used to. My ears didn’t pick up someone walking behind me. I could smell them, I didn’t see them, but I could feel them. Not totally on my skin, but also deep inside me. It was like a tiny thud of connection that was rousing a storm inside me, and I knew that feeling. Two days ago, it would have been alien to me, and I would have pondered what it meant, but not today. It was the same feeling I had when I first saw Luke.

It was subtle now, almost unnoticeable, but I noticed it alright. I wasn’t a savant when it came to that particular kind of sensory information, but I had a good feeling it meant he was close by.

I stopped walking immediately and looked around the woods as though I would be able to see him. Of course, I didn’t, but the feeling grew steadily. He was getting closer to me.

Why do I feel this way whenever he is around me? I wondered, but that wasn’t the most important question now.

What was he doing in the woods? Looking for me? Why would he be looking for me? The only reasonable explanation was that he was hunting me too.

That seemed very unlikely because of the relation between lone wolves and pack wolves, but also because two days ago James had ordered me to chase him and his friends from the little spot in the reservation they had cut off for themselves. I had walked past the spot earlier. Did he notice me then and decide to follow me?

I was making so many assumptions that my head was beginning to hurt. But it didn’t sit well with me that Luke was also part of the detail hunting me. I was fine with any other people, but not him. I felt a pang of betrayal that he was hunting me too. It made no sense that I should feel that way. We have no established relationship. Hell, I don’t think I’ve said more than half a dozen sentences to him, so he wasn’t my friend or acquaintance. I have to bury the betrayal I was feeling and focus on getting away from him.

My plan has to be my focus and to do that, I have to lose all the wolves. Luke included.

I ignored the feeling inside of me and the sensation that he was somewhere out here in the woods and that everything would be clearer if I just talked to him.

I stopped walking again, and I knew what I had to do. I tracked him right back. Get him and then have that conversation with him. Maybe he knew something; maybe that was why he was tailing me. Why not just come forward and talk to me, then?

Werewolves act in a very strange manner. That wasn’t news.

I found that if I focused on the feeling inside me, I could use it to track him right back, almost like there was a GPS tracker attached to him and all I had to do was follow it.

Does he feel this way about me? I hoped not. It would make it too easy to track me down, and it felt a bit like I was exposed to him, a bit intrusive.

I followed the feeling, and I was walking back the same way I just came, which meant he had actually been tracking me. I kept at it for a while until I returned to the edge of the forest and was before the open field again.

Then the connection was gone. It was like I was about to get to him, and then it was just gone. I scoffed angrily and turned around to return to the forest when I picked up someone walking towards me. He was holding was looked like a club with spikes all around it. It looked like some caveman type of weapon, and he was swinging it, his eyes focused on me and glowing.

He was a werewolf, and I knew him.

They called him Buff. He’s a hunter too.

“I saw what you did to The Twins,” he said even though he was still far from me, and he didn’t speak up, I could hear him.

I didn’t know those two were twins. Now their synchronized coordination made more sense.

“You think you can do the same to me?” he asked with a gentle grin, daring me. “I have always thought about this moment and knew I would be the one to bring you in.”

I just watched him. I didn’t know anything about his fighting skills, but he looked like a brute, and his weapon made him appear exaggerated. I have seen wolves with weapons before, but they are more practical ones like guns and arrows, not batons with nails sticking out of them.

I wasn’t worried about Buff. He was a showoff, I could tell, and show-offs do worst in a fight.

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