Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 87771 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87771 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Movement from the other end of the clearing caught my eye. Someone dressed in all black exited from the wall of trees. Two silver blades gleamed in his hands. He walked with his head down, looking at one of the knocked-out shifters. There was something about him that felt almost familiar… I held my breath. The man moved slowly, deliberately. He didn’t look concerned at all that he’d just walked into a clearing full of weres.
He crouched and ran a knife over the shifter’s all-white chest, some of the fur already marked red with blood.
He lifted the knife in the air. The angle made his face clear as day, highlighted by the glow of the bright full moon shining down from its cloudless stage.
Holy shit.
“Stop!” I shouted out at Harrison before he could plunge the knife down. I wasn’t sure if that shifter was even part of the Burlington pack, but I couldn’t take that risk. Harrison jerked up to his feet, holding the vicious-looking blades out like he was a trained fighter.
What the fuck?
“Elijah?” He sounded as shocked as I felt, but his mask of cool calm that I’d see dozens of times in the locker room flickered back on. His shoulders appeared to drop, and his hands lowered. “I didn’t—you and Gabe. Shit.” He tossed the curving blade into the air and caught it effortlessly. The hilt appeared to be made of some kind of dark stone. “A blind spot I should have picked up on.”
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I moved closer, inching myself between him and the unconscious were I knew had to be Gabe. Harrison didn’t seem to care, his posture still relaxed, considering the situation. He propped a leg up on a smooth stone at his feet.
“How much has Gabe told you?”
“Everything. Enough. But… what are you doing here?” It was like putting a puzzle together through a thick fog. I could make out some of the pieces, feel a few of the edges, fit a couple together, but no matter what, I couldn’t see the full picture. “Are you the one that’s behind this? This pack war?”
He sighed, like he was exhausted from having to go over another bad game with the team. My brain could hardly process the fact that I was speaking to my general manager, but that was probably because I was now focused on how the hell I was going to get out of this.
I had no weapons. I’d brought nothing with me but my fists.
I regretted that. A mistake. But I wouldn’t let it affect me, not now.
I’ve got this.
I had to keep him talking. Maybe one of the shifters would wake up—hopefully, one of the Burlington wolves.
“Yes,” he said. His face appeared etched out of stone, not a single twitch or micromovement. Not even any blinks. I wanted to look away, as if staring into those cold, dark eyes any longer would break me, but I held it. “It was me. All of it.”
“Why?”
“Do you know what happens to someone if they cross an angry were on a full moon? My daughter found out. She went on a short night walk on the trail behind our house. She’d done it hundreds of times before. She didn’t come home. Her body was unrecognizable when we found her.”
Fuck. I’d heard that Harrison had lost his daughter. That the cause had been an animal attack.
“I found her. I knew it wasn’t a wolf or cougar that did that. I started to dig, started looking around.” He flared his blades out to his sides. “I found the Hunters Guild first. They took me in, gave me training. Showed me how to hunt and kill these beasts. But the Guild wasn’t perfect—they follow too many silly rules, traditions. I defected. Dropped off the radar and decided to hunt on my own.”
“So you’re hunting these people? These innocent people? You know Gabe, you know Emmy, Chris. They’re real people, with big hearts and—”
“Chris, huh? I assumed Gabe and already had a suspicion about Emmy. Who else is caught in my net?”
Fuuuck.
“Why the pack war?” I asked, deciding to stick to questions instead of handing out information. From the corner of my eye, I could see Gabe’s limp were form. He wasn’t even twitching.
Come on. Wake up. Please wake up.
“I needed to draw them all out. I knew Viktor was a were—he was a fool and shifted in sight of a security camera I routinely checked. And Gabe had healed quite quickly after multiple injuries. I figured the other ones were better at hiding it, but we know Gabe is a shitty actor. All I had to do was spark a flame between them. Plant an iron collar after a game, leave a severed bobcat head at a hotel, abduct Viktor’s wife and make him think it was the Burlington pack. Easy things.”