That had been the last thing she’d remembered, as shortly thereafter, a fist to her cheek slammed her into unconsciousness. There had been no stars, no blurring of her vision, no dimming of light. One minute she’d been aware, awake, scared, and a split second later, a switch had been flipped, and her mind had been shut off.
When she came to, she wondered if she was dead, but the pain radiating through her cheek told her otherwise—pain was what made one know they were still alive. She didn’t know how long she’d been out when she awoke to the sound of police sirens and a paramedic standing over her, positioning an oxygen mask on her face. Then the memories had crashed into her, and she’d lost control. Her fists flew out of their own accord, and her arms and legs flailed as she tried to get free so she could find Tammy, but they’d subdued her with a pair of strong hands and a quick injection of something that made her feel similar to the drugs Russell had slipped into her soda.
The next time she awoke, it was to sterile white walls and beeping machines in the hospital. Her parents had been anxiously waiting by her bedside, and eventually told her Tammy was dead. She’d insisted on seeing her best friend, even over her parents’ adamant protests. Rose squeezed her eyes shut. Damn, how she’d wished she’d listened to them. Tammy hadn’t looked anything like the beautiful girl Rose knew. Her once nearly flawless face was black and blue and swollen to nearly unrecognizable. Clumps of her shiny red hair had been ripped out, exposing bloody patches of her scalp, and her fingernails—which were almost always meticulously manicured—had been chipped and broken. Her clothes had been shredded, and claw marks marred her skin.
Rose had cried for days and never fully got over her friend’s death. She ended up delaying going to college—which only led to not going at all—and took bow and shooting lessons, self-defense classes, and buried herself in research about lycan folklore. At one time in her innocent life, she would have laughed at anyone who told her lycans were real, but now she knew only a monster could do what had been done to
Tammy—the other girls, it turned out, as well. Besides, hadn’t she seen one with her own eyes? She refused at that point to believe it had been a mere hallucination caused by the drug.
She’d been the only one of the girls to survive that night. The guilt over it had gnawed at her incessantly, day after day. At times she wished she’d died right along with Tammy and the others.
Why had she been spared? The familiar guilt still ate away at her at times, even though she’d finally accepted it for what it was—unexplainable. Obviously her life being spared when it should not have was just one of those things, like why someone who flipped a car to where it was an unrecognizable heap of mangled metal could walk away without so much as a scratch, and another would die from a simple fall in the backyard.
A year later she’d made her first kill—Russell—but not before she’d none too gently coaxed some information from him. She’d been sickened by his philosophy of life. He thought the world was his, thought he could do anything to anyone without consequences, actually believed it was his right to rape, torture, and hurt others. It hadn’t been all that hard to get everything out of him she wanted to know, as he’d bragged about most of it.
She hadn’t been all that surprised to learn about lycans’ speed, heightened senses, and ability to heal quickly, but there had been one thing that had thrown her off. The mating scent. All potential human mates had a unique scent that marked them as compatible to breed with lycans. A damned smell was the only reason
Tammy had been killed that night. All four of them had carried the scent that marked them as bait to all lycan, according to Russell. Unfortunately, the prick had refused to tell her about any lycan weaknesses or how to kill them, no matter how she’d tried to persuade him, but she’d figured that out all on her own.
Everything she’d researched pointed to silver, so she’d stuck a silver stake through Russell’s heart and watched him die, thinking even that had been too easy of a death after what he’d done to Tammy. While she hadn’t been able to muster enough emotion to regret ridding the world of such a monster, she’d had to shield herself from the guilt her heart caused her for killing another living thing.
After Russell, she’d devoted all of her time to getting rid of as many of the lycans as she could. She’d learned lots of tricks along the way—the deer urine to mask her scent was one of the better ones—but she didn’t forget that she’d never be the one with the upper hand in the battle.
Her breath hitched when the lycan she drew down on turned in her direction. Four scars that resembled claw marks ran from his forehead, over his eye, and stopped midway down his cheek. She had been made, and she had to take the shot now if she were to have even a slight chance of coming out of this alive. Her arm quivered from the effort of holding the string taut, and she released her fingers, letting the arrow whistle through the air toward its intended target. Her aim was true, but at the last second, the lycan twisted, and the arrow pierced its chest right beside the heart.
Her heart sank, then pounded furiously. She’d missed, and now she had to run for her life. She burst from the nest of dead branches she’d been using as cover and started in the direction she’d left her truck, when a bloodcurdling scream of rage echoed behind her. By her estimate, she was about four miles in, and the head start she had on the lycan would amount to little once the thing recovered from the shock of being shot and set after her. The adrenaline she’d tried to suppress only moments earlier was now her best friend.
She was in great shape, but as the deep snow and cold air took its toll, her strength waned. She’d been in tighter situations than this, and she’d get through this one—at least she thought she would, until the sound of dead branches crashed behind her as the lycan closed in. The fear that slithered up her spine gave pause to her doubts, making her wonder if she’d come out completely unscathed.
She focused on the line of trees marking her destination, trying hard not to think about the fact that she could practically feel the hot breath of her pursuer on her neck.
Within seconds, her truck came into view through the thick tree line, and relief poured through her, almost there. Maybe she would make it after all, but that thought was crushed, along with her body, when she was tackled from behind. The sheer weight of the beast knocked what little breath she had left from her lungs as she hit the ground hard. She’d assumed one day she’d die by the hands of a lycan. She just hoped that that day wasn’t today.
Chapter Two
Knox had been a hunter for far too long to not realize he was being followed again. He’d been tailed for around a month now, but had to admit that whoever his stalker was had a few tricks up his sleeve. He’d gotten close a few times to discovering who hunted him, but he’d always been a second too late to come face-to-face with his pursuer.
While the deer urine had fooled him for about a second, he couldn’t discount the cleverness of the trick, as it would probably work well in masking one’s scent from most lycans, especially the young rogues he helped keep in check. Being one of the few ancients left in a dwindling race, the wool was not so easily pulled over his eyes.