“Uncle Ted?”
He turned to her, and in his eyes she saw the monster she tried to pretend didn’t exist. “Hey, honey. Having a problem with the wildlife. Killed our chickens.” His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t see anything strange out there, did you?”
“N-no.” She trembled and the tray in her hands shook. “I just finished my homework and thought you might be thirsty. So I b-brought you some tea.” She swallowed hard, looking around. “What happened?”
He regarded her for a moment, and again she had the sense he’d know if she lied. She’d told the truth. Tenth grade algebra annoyed the heck out of her, but Uncle Ted demanded perfection in his student. He’d been homeschooling her for the past five years, ever since he’d taken her in when her parents died. She still feared him, big bad Uncle Ted who had no problem beating men until they bled. Her cousins too. No one was safe from his temper, so she did her best to remain small, quiet, invisible.
She’d thought bringing him something to drink would erase her snooping into his office the other day. She couldn’t be sure, but she swore he knew she’d been there, as if he could smell her whereabouts at all times. To hear him tell it, he would do anything for his beloved sister’s daughter. He kept the boys away, made sure she had a roof over her head and food on the table. And after beating her that once, he’d never laid a finger on her again.
He scared the ever-loving crap out of her.
“Wolves, Sophie. They somehow found our barn and made a mess. Killed Scottie and Bernard too.”
She stared in horror. “Scottie?” Her favorite dog, the German Shepherd who’d taken to her right off. Bernard guarded the barn from predators—a rangier mutt, he was her cousin Brett’s pride and joy.
Tears trickled down her cheeks.
“Oh, honey. I’m sorry you had to hear it like this.”
As he said it, he stepped aside, and she saw a mangled body of fur and blood by the tractor. Good God, she could see part of Scottie’s skull and an eyeball hanging out of it.
She dropped the tray, turned and threw up, shivering and in shock.
“Good. Get it out.” Her uncle turned and barked at Brett, “Take Sophie in the house, then get your brothers and the neighbors. We need to clean this up. Almost broke away that time.” But he sounded excited, not upset, and she didn’t want to know any more. Because a part of her had wondered about the hay scattered over the uneven floor in the corner—hay that couldn’t quite conceal that door in the floor. Better to know nothing. Better to stay away, quiet. Far, far from danger.
“Sophie? Honey, I’m okay. It’s in the past.” Monty looked at her with concern and wiped away her tears.
Oh God. Her uncle had imprisoned Monty. For six years.
“Wh-what did he do to you?” she whispered.
He glanced at his chest, where she saw the faded but still visible scars from events past. “He hurt me whenever he could. Tried to break me. I fought a lot in the pits, hellholes he reserved for Ac-taw to fight each other. Didn’t matter if we didn’t want to fight. He or his buddies would shoot one of us if we didn’t do the job ourselves. Only one animal ever left the pits alive at a time. He killed a lot of friends of mine.” Monty grew quiet. “There’s something really wrong about that man. More than him being a Hunter. He never seemed to age. Not even when I saw him a few weeks ago after seven years of being gone.”
“What?” She sat up. “What are you saying? He’s here?”
“Easy. He has no way of knowing where we are. Cougar Falls has the totem. We’re protected.” Only Ac-taw could see Cougar Falls under the totem’s protection. But that didn’t relieve her. “Norris is still Hunting. The fu—friggin’ psycho kidnapped Stacey and Dean a few weeks ago.”
When the cats had been taken by Hunters, it had been big news in town. “That was him? The same man who tortured you? T-Ted Norris?”
“The same. Talk about coincidence.” He snorted. “He saw me during the rescue. He knows I’m near, and he won’t stop until he finds me. Bastard had a hard-on for me I never understood.”
But Sophie knew. She’d overheard her uncle talk about that Demon for years, the one that eventually got away. To him, Monty presented the ultimate challenge. And her uncle could never walk away from the urge to dominate. Monty had outsmarted the great Ted Norris. He’d be nothing more than a trophy to be mounted to Uncle Ted’s wall, not a wolf that had defeated the “best Hunter to have ever lived.”
“But I don’t understand. Why do you have to go after him?” Why couldn’t they live in peace in Cougar Falls, where he couldn’t find them? Let someone else from the order hunt him down.
“Rumor has it he’s setting up a new fighting pit. A Hunter’s Folly, they call them.”
She remembered celebrating Hunter’s Folly each year, a special time, her uncle had called it, when he and his friends gathered to see each other again and talk about old times. She felt sick, recalling how she’d joined in the laughter and cooked to her heart’s content for the yearly occasions.
“Don’t go. Please,” she begged. “Stay here with me.”
Monty’s expression softened. He stroked her cheek. “I can’t. Joy Bermin, Miles’s sister? She’s missing. Miles thinks she might be in trouble. And honey, I live and work in Whitefish, outside of Cougar Falls. I can’t hide here in town forever, hoping Norris leaves. He’s an evil man, Soph. I can’t let him keep on hunting and killing our kind.”
Our kind. What would he think if he knew she was more than Ac-taw, but a direct relation to that evil? She shivered, wondering how her happiness had turned sour so quickly.
“Sophie, it’s okay. I’ll come back. I promise.”
She shook her head and threw herself into his arms. “I don’t want you to go. I love you, Monty. He’s a bad man. Can’t you just leave him alone?”
He pushed her from him and looked into her eyes. She thought she saw disappointment there. “I couldn’t live with myself if I hid out here while he killed more Ac-taw. He has to be stopped. A man like him won’t quit until he’s dead.”
She knew he was right, but the hollow in her gut tore at her. Monty might die. Her uncle could kill him, and that would happen after Ted finished torturing him to within an inch of his life. Her wolf growled in her breast.
“Yeah, there she is.” Monty chuckled. “You never let your wolf out to play, but when I sense her, she’s got my back.”
Sophie felt immediate shame. For all that they’d mated, she had yet to run with the man she loved or show him her wolf. “I’m sorry.” For being less than you deserve. For bringing this danger to your door. For so much I can’t say.
“It’s okay. When I get back, we’ll take it slow, and we’ll run together when you’re ready.”
God, how could he be so understanding?
“A better mate would take care of you. I should have run with you before, and now it might be too late.” She sniffed and wiped away more tears. What if her uncle had been nosing around because he’d been following Sophie’s trail? What if he’d happened upon Stacey and Dean while looking for his wayward niece?
Jesus, she hadn’t thought about that possibility. Guilt ate at her. She’d brought danger to the people she loved. Some bad karma for not doing more to help the battered Ac-taw when she’d had the chance.