Hunter Fómhar

Hunter parked the truck two blocks away. Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he stepped out. He knew better than to get closer with the truck, engines carried farther than footsteps.

He also knew the route she took to get home, and tonight? Tonight was different.

The path she took wasn't her usual. He didn't care why she had chosen it, blocked road, exhaustion, and bad instinct. Reasons were for people who still had a say in what happened to them.

She didn't.

From the moment he'd first seen her, it had all built to this very night. She was a vessel, his mate, whether she understood that or not. He hadn't slept right in weeks. He hadn't wanted to, nor could he with her out there, breathing the same air as everything else that could take her away from him. She was the one meant to carry the next line of Fóhmars, keeping the blood from thinning out from existence.

He knew the outside world's rules for this. Courting. Slow hands, slower words, weeks wasted where she could already be carrying his pups.

Waste of time and a fucking moon cycle that was better spent making her pregnant with my pups.

Why bother to court what he could just take?

She turned into the alley, alone.

Perfect.

Those weeks of learning her routine had finally paid off.

She had needed luck every night to escape him, but he had only needed one. One night where he was lucky. One night where she slipped up. And she had.

Now the wolf was tracking.

Hunter followed, making sure to keep a good distance back from her. He knew how humans were. Finicky little things. If he spooked her, she'd bolt. Some leftover animal sense humans hadn't managed to breed out of themselves yet. He hated that about them. It was an honest instinct, but it was also an annoying one for him. Always going off at the worst possible moments.

His boots made no sound against the cracked pavement of the dying, weary town. His eyes never left the woman ahead.

The alley was situated between two buildings, dark, and narrow. The streets were empty. The last porch light went out.

Now.

He took two long strides and that's all it took to close the distance between them. He didn't use a rag or chemicals, just one clean hit to the back of her head, forceful enough to knock her out, but not enough to truly hurt her. She folded and he caught her with his arm before she could drop to the ground.

Didn't need to rough up his own future for nothing. Only what the job required.

He slung her over his shoulder. To him, she weighed almost nothing.

He walked back to the truck.

He knew if anyone saw they would turn a blind eye. Rydeshill had learned to mind its business a long time ago.

He buckled her in, her head coming to rest against the window, and drove them home in silence.

---

Butch was already waiting on the porch, the headlights of his own stolen truck sweeping across him and the yard.

His father didn't yell. He never did. His jaw clenched, his calloused hands curling into fists like he was holding himself back from swinging on him.

“You tryna get us killed boy?” Hunter didn't flinch, didn't give excuses he didn't owe. “She's new. Nobody's gonna come lookin’,” he said, like it was a fact. “I did it for the pack. For the blood.”

Butch chewed on that, staring at him for a few good minutes before his fists loosened by his side as the argument slowly won him out, as it always did.

“Fine,” he grunted roughly. “Keep her quiet. I ain't wanna hear one peep outta that basement, y’hear? Ain't just your neck on your line here, boy.”

---

The basement was quiet save for her breathing and his own.

Hunter sat forward on a stolen kitchen chair, his forearms braced on his knees, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest like it was the only thing worth watching in the world. Her body was curled on the tarp, the dried blood on it a persistent scent to his nose.

Open your eyes.

He would wait as long as it took. He always did when what he wanted was worth waiting for.

She was his. She already belonged to him more than she knew. The lesson hadn't even started yet.

He'd never understood why humans liked diners. Too many voices. Too many smells. Too many people pretending they weren't listening to each other.

He parked across from the diner ‘cause the light inside made it easy to keep track of her, and the dark outside meant he was impossible to spot.

She was drying glasses behind the counter inside, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, laughing at something the old man three stools down had said. The fact she didn't know was what he liked about her. She had no idea her whole life had already been narrowed down to a truck window and the man watching from it.

Not yet.

He wasn't stupid, he knew patience didn't make him a better man. He knew exactly the kind of man he was. He already knew exactly what he was going to do to her. Tonight wasn't the night.

Tonight he was just looking.

He'd only first seen her a couple of hours ago, and yet he knew she was meant to be his.

He watched the curve of her throat as she laughed, his wolf inside of him itching to sink his teeth into the soft flesh. He tracked the way she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear without thinkin' about it, some unconscious habit of hers that would be his to memorize soon enough. He filed it away, with everything else he had taken from her without her knowing it.

Gonna know every one of those little habits. Gonna know them better than she does. Gonna watch her do them in my kitchen, in my bed, round with my pups, and she won't even remember there was ever a version of her life where I wasn't standing right—

A car passed, headlights sweeping the dark cab. He went still, his jaw tightening, his eyes never leaving the window. Never leaving her figure.

She hadn't looked up.

Good.

Every minute spent in town was another minute the ranch wasn't getting worked.

Lucy was talking. Hunter wasn't listening.

He trailed half a step behind her on the one real Rydeshill had, hands shoved into his pockets, doing the math on how fast this errand could end so he could get back to something that mattered. Feed order. New rope for the barn. Something that wasn't Lucy's mouth running about some magazine she wasn't supposed to have.

The first thing he picked up on was the scent drifting out the diner door. It was pleasant in a way that most things in the town weren't. Not the usual scent of cheap coffee or the smell of wheat.

The diner door swung open just as he was about to reach the truck, and his attention shifted entirely.

She stepped out balancing a tray she had no business carrying that easily, sleeves rolled up, hair coming loose from whatever she'd tied it back with that morning. He didn't recognize her. He'd made a point of remembering everyone in town. New, he was sure of it.

Huh.

Lucy kept talking, but he stopped in place before he could even realize he was doing it.

Something in him, low and old, sat up and began to pay attention, the same instinct that told him where a fence line was weak or which cow in the herd would drop first. He didn't have a word for it yet, not one he'd say out loud anyways. Just a fact settling into his chest like a brand finding skin.

Her.

Lucy noticed him lagging and turned, following his gaze halfway before he caught himself and started walking again, his jaw set, his eyes forward like he hadn't just rearranged the next several months around a stranger pouring coffee.

“What?” Lucy asked, interest piqued in a way that usually meant trouble. To a troublemaker like her, finding something to exploit against him seemed like a gold mine.

Her lips were curved into a grin that he knew was more trouble than the soft, innocent curiosity she tried to portray.

“Nothin’.” He didn't look back. He didn't need to. He already knew he'd be finding a reason to come back to this street alone.