Hunter and the Hart

The Hunt Begins

Hunter

I tore through the woods, chasing my mate. From the second she entered the dense underbrush, she seemed to disappear. Her scent trail was spotty at best, but still enough for me to track. It took less than 10 minutes, though, to lose her entirely. Her scent stopped at a small creek behind what I can only assume was her house, now up in flames. I ran in circles around that creek for nearly half an hour trying to pick up any hint of her, getting increasingly aggravated at finding nothing.

"How could we lose her?" Orion snarled in my head, pacing back and forth. "She was right there. No human can run that fast."

"I don't know." I replied bitterly. "But I will find her. And when I do, we'll never lose her again. I guarantee it." I continued circling, wider now, in the hopes of catching that tantalizing scent.

"Hunter." My father boomed across the pack link, making me shake my head.

"Yes Alpha?" I did my best to keep my voice even, to not let my frustration leak through, while my claws flexed in and out of the damp soil beside the water.

"Where are you? Your brother has already returned. The witches are all dead, I understand?" His voice was somehow both agitated and uninterested.

I rolled my eyes following the creek farther down. "I'm following a trail." 

"Well, come back." He ordered, and I could picture him narrowing his eyes at me. "We have work to do, and I can't have my strongest warrior galivanting about the forest chasing some useless mystery."

"Yes, Alpha." I gritted out, heading back to the back border. I hesitated at the border proper for as long as I dared, crying out for my mate once again, hoping beyond hope that she might hear me and come to me. I knew she wouldn't, but I waited anyway. She never came.

I walked back to the pack house slowly, my ears constantly swiveling back toward the boundary, Orion whining. "We should be out there finding our mate, not dealing with whatever petty shit Henry decided he doesn't want to. He's the next alpha, he should be dealing with all this."

I silently agreed with him, my tail dropping as low as my mood by the time I arrived. I shifted back at the side door, grabbing a pair of shorts and a tank from the basket that's always left for those just finishing training or border patrol. Trudging up the stairs I knocked only once on my father's office door before opening it. I walked in, dropping morosely onto the couch along the side wall, my hands rubbing absently over my face.

"Dude, what the hell happened to you?" Henry pulled one of the office chairs in front of me, sitting down slowly.

"I lost her trail." I sighed, dropping my head on the back of the couch. "She was so close, and then she was gone." The words were barely more than a breath, but I could hear the way my father shifted in his chair.

"Her?" His voice was odd, almost soft as he leaned his elbows on his desk. "Whose trail were you tracking, Hunter?" 

I closed my eyes, willing Orion back as he tried to surge forward, livid that our father had forced us from the hunt for our mate. I focused on the one thing that always worked, piano lessons with my mother. Letting my fingers run through one of her favorite songs, "As the World Falls Down". Neither Henry nor our father would be able to tell the song, but they both knew that I have always used music to calm myself down. I still had to stifle a few growls as dad kept pestering me about whose trail I had been following.

"It was my mate." I murmured when Orion finally finished his tirade and retreated to the recesses of my mind. 

"Your....mate?" My father's voice was thick with confusion. "You found her?"

"For a moment. If jackass here hadn't tried to attack her, I'd already have her. Now I have to go after her." I stood up, stretching slightly. "And I will. If you do not give me permission to go after her, however long it takes, however far she's gone, then I will leave this pack, and go after her anyway, leaving you with no way to contact me." I met my brother's eyes, and then my father's. "You cannot use an alpha command on me, and you already know that. So this is your only warning, father. Either stay out of my way, or lose me forever." I knew that alphas don't like being challenged, and yet, I refused to look away from his eyes. And by the look on his face, he knew that I was serious. 

He lowered his head with a sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Hunter. You have never disobeyed me. You have always been my best warrior, and though we need your strength, I would never dream of keeping you from your mate." He gazed wistfully at the family portrait hanging above the fireplace opposite me, mom smiling brightly as she leaned against his side. "I wish you all the years I wish I'd had with mine. I look forward to meeting her." He smiled sadly and waved me from his office. 

"Thank you. I'll be starting first thing in the morning." He nodded and I practically ran to my room, Orion begging to start now. But we both knew that we'd get nowhere at night. If she was as smart as she seemed, and as knowledgeable about the surrounding forest, she'd already gone to ground. Daytime was our best chance. 

Trying to get any sleep was torture. I wanted to listen to Orion, to tear through the door and just find my mate, hold her to me, and never let her go. Tomorrow. We'll find her tomorrow. I repeated it in my head like a mantra, like a prayer, like a rope I was clinging to for my life. 

But setbacks are to be expected in life. Henry dragged me to school, to see if his own mate had was there. I love my brother, but we both would have been better not coming today. 

He found his mate, a human who had moved to town while we had been away, a young woman of average build, with shoulder length black hair falling haphazardly around her face. Cara, she'd said her name was, introducing herself with a weird expression.

"I'm waiting for someone." She leaned on a locker, scanning the faces walking through the hall. "She doesn't seem to be coming, which is weird. She's usually early." She gnawed on the inside of her cheek, not even paying attention to Henry's sad attempt at flirting. 

We didn't see her again that day. It was a solid week before she came back to school. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and the dark circles under her eyes said she hadn't slept much, and had been crying a lot. But no matter how much Henry tried to talk to her, she just shook her head or hiccupped out a stifled sob.  I took a mild interest in her because she had traces of my mate's scent on her.

On the eighth day the only thing she managed to say without crying was, "She left. Why did she leave?" 

I mentally cursed myself that day. I had been calling to her every night while searching the forest. She must have fled. 

"Why would our mate run from us?" Orion whimpered softly. "We would never hurt her."

"She might not know that, Orion." I took to the forest once again, that afternoon, finally catching that elusive scent. "But I'll make sure that she understands, eventually."