Hunter's Heart

Chapter 16

She could feel the Alpha's eyes on her back as they walked and it made her self-conscious. She should have put the stupid sweatshirt back on when they left the clearing where Grayson and Melissa were.

"The scars on your back," she heard him say, breaking the tense silence they had endured since leaving the clearing, and she stopped, bristling.

"What about them?" she asked softly.

This wasn't something she wanted to bring up with anyone, least of all Christian. And why the hell did he sound like he actually gave a damn?

She could hear him approaching her and she tensed when she sensed him standing just a heartbeat behind her. He was so close she could feel his body heat against her skin.

Don't touch me, she thought desperately and flinched when she felt gentle fingertips tracing one of the long lines that ran over the back of her right shoulder. A moment later, she felt his free hand curl around her left side, as if he were trying to hold her in place.

"Tell me," he said.

"What do you want to know?" Quinn asked.

"Everything."

*

"Treason!" Viktor Antonov announced coldly as he and the rest of the Hunter Council looked down at her. "Alexandra Antanov, for your crime against the Hunter Order, you no longer have the right to call yourself a Hunter or an Antanov. The punishment will be five lashes and banishment, to be carried out immediately."

Quinn expected nothing less for what she had done. The whole purpose for the Hunter Order was to kill monsters and she had let almost one hundred of them go.

She let herself be shackled to a post in the middle of a viewing area where the Council could oversee the punishment. And when the first bite of the whip cracked against her back, she bit back the urge to scream in agony. The back of her right shoulder felt as if it was on fire, but she wouldn't give them the satisfaction of hearing her pain.

One after the other, the whip was brought down across her back and every time she made no sound, the next lash got even harder, bit even deeper.

When it was over, Quinn was gasping for breath and her back felt as if someone had set it on fire. She was released from the shackles and watched as her grandfather approached her with a cruel emptiness in his expression.

"You are an utter disappointment," he said, before he backhanded her so hard her ears rang and she tasted blood. Unable to keep her balance, Quinn fell to the floor and cracked her head on the stone floor of the viewing area.

She had no idea how long she had been unconscious, but when she woke, she found herself in a holding cell beneath the Antanov home and long cuts into her back had been sewed up. As she tried not to focus on how much pain she was in, she thought about her actions.

The people in that encampment clearly had no idea that they were about to be set upon by a small army of Hunters. They were unprepared, nothing like the growing army Viktor had told everyone they were. They were just people, innocent and scared.

The only monsters she had seen in that encampment had been the Hunters.

Every pain she had endured afterwards had been worth it, she was sure of it, but did that mean that everything she had ever been taught about the supernatural races been a lie?

"Such a waste."

Quinn turned to the bars of her cell to see her cousin Jessa watching her with an expression that was nothing short of glee. The slim blonde with cold grey eyes very much like Viktor's had always been jealous of the time their grandfather had put into training Quinn. She resented Quinn with a passion that had led to Quinn being blamed for countless of the bitch's pranks over the years. She enjoyed making Quinn's life a living hell whenever she could.