Hunter's Heart

Chapter 23

The black wolf was filled with an urgency he had never felt before. Something was wrong, he just knew it.

He ran through the trees as quickly as he could, every passing minute that went by making his anxiety grow more and more.

He caught the scent of blood in the air and kicked up the speed. He needed to get home. Now.

Only when he reached home, he almost wished he hadn't.

The scene was utter carnage. There was blood everywhere, the ground soaked with it. His pack brothers and sisters were all dead around the den grounds. They had been butchered, there was no other way to describe the sickening scene around him.

He turned his attention to the house and bolted inside, his heart hammering hard against his ribs. Where were his parents? Where was his uncle? He ran through the house with an urgency he had never known before, trying his best to block out the scenes around him as he searched for his family. He had to find them. Please let them be okay!

And then he found them, or what was left of them.

Humans shouldn't have been able to do it, but his family had been strewn around the study in pieces. Only the fact that he knew them enabled him to tell which body part belonged to whom. Bile rose up in his throat.

No! he thought in horror as he looked at what had once been his loving family. NO! Those monsters!

His mother, his father, his uncle ... his whole family gone ... taken from him by Hunters ...

As the rage at the loss of his entire pack boiled through his blood, the black wolf sat back and howled out his pain.

*

Quinn came awake with the howl of pain ringing in her ears. It hadn't been her nightmare that she had just experienced, she was certain of that, but the touch of Christian's mind was now as familiar to her as her own. It seemed their bond was allowing her a little further access into her Alpha's mind so that she could get inside even when he was asleep.

It was still dark, which told her that it was most likely the middle of the night and it took her a moment to remember why her surroundings were unfamiliar, to remember that she was in Christian's room and not her own.

After her sudden fit of rage from Liam's teasing the night before, it had felt as if all of her energy had been drained. She had barely had enough left in her to eat the pancakes Christian had thoughtfully brought her to eat.

The huge bed the pair of them had been sitting on while she ate had looked so inviting when she was done, but just having her Alpha sitting so close to her as he watched her eat made her reconsider. She hadn't known what she had done to make him angry with her before he had left to get her something to eat, but she hadn't wanted to provoke him any more than Liam had.

"I think I'm going to go turn in," she had said as she got to her feet, stifling a yawn. "Thank you for the food, Alpha."

"Not a chance," Christian had objected, his lips forming into the hard disapproving line Quinn had become accustomed to while his gaze came to rest on the bruises forming around her throat. "Silvia won't be the only one to try and lash out at you out of some misplaced sense of jealousy."

The disapproving expression had turned into a lazy one while he had lain back with his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.

"You're staying right here where I can keep an eye on you," he had said with an almost contented sounding sigh. "I'll have Sophia bring over some of your things a bit later. I'm sure she'd love to visit with you now that you're up and about again."