The Hunted

Sixteen

Blake

"Tell me why we failed. What went wrong?"

Blake stared at Malachi's face, harsh in the moonlight streaming in through the window. Half of it obscured in shadow, the sharp features of his cheekbones and jaw prominent. The majority of the room where the moon's reach didn't touch was bathed in darkness.

It hadn't been a surprise when she'd received his text near-midnight, eight days after her return to Beare Lake. Frankly, she'd been more surprised that he'd waited over a week before summoning her back to his bed.

She's almost turned him down, refused to answer his summons. But it had been curiosity, not lust, that had brought her back to this room.

Here, in his bed, Malachi was always more willing to share the truths he tightly guarded during daylight hours. Today, Blake wanted to know what had happened in that werewolf pack because until now no one had been forthcoming about why the hunt had failed so spectacularly. It had been eating away at her, a near-present thought, as she readjusted to life at Beare Lake.

And as she grappled with the proposal he'd given her.

"This is what you want to talk about now? Not about how much you missed me?"

Malachi tried to grin but it faltered when he beheld her face. Stoic and hard. He sighed. "It should have been easy. Daryl's team went in first and they took out those two werewolves that were guarding the hole. The hole should have been bigger. We should have been able to send more people in at the start and then afterwards, it became a bottleneck as we tried to get everyone out.

"We had the jump on them," Malachi continued. "Those monsters didn't know we were there. I had the damn Beta in my crosshairs. I was ready to take the shot and blow his fucking head off and then Brullo got trigger happy and went a second too early."

There was a trace of pain in his voice. Brullo hadn't made it out alive.

But Blake's ear had caught something interesting. "You said the Beta was a guy?"

Malachi raised a brow at her question but nodded. "That's what our intel said. Tall guy, dark hair, green eyes. As a wolf, he had a russet-coloured coat."

Red.

She had been dreaming of him – of those shifting forest green eyes. The eyes that stayed the same whether he was a man or wolf. In her dreams, he was always in both forms. Walking next to her on either side through a moonlit forest on her way to the exit of the pack.

"Well, your intel is wrong," Blake told him, even as something twisted in her stomach.

It felt like a betrayal in some ways. Red had set her free. It felt wrong to speak of him to Malachi but at the same time, her duty was to her people. Malachi would want to know the truth about the pack hierarchy.

"Wrong?" Malachi asked. He lifted his head off the pillow slightly.

"I met the Beta. Blonde-haired female who knows a surprising amount of celebrity gossip for someone who lives as a recluse in the woods. The wolf you had in your crosshairs was their Lead Warrior. He's the one that let me go."

"You're shitting me."

Blake shook her head and ignored the sinking feeling in her gut. "No, I'm serious."

Malachi's shock was palpable and it wasn't hard to guess why. Most hunters knew enough about werewolf packs to know that they were often patriarchal. Having a female as their Beta must have meant that she was surely something special.