Chapter Thirty-one
Traipsing through a shallow, trickling creek, Ripper glanced around Bloodhill Forest, ever vigilant. His boots stopped his feet from getting wet, but the water’s icy coldness seeped through.
Several of his clan were hunting game with him, including his brother – who currently walked alongside him. Others were scattered around, but none were too far away.
Adjusting his hold on his bow, Ripper stepped onto dry land. Typically, they didn’t wander too far into the forest when hunting. It wasn’t necessary. The Rabid tended to hole up near the mountains, so the wildlife found a home closer to the town where they were safer.
Though it was unlikely that they’d stumble upon any Rabid while hunting, it was best to be cautious.
The Rabid slept during the day, but they would wake if you came too close to their lair and attempt to scare you away.
Those occasions were few and far between, but they did happen.
Which was why every hunter took handguns.
Arrows wouldn’t take down Rabid. A silver bullet? Different story.
A fatal shot wasn’t necessary – the silver would weaken the Rabid enough that they couldn’t fight as they were dragged back to town, where they could be helped.
At one time, people used to regularly go to Bloodhill to capture Rabid so they could return them to their natural state.
But the creatures were hard to track, and it meant roaming deep into Bloodhill.
That was risky, especially when Rabid tended to travel in packs and would attack without a qualm.
Too often people had been badly injured and forced to kill Rabid in their own defense, which no one wanted on their conscience.
Nowadays, people generally only attempted to search for newly turned Rabid. They were easier to find and usually traveled alone because they didn’t instantly join packs. Once upon a time, they’d searched for Ripper, too.
It was strange for him to think that this forest had once been his home. For four damn years he’d lived out here. Yet, he felt no sense of comfort.
He was better at traversing it than most, his sense of direction spot on. As if he’d retained memories of the typography. But he didn’t look at any landmarks and feel nostalgia or experience any flashbacks.
The hazy memories of his time here were vague and short. He could see flashes of a cave in his mind. Of fights with other Rabid. Of stalking a fox. Of splashing in a stream. But there was no ‘story’ to follow and piece together.
The forest was like many others in the world.
There were miles upon miles of trees that seemed tall enough to scrape the sky.
Sporadic bursts of wildflowers and shrubbery could be seen.
There were creeks, rivers, waterfalls and even hot springs.
The air was fresh and scented of tree sap, warm earth and moss.
But Bloodhill differed in one respect. It had a gloomy, ominous feel. A vibe made worse by the number of dead, crooked trees.
It was quiet. Too quiet. As if every bit of wildlife had adapted to be silent so as to avoid the Rabid’s detection. There were rarely tweets or chirps, rarely any deer grazing in plain sight, hardly any glimpses of squirrels hurrying up trunks or even lizards zipping through the underbrush.
All he could hear right then was the creak of branches, the skitter of fallen leaves, the trickle of the creek, the sound of their boots scuffing ground . . . and the yawn that at that moment cracked Logan’s jaw.
Ripper spared his brother a glance. ‘That’s the fifth time you’ve yawned in the space of an hour.’
Logan shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t weighed down by his backpack’s strap. They all took supplies such as food, water and first aid necessities. ‘What can I say? Clem knows how to exhaust a guy in bed.’
‘You two seeing each other now?’
Logan wrinkled his nose. ‘Sort of. We’re keeping it light. At least for the time being.’
‘Light?’ Ripper snorted. ‘You’ve spent so much time with her lately I’ve barely seen you.’
‘That’s partly because you’re always with your witch.’ Logan plucked a berry off a nearby bush. ‘Things still seem to be going good with you two.’ There was a questioning note in his tone.
‘They are.’ It had been a little over two weeks since the ‘green and moldy hair’ incident.
Ripper still saw Emberlyn every day, and they never spent a night apart.
Which, as a guy who liked his space, he would have thought he’d struggle with – attachment or no attachment.
But being around her steadied him. Relaxed him. Made him feel recharged.
Logan tossed the berry into his mouth. ‘When are you gonna claim her, then?’
Ripper’s step faltered in surprise.
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t at least considered it.’
His hand flexing around his bow, Ripper walked onward as he admitted, ‘I actually didn’t let my mind go there.’
Logan’s brows flew together. ‘Why not? You’re totally gone for her. Lost.’
Ripper didn’t feel lost – that implied a sense of drifting, of disorientation, of struggling to find his way. He knew that from personal experience. Emberlyn was solid ground. An anchor. One he held tight to.
But gone for her? Yeah, that was accurate. It was just that . . . ‘I never imagined I’d take anyone as a mate.’
Logan watched him so closely he almost tripped over a tree root. ‘Has this got something to do with what Mom went through when Dad died in front of her?’
Ripper swallowed, his gut twisting. ‘I can still hear that scream. The agony in it, the mindless rage . . .’ It had been the cry of a broken soul.
‘There’s a very big difference between our mom and Emberlyn,’ said Logan, his voice soft.
‘What’s that?’
‘If something happened to you, Emberlyn wouldn’t lose all control and throw herself into a fight she couldn’t win. She’d fucking destroy everyone she held accountable – and she’d do it right there right then with a minimal amount of struggle.’
Ripper felt his lips almost twitch. Yeah, his witch would do exactly that. She was no slave to her emotions, even when they were running high.
‘You never envisioned yourself claiming CeCe?’
‘Not once.’ Ripper inadvertently kicked a pebble, sending it skipping along the ground. ‘You?’
‘Too many times,’ Logan mumbled.
‘You were right in what you said. You care for her far more than I ever did.’
‘You meant what you told her, didn’t you? You never actually loved her.’
‘I meant it,’ Ripper verified.
‘She’s kept her head down since the whole hair-turning-green thing a fortnight ago.
I think she’s still shaken over it,’ Logan added, a hint of humor in his voice.
‘Much as she will have known that Emberlyn’s a vengeful creature, I don’t think she was prepared for your witch to do anything like that. ’
His brother wasn’t the only one who’d found it amusing. Ripper had been wrong to worry that his clan would be so unnerved by Emberlyn’s actions that they wouldn’t want her around. On the contrary, they respected that demonstration of strength and pitilessness.
‘It was a genius punishment on Emberlyn’s part – she forced CeCe to have to own up to her actions and admit to a difficult truth.’ Halting, Logan turned to him. ‘And now you’ve gotta admit to your own difficult truth.’
Stopping at his brother’s side, Ripper frowned. ‘Which is what?’
Logan regarded him with a serious expression.
‘You have some decisions to make regarding Emberlyn. You might be okay now with how things currently are between you, but that won’t last. We’re werewolves.
It’s in us to claim what we intend to keep.
You won’t be able to fight it unless you break away from her before it gets too late. ’
‘Break away?’ Ripper all but snarled.
‘Walk, or get over your reservations about mating – one or the other. To not claim her wouldn’t spare her pain if she lost you, it would just mean you weren’t mated.’
Ripper ground his teeth, his thoughts—
‘Fuck.’ The barked curse made them both tense. It had come from Crew. A birdcall came next – a Get over here message from the werewolf in question.
Ripper and Logan tracked the sound, finding Crew staring at a tree. Their other clan members materialized, coming from various directions.
‘What is it?’ asked Ripper.
He pointed at the tree. ‘That.’
Ripper did a double-take. A pile of skulls and other bones – most covered in stringy flesh and blood – rested against the large tree.
‘Jesus,’ Kerr breathed.
‘What could have done that?’ asked Crew. ‘I mean, I can smell Rabid piss – you can’t mistake it for anything else; it’s too distinctive. But they don’t collect the remains of their kills and stack them like this.’
Ripper glanced around, noticing there were deep grooves in the nearby trees. But some claw marks were smaller than others, as if not all were made by the same creature.
‘They do now,’ said Logan. ‘Because there’s nothing else out here that would. You ask me, it’s a Stay away from my territory message.’
Crew frowned. ‘Rabid mark their slice of territory, but they don’t use scare tactics to keep other packs away. Why would one suddenly do this?’
‘Maybe because this has somehow become a public area,’ said Ripper.
‘Generally, the leader of the pack will do the marking, but there’s more than one urine marker here.
I can smell several. And not all the rake marks were done by the same Rabid.
More than one pack has come here, and it’s like they keep coming; feel compelled to claim it. ’
Logan scratched his nape. ‘Why, though? Sure, there’s plenty of wildlife to hunt in these parts. But no Rabid needs to settle in this particular spot. What could be drawing them here?’
‘Maybe they have something to do with it,’ said Crew.
Following the path of his friend’s gaze, Ripper noticed that two small symbols had been carved into the same tree against which the bones were piled.
‘What the hell are they?’ asked Logan.