Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Tammy bent over and grasped his face with both hands. Then she rubbed them against his skin and slid her hands down to his neck.
“W-what are you doing?” the man asked, and I gaped at both of them.
Tammy’s hands were now on his pec muscles. She giggled, making me smile, but I had to stop her before we got in more trouble.
“In the movies, tickling the captives always works,” she said.
I rolled my eyes at her. “Please stop touching him, girl.”
The man grinned and then laughed. “I don’t mind, ladies.”
What were we doing here? Our so-called prisoner was laughing instead of giving us information.
“What the hell is going on here?” a deep male voice boomed from the entrance of the alley.
The second man had found us. The laughing immediately stopped. Tammy froze. And I stood with pepper spray in my hand next to them.
But as the dark figure stepped closer, I figured my plan wouldn’t work, and Tammy and I were doomed. Soon we were going to be prisoners. No more silly games.
We had a big problem. The second young man held a crossbow with a drawn arrow. He moved the crossbow from me to Tammy, back and forth, as if he couldn’t decide who to shoot at first.
I stared at the silver tip of the arrow. Handmade. Familiar. And then it hit me. These were similar arrows to those used by the hunters when they attacked us during the annual winter hunt Dad led onto the mountain.
We’d been ambushed by the hunters with the same imperfect silver-tip arrows.
The hunters were the werewolves’ number two enemy, so Tammy and my situation hadn’t brightened up.
“Get your hands off him,” the man said and pointed the crossbow at Tammy’s chest.
With a twitch of his finger, he could release it. Since it was such a short distance between them, Tammy would have no chance to dodge or survive the damage.
Blood rushed to my head, and adrenaline infused my veins.
We were supposed to apprehend this man, but instead, our lives were now in the hands of a hunter.
“Can we all cool off for a moment, please?” I asked. “Let me explain. We were only concerned with the safety of the people in the shelter.”
“And what business do you have with them?” the man with the crossbow asked.
“They are human beings, and so are we. We look out for each other.”
Tammy gazed at me. I almost rolled my eyes at her. Technically, I had witch blood in me.
I touched my bracelet, but it didn’t pulse and wouldn’t help me anymore. So what kind of witch was I without any powers? I still felt like a human.
I put my hands up, palms out. “Please let me talk to the hunter leader. We mean no harm. I promise.”
Tammy withdrew her hands away from the guy.
“Then release him,” the man demanded.
Tammy looked at me, and I nodded. We had no choice but to comply and hope they didn’t kill us.
“If you let me talk to your leader, I can explain everything. It was just a misunderstanding,” I said.
Tammy reached to the V-neck of her shirt, and her fingers fumbled with her bra.
She shrugged. “What? The handcuff key is so tiny, I was afraid I would lose it, so I hid it in my bra.”
I smiled at her, and the two men chuckled. The man on the ground stood and walked up to his buddy.
“You’ll stay here until we make it to the street. Then you are free to go,” the other man said, and I frowned.
I was glad the hunters didn’t want to kill us, but I didn’t know what they were doing at the shelter. Were they guarding it, then? But from what or who?
The men were walking away, but I couldn’t let them.
“I am Princess Breanna Allen from the werewolf kingdom.” I watched as the men halted and turned. “If the hunter leader finds out that you let go of the Princess so easily, he wouldn’t be happy. Don’t you think?”
“Bree,” Tammy whispered next to me, “what are you doing?”
“We’re going to see the hunter leader.”
The men stood some distance away from us, gaping at me. One of them recovered and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. After a moment, he placed the phone back in his pants pocket.
“Follow us. It’s your lucky day, ladies. You’re coming with us to the hunters’ headquarters,” he said.
His buddy scowled at us and then looked at his friend. “What? They’re coming with us to HQ?”
“It seems that way. The hunter leader wants the women all to himself. He’ll interrogate them himself, he said.”
We strode behind the men to their car. Tammy nudged me with her arm.
“Bree,” she whispered, “how much trouble are we going to be in?”
I sucked in a shallow breath. “The hunters protect humans, and they usually attack supernaturals if they cross the line.”
Tammy furrowed her brows. “I don’t mind talking to him. As long as he doesn’t have an arrow aimed at our chests.”
The hunter men didn’t blindfold us. They acted so civilized and were the perfect gentlemen that goose bumps rose on my forearms. After a short drive to the other side of the outskirts of town, the hunter parallel parked on the street, and both men stepped out of the car, waiting for me and Tammy to catch up.
We’d stopped in a nice part of the city where humans chose to live and not commute into downtown. The area was mostly residential, with tall condominium buildings and small shops and gyms on the first floors.
Once I stood next to the hunters, I asked, “So your headquarters is in Los Angeles? In the city?”
Somehow, I couldn’t reconcile the hunters with crossbows and knives hung on their waist holsters as people who regrouped in downtown LA.
They didn’t strike me as businesspeople, but we all had to make a living.
Even Dad and the Alphas had businesses, online, stores, restaurants, which they’d run for generations, helping them finance their werewolf operations.
“What did you expect, Princess? We’re not cavemen or cannibals. We live among our kind,” he said and scowled, clearly annoyed that his boss had granted us a visit to their HQ.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make assumptions,” I said and pressed my lips together.
We walked through the entrance of the tall building. The outside of the building looked like a giant box with white walls and black balconies. It reminded of an anthill where each ant had its own balcony.
The lobby had warm brown and beige colors with decor on the walls.
The other man glanced at me. “Our HQ is set up here on purpose, Princess.”
There wasn’t much that I knew about them. Dad and the Alphas taught all the pups about the hunters being our number two enemy and to distance ourselves away from them as much as possible.
The kingdom training went over a protocol for all pups to learn. If you saw the enemy, vampires or hunters, the best self-defense was to run away—avoidance. If it wasn’t possible or safe to do so, we were to fight until the enemy, or us, were killed.
“Our HQ is set up here because it’s the closest place to the werewolf kingdom, Princess. We need to be able to watch the werewolves closely,” the hunter said.
I sighed. There was nothing I could say to change their minds. Their training was different from ours. And neither the hunters nor the werewolves made the right assumptions.
There had to be a middle ground between the groups, allowing us to coexist without constantly fighting, threatening, or losing lives.
Tammy let out a heavy exhale next to me. “These apartments seem so much more luxurious than the ones we lived at in London.”
When the elevator arrived, it looked clean and didn’t stink like molded carpet. As we entered the elevator, one of the men pushed for the second floor. There were eighteen numbers for each floor.
“Does your boss own this building? He rents it out?” I asked.
The two men stood in front of me and Tammy. No one bothered to turn when he spoke.
“You can ask the boss.”
Tammy fidgeted next to me. “Is he a bad man?” she whispered.
The men in front of us chuckled.
Tammy frowned. “If I wasn’t afraid right now, I would elbow those goons.” She nodded toward the hunters.
“I don’t think the hunter leader is bad, but don’t trust easily and stay alert. I don’t know what mood he’ll be in today, but he didn’t hurt me in the past.”
I’d met the hunter leader during the annual winter hunt when the hunters ambushed us.
The hunter leader had an arrow aimed at Layla’s chest, and I’d saved her then.
The second time I met him was when I was with Torin just a few weeks ago when the hunter leader ambushed me inside the SUV.
He was after a witch book that I didn’t possess.
Either time, he didn’t hurt me. I hoped he was in a good mood today, too.
We walked to a green apartment door, one of several others on the floor. The fluorescent fixture above brightly illuminated the hallway, reflecting our images as we passed by the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“For being the hunters’ HQ, your building is unguarded and unsecured.”
One of men pushed the handle, and the door opened. Was it unlocked?
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t worry about security, Princess. You’re not seeing us because we don’t want to scare the tenants. But make no mistake, supernaturals would have difficulty walking in here,” he said, gesturing for Tammy and me to follow them.
I only mentioned it to make sure Tammy and I had a way out of here in case the hunter leader decided to keep us hostage.
I darted my eyes everywhere, and I tried memorizing the location of the furniture and other things. The small corridor opened into the living room, but instead of the usual couch and coffee table, there was a messy office desk and a leather chair.
The kitchen was connected to the office area, and a bedroom door was on the side. A plant in a pot stood in almost every corner of the space as if they were there to remind the owner of the forest.
The bedroom door creaked open, and in came the hunter leader. Tammy’s reaction was priceless, and I could see why her mouth dropped wide open and she couldn’t stop gaping at the man.
I also did a double take at the hunter leader, but only because he looked so different from the way I’d seen him last time when he slid next to me into the back seat of Torin’s SUV.
The business casual navy-blue pants and white unbuttoned dress shirt gave this man another personality I didn’t expect to find. If I passed him on the streets of downtown, I’d think he was another business professional rushing to get to where he wanted to go.
His clean-shaven face displayed his symmetrical facial features and long scar over his jaw and neck. The bumpy skin made him look fierce.
“Boss, here they are,” the man from the dark alley said, bringing me out of my thoughts. “And we didn’t touch them as you ordered, although one of them was rather frisky.”