Chapter 2 Predator in Enemy Territory
“Do you remember me, Colt?”
For a second the past memories bled through again.
Colt, help me hold this bitch down. Hands pinning me. Legs pried apart.
I pushed it back.
His eyes moved over my face, searching, trying to place me. He drew in a sharp breath, hunting for a scent that wasn’t there. Even half-conscious and bleeding, the wolf in him was still looking for a trail.
“I don’t know you,” he snapped. “Never seen you before in my fucking life.”
Ten years and a very good surgeon had taken care of that.
I crouched down to his level and rested the bloody knife across my knee.
He flinched.
“Think harder. I was thirteen. You and your friends came to my house one night. Uninvited. You stayed for hours.”
Something shifted behind his eyes. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said. “Who are you?”
I studied him for a long moment. His heartbeat was elevated and his breathing shallow. He was scared, yes, but he was also stalling, buying time for a way out that would never arrive.
“That’s alright,” I said, standing back up. “You don’t have to remember me now.”
I looked down at him. “But before this is over, you will.”
He dragged himself backward, ruined feet scraping across the concrete. “You’re fucking insane.”
“Men like you made me this way,” I said.
His gaze darted around the room, hunting for an exit, a weapon, anything.
I kept my distance. Even injured, he still outweighed me by a hundred pounds, and men with nothing left were the most dangerous. Especially wolves.
“There is no way out.”
“You have no idea who you’re fucking with.” Panic edged his voice higher. “My pack will come looking. You’re dead the second they find you.”
“Nobody is coming.”
He stared as the weight of it sank in.
Oh, fuck, she feels good. Colt’s growl as he took his turn.
“You took two turns.”
His face twisted. “Two what? Who the fuck are you?”
“I was thirteen the last time you saw me.”
His nostrils flared again. Shifter instincts clawed at a truth his mind refused to accept. I watched the slow, terrible recognition move through him.
“No,” he breathed. “They’re all dead.”
“Not all of us. You missed one.”
Something hardened in his eyes then. The predator pushed through the fear. In his head I was still that sobbing, helpless girl. Still easy prey. With a raw scream he threw himself at me. It wasn’t much—just a desperate surge powered by rage and his upper body.
I stepped aside.
Before he could recover, I drove the knife into his shoulder, twisted hard against bone, and wrenched. A sickening crunch filled the basement. He collapsed, right arm useless.
He lay there gasping. “You stupid fucking bitch. You’ll pay for this.”
Using his good arm, he started dragging himself toward me, inches at a time, teeth bared, pure hate in every movement.
His eyes flashed yellow. For a second the wolf surged forward. Claws punched through his fingertips and scraped across the concrete. He swiped at my ankle and missed by a foot.
I clicked my tongue. “All that size and nothing to show for it.”
The claws stayed out. His chest heaved. The wolf wanted out badly, but shifting took control, balance, and working limbs. I had taken those away the moment I cut his tendons. He was stuck in human form, half-shifted and helpless, and he knew it.
I crouched beside him while he wheezed. “You know what your problem is, Colton?” I kept my voice pleasant. “You’ve spent your whole life picking on people who couldn’t fight back. You forgot how to actually fight.”
He spat blood. “I’m going to kill you.”
“You’ve said that already.” I stood. “You need a new line.”
He reached for my ankle again. I shifted just enough and brought my boot down hard on his good wrist, pinning it to the concrete.
He bucked and twisted like a worm, trying to wrench free while his ruined legs flopped uselessly.
I leaned more weight onto the boot until the bones in his wrist creaked. The wolf claws finally retracted.
“A hundred pounds on me,” I said, looking down at him. “All that muscle. All that pack status.” I tilted my head. “And a little woman with a knife has you bleeding on your own basement floor.” I smiled. “How does that feel, Colt? Really. I want to know.”
He said nothing. His chest heaved with pain, rage, and underneath it all, humiliation.
Good. I wanted him to feel every inch of it.
“The last time we met,” I said, “I was thirteen years old and I couldn’t stop you or the others.”
I lifted my boot just enough to grab his wrist with my left hand. He immediately started thrashing again, weak and desperate. I dropped my knee hard into his stomach, driving the air from his lungs. While he gasped, I wrenched his arm up and slammed his hand palm-down onto his own chest.
He tried to jerk free. I leaned forward and put my weight behind it. His hand stayed exactly where I wanted it. The shoulder wound and ruined legs left him with almost nothing.
I kept the knife in my right hand and drew the blade slowly across each finger, pausing long enough for him to feel the promise.
“Look how things change.”
His eyes locked on the knife. He started to tremble. “Wh-what are you going to do with that?”
“Shhh. I want to play a game,” I whispered.
“A game?” His voice was barely there.
“Truth or lie. Tell the truth, you keep your fingers. Lie…” I pressed the blade just enough to dimple the skin. “You won’t.”
Silence.
“Understand?”
“Y-yeah,” he stammered.
“Good. First question.” I kept my tone almost conversational. “How many little girls have you raped?”
“Wh-what?”
“Don’t play stupid. How many?”
He looked away. “Just you. I swear, it was just you.”
I cut off his pinky. The blade bit clean through the finger but also sliced into the meat of his chest as his hand jerked. Blood welled up immediately.
His scream bounced off the concrete and he bucked hard enough to nearly throw me off balance. When he was done panting, I tilted my head. “Let’s try that again.”
“And your sister,” he choked out, tears cutting tracks through blood and grime. “Just you two. That’s all, I swear to god.”
I took the next finger. This time the knife dug deeper into his chest on the follow-through. He howled, body convulsing under my weight. Tears streamed down his face. “Okay. Okay. Three. Maybe four. I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.”
I waited.
“There’s one buried at the riverbed at Westside Park,” he said, words breaking between gasps. “I dug the hole myself.”
“How old?”
“Twelve.”
I let that sit. Twelve years old. Another family without answers. Another body that needed to be found.
I stood.
Colt was a wreck on the concrete. The sobbing had faded to ragged breaths. Blood covered his shirt and slicked the floor beneath him. Two fingers were gone from one hand, one shoulder bled freely, and neither leg would ever carry his weight again.
“You’re going to kill me,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You’re going to die for it. You know that. Thomas will hunt you down.”
“Mm.”
He laughed. Wet. Broken. It turned into a cough. “Wait till Thomas hears you’re alive.”
I crouched beside him one last time, close enough that he could see my eyes.
“He won’t,” I said. “Not from you.”
I drew the knife across his throat in one clean line and stepped back so the spray missed my boots.
He didn’t last long. I watched him bleed out. No wild exhilaration came. No rush like I had imagined for years. Just something quieter. A tiny crack in my soul, a fraction less raw than it had been an hour ago. I would take it.
Less than a minute later, I got to work. Someone would find the body soon. Publicity would follow, not just because of how he died but because Colt mattered to the pack.
I cleaned carefully, scanning for hairs, fibers, anything that could tie me to the house. One eyelash near his shoulder went into a bag. Every surface I had touched got wiped down. I retrieved the cameras from the living room, kitchen, and bedroom, then slipped back out through the window.
The night air felt crisp and clean, almost jarring after the basement. Bag over my shoulder, I moved through the shadows and didn’t look back.
At the rental car I opened the trunk and pulled out the plastic tarp I had stashed there earlier. I spread it over the seats, then climbed in. No visible cameras. No neighbors awake. I drove the speed limit.
Halfway home the thought I had locked down in the basement finally surfaced.
Not regret, I didn’t regret killing him, but something quieter.
In a small, vulnerable corner of myself I wondered what my family would think of me now.
Whether they would look at me with fear. Whether Harmony would still know me.
I let it sit for a moment, then pushed it down. It didn’t change anything.
I left the Civic on a quiet forest road, well away from houses and cameras. I would return it tomorrow. Then I slipped into the woods with the tarp and pack.
Deep enough in, I stripped, soaked the clothes and tarp in burner fluid, and burned them. Gloves and weapons went into the backpack.
I shifted, gripped the pack between my teeth, and ran. The forest swallowed me. When I reached the hollow tree I had scouted earlier, I stopped just long enough to push the backpack deep inside, then kept moving.
Around five a.m. I reached my back porch and shifted back. The air was cold against my bare skin. I retrieved the spare key and slipped quietly inside. The house was silent. My roommates were still asleep.
In my bedroom I went straight to the shower, letting the warm water rinse away the last traces of the night. After toweling off and combing my hair, I pulled on an oversized T-shirt.
One last thing before sleep. I sent Brian the location—Westside Park. Riverbed. Twelve years old. He would route it through channels that wouldn’t lead back to me.
I crawled into bed and let sleep pull me under.