Hunted by the Wolves (Elite Shifter Enforcers #2)

Chapter One

R iley Quinn had learned the difference between hiding and being safe.

Hiding was something you did to survive.

Being safe was something you eventually stop believing in.

Hiding was leaving the city you had lived and worked in for the last ten years and telling no one.

It was finding an apartment you could pay for in cash, living on whatever you could make in cash, never looking anyone in the eye, and desperately trying to fade into the background so no one would see you.

Safety was the illusion she chased—the fragile hope that if every lock was thrown and every light was off, the world might forget she existed.

She lay on her mattress on the floor, staring at the cracked plaster on the ceiling, counting her breaths because it gave her something to control. In through her nose. Out through her mouth. Slow enough to keep the panic from climbing into her throat.

It wasn’t working tonight.

She rolled onto her side and reached for her phone, checking the time without turning the screen fully on.

12:04 AM. She had been trying to sleep before her shift started, but tonight sleep was proving elusive.

You couldn’t sleep when your body had decided that rest was a luxury it could no longer afford.

Riley pushed herself up and crossed the apartment barefoot, wincing as the floorboards creaked under her weight. She froze, listening.

Nothing.

Still, she waited a full thirty seconds before moving again.

The deadbolt was engaged. The chain was hooked. The cheap wooden chair she’d wedged under the doorknob was still braced in place. The windows were locked, duct-taped where the frames didn’t quite meet. She checked them anyway. Always checked them.

People who survived learned rituals that helped to keep them alive.

She pressed her forehead briefly against the cool glass of the window and forced herself to breathe again.

The city outside was washed in sodium light and shadow, Brooklyn stretched out in uneasy layers of brick and concrete and people pretending not to see each other.

Somewhere down the block, a siren wailed and cut off abruptly.

Somewhere else, laughter spilled out of a bar doorway and died just as quickly.

Riley flinched at both.

She pulled back and wrapped her arms around herself, ribs sharp under her skin.

She’d lost weight. Too much of it. Her jeans hung loose on her hips, and the sweatshirts she lived in swallowed her whole.

She’d stopped looking at herself in mirrors weeks ago.

It was easier not to see how small she was becoming.

The apartment wasn’t home. It was a holding pattern.

A place she slept—sometimes—and hid when the exhaustion got bad enough that she started making mistakes.

She’d moved twice already since everything went wrong, choosing buildings where no one asked questions and landlords didn’t care as long as the rent came in cash.

This one would do. For now.

She moved into the kitchen and got herself a glass of water from the tap, letting it run until the metallic taste faded. She drank slowly, eyes tracking the dark reflection in the window, half-expecting to see movement behind her.

Nothing.

Her heart didn’t slow.

It never did.

As a medic, Riley had spent most of her adult life in places where fear was logical—disaster zones, triage tents, cities torn apart by things people pretended weren’t wars. Fear had been situational then. You assessed, adapted, treated the wounded, and moved on.

This was different.

This was personal.

She knew exactly when it had started.

She just wished she didn’t. She had been working in a clinic when an emergency transport had been rerouted at the last minute due to weather, a man brought in half-dead with injuries no human or shifter body should have survived.

She’d treated him anyway.

That was the job.

His bones had shifted under her hands when she set them, muscle and sinew moving in ways that made no anatomical sense.

This movement didn’t fit any known shifter physiology she knew or had studied.

She’d told herself it was shock. Adrenaline.

Her imagination filling in gaps it had no business filling.

But when he woke, his eyes had locked on hers with something that wasn’t gratitude.

It had scared the hell out of her, watching his eyes shift from green to arctic blue.

She hadn’t asked questions.

That was the first mistake.

The second had been bringing her concerns to her supervisor back in Philly—quietly, professionally, with notes she’d triple-checked and observations she couldn’t ignore. He’d laughed.

Actually laughed.

Told her she was tired. Told her she’d been in the field too long. Told her if she didn’t want the work anymore, she was free to leave.

When she insisted, when she refused to sign off on the report the way he wanted, he fired her on the spot.

No appeal. No reference.

Just a warning look and a reminder about confidentiality agreements that suddenly felt a lot more like threats.

The third mistake had been thinking she could just walk away.

She hadn’t done anything wrong. She was sure of that. She hadn’t signed anything. Hadn’t agreed to anything. She’d treated who was put in front of her, stabilized who she could, and walked away when her contract ended.

Apparently, that had been more than enough to create an obsession.

He found her two weeks later.

Violently.

Decisively.

He took her for forty-eight hours that erased any remaining doubt she had about what he was.

Not human, and not shifter. At least, not entirely.

He broke into her apartment in Philly like the locks were suggestions, dragged her out before she could scream, and kept her moving—basements, back rooms, places that smelled like oil and blood and rot.

He hurt her when she fought. Hurt her when she didn’t.

Never enough to kill her. Always enough to remind her that he could.

She survived because a neighbor heard something they couldn’t ignore and called the cops. Because sirens came faster than he expected. Because he let her go rather than be taken himself.

She filed a restraining order with shaking hands and bruises she couldn’t quite hide. But she knew it meant nothing.

When he came close to taking her a second time—when she caught his reflection again, too solid to be coincidence—she didn’t wait.

She ran.

And she never went back.

She left Philly the same night.

New York wasn’t freedom. It was noisy with crowds and plenty of places to disappear.

But she knew he would find her eventually.

Riley drained the glass and set it down carefully, fingers trembling despite her efforts. Her gaze slid back to the door, to the thin strip of shadow beneath it.

She could feel it again.

That sensation of eyes on her skin.

It wasn’t constant. That was what made it worse. It came and went, unpredictable, like pressure changes before a storm. Sometimes she could go hours without it. Sometimes days.

Tonight, it clung to her.

She grabbed her jacket from the back of a chair and shoved her phone into the pocket, fingers brushing the edge of the small folding knife she carried everywhere now. It wasn’t much. It wouldn’t stop someone trained or even determined.

But it made her feel less empty-handed, less unprepared.

The café on the corner stayed open all night, and that mattered more than the burnt coffee or the way the waitress watched everyone like they might bolt without paying. Public places felt safer. There were witnesses. Light. Noise that didn’t belong to her.

Riley locked the apartment behind her and took the stairs instead of the elevator, pausing at every landing to listen. Her building smelled like old cooking oil and damp concrete. Someone had left trash bags piled near the exit. She stepped around them carefully, pulse jumping at every rustle.

Outside, the night hit her like a wall.

She kept her head down and her pace steady, the way she’d learned to move when she didn’t want to be noticed. Don’t rush. Don’t hesitate. Act like you belong.

She reached the café and slipped inside, shoulders easing a fraction when the bell over the door chimed. Warmth, light, the low murmur of voices. She chose a corner table with her back to the wall and wrapped her hands around the mug the waitress set down without comment.

Riley stared into the dark surface of the coffee and tried to remember when her life had narrowed down to this.

She worked at a convenience store three nights a week, 1:00 AM to 7:00 AM. The owner paid her under the table and didn’t ask for ID as long as she showed up on time and kept the place from getting robbed. She didn’t talk to the customers. She didn’t linger after her shift.

It wasn’t a future. It was survival.

She took a sip of the coffee and barely tasted it. Her shoulders ached. Her hands were rough from cleaning products and stress. The medic bag she used to carry everywhere sat empty in her apartment, a relic from another life.

She missed helping people.

The door opened again, and Riley flinched before she could stop herself. She forced her gaze back to the table, counting breaths, reminding herself that fear didn’t mean danger.

Still.

The sensation didn’t fade.

She scanned the café’s reflections instead of faces, watching movement in the chrome of the espresso machine, the dark window glass. No one stood out. No one stared.

That didn’t mean anything.

Riley curled her fingers tighter around the mug and wished, not for the first time, that she knew what she’d done to deserve this. All she knew was that her life had been reduced to hiding, and somewhere out there, someone had decided she was worth following.

Her shoulders tensed as the feeling spiked again, sharp and undeniable.

Eyes.

On her.

Riley swallowed hard and kept her head down, telling herself she was safe.

Public place. Light. Witnesses.

She had no idea that she wasn’t wrong.

She was just wrong about who was watching her.

****