Hunter's Rise (44 page)

“Matty, look…”

Matt stilled and sat up, his eyes flashing from green to yellow. “Matty?” He lifted a brow.

The guy in front of him gave a cheerful, forced laugh, while behind him, Toronto pulled out his knife. The older wolf’s eyes cut his way and Toronto smiled at him, nice and friendly. If only one of these bastards would just come up to him, they could have it out, but
no
…

“Matty is the kid who died the night I had to chase off feral wolves after they’d killed my father, Charlie.”

A poker seemed to shove its way up good ol’ Charlie’s ass, Toronto noticed. His spine stiffened, hands clenched into fists. “We would have helped more, if we could have. We had families to protect.”

“Yeah. You did.” Matt shrugged. “I’m not disputing that.” He paused for a moment, hit a button on the laptop and then shut it down. “You had families to protect, and you did it. But where were you when I was out there broken and bleeding, the next day? You were still protecting your family when I had to crawl back home?”

Charlie, wisely, kept his mouth closed.

Rising, Matt came out from behind the desk. “It was me and four guys my age out there. Two of us came back. The rest of you—
grown men
—were hiding in your houses afraid to come out because you were afraid of the other pack.”

He glanced at Toronto, a faint scowl on his face. “Hunters were the ones to track down the stragglers who got away from us and kill them. A Hunter had to clean up the mess you all were too fucking chicken to clean up. So, yeah, he’ll be here for as long as I want him around. You got a problem with me? We’ll have a go, right here, right now.” His eyes burned wolf-yellow now and he watched Charlie with a look that said he really, really wanted to hurt him. “If you got a
problem with the Hunter, then maybe you should take it up with him. And spread the word— I’m not doing this every other day, damn it.”

As the door closed quietly behind Charlie a few minutes later, Toronto looked at Matt. “You know, the Hunter has a name.”

“Hell, you’re lucky I didn’t call you that fucking jerk,” Matt muttered, returning to his spot behind the desk and staring at the computer with a look of abject misery.

“You wouldn’t be the first.” Moving to settle in the chair across from the desk, he said, “You know it’s going to be a while before I can leave.”

Green eyes stared into his. “I figured that out the day you stuck a silver knife in me. I’m stuck with you until I can function past that sort of thing, aren’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“I can get there, right?” He looked terribly young in that moment, terribly lost. “I can do it, can’t I? They… they used silver on Dad, and he just couldn’t…”

“Not all of you can. But you’re stronger than a lot of the natural shifters I’ve met. You just have to find the control.” Spinning in the chair, Toronto focused his gaze on the window. “And you have to survive all of them.”

“I can handle them. The question is which one of them is going to push me too far.” He propped an elbow on the desk, staring outside along with Toronto, eyeing the two men who’d met not too far away from the main house. Charlie was one of them.

The other was Graham— the drunken bastard who’d gone a few rounds with Matt’s fists already.

“Graham’s your biggest problem.” Toronto hooked one ankle over his knee. “He mouths off, questions everything. You might need to kill him.”

Matt curled his lip. “I was ready to do that. You stopped me.”

“There’s a difference between killing him in a fight and murdering an unconscious drunk.” Toronto had thought about doing the man himself— something wasn’t right with
him. But this couldn’t be his fight, not until it was forced on him. And Graham wasn’t that stupid. He thought he could maybe handle a half-grown Alpha. He wasn’t going to take on Toronto in a straight fight, though.

And Toronto had no grounds… Frowning, he spun back around and studied the kid. “Did your father have a second?”

“Yeah.” Matt’s lashes swept down. “Broderick Scott. He died first. Took a bullet for my dad.”

“So your pack is used to having one around, right?” Not every pack used them nowadays. A few hundred years earlier, the packs had warred— often. But that had been brought to a halt, mostly thanks to Hunter interference—they couldn’t have packs going to war over territory in this day and age. Bodies eventually got hard to hide and sooner or later, if they were burning them, they would be discovered.

“Yeah.”

“Make me your second.”

Matt just stared at him. Toronto smiled. “You realize when he came in here the way he did, he was insulting you. He didn’t knock. He didn’t announce himself. He used the same name for his Alpha that he’d use for a kid. They still treat you as a kid— you see some of it, but not all. Because you’re used to it. It has to stop, though, and it won’t, until you make them.” Leaning forward, he braced his elbows on his knees and studied the boy. “I see it all. I see the conscious and the unconscious challenges. I can call them on all of those slights— if I’m made your second. As long as I’m outside the pack, they can ignore me. They can challenge me over it, but I’d hurt them— since I’m here to try and play nice, I’d try not to hurt them. Then they’d get ugly and decide to gang up on me. Once that happens, I kill. You make me part of the pack, they have to follow protocol and we all know it. They issue the challenge and follow through and when they lose, it’s done, or they are outcast.”

“I don’t want a stronger bastard than me serving as my second,” Matt muttered, rubbing at his shoulder, like he could still feel the silver there, although it healed days ago.

“I don’t plan on living here forever and ever. Just until things are settled and you know what you’re doing. Get a few years on you— and figure out who should serve as your real second.” Toronto shifted his gaze out the window, studying the two men. They were walking away now, heads bowed. “You’ve got good people here. If you get the troublemakers out of the way, you’ll be able to see them more clearly.”

M

He had come to fucking
Montana
?

Sylvia felt like she was in a different country— a deserted one. She’d been on this strip of highway for what seemed like hours, cutting through night-dark fields that were probably impossibly green in the day.

The mountains were dark shadows in the distance and if she had it pegged right, she should have another forty-five minutes to drive before she hit the city Rafe had directed her to.

After that, he told her, she was on her own.

Wonderful.

He sends her out in the middle of nowhere and then tells her she’s on her own…

But hell, how was that any different from the past couple of months? She’d been living with a gaping hole inside her ever since the day she’d walked away from that cabin in Toronto. Leaving behind the one person who had actually made her realize she was… empty. Empty in her heart, in her soul.

Now she just had to figure out where to find him.

Although, seriously, once she got to the city, it wouldn’t be that hard, she didn’t think. All she really had to do was stop hiding herself so much, she figured. Do that, and just maybe he could find her…

R

Riding a fence line and then having to fight off an attack
that came at his back was another thing he hadn’t planned on— but he was more equipped to handle the attack than the fence line.

After he’d hurled Graham to the ground, he shrugged out of his leather jacket and threw it off to the side. “We don’t need to do this,” he said quietly. “You know you aren’t going to win.”

“You don’t
belong
here.” Graham shoved upright, staring at Toronto with rage burning in his eyes. It was an ugly sight.

“Yeah. You’re right. But I’m not leaving until the kid is ready to stand on his own.” He cocked a brow. “Deal with it.”

“Deal with it…” Graham’s voice dropped, gravelly rough. “If he can’t stand on his own
now
, he shouldn’t be the Alpha.”

“You couldn’t take him on your best day. Nobody in your pack can. But you think you’ve got a right to try and run him out? Because he’s young?” Toronto shook his head. “We going to do this, or not?”

Graham sank to a crouch, his muscles already rippling as he started to shift.

Lucky bastard— it didn’t hurt a natural shifter the way it hurt a were. Toronto kicked off his boots, keeping an eye on the stupid fuck. He’d seen the guy fight. He didn’t stand a chance and had to know it—

As he rose from the ground, his body a meld of wolf and man, Toronto saw why Graham was so cocky— sunlight glinted off a glass vial in Graham’s hand. Somehow, he didn’t think it was just water in that little bottle. There was only one thing, really, that would do much good against a were. Silver.

Fury bit into him and he spun away halfway through his shift as the other wolf lunged for him.

Turning to face Graham, he said, “That’s a dick move, bringing poison into this. When you go down, I’m going to make you eat it.”

Graham’s reply was a snarl. But there was fear in his eyes now.

The bastard had lost the edge of surprise and was now completely fucked.

*  *  *

H

Once he’d finally made it back, he saw several eyes cut his way before darting off without making contact. They’d already smelled the dead body. Lips peeled back from his teeth, he cut the ropes he’d used to keep Graham’s body from falling. Hauling the corpse off the back of the three-wheeler, he turned and dumped it on the ground

Hearing a door open, he looked up.

Matt stood in the doorway, his young face rigid, eyes dark.

“What in the
fuck
did you do?”

Cutting his eyes to Charlie, Toronto said, “I dealt with a bastard who came at my back— one who decided he’d level the playing field with poison.” Curling his lip, he looked down at Graham. The silver nitrate had burned and blackened Graham’s face, his neck as it killed him. Toronto stared at him woodenly for a long moment before shifting his gaze upward and studying the people gathered around him.

“You murderer,” Charlie growled, his eyes flashing to wolf-yellow.

“Murderer.” Toronto lifted his gaze, staring at the other shifter. “He comes at my back, with poison, and you want to call me a murderer.”

“He didn’t have a chance against you, fucking monster.”

“Then he should have thought of that before he attacked a Hunter,” Matt said quietly.

All eyes turned toward the young Alpha as he came down the steps, striding toward Toronto. There was nothing hesitant on his face now, although Toronto saw something in the back of the kid’s eyes. Regret, maybe… and resignation.

Charlie turned to Matt. “You can’t tell me you’re going to stand for this. This fucking
outsider
killed one of ours. He murdered him.”

“No.” Matt’s gaze dropped to Toronto’s leg.

Under the denim, he was bleeding. Thanks to the silver
nitrate, he wasn’t going to heal until his body had managed to purge the shit from his system. And it
hurt
. Nothing hurt a shifter of any form, natural or were, the way silver did. He felt like something was trying to chew through his veins.

“You’re injured,” Matt said.

“He had two vials of silver nitrate on him. I’ve got one of them inside of me.” And he meant the whole damn bottle, too. Graham had gotten one good hit in— using his claws to shred Toronto’s leg and then shove the damn thing inside him, crushing it. He’d already been healing so that shit was now stuck inside him, broken glass vial and all.

A good healer could get the glass out. A good doctor could. The pack didn’t have a healer but Toronto wasn’t certain he’d trust the doctor here.

Eyeing Graham, Matt crouched down next to him and sighed. “I guess I don’t need to ask where the other one is.”

“No.”

Charlie came storming up, bumping into Toronto. With a snarl, Toronto caught him by the shoulder and shoved, sending him flying facedown. He’d had
enough
—

The other man came back up with his fists bunched, muscles rippling under his clothes. “No outsider gets to do that to us,” he growled.

“Toronto is no outsider.” Matt blew out a breath and then looked at Toronto, gave a short nod. “He’s my second, effective now. You want to fuck with him, do it at your own risk.”

Toronto met Charlie’s gaze and smiled.

“T

Toronto managed, just barely, to keep the growl behind his teeth when the wolf appeared in the doorway, head bowed. It was Jason, one of the kids who’d gone out with Matt the night their pack had been attacked. One of the two who had returned, while the adults were inside whining and whimpering.