Chapter 31: Hunter
River
"You sure this is the place?"
The question leaves my mouth quietly as I stand beneath the flickering lights of the service station forecourt, phone pressed against my ear, rain ticking on the hood of my jacket softly.
"Positive." Ezra wastes fewer words than me.
The cash machine’s positioned beside the entrance. Three security cameras. Two blind spots. One road leading north. Three leading south. The card transaction happened hours ago, its timestamp sits in my head alongside a thousand other pieces of information. Dates. Locations. Names. Patterns.
The reality of hunting someone is patience and observation.
People always leave pieces of themselves behind, the trick is knowing where to look.
"I’ll call when I have something."
I slide the phone into my pocket and breathe deeply through my nose.
The world unfolds.
Shed pieces of lives linger without them ever noticing. I stand quietly beneath the overhang of the service station entrance and watch drips wall against the concrete beyond. Around me, hundreds of people move through the building carrying coffees, bags and conversations that will be forgotten before the day ends. To them, this is a brief stop on a longer journey.
To me, it’s a crime scene. And I shouldn’t be here.
There are too many competing scents. Human lives piled on top of one another until everything becomes a blur. I learned long ago how to listen through the chaos. Beneath the diesel and rainwater, buried under thousands of passing strangers, I find her. Nearly erased, but there.
Frankie. Who made her choice.
The scent catches something deep inside my chest before I force it back under control. Fear lingers in it, determination too. She was exhausted when she passed through. Hungry. Running on stubbornness and very little else.
I follow the trail as far as I can across painted tarmac until it finally disappears beneath traffic and time. When I open my eyes again, disappointment barely registers. Emotion has never solved a problem.
My attention drifts across the station and settles on the diner attached to the far side of the building. I catch another scent, wolf. Old enough that most people wouldn’t notice it. Fresh enough that I do. Then another, and a third. My jaw tightens because I know these scents. Not the individuals, but the type. Independent packs.
The ones that operate beyond council oversight because they’re useful when convenient and ignored when inconvenient. Predators in the purest sense of the word. Smugglers. Traffickers. Mercenaries. Men who see vulnerability and immediately calculate its value.
I’ve crossed paths with their kind more times than I care to count. Sometimes professionally. Sometimes personally. The outcome is usually the same, blood and one less monster breathing.
Frankie came through here alone, newly awakened, unbonded and scared. Any wolf with functioning instincts would have noticed her, most would have walked away. Unfortunately for her, all it takes is the wrong pack to catch that trail and questions start forming.
A lone female with no visible protection and no pack beside her is an opportunity. This wouldn’t even be an issue if we’d have just been honest with her from the start, like I demanded. We should have laid it all out on day one.
The idea leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. She’s being hunted and only we are to blame.
Whoever is following her has made a mistake. They think they’re hunting prey, they haven’t realised they’re walking into the sights of a predator who’s been doing this longer than most of them have been alive.
The security office sits at the far edge of the lot, tucked between a loading bay and a maintenance corridor that smells of old cigarettes. People will walk past it without noticing. Especially the tired man inside scrolling through his phone while a wall of monitors flickers behind him.
Frankie passed through here and somewhere in those recordings is a direction, a clue. Maybe the difference between finding her first and arriving too late.
His irritation rolls off him in waves as I approach. I smell it before I see it fully settle into his posture. The slight tension around his mouth, the way his fingers tap against the desk, people always tell on themselves eventually. Scent is simply the most honest language in the world.
Mine, meanwhile, remains exactly where it belongs. Controlled. Anger has never been the enemy, uncontrolled anger is. The moment emotion starts making decisions for you, you’ve already lost.
I remove a folded stack of notes from my jacket and place them carefully on the desk between us. Enough to be taken seriously.
"I’d appreciate your cooperation with some CCTV footage."
His eyes drop, money has a gravity all its own. He studies the notes for a second before looking back at me, then back at the cash.
The grin that spreads across his face I’ve seen variations of it in politicians, criminals, council members and killers. A person convinced they’ve found leverage.
"Double it."
I simply look at him. Fluorescent lights hum overhead. Out there Frankie is alone, frightened and running from things she doesn’t understand. Here, I’m negotiating with a male who thinks this conversation is about money.
"Come on, mate," he says, leaning back in his chair. "Double it or get fucked."
I step into the office and pull the door shut behind me. The lock clicks, such a small sound. His smile falters all the same.
Instinct is a fascinating thing. The conscious mind is slow, the body is not, I can already smell uncertainty beginning to replace confidence. His pulse picks up, sweat gathers beneath his collar.
"What the fuck," He sounds squeaky.
There isn’t a useful answer to give. Instead, I let him see a fraction of the truth.
The wolf rises beneath my skin, muscle tightens along my shoulders as my frame expands subtly. Pressure fills the space between us. The growl I loose from my chest is more vibration than sound, but it lands exactly where it’s intended.
The effect is immediate. His chair crashes backward as he stumbles to his feet, the colour drains from his face and all that remains is raw fear.
He pisses his pants right there in the corner.
It doesn’t bother me. Men soil themselves more often than stories suggest, most simply never encounter anything powerful enough to remind them where they sit in the food chain. This one has.
"The fuck are you?" he whispers.
His knees buckle.
"Please."
Interesting. Less than thirty seconds ago he was negotiating, now he’s begging. Civilization is a remarkably fragile illusion.
I let him sit with the silence. Let him feel the weight of something that could tear him apart without effort and has simply chosen not to. Only then do I allow the wolf to settle again, the pressure eases from the room.
Relief crashes through him so hard he collapses.
"The footage?"
His head bobs frantically.
"Anything. Take whatever you want."
"Thank you."
I mean it, too. Fear has succeeded where money failed.
He crawls out of the booth into the rain, slamming the door behind him.
The monitors occupy the entire wall behind his desk. I lower myself into the chair and punch in the date and time, setting the footage to 4x speed. Families. Truck drivers. Students. Holidaymakers. Hundreds of faces moving through the station without consequence.
I see her.
Baseball cap pulled low over her eyes, backpack hanging from one shoulder.
She’s exhausted, moving like every step hurts. Too thin. For the first time in days, my attention narrows on a singular point.
Bus bay three. I mentally note all important information. A trail, at last.
I pull my phone from my pocket before the footage has finished playing. Ezra answers in less than a ring.
"What." He snaps.
My eyes remain fixed on the screen as Frankie disappears through the bus doors and vanishes from view. A lone figure walking away from us, away from safety.
"I found her trail."
Time to hunt.
