Her Hunter's Heart

Chapter 1

Harper

The comm unit crackles in my ear, a burst of static against the unnatural silence of the forest. “Report, Hunter Harper. What is your status?”

My father’s voice. Even filtered through the device, it’s a commander's voice. Clipped. Precise. Devoid of warmth. It’s the only voice he uses with me in the field.

I crouch lower, my fingers brushing against the damp earth. The scent of rot and old blood is thick in the air, a foul perfume that clings to the back of my throat. “Tracks are fresh. Broken branches, claw marks deep in the oak. It’s heavy. And angry. I’m close, Commander.”

The silence stretches for a beat too long. He’s worrying. He thinks I cannot feel it through the ether, but I can. It is a quiet hum beneath his authority.

“Maintain protocol,” he says finally. “Observe. Report. Do not engage alone. That is an order.”

“Daddy’s little hunter, on her very first solo mission,” another voice cuts in, slick with contempt. Jaxon. Of course. He is probably monitoring from the comfort of the guild hall, a smug grin on his face. “Don’t you trip over a root, princess. We wouldn’t want you to scuff your new boots.”

My jaw tightens. I do not give him the satisfaction of a reply. Instead, I focus on the print in the mud before me. It is huge, distorted. The claws are too long, the shape all wrong. This is no ordinary wolf. This is a rogue. An outcast driven mad by sickness or rage. The guild’s official line is that they are abominations, rabid beasts to be put down without hesitation.

“Jaxon, stand down,” my father’s voice is sharp, a whip crack over the comms. “This channel is for mission operatives only.”

“Just making sure your investment is safe, Commander,” Jaxon replies, his tone oozing false sincerity. “Everyone knows you pulled strings to get her this assignment. A simple rogue track and hunt. A real softball.”

My fingers curl into a fist, pressing into the damp soil. He is not entirely wrong. My father is the Guild Commander. I am his daughter. The whispers have followed me since I first picked up a silver blade. *Nepotism. She did not earn it. She will be the weak link that gets a real hunter killed.*

Every mission, every successful hunt, has been to prove them wrong. To prove *him* wrong. To carve out a name for myself that is not just a reflection of his.

“The mission parameters are clear,” I say, my own voice steady and cold, a shield against Jaxon’s taunts and my father’s concern. “I am tracking the target. I will report when I have its location confirmed. Harper out.”

I deactivate the comm before either of them can respond, plunging myself back into the woods' suffocating quiet. The silence is better. It lets me think. It lets me hunt. My father’s training was relentless, brutal. He taught me to read the forest like a book, to hear the whisper of a single leaf falling, to smell a lie on the wind. He made me a hunter, but he never taught me how to be his daughter.

I move forward, my steps silent. The trail is easy to follow. Too easy. The rogue is sloppy, desperate. It is not hunting. It is running. Or chasing.

The trees thin ahead, and a new sound cuts through the air. It is not the growl of a beast or the snap of a twig. It is a whimper. Small and human.

My blood runs cold. A child.

My training screams at me. *Bait. It is a trap. Rogues are cunning.* My father’s voice echoes in my head. *Do not engage alone.*

But then the whimper turns into a full-throated sob, a cry of pure terror that rips through the forest and straight into my chest. Protocol be damned.

I draw the twin silver blades from the sheaths on my back. The metal is cold against my palms, a familiar and comforting weight. I move faster now, pushing through the last line of ancient firs and into a small, sun-dappled clearing.

And I see it.

The rogue is a nightmare made flesh. It is massive, far larger than any werewolf I have seen in the training manuals. Its fur is matted with black, foul-smelling ichor, and patches of skin are visible beneath, raw and weeping. Silver poisoning. The traps. They do not just kill, they drive them mad first. Its eyes are not the intelligent gold of a true shifter but the milky, vacant yellow of a rabid animal. It stands over a small form huddled against the roots of a great oak.

A little girl, no older than six. Her face is streaked with dirt and tears, her dress torn. She is clutching a small, stuffed bear, its button eyes staring blankly at the monster before her.

The rogue lets out a low, guttural growl, saliva dripping from its elongated jaws. It takes a step closer to the child.

There is no time to think. No time for plans or protocols. No time to call for backup that is miles away.

I erupt from the trees.

“Hey!” The single word is a bark, sharp and loud. The rogue’s head snaps towards me, its yellow eyes locking onto mine. It snarls, baring teeth stained black. Good. Look at me. Forget the child.

I do not hesitate. I charge. The first blade slices a shallow cut across its flank as I dodge its clumsy opening swipe. It howls in pain and fury, the sound of silver searing its corrupted flesh echoing in the clearing. The smell of burning hair fills the air.

“Run!” I scream at the little girl, not daring to take my eyes off the beast. “Get out of here! Now!”

For a moment, she is frozen, a statue of fear. The rogue lunges again, and I have to throw myself backward, rolling through the dirt to avoid its claws. They are like obsidian daggers, leaving deep furrows in the earth where my head was a second ago.

“GO!”

The scream seems to break her paralysis. She scrambles to her feet and runs, stumbling into the woods without a backwards glance. Thank the gods.

Now I can fight.

Now I can hunt.

The rogue is fast, unnaturally so for its size and condition. But it is all rage, no strategy. I am a dancer of blades and death. I weave and duck, my silver knives a blur. I leave a dozen cuts on its hide, each one sizzling, each one making it angrier, more reckless.

It is working. I am wearing it down. It is slowing, its movements becoming more erratic. It swings a massive paw, and I duck under it, driving my left blade deep into the muscle of its thigh. It roars, a sound of pure agony, and collapses onto its side.

I stand over it, chest heaving. One final, clean strike to the heart. That is all it will take. My mission. I can still complete it.

I raise my right blade for the killing blow.

But as I stare down at the creature, its rabid yellow eyes meet mine, and for a fleeting second, the madness clears. I see a flicker of something else. Pain. Terror. A soul trapped inside a ruined body. Then it is gone, replaced by the same mindless fury.

That one second of hesitation is all it needs.

With a final, desperate surge of strength, it kicks out with its back leg. The blow catches me in the chest, sending me flying backward. I land hard, the air knocked from my lungs, stars exploding behind my eyes. One of my blades clatters away into the undergrowth.

Before I can recover, before I can even draw a breath, it is on me. A furnace of hot, rancid breath washes over my face. I try to bring my remaining knife up, but its weight is crushing, pinning my arm to the ground.

A mouth full of teeth, impossibly large, clamps down on my shoulder. The pain is absolute. It is a white-hot, blinding agony that eclipses everything else. I feel the tearing of muscle, the sickening crunch of my collarbone shattering like glass.

But that is not the worst of it.

It is the burn. A liquid fire floods my veins, a venom that sizzles from the inside out, hotter than any forge. My own scream is a raw, strangled thing.

Pure instinct takes over. My pinned arm, my broken body, all of it forgotten. My free hand finds the hilt of the silver blade still clutched in its grasp. With the last of my strength, I drive it upwards, right under the beast’s jaw, sinking the entire length of the blade into its throat and up into its brain.

The rogue stiffens. A wet, gurgling sound escapes its throat. The burning yellow light in its eyes flickers and dies. Its massive body goes limp, its full weight crashing down on me, driving me deeper into the mud and leaves.

I lie there, trapped beneath the dead monster, the world a blurry, swimming mess. The pain is a roaring ocean in my ears. I can feel the venom spreading through me, a cold fire that is slowly extinguishing everything it touches.

The forest is quiet again. I can hear the distant chirping of a bird. I can smell the damp earth, the metallic tang of my own blood mixing with the foulness of the rogue's.

The child is safe. I saved her.

But my mission…

My first solo mission.

Jaxon’s mocking voice echoes in the haze of my mind. *Daddy’s little hunter.* He was right. I am a failure.

My vision darkens at the edges. A cold numbness starts in my fingers and toes. I failed the mission. I failed the guild. I failed my father.

My last conscious thought is not of victory, but of the searing poison rewriting my body from the inside out. My last sensation is of falling into a deep, dark well of failure from which I will never, ever climb out.

Chapter 2

Harper

Noise.

A heartbeat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It is too loud, a drum beating inside my skull. It is not mine. Mine is a frantic, panicked flutter, a trapped bird against my ribs.

The air is wrong. It is too thick. I can taste it. Woodsmoke. Pine needles. Damp earth. And something else. Something warm, and musky, and alive. Animal.

My eyes crack open. The light is a physical blow, a blade of pure white that makes me flinch. I squeeze them shut again, a groan tearing from my raw throat. Every inch of me is a symphony of pain. Not the sharp, clean agony of a blade, but a deep, throbbing ache, as if my very bones have been broken and reset wrong.

I try to move, to sit up, but my limbs are leaden. The sheet covering me is coarse, like wool, and it scratches against skin that feels too sensitive, too new.

“Easy.”

The voice is a low rumble. It vibrates in the floorboards, in the air, in my teeth. It is part of the landscape of this place. I force my eyes open again, blinking through the pain, letting the room swim into focus.

I am in a cabin. Rough-hewn wooden walls, a stone fireplace where embers glow softly. Simple. Rustic. Nothing like the sterile efficiency of the guild’s infirmary.

A man stands by the window, a silhouette against the blinding light. He is huge. Not just tall, but broad, a mountain of a man who makes the small cabin feel even smaller.

My hunter’s instincts, buried under layers of pain, flicker to life. Threat.

I try to reach for the blades that should be on my back. My hands find only empty air and the rough fabric of a simple tunic that is not mine. My weapons are gone. My armor is gone.

“Who are you?” My voice is a stranger’s, a gravelly rasp. “Where am I?”

He turns from the window, and the light spills around him. His face is all harsh lines and sharp angles, framed by dark hair that falls just past his jaw. His eyes… his eyes are the color of molten gold. I have seen those eyes before. In the forest. On wolves that were not just wolves.

“You are safe,” he says, his voice that same calm, deep rumble. “My name is Marcus.”

Marcus. The name means nothing to me. He is a werewolf. That is all that matters. My hand clenches into a fist on the rough blanket.

“Safe?” I scoff, the sound painful. “The last thing I remember is one of your kind tearing me apart.” The memory flashes, white-hot and terrible. Teeth and venom and failure. I instinctively reach for my shoulder. I expect to feel mangled flesh, torn muscle, shattered bone.

Instead, my fingers meet smooth, warm skin. Healed skin. There is a faint network of scars beneath the tunic, I can feel the raised lines, but the wound is gone. It is impossible. A wound like that… it would take months to heal, if it healed at all. The rogue’s bite is always fatal. Always.

“How?” The word is a whisper.

He walks closer. Every silent step he takes is a threat. I push myself up on my elbows, my body screaming in protest.

“The rogue’s venom was killing you,” he says, stopping a few feet from the bed. He does not seem to feel the need to fill the silence. He just watches me, his golden eyes unnervingly steady. “You were dying when I found you.”

“You’re lying.” It is a desperate denial. Hunters do not get saved by werewolves. We hunt them. We kill them. That is the order of things.

“Your heart had almost stopped,” he continues, his tone maddeningly patient. “The poison was in every part of you. There was only one way to burn it out. To save your life.”

My blood runs cold. A dawning, sickening horror creeps up my spine. I stare at him, at his calm face, at his predator’s eyes.

“What did you do to me?”

He holds my gaze. He does not flinch. He does not hesitate. “I turned you.”

The words hang in the air. They do not make sense. My mind rejects them, tries to push them away, but they sink into me like hooks.

Turned me.

Turned me.

Into one of them.

Laughter bubbles up in my throat, a hysterical, broken sound. “No. No, you’re lying. You’re a monster. Monsters don’t save people. They kill them.”

“The thing that attacked you was a monster,” he says, his voice hardening for the first time. “It was driven mad by your guild’s silver. That is not what I am. And it is not what you are now.”

“What I am now?” I spit the words like poison. “I am a hunter! I am a daughter of the guild!”

I throw the blanket off and swing my legs over the side of the bed. A wave of dizziness washes over me, and the world tilts, but I plant my feet on the cold floorboards. My body feels alien, a vessel I no longer command. There is a strange energy humming under my skin, a restless power that makes my muscles twitch.

“You violated me,” I whisper, the accusation raw with hatred. “You took my life and twisted it into this… this abomination.”

I look around the room, frantic now. I need a weapon. A piece of firewood. A loose stone from the hearth. Anything. My eyes land on an iron poker resting by the fire.

I lunge for it.

He moves so fast he is a blur. Before my fingers can even brush the iron, he is there, his body blocking my path. His hand closes around my wrist. It is not a violent grip, but it is absolute. Like being caught in a trap made of granite. The warmth of his skin is a shock, a brand against my own.

“Let go of me,” I snarl, trying to wrench my arm free. It is useless.

“Stop,” he says simply. “You are weak. You will only hurt yourself.”

Weak? The word ignites a firestorm in my chest. All of Jaxon’s taunts, my father’s disappointed silence, my own crushing failure. It all boils over into pure, undiluted rage.

“Weak?” I scream, and I swing at him with my free hand.

He catches that wrist too, just as easily. Now he holds both of my arms, his grip unyielding. I struggle, I twist, I kick, but it is like fighting against a mountain. I am a child throwing a tantrum. The humiliation is a fresh wave of agony.

This is not my body. My body is a weapon. Precise. Controlled. Deadly. This new body is a clumsy prison, filled with a chaotic strength I cannot begin to comprehend or control. My legs tremble and give out. He holds me up, his hands still locked on my wrists, forcing me to bear his scrutiny.

“I will kill you,” I gasp, my breath coming in ragged sobs of fury. “I swear it. I will hunt you down and every last one of your kind. I will burn this forest to the ground.”

“The hunter is still in there, I see,” he says, and his voice is low, almost thoughtful. It infuriates me even more. He is not afraid. He is not even angry. He is… curious. Like I am some strange new specimen he is studying.

“I am not one of you!” I shout in his face. His scent fills my head, overwhelming me. Pine and earth and something uniquely his. It is dizzying. Confusing. My heightened senses are a curse, turning this tiny room into a sensory torture chamber.

“Your blood says otherwise,” he says quietly. “Your heart beats with a new rhythm. Can you not feel it? The strength waiting for you? The life I gave you?”

“You gave me a death sentence,” I say, my voice dropping, venomous and low. “I would have rather died in that clearing than live as… this.”

He is silent for a long moment. I can feel the steady, powerful beat of his heart through his grip. It is the same one I heard when I woke up. The one that is not mine. It is the anchor in this storm.

“Your old life is over, Harper,” he says finally, and my name on his tongue feels like a brand. “That part of you died with the rogue’s venom.”

He releases one of my wrists, and before I can react, his fingers gently touch the pulse point on my neck. A jolt, like lightning, shoots through me. It is not pain. It is something else entirely. Something terrifyingly new.

“But you are alive,” he says, his golden eyes boring into mine. “I saved you. Whether you see that as a mercy or a curse is up to you.”

He lets go of my other wrist. I stumble back a step, catching myself on the edge of the bed. I am breathing hard, shaking with a mixture of rage and exhaustion. He has not harmed me, not really. But he has broken me more completely than the rogue ever could have.

He took away my failure and replaced it with a monstrous identity.

He turns and walks back to the window, leaving me trembling in the center of the room. Helpless. Furious. Alone with the thrum of unfamiliar power under my skin and the steady, resonant beat of his heart in my ears.

He has left me with a choice. But it feels like no choice at all. It feels like the end of the world. My world.

And the beginning of his.

Chapter 3

Marcus

She sleeps.

The rage that poured from her, a physical force in this small cabin, has exhausted itself. She lies curled on the simple bed, a predator forced into stillness. Even in sleep, her scent fills the space. Rain-soaked earth, clean steel, and a sharp, wild defiance that is all her own. It is a scent my wolf has craved without ever knowing it existed.

I stand at the window, my hand resting on the rough-hewn frame. My knuckles are white. The forest outside is dark, the moon a sliver of bone behind the clouds. It was in that darkness I found her.

Her words echo in the quiet room. *I would have rather died in that clearing than live as… this.*

A curse, she called it. She does not understand. I did not curse her. I answered the will of the Goddess.

I close my eyes, and the scent of the memory returns. Old blood. Silver-rot. The signature of a hunter’s trap not meant to kill, but to corrupt. To create monsters.

The trail had been three days old. The scent was of Garris, one of my own. A young male, barely an adult, who had vanished on a patrol near the guild’s territory. We searched for weeks. But the scent I followed was a perversion of the wolf I knew. It was twisted with agony and madness.

I was not on a hunt. I was on a mercy mission. To find what was left of my packmate and grant him the peace the hunters had denied him.

The trail ended in a small clearing. And what I saw stopped my heart.

Garris was a monster. A thing of pure, mindless rage, his fur matted with filth, his eyes the vacant yellow of the silver-plague. He was crouched over a small human child. The air was thick with the girl’s terror, a smell like ozone and salt.

My wolf snarled, demanding I tear the heavens apart to save the innocent. I prepared to move, to end Garris’s suffering and protect the child.

Then a figure exploded from the tree line. A hunter.

My entire being went rigid. I knew her instantly. Harper. The Commander’s daughter. A legend in the guild, even at her young age. They called her the Silver Ghost. Said she was ruthless, efficient, a perfect weapon forged in her father’s shadow.

I expected her to use the child. A distraction. Bait. It is what a hunter would do.

“Run!”

Her voice was not the cold command I anticipated. It was a raw, desperate scream. She threw herself between the child and the rogue, her silver blades a flash of moonlight in the dim clearing.

I remained hidden in the shadows, frozen by a shock that went deeper than strategy. This was not the act of a cold-blooded killer. This was the act of a guardian.

The child scrambled away, and the hunter turned her full attention to the beast. She moved like a storm. A dance of impossible grace and brutal precision. She did not fight with hatred. She fought with a sorrowful purpose, a surgeon cutting away a cancer.

She was winning. She drove Garris back, her blades leaving sizzling trails of silver on his corrupted flesh. She crippled him with a strike to the thigh, and he went down, howling.

She stood over him, blade raised for the final blow. And then she hesitated.

I saw it. Even from my distance, I saw it. Her eyes met his, and for a fraction of a second, she did not see a monster. She saw the victim trapped inside. She saw the same wolf I was there to mourn.

That single moment of compassion was her undoing.

Garris, in a final spasm of mindless agony, lashed out. The blow threw her across the clearing. Before she could recover, he was on her. I heard the sickening crunch of bone, her strangled scream of pain.

His jaws, dripping with venom and poison, locked onto her shoulder.

The world went silent. The forest held its breath.

With her last measure of strength, she drove her remaining blade up under his jaw. A final, merciful strike. She did for him what I could not.

He collapsed on top of her. Dead. Truly at peace.

I stepped out from the trees. The child was gone. The forest was quiet save for the sound of Harper’s ragged, shallow breathing.

The scent of her blood was sharp in the air. But underneath it was the smell of the rogue’s venom. It was a vile, creeping thing, a scent of rot and decay that was already wrapping its tendrils around her life force.

I knelt beside her. I brushed the matted hair from her face. She was so pale. So still. A broken doll left in the mud.

And then my wolf spoke. Not in words, but in a feeling. A certainty that slammed into me with the force of a physical blow. A single, soul-shaking truth that buckled my knees.

*Mate.*

The word was a brand on my heart. *Ours. She is ours. Do not let her die.*

Every instinct I had as an Alpha screamed at me. She is a hunter. The enemy. Bringing her into our world is an act of treason. It could doom us all. My pack trusts me to protect them, and my wolf demands I bring their greatest threat into our heart.

I looked at her face, serene even as the poison ate her from within. I thought of her selfless courage. The spirit that chose to save a child over its own safety. The compassion that caused her to hesitate.

That was not the spirit of an enemy.

That was the spirit of a queen.

The Goddess does not make mistakes. The bond is sacred. A gift. And it was screaming at me to act.

My rational mind, the Alpha that had led this pack for ten years, fought a losing war against the primal certainty of the wolf. The war lasted only a heartbeat.

I made my choice.

I lifted her from beneath the weight of the dead rogue. She was light, fragile in my arms. I bit into my own wrist, ignoring the sting, and let my blood, thick with the magic of my lineage, well to the surface.

I pressed my wrist to her lips. “Drink,” I whispered, though I knew she could not hear me.

The act felt profane and sacred all at once. Forcing my life into the mouth of my enemy. My blood, the Alpha’s blood, battled the venom in her veins. Her body convulsed, a silent war raging within her cells. It was a violent, brutal rebirth.

I carried her for hours, back to this cabin, my private sanctuary hidden deep in our territory. I laid her on this bed and I watched over her while her body tore itself apart and rebuilt itself into something new. Something more.

Something mine.

I open my eyes, the memory fading back into the shadows of the room. I turn from the window and look at her. The woman who swore to kill me just hours ago. The woman my soul recognizes as its other half.

She stirs in her sleep, a soft whimper escaping her lips. A frown creases her brow. She is dreaming of the life she lost. The life I stole.

An unfamiliar emotion surges through me, so powerful it makes my chest ache. Protectiveness. It is a feeling I know well as an Alpha, a duty to my pack. But this is different. This is not duty. This is a possessive, desperate need that has nothing to do with leadership and everything to do with the woman sleeping in my bed.

I have risked everything. My life. The safety of my pack. I have bound our future to a hunter who hates what she has become, and by extension, hates me.

Her words come back to me again. *Mercy or a curse.*

I walk to the bed and stand over her. I reach out, my hand hovering just inches above her cheek. I can feel the warmth of her skin, the gentle puff of her breath.

She will wake again soon. And her fury will wake with her. She will see me as her jailer. Her monster.

Let her. I will weather her rage. I will endure her hatred.

I made my choice in that clearing. I chose her. And I will not let her go.

I will show her that what I gave her was not a curse. It was a second chance. For both of us.