Her Hunter's Heart

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.