I waited until the sun was nearly set to get ready to leave, loosely tying the laces of my boots and pulling on my leather jacket over a plain black shirt and sweatpants I could shed in a moment if I had to transform. Hunter was going to be expecting me soon, and I needed to run twenty minutes through the woods to him, something I was uncertain of how to go about without raising concerns.

  It would have been easier to shift into wolf form and run there, and would cut some time off too while making me feel safer, but it wouldn’t have allowed for subtlety. I’d be stuck running around naked as a baby if I needed to be in human form, and that wouldn’t allow much social interaction. No, human form there was for the best, even if it was going to be a bitch ruining my clothes if I got into a fight.

  Lord was draped across my dresser lazily lounging, and had behaved relatively well for how he normally was, meaning I doubted he’d cause me trouble. I’d only been forced to boop him on the nose twice, and both times were for comments he’d made about me looking flustered. None of them were particularly bad, I’d learned to deal with worse, but with Misha’s kiss so fresh on my mind and, well, tonight, I needed some time to think.

  So how’d the day on the town go? Lord spoke up again, probably a sign I’d jinxed myself there contemplating it as he rose his head curiously, you still didn’t spill the beans, you just kept poking my face for saying you were a cute tomato, little tomato.

  “I will give you a bath,” I warned him, before realizing there was no winning this in the long run, “Fuck, look I…I had a talk with Misha so I could use some time to think about that. Just give me a bit first, please?”

  Oh, yay, Lord said dramatically, rolling his head as he laid it back on the dresser with a dramatic huff, Misha.

  “He’s a good guy,” I answered, looking down at the cat with a frown, “come on, give him a chance.”

  I’ve known him longer, Lord hissed at me.

  “Oh shut up, you’re just jealous I’m not fucking you,” I snapped, not a moment later interrupted with a nervous cough behind me.

  I froze, a long moment, giving a small cough of my own as I turned around to be greeted by Knives, standing there with a look of complete confusion as she watched us. The werewolf looked like they’d been cooking, with flour and eggs staining their apron, and their short hair having a bit of sauce in it. I had no fucking idea how I hadn’t heard or smelled them coming, they smelled like a fresh meal, and it made me worry I was either too comfortable or too stressed.

  “The…The Lady just pulled in the driveway,” Knives said, looking ready to say something else before tilting their head, “were you just…talking to Lord?”

  “No,” I said quickly, forcing an unconvincing laugh as I rubbed the back of my head, “I mean, yes, but like, it wasn’t like it sounded. I was just-”

  “It’s fine,” Knives said slowly, looking at Lord for a moment before saying, “I’m…I’m going to go back to cooking. You two just…yeah, whatever.”

  I was about to try explaining that I’d just been genuinely talking to the cat, before realizing that probably sounded worse. Now was not the time to be revealing I could talk to animals, there was too much context behind that conversation. Besides that, from the sound of it I needed to get upstairs and fast to see what The Lady wanted. I couldn’t let this ruin figuring out what was going on with me tonight, and besides that The Lady being here was probably a bad sign for my health all things considered.

  Taking my locket and bracelet off the dresser, I stuffed both deep into my jacket pocket and left my phone behind as I went up the stairs. A gathering of werewolves already formed in the living area, most were waiting in held breaths as The Lady walked in. The vampire wearing clothes probably thirty years out of date based on the puka shell necklace, looking as though she were trying for a casual look and not sure of what that should be, and it would have been comical if not on her.

  The Lady walked over to me, a smile crossing her lips as she raised the side of one finger to her lips and in a low purr declared, “My favorite morsel, you are looking…ready to leave. Did I interrupt previously made plans?”

  “I was just going for a walk,” I lied, hoping it didn’t seem obvious there was something more going on, “figured just, go down the driveway, maybe to the gas station down the road. Did you need me to stay around?”

  “Stay around?... No, that won’t be…necessary,” The Lady admitted, speaking surprisingly more directly than normal as she tilted her head and licked her fangs, “most likely for the best. I need…to talk to some of the people here. It would be best if you were not…present for a few hours.”

  “I can do that,” I said, nodding as I quickly stepped out of the door and ran off into the woods hoping no one was looking after me.

  It was a short jog all things considered, dashing between trees and going through low-lying vines and bushes without too much issue. Even as old as the artificial woods was, it had not yet developed all the twisted foliage Virginia had to offer, which made running in the woods impractical unless you knew how to do so.

  Eventually I hit a tall brick wall once marking the estate’s edge I climbed over in a few seconds, and found myself in a small stretch of trees leading out into the suburbs. I slowed down a bit there, stepping out onto the street as I slipped my locket around my neck and clicked the bracelet on my wrist.

  In an instant my thoughts changed, a hard shift compared to before, and I felt Hunter’s presence very close and softly ringing in the background. I could tell generally where the thoughts were coming from though, and I straightened myself out as I started to walk down the street in his direction.

  It was going to be weird seeing Hunter again, even if it’d probably been only twenty-four hours since we’d last been in person. Still, I’d kissed my first…well, anyone since leaving the Purists, and was now starting to consider Misha a little stronger now I’d kissed him.

  Or, I guess he’d kissed me, but at the same time I’d kissed him back and most certainly wanted him to do more. Wolf Gods, it would have been nice to have someone in my bed again, pressing themselves against me every opportunity, to claim them as my mate and-

  Bloodhound, Hunter’s thoughts rang firmly in my head, surprising me enough to stumble over my feet on the road, please…please refrain from thinking about having sex with random men while we share a mind. You know how I feel about that.

  Sorry, I replied, feeling a flush rise to my cheeks as I pushed the thought aside. It was one of the ways Hunter and I had learned to manage ourselves when we wore our bracelets constantly. While I made no real distinction in who I found attractive, maybe a small preference for men though I wasn’t sure, Hunter didn’t really find men that tempting and found the idea of them sexually more than unappealing. At first it’d been a source of friction between us, once I’d realized that aspect of myself, though after a while we’d reached a truce. I’d limit how much I was thinking about men while wearing our bracelet, and we could remove them whenever one us wanted to think too hard about someone else without judgement.

  Which house is our prey? I asked, keeping an eye out for the man as I walked casually as I could.

  Blue house, Hunter answered me, barely narrowing it down, between the one with the little plastic kid’s playhouse and the one with the garden gnome display of Old Yeller.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  It took me only a few minutes to find the house, and as I walked up to it Hunter stepped from nearby bushes and interlocked an arm around mine. I held onto him on instinct, and rested my head on his as we looked over at the house and thought of what to do. Perhaps to anyone else just looking like any young could considering what it’d be like to have some house or another.

  There were no ghosts, but you know how that sort of thing always goes. There’s a grace period between murder and formation, we needed to keep that in mind. I wonder if there are any people inside.

  Yes, there was at least one person, a girl had ordered delivery and gotten a two liter and average sized pizza. She was a horrible tipper, only gave a couple dollars to the guy, he was complaining about it. One person then? One person who liked to eat or a couple people more than likely

  No, she drank from the bottle directly before going upstairs, likely just the one person.

  The front door was probably locked in that case, common sense after getting something delivered while home at night. Who ever remembers to lock the back door when they're home and awake?

  There was that time at the lake house that went particularly bad.

  They tasted so good though.

  Shall we indulge again?

  No, we can’t, not right now.

  Never.

  We stepped off the sidewalk, moving around to the back of the house as we hugged the vinyl wall as best we could. The back yard’s gate was open, and there was a sliding glass door there that the light of a kitchen came through. The two of us creeped forward under the light, until I pulled at the door, feeling it slide open as I gave my former mate a smile.

  This was a horrible plan.

  This was a great plan.

  This was a beautiful plan with you here.

  You looked lovely in the moonlight.

  We stepped into the home, and quite as we could started to make our way through the house, creeping through halls and rooms. It was sparse, cleaned out recently, and the smell of rotting flesh had been largely hidden under heavy cleaners and probably only detectable to our noses. Even the blood had been cleaned up surprisingly well, like someone was trying to make sure half-ones wouldn’t notice.

  The carpeted floor of the living room and halls still held a purplish red tint to it from where someone had been dragged and killed. The leather recliner near one wall still smelled like a few spare chunks of meat had long ago fallen between cracks and finished rotting. There were a few scratch marks on walls and door frames, barely visible except for the thin difference in layers of paint.

  We passed a children’s room whose pink walls bore too many stains of red that were barely visible, and I paused for a long time there, pain and anger flashing through me. Hunter tried to remind me to not lose control, we’d done worse, and I stormed up the stairs of the home.

  This was a bad idea, we needed to take it easy, go slow, just look around for information. We could sneak attack her, set a trap, get information from her, but not charge into this without a plan. I needed to stop, I needed to slow down and not fucking charge into a fight for once in my life. This couldn’t be another fucking situation where I nearly died by attacking the first fucking thing I saw.

  I didn’t care.

  My skin was itching, my bones felt like they were burning within my muscles, my muscles were trying to stretch. I shrugged off my jacket, tossing it to Hunter and it annoyed one of us as I walked toward a closed door with light coming from under it.

  This was going to be rough depending on whether she was a werewolf or not, and my brain was leaning towards werewolf. A human would be easy to subdue, but dragging information out of them was going to be a lot harder without killing them. If it was a werewolf I was going to need to be careful subduing them, but there were a lot more ways for me to get them talking.

  Werewolves were hard to kill, and it took a few particular actions to put one down for good. We could survive almost anything, even if we might not like to, and it was one of the reasons hunters had a hard time with our kind. Silver was obvious — stopping wounds from healing faster than mortals and heating when in contact with our blood — and fire did the job well enough if you were persistent. You could cut off a werewolf's head and that would keep them down, but you needed to either get it all the way off or sever the spine and cut off blood flow. Suffocation would take hours to do, severe damage to the body was shrugged off, the brain could heal around sections dying with only minor problems.

  That left only one thing.

  A werewolf eating a werewolf’s heart was an old way to do it, though only done in the most dire of cases. At least, it was supposed to be saved for that, and in actuality it was something the Purists did very freely. It was a spiritual death, with no spirit left to be in this world or the next, and one I needed to try avoiding.

  The last thing I needed was to get in trouble for that sort of thing.

  The last thing I needed was to be charging in like this.

  My body crashed into the door, and it broke off its hinges with a pop as I stepped into a master bedroom. On the bed, entwined with each other under the sheets and looking up to me in surprise, was a man with a woman on top of him.

  I ran up before either could move more than a few inches, and tossed the woman across the wood and into the drywall, leaving a large dent in the wall. My muscles were starting to turn without me realizing, and I didn’t care as I grabbed a pair of keys off the table and the man by his hair. He let out a noise of fear, and I jammed one of the keys into his neck, watching him grab at it in fear as he fell to the ground.

  Well, he was human.

  There were better ways to test that

  I was angry.

  Mary, behind you.

  I turned around, just in time to see a large furred paw grip my head and spin me around toward one of the walls. There was a crack, my body screamed in agony, pieces of drywall, wood, and metal pierced into my back, and then nothing as I landed on the floor of the next room.

  I laid there limp a moment, a groan of pain escaping me as I felt my bones crack back into place and my body begin to expel the foreign material. Hunter was fighting, his thoughts were focused on it, dodging weaving, ripping clothes and muscle as he changed form.

  I wasn’t far behind.

  My bones snapped, broke, shattered, moving out of place and twisting around on themselves in agonizing movements as I rolled onto my hands and knees. My muscles melted, shifted along bones, grew in size, my eyes blinked once and opened again to a wolf’s view of the world. There was a rip of fabric as my clothes tore to shreds, as I forced myself into my hybrid form, and I kicked off my boots even as my feet shattered and came back together in a large canine form.

  My spine grew and formed a tail, my already heavy body hair turned thick and into a matting of red fur, and my nails and teeth extended and sharpened. The bones of my jaws stretched, suddenly too big for my mouth and an instant later dislocated before coming back together as a muzzle. A laugh that might have been a howl escaped my lips, and I charged forward in my hybrid form.

  Nine feet tall and three hundred pounds heavier, the hybrid form was painful to hold onto, it was unnatural. It was like deadlifting a car and trying to hold it there for several seconds or even minutes as your body begged to either become wolf or human.

  The woman was in her own hybrid form, looking like she could barely hold it as her body begged to change, and I slammed into her with all my weight. We tumbled onto the bed, the frame shattering below our struggle, and my nails dug into her as she turned us around so she came out on top.

  Hunter jumped onto her back, in his wolf form, and bit at the back of her neck, and I simultaneously lunged forward, biting the front of it. Delicious blood stained my tongue, and a noise I didn’t exactly want to describe escaped my throat as I bit down hard. The woman clawed at my back, digging into bones and muscles, and I tore my nails into her chest as I forced her off me.

  She fell back, crushing Hunter and extracting a yelp from his helpless form — not helpless — and rolled to face both of us.

  She was struggling, her spine and muscles were changing, she was leaning towards the wolf. I couldn’t blame her, I could feel my fur trying to return to my skin as I played the same dance.

  I growled, and she growled back, and Hunter and I briefly shared a plan before we lunged forward. Hunter grabbed at her back paws, and I leapt for her neck, narrowly dodging a swipe from her claws. My clawed hand gripped her arm, and I twisted it until it popped and she let out a yowl of pain. She looked delicious, and I bit hard at the back of her neck, digging my razor teeth deep.

  My arms wrapped around hers, and I pinned them against me as I started to tear into her neck, biting through muscle and bone. Meat stained my lips, filled my mouth, and I swallowed as little as I could muster myself to as I worked deep. Hunter dug into her stomach with his teeth, working towards her heart, and the woman howled and growled in agony, her claws futilely clawing at my back, until her head fell forward and I chewed through the last bits of flesh.

  I dropped her headless body, letting my own fall back into my human form as I suddenly became aware of an agony in my body. No, my back, something felt wrong and I frowned as I made it a few steps and looked around in confusion.

  Hunter was changing back, laughing as he looked over to me. I looked beautiful with blood on my mouth, he wanted to kiss me, I wanted to kiss him. I needed him.

  I stepped forward, and I went to laugh only to find nothing coming out of my mouth and only pain struck through my body. With a frown I turned around, for some reason thinking that would work even as my world began to fog.

  My back was missing.

  A lot of this blood was mine.

  I had a few organs hanging out.

  That wasn’t good for me.