Hunt
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About this ebook
~A short story set in Rachel Vincent's Shifters world!~
It’s been more than four years since Abby Wade survived capture and torture by a quartet of rogue shifters. Back then she was a scared kid, just trying to survive.
Now Abby is all grown up, and if she’s learned anything from training with Faythe Sanders, the world’s first female Alpha, it’s that she can take care of herself—and anyone else who comes along. So when her college roommate is abducted from a campsite deep in the Appalachian woods, Abby knows exactly how to get her back...
The rules of the hunt are simple. Kill or be killed.
Abby Wade is not ready to die.
Rachel Vincent
New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent loves good chocolate, comfortable jeans, and serial commas. She’s older than she looks and younger than she feels, but is convinced that for every day she spends writing, one more day will be added to her lifespan. Now absorbed in the dark, tangled loyalties of her UNBOUND world, as well as the travails of a teenage banshee in her SOUL SCREAMERS world, Rachel can be found online at www.rachelvincent.com or urbanfantasy.blogspot.com.
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Book preview
Hunt - Rachel Vincent
Hunt
A Shifters/Wildcats Story
Rachel Vincent
Text copyright © 2014 by Rachel Vincent.
Cover art copyright © 2014 by Gaslight Graphics
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locals is entirely coincidental.
Rachelvincent.com
Created with Vellum Created with Vellum
To my husband—my number one fan, my other half,
and my partner in this first independent project.
Contents
Hunt
A Note From Rachel…
Lion’s Share
Also by Rachel Vincent
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Hunt
The forest was singing, and its song was all mine. The others, with their human ears, heard only the crackle of the campfire and their own voices. Huddled in down jackets and sleeping bags, they thought they owned the world by virtue of their ability to tame it, and that was an understandable mistake. But they’d never really seen the forest. Not like I saw it.
They couldn’t feel it like I felt it either, poking at my paws with sticks and thorns. Blowing through my fur with the scents of pine, and ash, and warm, plump rodent. Winding through my soul, with the knowledge that I was but part of a whole, a single predator serving nature as surely as it served me.
Soon I’d have to go back to the campfire. To my friends’ idea of roughing it
with battery powered radios, canned food, and no-rinse bathing wipes, guaranteed to keep you fresh even days into a showerless camping trip. Soon I’d have to put on my human skin so I could be Abby Wade, normal college senior. I’d been hiding the feline half of my life for three years, and my secret forest run was just a temporary reprieve from all things human.
Still, the next few moments were mine.
My paws snapped through twigs and sank into underbrush, pushing against the earth to propel me faster, higher. I was a streak of black against the night, darker than the forest, yet a part of it, as I hadn’t been in weeks. Small animals fled ahead of my paws, scurrying through tangles of fallen leaves and branches. The scents of oak, birch, maple, and pine were familiar comforts, relaxing me even as they pushed me for more speed, greater distance. Thorns caught in my fur. Cold air burned in my nose and stroked the length of my body as I ran, like a caress from the universe itself.
I was welcome in the woods. I belonged there, as I’d never truly belonged anywhere else.
When I’d been gone as long as I could stay away without worrying the others, I slowed to a gradual stop, huffing from exertion. It was time for a snack, to replace the energy I’d burned during my shift.
My ears swiveled on my head, pinpointing the telltale sounds of prey. Werecats can’t track by scent, like a dog, so we hunt with our ears and our eyes. On my run, I’d smelled mice and a couple of weasels, both of which stay active in the winter, but I was holding out for a rabbit, or even a beaver. No use wasting a deer with only me there to feed on it.
Something scuttled through the underbrush several yards to the southeast, too fast and light to be raccoon. Probably a mouse or a rat. Too much effort for too little meat.
I slowed my breathing and listened harder. From the north came a soft, rapid swooshy heartbeat, but no movement. Whatever it was, it knew I was close and hungry. I turned my head and sniffed toward the north—I could pinpoint prey with my ears, but could only ID it with my nose, which told me I was hunting rabbit. Perfect. Its fur wouldn’t be white yet—not in mid-October—but my feline eyes would have no trouble distinguishing it from its surroundings.
I pounced. The rabbit sprang from the underbrush and landed three feet away. I caught a glimpse of brown and white fur, then it was off again, racing through the woods and vaulting over low shrubs and fallen logs.
I ran after it at half speed, reluctant to end the chase too soon—who knew when I’d have