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“You don’t have to scream like that. My bullet caught the wolf before they disappeared down the hill.”

Robert stared at him. “How do you know? I could barely see them when you were shooting.”

Tatum knew because he’d seen the way the wolf had jumped in front of Storm and how it had jerked when the bullet struck. He could also smell the blood in the air.

Sometimes being transformed into a demon monster with all these heightened senses really had its perks.

“I’m a good shot, and I saw the way the wolf fell over.”

Robert’s brows went up into his hairline, and his mood immediately improved. “Great. Let’s go pick up the carcass.”

They were still moving. He hadn’t killed the wolf, just injured it.

He could follow the scent of them, and that would have to be good enough. “I doubt I killed it. I just got it in the leg. It’ll slow them down and make them easier to track. We didn’t lose them yet.”

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Already Tatum was reaching into the truck and pulling out bags of ammunition and weapons. He was going to have to be careful when it came time for him to start loading the guns with silver bullets, but he had a pair of gloves with him for that.

Robert wasn’t moving. He was just watching as Tatum eagerly hoisted the heavy bags over his shoulders.

“What do you want those two for? They killed my family. That’s why I want them, but you specifically want them, too. Why?”

Tatum clenched his jaw. He really didn’t have time for this shit.

He hadn’t stuck around long enough to discover exactly what Storm was for himself that day he escaped before the wolves could kill him. No, he’d found that part out later, and he wanted to kill both him and Tony for hiding something like that from him. A shifter had been hiding out in his team of hunters and had probably been waiting for the right moment to strike at them for who knew how long.

As for the wolf, well, he was part of the pack that was responsible for the fact that Tatum was now a demon creature.

He’d thought about eating a bullet once or twice, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Tatum was a survivor. He’d survived the loss of more than one team, and he survived being attacked by werewolves, he was not about to take himself out of the running for life.

The first couple of times he’d transformed, just to wake up with the dead bodies of normal, clean-souled humans next to him, well, that had nearly been his undoing. He swore he would learn to control what he was, and he would get his revenge on those wolves for what they did to him and for what they made him do to those dead humans.

“I have my reasons,” Tatum said. He wasn’t about to get into sharing his shit with this guy. “Every hunter does. You should know that.”

Robert actually blushed. Was this guy for real?

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“I am right. Now hurry up. If we keep a steady pace, we might be Hunted and on the Run

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able to catch up with them. They have to stop and rest sometime considering that wolf has a silver bullet in him.”

* * * *

John wasn’t going to make it. The world swirled around him, and for the fourth time he found himself about to keel over.

He would have, too, had it not been for Storm.

Storm was always there to grab him by the neck and force him back to his feet, like a mother helping her cub along. John didn’t particularly like that comparison, but it was the only thing his foggy brain would produce.

“Keep moving. Just a little farther,” Storm said encouragingly.

He’d been saying those same words for what felt like hours now, and John had gotten to the point where he was just blindly following the other shifter along. He couldn’t even navigate himself away from a tree before he ran into it.

With every painful step he took, the burning in his leg grew worse. At first the pain was nearly unbearable, but then it had numbed and John was able to quicken his pace a little. He’d still hobbled, but it hadn’t been that bad, and he’d even started to think that maybe the bullet had only been silver plated.

Then the burning had returned, followed by the swelling, itching, and stiffness in his back leg. Then the colors of the trees had all started to blend together, and now his body was so hot he thought he might actually expire if he didn’t get some water in him.

“Stop, John. Stop.”

Those words hadn’t been spoken in his head. They were out loud.

Storm had actually stopped to shift back into a man while John feverishly wandered along.

Still, Storm had told him to stop, and he gratefully allowed his body to fall into a bed of cool leaves.

They had been cool for the first three seconds anyway because 60

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then they absorbed all the heat from John’s body, and it was like he had a quilt around him, which only made the heat that much worse.

He felt Storm’s human hands come to rest on his fur. They stroked him carefully then moved down to his injured leg.

The burn that followed behind his touch felt like he’d just been scalded with hot oil. Storm’s hand grabbed him by the scruff again to keep him from jumping up.

“You’ll injure yourself more! I’m sorry. Stay still,” he said, stroking John’s neck and ears.

He liked that, and it calmed him enough that he was able to put the pain out of his mind for a little bit. He even managed to smile as he looked up into Storm’s eye. He wasn’t wearing his eye patch, but John’s vision was still too cloudy for him to see