Chapter 9

NINE

CARVER

" F ind her. Hunt her down. Don't let her get away."

My fists tightened on my steering wheel, my knuckles cracking and turning white.

My entire life, my wolf had never spoken to me. Now it wouldn't shut up. That rebellious bunny had awoken a primal hunger within me. It wanted her. It chose her.

"She's our mate."

"Why her?" The monster inside me could have heard me even if I hadn't spoken out loud, but verbal responses felt better since I'd gone three decades without it responding to a single thought.

"Because she's perfect."

"She's not fucking perfect." I was squeezing my truck's steering wheel so tightly now it groaned, threatening to break under my strength. "She's a rabbit shifter. Prey! Food! Our kind don't mate hers. She wouldn't survive it anyway."

"With the way her cunt dripped at our touch? She was made for us."

It went on about how Ruth was our mate and how I needed to let it out so it could track her down. I flipped on the stereo and cranked the volume up to drown out the voice in my head. Mot?rhead's "In the Name of Tragedy" filled the cab.

Catching the hint, it fell silent, and once again, my head felt like my own. But its words still bounced around in my skull.

Even if the rabbit shifter was my mate, it didn't matter. Even if she survived the coupling, my pack would see our bond as an abomination. They'd kill us both.

My wolf knew that, and it didn't care. It filled my head with the dark and disturbing things it wanted to do with her, consequences be damned.

Images of Ruth's naked body filled my head. Bent over in front of me, with her fluffy bunny tail quivering, my hands clenched around the base of her bunny ears as I shifted into my wolf form and forced her to take my knot.

My foot slammed on the brakes when a hulking shadow burst onto the road, a mass of muscle and fur bolting in front of my truck. The black wolf's eyes glowed in my headlights.

"Lila, what the hell?" Shifting the truck into park, I flung my door open and ran to my brother's mate. "You're not supposed to leave the woods in that form. What if a human drives past?"

I knew something was wrong as she shifted into her human form, her naked body stumbling toward me with her arms wrapped protectively around her belly. Her eyes were swollen with tears. In all the years I'd known Lila, I'd never seen her cry before.

"What's wrong? Is it the baby?"

It wasn't until her shivering form was in my arms that I realized she was covered in blood. A cold realization sunk in. It wasn't bunny blood… It was werewolf blood, and the scent was hauntingly familiar.

Lila was soaked in Casey's blood.

I took her by the shoulders and held her away from me to pin her with a wild look. "Where is Casey? What's happened?"

"We—" She visibly swallowed. "We found both of the female sacrifices."

My heart sank like a hot coal to the pit of my gut. "The girl with the purple streak in her hair, is she still alive?"

The concern in my voice had Lila's eyes widening. "Why do you care? She's a sacrifice. She's supposed to die. That's the truce, and she broke it by killing one of our own!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" A rabbit shifter couldn't kill a werewolf. It wasn't possible. It was like pitting a baby against a coked-up grizzly bear.

"Carver. Your brother is dead."

"What?" My voice sounded distant. Not my own. Lila frantically tried to tell me what had happened, but I could barely make out her words.

Casey was gone. Ruth killed him… How? How in the fuck did that little bunny take down one of the strongest males in the pack?

"If you'd listened to me, this wouldn't have happened."

I hated how right my wolf was. If I'd listened to it, Ruth would still be with me, and I'd still have a brother with breath in his lungs.

Lila's brows twisted with hate, and a fresh wave of angry tears rolled down her cheeks. "I have to kill her."

My wolf tensed inside me, and I pushed it back. "No. You have to go back to the pack house. Case would want you and his cub safe."

Bundling her up in my arms, I walked her over to my truck, placed her into the driver's seat and handed her the keys. She hesitated before taking them. "I know you don't like participating in the Hunt. But just this time, will you do it? Will you track her down and kill the rabbit who killed Casey?"

Right then, my sister-in-law could have asked me to crawl up into the goddamn sky and wrestle the moon down for her, and I'd do it. Anything for the last piece of my brother that I had.

"I'll do it."

Every sinew in my body tensed, waiting for the beast inside me to protest. But it was eerily quiet, and that unsettled me more than anything else.

"Thank you, Carv. I hate to ask so much of you, but could you—" Lila's voice wavered and cracked, and she had to take a moment to gather herself. "Could you go back to Case's body and bury his head? Lars won't like it, but I hate to think of the animals getting to it."

Every chord in my body stiffened, the hackles of the wolf inside me rising. "What do you mean, bury his head? I'm not going to sever my brother's fucking head, Lila."

The she-wolf's bottom lip trembled, and she scootched across the bench seat of my truck, gesturing to the space next to her. "You're going to want to sit down for this…"

With Lila's directions and my keen sense of smell, even in my human form, it didn't take long to find Casey's body. He was lying in a clearing not far from my cabin, where I often gathered wood. My stomach churned, seeing he'd shifted sometime after death. He looked so small, bathed in blood and moonlight, his severed head lying a few feet away from his body.

I hadn't believed my ears when Lila told me that thelittle rabbit shifter had cut off the head of a fully shifted werewolf. If it had been anyone else, I'd be impressed.

Instead, pure loathing raged through me like wildfire, turning every cell in my body to ash.

How had she done it? I'd taken her knife, which was now in the glove compartment of my truck. The details didn't matter so much, but they helped keep my mind off the fact that my brother was gone.

I had to find her.

"Let me out, I'll track her down quicker than you."

I didn't bother responding to the voice inside my head. I didn't trust it. I knew its game.

It believed Ruth was his mate. He'd want to keep her, mate her. Claim her. I could feel its hunger for her clawing at my insides, morphing into something that I wouldn't be able to hold back.

I had to find and kill her before I lost control of baser desires.

Picking up Case's head, I forced myself to look into the face that mirrored my own. I'd promised Lila I'd bury his head, but I couldn't do it now. So, I tucked him close to my chest, resolving to give him a proper burial later. It was against pack rules to bury our dead. It was tradition to leave the body in the woods to be reclaimed by our land. But Lila wanted Case's head to be safe from the animals, and I wasn't about to argue with her. If Lars had a problem with it, he could take it up with me. I almost wish the bastard would try me.

Ruth had laid a trail for me, drops of my brother's blood leading me through the woods. The further away I got from where my brother lay dead, the thinner the trail got. Luckily, she'd come this way not even an hour ago, so her pheromones still clung to the air, making it easy to retrace her steps.

"Making it so easy for me, Little Bunny," I muttered, the inferno of desire and hatred spiking inside me as her scent grew stronger.

The image of my brother's body lying limp in the pool of his blood haunted me. We'd never go on another hunting trip, never share another smoke or beer. He'd never see his mate again or ever know his pup.

Grief morphed my anger into something lethal.

Something monstrous.

When I got my hands on Ruth, I'd make her fucking scream.