Chapter 13

Hunter

H unter stared at the gate to the RISE Academy, and a creeping growl rose in his throat. It had been years since he had stepped onto a school property, and he hoped he would never have to again. He spent years honing his skills and learning how to kill anyone who so much looked at him wrong at an academy similar to this. He hated every second. All schools were the same. There were the popular kids who thought they were better than other people, the dumb males who thought it would be a good idea to listen to those popular kids and date them, and then the outcasts were sulking around, wondering why they weren't popular. Even during his training days, it was like that. Males wanting to be better than the others and shitting on the ones who had trouble keeping up. It was pitiful.

There was once a time when Hunter was that kid. He wasn't the tallest or strongest when he was elected to undergo this training. At the time, two or three boys from each village were plucked from their homes and sent to complete the training so they could become Werewolf Enforcement. A group of Werewolves was called on to wipe out the problem children of the packs so the Alpha didn't have to get their hands dirty. Hunter was the runt of his village at the time when he was chosen. His family protested, knowing he would end up getting killed during the training from the intensity and competitiveness it created amongst the males. It was his Alpha who made the decision to make him go. Hunter learned it was so he would die at the academy instead of having a weak wolf in his pack. Little did his Alpha know, his wolf was no quitter, and he rose to become the academy's top wolf.

It was a great day when I got to kill that bastard. He deserved a fate worse than the quick death I gave him.

It was so dark out with the new moon taking away the light, but Hunter's night vision was better than most with the years of training he had under his belt. The RISE crest on the gate made his lip curl. It annoyed him that he had to come here. He wouldn't have come if it weren't as important as it was to be here. Instead of walking down to get back on the train, Hunter cracked his neck and stepped closer to the gate. It registered his presence and opened with a creaking sound. The security guard looked at him, and he pulled out the paper stating he was registered to attend the classes to reform himself. Hunter fought the urge to roll his eyes and growl at that word.

Nonsense. It's fucking nonsense to have to reform to meet someone else's expectations.

Security waved him through, and he marched up to the school door. A brunette with waist-length hair opened the double doors before he could, and he felt her power smack into him. Hunter let out a startling growl, and the woman smirked at him. His wolf came to the surface and let out his power so the woman would know she wouldn't intimidate him. He stared into her eyes to show he wasn't afraid of a challenge. Her smile grew as their power collided. When she turned down her power, he did the same and waited for her to say something. The pale gray eyes looked too freaky on a human, and they stared into Hunter's soul as she held out her hand. Hunter looked at her with his eyebrow cocked, and her eyes moved to the piece of paper in his hand.

"Hello, Hunter Hawthrone. We've been expecting you. Welcome to the Reform Institute of Self-Enhancement. I am Louve Lupe, the Werewolf Council Member and your mentor during your time here. Here, you will Reform, Improve, Shine, and Elevate yourself. You are not here to compete with your fellow students. We are here to rehabilitate you and restore the bond with your fated mate. Through those doors is the chance for a better tomorrow. So have this thought in mind. You are only competing with yourself to be better than who you were yesterday."

Hunter frowned at the cookie-cutter welcome speech. Surely, they could create a better one than that if they were so hellbent on reforming their students. They should enhance the welcome experience, so I'm not bored when I get here.

"Hello," he responded.

"Would you like to see around the school or head straight to the dorm? I understand it is quite late. We apologize that the train could not get you here sooner."

Hunter nodded. He was on the far side of his land, and trains took forever to get to this part of their world. This was another reason why he was reluctant to come here, but something inside of him told him this was something he needed to do. His wolf disagreed with him when he almost turned down the opportunity, and he relented to make his wolf shut up.

"There's nothing you can do about it, ma'am. I'd prefer to head to the dorm to get some sleep."

Her jaw clenched, and Hunter wasn't sure if it was the ma'am's remark or his tone. "Certainly. I can also delay your classes until Friday if you wish. That would leave just your mentorship class, which isn't until the afternoon. I believe it starts at 2:30 p.m." She handed him his schedule.

Hunter shook his head. "No, ma'am. I can attend my class in the morning. I just need a few hours of sleep, and I'll be good to go."

Lupe gave him a curt nod. "If you wish. Though, just call me Professor Lupe, Professor, or Lupe." The tone was an order, not a suggestion.

The direct order rubbed his fur the wrong way. He gave her a stiff smile and nodded. The only person he allowed to give him orders was his Alpha, and no one could argue with that man. He was the Monarch, after all.

"Come this way, please."

Lupe led him to a building by a tree line. He smelled a hint of blackberry and currant that roused his wolf in a way that drove him mad. For the first time in a century, the wolf fought for dominance and pushed for a shift. Hunter stopped and pushed back on his wolf while stifling a snarl. He felt Lupe's eyes on him, but there was no way he would tell this woman what he was doing.

Mate.

You gotta be shitting me.

Mate. Mate. Mate.

Our mate cannot be here. Knock this nonsense off. The Great Moon does not give Enforcers mates. It distracts us.

She is here. That is her scent. I feel it.

Hunter took another second and breathed in the scent. He felt a tugging in his chest, and the need to find who the scent belonged to became overwhelming. Hunter took a deep breath and threw a wall between him and his wolf. This had to be a trick. His wolf had been wanting a mate since he could remember, but he already knew it wasn't an option. The scent must trigger his wolf to remember something of their childhood instead of finding their mate. He didn't need the distraction right now. His mission was to get through these courses, find his target, and get out.

"Mr. Hawthorne, are you okay? Do you need to go to the infirmary?"

He shook his head. "No. Just a random head pain. I need to get to sleep so the headache can go away."

She gave him a pained look. She smelled his lie, and he waited to see if she would press him. Another curt nod and then led him into the dorm. Lupe told him that one floor was devoted to the males, the next to the females, and then the top floor was the suite for mated couples if anyone found another mate at the school. She stood outside of one dorm and opened it for him. When she gave him the key, she gave him a tight smile.

"This room has been thoroughly cleaned, as it was recently used by a male who had found his second chance mate. If you have trouble because his scent is still in the room, please let us know, and we will have our resident witch come in and remove it."

Lupe said nothing more and walked down the hall. Hunter wondered why he had to use a recently used room but decided against raising a fuss. There were only so many rooms within the dorm.

Do they turn away others if they are full or create more with magic? Maybe I'll learn that in one of my classes.

He threw his bag into a corner, stripped to his boxers, and crawled into the bed. He would only get six hours of sleep before waking up for class. He didn't know what classes he had, but he made sure to have it where he would be in the same ones as his target to limit his time searching for them.

Get in. Kill the target. Get out.

The next morning, Hunter showered, dressed in stupid pants and a blazer with the RISE symbol on the chest, and returned to the school. He thought it was helpful that the school mapped out the classes so students could limit their time walking around trying to find things. He was to eat breakfast first, and his stomach rumbled at the thought of food. It had been a while since he ate. Letting the wolf go without food for too long was never good. They would go feral and attack unsuspecting people without the food to satiate the beast inside them.

The spread of food was good to see. The Monarch did the buffet style like the one before him, including food for all taste buds. Hunter stacked his plate high with as much meat as he could. There was ham, bacon, and sausage that would fill his daily needs, but he tended to burn energy more than most with his bulk. To be an Enforcer meant having a heavy training regime and even weightlifting. The amount of calories he needed to keep up with it made him look like he was starved three times a day.

The tables throughout the room held various species of supernaturals; most seemed to sit with their own kind. Hunter smelled the blackberry and currant scent again, and he had a hard time not wanting to follow it to whoever it belonged to. He reminded himself of his mission and scanned the room again. He was looking for a female with purple hair, teal eyes, and a power that only Shadowborn carried. He had tangoed with Shadowborns before and knew the scent very well. There was always a hint of darkness that shrouded their scent and aura. He walked toward the corner, which smelled more like a werewolf than the other species, and his eyes landed on her.

The world fell away as he looked at this female. The blackberry and currant scent filled his nose, and his wolf banged against the walls he built between them. He had looked at this photograph of his target for the last three days to memorize what she looked like. His wolf never tried to fight for control the way he had been now, so it did not make sense to him how his wolf thought this female was his mate. He was sent here to kill her, not mark her as his. However, he couldn't deny it. The warmth in his chest grew as he stared at this female that the Great Moon marked as the other half of his soul.

I am an Enforcer, but I have been given a mate. How can this be? How is it that the Great Moon marked this Shadowborn I was to kill as my true mate? Is this a sick twist of irony?

The female looked at him, and their eyes met. He watched her suck in a breath before a dark-haired male turned to look at him. Hunter could see the tips of a mate mark on the male, and Hunter let out a deep-throated growl. The female put her hand on top of the dark-haired male's and murmured a few words. He noticed the male relaxed at her touch and sealed it for Hunter.

This is the newly mated couple. It is one thing to kill a female when she has only found one of her mates, and it be the only one she was given. This one was given to another already, and I feel drawn to her. How can I kill someone who will take away from another?

It was foreign to him to think about his target. Hunter was a "by the book" kind of guy who just took out those who threatened their society. The man who contracted this girl only mentioned that she was a Shadowborn with no control over her Shadow Wolf. That was a major threat to their society, and there was no question that this female needed to be dealt with.

But this could be our female. We need to touch her. We need that bond to open.

Her male is not going to allow us to touch her right now willingly.

We must try.

Hunter walked over to the table where the female sat and stood at the head. He smiled down at her, and she gave him a weird look. Hunter was unsure of why she would look at him that way. She must feel the same pull he did. That's how this works. Yet she stared at him like he had three heads.

"Can I help you?" She asked him.

Her voice was fierce and had all the hints of back the hell off, but Hunter wanted to sit next to her and listen to her talk for hours instead.

"Hi. I'm Hunter. I'm new here. May I sit with you?"

Hunter realized he was speaking like he was a pup instead of someone with over a century of life experience. He wanted to facepalm and walk away, but that would look odd.

Her eyebrows furrowed. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?" He looked at the rest of the table. Next to his purple-haired beauty, a redheaded female looked at him almost the same way. The table could seat at least four others, so he didn't understand why he couldn't sit with her. "I see many open seats here."

The male growled, sitting across from his potential mate. Hunter glared at him and let out his own growl.

"Knock it off, Jackson. You said we could attend classes today without you acting like a douche canoe."

The male named Jackson was still holding her hand, and Hunter felt jealous of him for being able to touch her openly. Hunter's wolf paced and howled inside his mind, and keeping him contained became more difficult. Before he could tell the pup he could speak to the female, she stood up from the table and cut him off.

"Listen here, new guy. My name is Dylan. That is my mate, Jackson. I would like to attend my classes today instead of being stuck in one room because my possessive mate can't contain his wolf while I am around all these unmated males. If you want to sit here, you can sit on the other side next to Jackson. I refused to spend my entire breakfast time listening to two males get into a pissing match with growls. If you can't stop puffing out your chest and snarling at my mate, I must ask you to sit elsewhere. Understood?"

No one had spoken to Hunter this way since he was at the Enforcer Academy. He wasn't sure what to say in response. Part of him wanted to tell her she would never speak to him that way again, but another part wanted to hear her boss him around in other ways.

"I can keep my cool if he can." Hunter made sure to catch Jackson's gaze and hold it. Surprisingly, the male did not immediately drop them. Since he was so young, this one was higher on the hierarchy than Hunter thought he would be. Hunter looked back at Dylan, cursing at himself for dropping his eyes first, but then he was hit with the power that rolled off her. It was rare to find a female with this kind of power.

Why did they want her killed again? She holds this kind of power, and the pup rejected her? Did they no longer teach what it means to be mated to someone with power?

"I can behave," Jackson told him.

Hunter took his cue and moved to sit down at their table. He stayed quiet while he ate and soaked in the conversation the three of them had. The redhead introduced herself as Serafine, Dylan's bestie. Hearing someone introduce themselves this way was odd, but the Monarch had very few young wolves in his pack. This was certainly going to be an adjustment to stay here.

He noticed that Dylan did not like the fact that she was here from the way she talked about her classes. She wanted to return home and drag Jackson, but the rules stated she had to stay. Hunter tried to ask her a question but was cut off by the sound of the bell blaring through the building. He covered his ears and glared at the receivers. He noticed Dylan, Jackson, and Serafine were doing the same. Dylan grumbled while cleaning up her area and grabbing her bag full of her school supplies. While Hunter followed, he wondered if he would survive being stuck in this school and match Dylan's feelings about it.

And it will be a lot longer than a day or two before I can leave here. If Dylan is my mate, I'm not going anywhere, and I won't execute her.