Hunter Maximus

Isobel’s POV

“Do you really have to drag him so roughly?” I ask Christian, who walks ahead of me without looking back much. He obviously didn’t consider a human girl with a dagger much of a threat.

“Is this your boyfriend is it?” Christian asks with almost more mocking than a vampire. I don’t know how to answer that question, it puzzles me. Did I consider Maximus my boyfriend? I mean, he drank my blood, kissed me senseless, wanted to fuck me...

So why did I have trouble recognizing him as my boyfriend? Probably the general fact that he was a pain in the ass, and our ‘relationship’ began as me being a forced slave in the palace. In fact, he still thought of me as a slave. Even now, when we were both human.

No, I couldn’t consider him a boyfriend.

He was just my hot, dicky kidnapper – who toyed with my emotions.

“He is not my boyfriend,” I finally state, anger surging through that one statement.

“Took you long enough to decide on that one,” Christian laughs menacingly and suddenly jerks to a stop, looking shocked as a really pretty female waltzes out into his path, “Ruby, what is it?” he snaps at the newly arrived girl and I get the sense he is simply putting on a tough act because he doesn’t want her to see how much he was affected by her sudden appearance.

“I need his keys,” she says dryly, not taking much notice of Christian’s uptight glare her way as she approaches Maximus and goes for his pocket. Just before she can reach the pocket, Christian swings Maximus out of the way and looks down on Ruby bent over, a spark of something in his eyes which I could only call lust and anger and perhaps frustration too.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Christian growls low, “Explain.”

Ruby straightens up to her full height, a scowl on her face. I can tell she is about to snap or yell at him but when she quickly glances at me she composes herself and relaxes her shoulders.

“They left a car,” Ruby says slowly, too slowly, and I can tell she is trying to make Christian seem slow-witted, “We need the keys to drive the car, are you following along yet?”

Christian pauses and I can tell Ruby must have crossed a line. Surely alpha’s deserved more respect from the pack-mates. After all he was at the top.

“Take the keys. Gather up the rest of them before they do something stupid and bring them back to the den,” Christian growls low, “And watch your tone around me.”

Ruby, without replying, reaches down into Maximus’ pants pocket and takes out the keys. She throws them on the ground and holding Christian’s eye, she starts undressing.

“Umm...” I mumble to myself, looking away momentarily as she fully gets naked in a matter of seconds.

What the heck was she – ?

Oh.

I glance at Christian to see him barely containing his frustration at Ruby’s actions as she transforms into a wolf and picks the keys up in her mouth before running off into the underbrush, leaving clothes, panties and a bra behind.

“Who was she?” I ask and I instantly regret asking the question when he directs a full-blown glare my way.

“Pick up those clothes and shut up, one more word from you and I’ll kill him!” Christian snarls and I find myself leaning down to pick up Ruby’s clothes an instant later. I admit, Christian was extremely intimidating. I find myself walking after him without much protest. I honestly admired Ruby’s strength around him. I wonder why they were both so hostile towards each other?

Then I remember we are walking into a werewolf’s den and I briefly wonder what that will look like and what will be the consequential fate for me and Maximus.

As I follow Christian through the forest I fumble out my phone as silently as possible.

I consider texting Jennifer the situation, but from what Christian ordered Ruby to do, it sounded like her and Caitlin would be next to be kidnapped.

I can think of only one other person to help me.

I start a new message and write, SOS werewolf’s den, Evergreen Forest, and I send it to Luke.

It’s the only amount I manage to type without my nerves getting to me about Christian finding out.

It’s as I press send and push the phone back into my pocket that Christian looks at me over his shoulder, glaring at me.

I stare back with wide eyes, feeling like he must have known what I had done.

But then he suddenly stops walking and dumps Maximus’ body on the ground.

“You’ll be crawling the next part,” Christian growls, “Ladies first,” it certainly isn’t a compliment as he jerks his chin in the direction of what is just in front of him to the side. I see a hole in the ground.

My claustrophobia instantly kicks in and I haven’t even crawled inside it yet.

But I’m momentarily distracted as Christian also starts stripping and he manages to smirk at my discomfort as he takes off his jeans, clearly he was going commando style as he chucks the jeans at me and I try very hard not to stare at his private parts.

I’m put out of my misery when he transforms into his wolf, brown fur shining in the moonlight. He looks from me towards the den’s entrance. Then he grabs Maximus’ leather pants by the ankle and drags him a little closer to the hole and pauses, waiting for me to go in first.

“Fuck...” I mutter under my breath, getting onto my knees I chuck the alpha’s jeans and Ruby’s clothes over my shoulder and then I start to crawl forward into the dark, small entrance to the den.

I instantly start to feel sick, it instantly gets hard to breathe.

Claustrophobia, a fear of enclosed spaces, certainly wasn’t helping as I had to force myself to move one elbow forward, then one knee, then the other pair.

I hear Christian growl behind me, obviously wanting me to hurry up.

Fear of the alpha-werewolf in his wolf form slightly overcomes the fear of the enclosed den entrance and I speed up as fast as I can.

I hoped Maximus and I survived this and if we were inevitably on death row – maybe Luke would pull through and come to save us.

I could only hope.

Luke’s POV

I’m dreaming once again of Isobel. I’m hunting her down, a stake in hand. My fellow hunters are urging me to kill her and I’m chasing her and cornering her in an alley way but I hesitate to throw the stake. She is injured already, on her knees, bleeding from multiple wounds. She heals slowly in my dreams, as if she is still human. Please don’t kill me, she begs, and I drop the stake to the ground, I can’t do it. I can’t kill her. But suddenly there is a huge sword at my throat, and a deep throated snarl followed by a chuckle at my ear. She’s mine, and she always will be. I know who it is, it’s Maximus, the vampire palaces’ best Hunter.

Thankfully I’m jerked awake when my phone buzzes off next to my ear. Sweating and feeling red in the face, I grab my phone, my eyes squinting at the screen, my vision still slightly blurry.

“Could you turn that off?” There is a sweet melodious voice next to me, sounding tired and frustrated, “I’m trying to sleep here...”

“One second, Charlotte,” I say quietly, feeling all too guilty that after sleeping with my new girlfriend I had been dreaming of the first girl I ever fell in love with. She groans in annoyance and turns around, her back to me.

It’s about then that my eyes start to focus, my vision clears and I see who the message is from.

The girl I had just been dreaming of.

Isobel.

SOS werewolf’s den, Evergreen Forest.

Before I can even breathe and reason with myself, I am rolling out of the bed, pulling on some pants.

Charlotte quickly rolls around, her eyes in the darkness trained on my face.

“What’s the matter?” she asks, “Is it an emergency?”

“Yes,” I agree, but I can’t find the nerve to tell her what is really happening.

“Okay, I’ll get up too,” she says, slowly rolling over.

“No, no, darling,” I say quickly leaning over and grabbing her shoulder, pushing her back down, “This isn’t a hunter issue, it’s a family issue...” The lie doesn’t sound very convincing and she pauses as she takes in what I’ve said.

“What happened to your family, are they okay?” she asks, with worry.

“I have to go, I don’t have time to explain,” I say, leaning down I go to kiss her on the lips but find myself kissing her on the cheek instead.

When I pull away and run for the door I know I’ve stuffed up, Charlotte was very intuitive she would know something was wrong, that I wasn’t telling the whole truth.

It didn’t matter.

I had to go save Isobel.