HUNT (A Shifters Short Story)

I heard voices in the background, as other tomcats volunteered for the emergency mission. Save the damsel in distress—what every enforcer lives for.


Only I didn’t have time to be rescued.

“I can’t stay here, Jace. They’re coming back for me. And I have to get Robyn back before they hurt her.”

“No!” A car door slammed and Jace’s engine roared to life. He was already on the go, no doubt with his three best enforcers. “Abby, do not chase the bad guys! That’s an order!”

“They’re gonna kill her!” And by the time they got around to that, she’d be begging for death.

“If you go after them, they’ll kill you too.”

“I can handle myself. I’ve been training with Faythe.”

“Sounds like you picked up more than just her left hook,” he muttered, and in the background, another tom chuckled. “Faythe’s an Alpha, and before that, she was an enforcer. You’re a poli-sci. major with three-summers worth of self-defense lessons. Sit tight. We’ll be there in an hour.”

“She’ll be dead by then!”

“But you won’t be.”

I hesitated. I honestly did, because disobeying an Alpha was serious shit, even if the Alpha was young, and hot. But Robyn was the priority. “I’m sorry, Jace,” I whispered, digging through my pack again for an extra set of thick socks. “You can kick me out of the Pride if you want, but I have to help Robyn. I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Abby, no…!” he shouted, while his enforcers went apeshit in the background. I hung up the phone, put it on silent, then slid it into my pocket.

The phone buzzed as I pulled my socks on, then again while I dug Olsen’s pack from the pile. He had a hunting knife. I’d seen it. And in human form, I would need it.

I slid the knife into a loop on the right leg of my pants, then crossed the clearing and grabbed the insulated jacket they must have made Robyn take off before they’d tied her up. Her small, folding knife was in the right pocket, and the material was still warm from her body heat. I couldn’t believe how fast everything had happened.

Armed, dressed, and now fairly warm, I knelt next to Dani, trying to avoid looking at the guys. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, as I unlaced her hiking boots. Mine were a quarter mile away, in the wrong direction. “I hate to leave you like this, but I have to help Robyn. I swear they’ll pay for what they did to you.”

Fortunately, she had small feet, so the boots were only half a size too big, and since I wore an extra pair of socks, I could hardly tell.

As ready as I was gonna get, I put on my hiking pack and stepped into the woods with only a single glance back. I felt a fleeting bolt of sympathy for whatever forensics team would soon show up at the scene of the crime. The analysts would be confused over Dani’s bare feet, the paw prints in the dirt, and the drops of blood from the cut on my arm, which would seem to be contaminated with feline DNA.

I headed in the direction from which I’d last heard Steve, Billy, and Robyn’s footsteps, mentally crossing my fingers that they would stick to that heading. My human form kept weight off my injured arm, but for that advantage—that necessity—I’d sacrificed most of my enhanced feline senses. My nose and ears were still more sensitive than a human’s, but they were nowhere near the advantage they would have been in cat form, and the flashlight I carried was no substitute for feline vision, a huge benefit in the dark.

After a quarter mile, I was freezing, exhausted from Shifting without eating, and reeling from the trauma of what I’d seen. Reality had finally hit me, and shock was like a cold blanket wrapped so tightly around me that I could hardly breathe, let alone think.

My arm throbbed with each beat of my heart, and by the time I’d gone half a mile, blood had soaked through both my shirt and Robyn’s jacket. That one Shift hadn’t been enough to completely close the wound, and moving my arm had kept the blood flowing. Frustrated, I turned the flashlight off and shoved it into the side pocket of my pack, then used my free hand to apply pressure to my cut. But then I couldn’t see.

Damn it! How was I supposed to save Robyn when I couldn’t even find her?

You’re not cut out for this, Abby. Jace was right. You should just sit down and wait to be rescued. Again.

But if I did that, Robyn would die scared, alone, and in pain. Just like Dani. And I’d be the coward who’d given up on her.

You’re not using your resources… a new voice in my head said, and I recognized it as Faythe’s. You’re not human, and you’re not helpless.

I closed my eyes, and the memory came back in full. We’d been training in the barn, at night, with the lights off. I could hear her when she spoke, but the others had gone silent, and I couldn’t see any of them. Because then, like now, I hadn’t been using my resources. My senses.