Twilight Hunter

He took a swig from the whiskey bottle. “No, I’m not. That son of a bitch Frankie Amato has got another think coming if he thinks I’m gonna take care of business for him. Every night I’ve been patrolling, looking for the sick fuck who’s hurting these women, and are any of his men out searching? No. There should be werewolves prowling everywhere, if not to help, then at least to cover his ass. Because if I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone in the Rochester pack is doing this.”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t so biased and hateful, you’d realize that Frankie is trying his best. I volunteered to search for the killer.” Her nostrils flared as she exhaled a long breath. Her anger reminded him of an animal in fight mode—powerful and stubborn.

He scoffed. “Oh, so he sends a lone female werewolf to do his work? Where are the rest of you?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to endanger his pack members.” Her full lower lip quivered and contradicted all the fire in her eyes.

“Better werewolves than innocent people.”

She froze as if he’d stabbed her in the chest. Her cheeks flushed as her shock boiled into rage. “How can you say that? We are people.”

Jace gulped more whiskey. “Infected people.”

“We’re not infected. We can’t turn anyone into—”

“Maybe not someone who’s already been born. You can’t infect them, but a fetus, you sure can. What about all those freaking babies that you harness with your curse from birth, huh?”

The image of his father haunted his mind as he spoke—his old man’s handsome features, which resembled his own, twisted and snarling with anger as he slapped Jace’s mother around. But the worst: after all the abuse the bastard had forced his mother to endure, he’d strolled out the door and left them with nothing but scarred memories and broken lives.

Jace lowered his eyes to the floor; he could still smell the summer rain mixed with the city’s scent from the night his father left.

“You have no idea what it’s like to be one of us. How do you know it’s a curse? Some think it’s a gift.” She tugged against the cuffs, her face filled with raw pain.

“How do I know?” He started to laugh and brushed his fingers through his hair. “How do I know?” He set the bottle on the ground and stalked toward her, his gaze fixated on her large, chocolate-brown eyes. She pressed closer to the headboard as he leaned onto the bed and positioned himself over her. A shiver of power shot down his spine, and he allowed the beast to take the reins. “Because it’s my curse to bear.”

She gasped as his green, human irises transitioned to golden wolf eyes and reflected in her gorgeous stare.

CHAPTER FOUR

DESIRE BILLOWED THROUGH Frankie as she stared into the hunter’s wolf eyes. This can’t be happening. He wasn’t human? Shit. The flash of gold she’d seen in his eyes earlier hadn’t just been a trick of the light. She hadn’t seen that coming. A hunter with any supernatural abilities or bloodlines was completely unheard of. How could she have anticipated the familiar pair of wolf eyes staring her in the face? And if the hunter wasn’t human, which clearly he wasn’t, then he needed to get the hell away from her before her estrus cycle hit full force. Once that happened, like it or not, they would both be more than ready to do the horizontal tango. He didn’t even know her real name—and, more importantly, she didn’t know his name, either—but if he stuck around she would be sleeping with him. She needed to get him out of there—now.

“Get away from me!” She pulled against her restraints.

He leaned in closer, his body hovering centimeters over hers. “What? Does your own infection disgust you?”

Damn it! I thought you were human! What the hell could she do to get him to stay away? This uncontrollable need to mate with the nearest Alpha male was exactly what she’d been trying to avoid earlier in the evening.

Another tsunami of heat and longing overcame her, and she arched her spine, gritting her teeth. No wonder she’d been so attracted to him, because no matter how small his werewolf heritage might be, he wasn’t completely human, and all her body needed to detect and prepare itself for an Alpha male was the slightest trace of a bloodline. Neither of them would be able to stop it. “Absolutely not, and it’s not an infection, it’s a gift. A gift that’s going to hit you like an oncoming bus if you don’t listen to me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He pulled away and left her on the bed. Her skin prickled against the rush of cool air as the heat of his presence disappeared from her skin as quickly as it had come.

She sucked in a sharp breath. “It’s the full moon, and tonight I would have been forced by my pack to choose a male to begin the mating process with. I already knew who I would be choosing, but only because my parents arranged it before their deaths to ensure that the strongest bloodlines continued. I’m not in love with him, so I ran to avoid the ceremony.”

He grabbed hold of the whiskey bottle again and raised a single brow. “And I give a shit, why?”

“Because I’m in my mating cycle. It’s my time to choose a mate, and you may not be a full werewolf, but you’re not completely human, either.”

How was he not making this connection? She watched his grip tighten around the bottle. Maybe she was getting through to him. All she could do was appeal to his sense of reason.

“I was out hunting for the killer because I was trying to escape my mating ceremony. I thought I’d have a couple hours of strength to hunt before my cycle hit full force. When you captured me, I thought you were a human, so you were immune. I thought that tomorrow, when my strength came back, I could easily take you down and escape—and, lucky me, mating ceremony avoided for one more year in the process. But when 3:00 a.m. rolls around, between the full moon, the supernatural hour and the mating call, you’re not going to be able to control yourself around me.”

“Stop feeding me bullshit.”

She tore at her handcuffs to no avail and gritted her teeth. Her anger at his ignorance skyrocketed. Why wouldn’t he listen to her? “It’s not bullshit. It’s fact. I’m a werewolf, asshole. While human, my body is also wolf —”

“Son of bitch!” he interrupted.

She knew he didn’t like what he was hearing, but he needed to know, so she ignored him and kept going. “It’s a natural estrus cycle. Once a year. It’s not like I can control it. I’ve been taking extended vacations around this time since I was fourteen.”

He swore again. “So what? It’s just my fucking luck you decided to stick around this year?”

Her eyes hardened. “I told you to let me go. You still can.”

He frowned. “Look, I don’t care what you think you know about me just because I’m a half-breed, all right? The truth is you don’t know a damn thing. I’ve never once acted like one of you animals my whole damn life and I’m not starting now.” He turned away.

She wrenched against her restraints, and the wood of the bed frame groaned beneath her strength. “On the night of the full moon, do you feel its pull, like something living is crawling underneath your skin, threatening to burst out?”

He froze.

“I bet you get the same feeling when you’re angry. You constantly fight to control your emotions and hide your identity from the other hunters. When you’re hunting and you smell a female werewolf, it turns you on more than a human woman ever could, doesn’t it, and you hate yourself all the more for it.”

He remained silent, his body language speaking volumes. The muscles in his back flexed, and rage radiated off him like a nuclear bomb.

“And right now I’m making you angry,” she said, pushing him to his limits. “Because every mention of your true nature pisses you off. You’d rather loathe yourself your entire life than embrace what you really are. You’ve