The man was clearly dressed as a hunter, what with his camouflaged gear that he was wearing and the heavy-duty hiking boots. He looked like he could even be a member of this team here.
He was tied up, his hands stretched out behind him with ropes keeping him attached to the tree itself.
Phillip’s heart went out to him. His face was contorted with rage, and while at first Phillip had assumed that the moisture on his cheeks was sweat, the scent of salt told him that they were tears.
The man twitching on the ground while two others mechanically sliced him with silver knives must be a loved one. Phillip sympathized entirely. He knew what it was like to scream and scream until his voice left him.
“I think we made him pass out again,” one of the hunters, the younger, not as muscled one, said.
“Get the smelling salts then. We’ll get him to shift soon enough.”
So they could skin him for his pelt. Phillip targeted the hunter with the most muscle. He was likely the leader. Phillip was going to consider him to be the one who was most dangerous and best to take out first.
He waited for the other hunter to push himself to his feet and walk back toward the tent. The hunter was kneeling with his back to Phillip, and he was touching the werewolf’s face with one hand and holding a knife in the other. It was almost like he was trying to decide what to cut off first.
Phillip allowed the rage he’d felt for the last several months enter him. It was his fuel to keep his body going, and he was going to need it.
He charged down the small hill, fast and nearly silent. The hunter must’ve heard him approaching because he turned around.
The surprise on his face was what he died with when Phillip leapt at his throat and locked his jaws on. The hunter was dead so fast he didn’t even have the chance to lift the knife he’d been holding to defend himself with it.
Phillip could hardly stay silent after that. Not when the man’s blood squirted in his eyes and not when he became so drunk on his need to violence and revenge that he began to tear into the man, ripping away his flesh, long after he’d died.
“Look out!”
Phillip’s rational thinking mind came back to him as the words were shouted at him. He jumped off the body and out of the way just as the gunshot punctured the man he’d just been eating.
He felt a little green under the gills at that realization. Christ, he’d been chewing on human flesh because he was eating it.
The rifle that the hunter held made that familiar clicking sound as the human cocked the weapon and pointed it at him again.
“Luke, don’t!” the tied-up human yelled.
Excuse me? Phillip was trying to save his sorry ass, and that stupid male was trying to talk some sense into a hunter?
He didn’t have time to think about it as he started running in a wide circle around the camp. The gun fired on him, but the bullets missed Phillip’s flesh by miles as he ran behind trees, behind the four-wheelers, and then the shots stopped altogether when he ducked behind the tent.
Wasn’t that something? The hunter didn’t want to risk shooting his injured friend inside.
Too bad for the both of them. Phillip barreled around the tent in a slingshot motion that caught the hunter off guard as he reloaded his weapon. Phillip lunged just as he lifted the weapon back up to take his shot.
* * * *
Everett had to look away when the wolf jumped at Luke and tore his teeth and claws into Luke’s chest and torso. Luke screamed and fought and kicked and shrieked, and all Everett could think about was how this werewolf was going to do the exact same thing to him once he got around to it.
This was a wild werewolf. He had to be. The thing had swallowed some of the flesh he’d pulled from Dan’s now-gaping neck.
Now he understood, really and truly understood, what the differences were that Cole had been trying to tell him about. This wolf was nothing like what Cole was. Everett couldn’t believe there was ever a time when he suspected that Cole might go crazy and do something this awful to another person. He couldn’t believe any hunter was stupid enough to think that these werewolves bore any resemblance to normal pack werewolves like Cole.
Everett stopped acting like a scared little bitch and decided to just look over and see if the wolf was done eating.
He was covered in blood, Luke’s blood, and he was staring down at the other man strangely before he decided to just walk away.
For whatever reason, it seemed he didn’t want to eat Luke.
Then the unknown wolf started walking over to where Cole was still piked to the ground.
Everett tensed as the wolf came closer and closer. Maybe this wasn’t a werewolf. Maybe this was really just a common gray wolf, and it had smelled all the blood coming from the area.
Everett tried to think of what he could do to get the creature away from his bleeding, hopefully still alive, lover before the wolf decided to make a meal out of him as well.
“Bad dog! Get back! Back!”
When the wolf ignored him, Everett whistled. He knew how to whistle so that the sound hurt the ears of a normal person. It made the wolf jump back a little before growling at Everett instead.
He glared back at the thing, still struggling against the ropes to try and escape. All he succeeded in doing was pulling at his skin. “Don’t you fucking touch him.”
He didn’t care if the wolf was wild. He wanted to scare it away.
The wolf walked around Cole’s prone body and approached Everett now. Its head was bent, and its hair stood on end. Everett swallowed
