Chapter 5 THE HUNT
Jenna
Of course it had to be a walk-in closet.
I stood at the threshold and took it in — one side consumed entirely by black suits, each one pressed into submission, hanging in perfect, suffocating order. Below them, rows of drawers lined the walls. Above, shelves of button-ups arranged by color, ties draped like quiet declarations of power. The other side was almost human in comparison: plain shirts, dark jeans. A man of contradictions, then.
I grabbed one of his shirts and rummaged through a drawer until I found basketball shorts. I dressed quickly, knotting the shirt at my waist, wrapping my hair into a messy bun. I was almost out the door when it swung open.
Alcander walked past me without a word, reaching for his own clothes with the ease of a man entirely unbothered by the fact that I was standing three feet away, wearing his shirt. I left before my wolf could convince me to stay and look.
Audrey, you're a shameless traitor.
I sat at the edge of the bed and waited, arms crossed, face arranged into the particular blankness I had perfected by age fourteen — the one that told people I was listening but had already decided not to care.
The closet door opened. He crossed the room and lowered himself in front of me, one knee to the floor, those hazel eyes level with mine. Up close, they were unsettling — warm and sharp at the same time, the way fire is.
"I'm sorry." His voice was quiet. Deliberate. "The way I acted — it wasn't right. My wolf was... overwhelmed when he first saw you. When you didn't submit, he took it as a challenge. That's not an excuse. I'm sorry."
I studied him for a long moment. There was no performance in his eyes, no calculation. Just the quiet weight of a man saying what he meant.
I sighed. It was the most I'd give him.
"Can I at least know your name?" he asked.
I let the silence stretch exactly long enough to make him wonder. "Jenna," I said finally. "Jenna Knox. Third-in-Commander's daughter."
Something shifted behind his eyes — surprise, quickly reined in. He hadn't asked for all of that. Good. I wanted him off-balance.
"Were you next in line? For Commander?"
"No. My brother is. Anthony — firstborn." I kept my voice flat, like the topic meant nothing, like I hadn't spent years making peace with that particular truth.
"Who trained you?"
"Dakota, Maddox, and Anthony."
The shift was immediate. A low sound built in his chest, slow and deliberate, the kind that didn't ask permission.
"What were they to you?"
I met his gaze and held it. "Friends," I said. Then, because I could: "
The growl came harder this time. His eyes bled blue at the edges — his wolf, rising. "Don't," he said. One word, low and edged like a blade.
I stood. "I'm hungry. Where's the kitchen?"
I made it two steps before his hand closed around my wrist.
The sparks were instantaneous — electric and bone-deep, rushing up my arm before I could brace for them. I hated the sound I almost made.
He stepped close — close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him. His voice dropped to something private, something that pressed against my skin like a hand.
"Don't roll your eyes at me again.
He released my wrist, stepped around me, and walked toward the door. After a breath — one I needed more than I'd admit — I followed.
In the kitchen, he pulled the refrigerator open and surveyed it like a general reviewing troops. "What do you want to eat?"
I settled onto a stool at the island. "Doesn't matter. Anything."
He closed the refrigerator and turned, leaning back against the counter with his arms folded, watching me with something that walked the thin line between amusement and intensity.
"How about we go hunting?"
Audrey detonated inside my skull.
YES. YES. Jenna — JENNA, SAY YES —
I flinched at the volume of her.
She had the grace to sound briefly apologetic.
I exhaled and slid off the stool. "Sure. I could use a run anyway."
His backyard ended where the forest began — a clean, dark line where the manicured lawn surrendered to something older and unmanaged.
I stopped walking and stared.
Something moved through me — not thought, not language. Just the wordless pull of something that felt like home, which made no sense at all. Audrey stirred slow and satisfied in my chest, the way she only did when we were somewhere the rest of the world couldn't reach us.
I felt him watching me.
I turned my face away and walked forward before the warmth I could feel building in my cheeks could betray me.
Bones cracked behind me — the familiar, brutal music of a shift. I glanced back over my shoulder and watched his wolf emerge: a massive grey, built like a storm given shape. He ran toward me with his tongue out and something wolfish and undignified in his face — almost playful. He nipped lightly at my hand, then bolted past me into the trees.
Audrey didn't wait for my permission.
I shifted mid-stride and hit the tree line at a sprint.
We lost him quickly.
I slowed in a clearing and listened — ears pricked, reading the forest. A blue jay half a mile east. A woodpecker five trees north. No grey wolf.
Audrey made a small, uncertain sound.
I rolled my eyes and sniffed the ground.
A scent trail caught. I followed it with my nose low, and then I handed Audrey the reins the way you give a tool to someone who knows how to use it.
All yours. Don't disappoint.
She scoffed in my skull.
She was right. I sat back in my own mind and watched her work.
She moved differently when she hunted — lower, more patient, the urgency in her body pulling inward rather than forward. She slowed at a stream's edge. A buck stood drinking with its back to us, flanks rising and falling, completely unaware.
We crept. We crouched. We became something still and purposeful behind the treeline, invisible the way only predators are invisible — not absent, just patient.
The buck's head snapped up. It scented the air.
Too late.
We launched from cover before it could take its first stride — all weight and speed and fangs — and clamped hard onto its neck. It fought. Threw its body sideways, kicked, thrashed with the wild panic of something that understood what was happening. We held. Jaw tightening, paws braced, riding the fight until the kicks slowed, until the light drained from its eyes, until the body beneath us went completely, finally still.
We stood over it. Chests heaving. The metallic warmth of blood familiar on our tongue.
I smiled in the back of my mind.
Audrey chirped and sprang around it once before diving in. I surfaced occasionally to eat — until I was full and let her take the rest, content to simply
Which was precisely why neither of us heard him coming.
The grey wolf appeared at the carcass without warning and tore into the shoulder like it was simply his right. Audrey's head snapped up. Her grey eyes locked with his hazel ones across the kill — and she
Not a warning. A verdict.
Alcander was still in control behind those eyes — I could see it, that particular stillness that meant a man and not just an animal. He knew exactly what he was doing. He held her gaze and ate her kill without blinking.
Audrey pulled back from the carcass. Blood dripped from her snout. Her lips peeled back and her fangs caught the fading forest light — red-stained and deliberate. The growl that rolled out of her this time was not a warning either.
Then his eyes bled blue.
And Audrey launched herself at his throat.
