She Stopped Being His Weak Human Mate

Five years ago, I slammed my Hunter's badge onto the Council's table and walked out into the rain.

Behind me echoed the curses of my colleagues, branding me a "traitor."

For five years, I moved through the shadows, dodging the deadliest executioners of the Hunter's Alliance across every continent. I bled and I fought, all to ensure that the home I traded my life to protect could live in peace.

I did it for my mate, the Alpha who had promised me a lifetime, and for our newborn daughter.

It wasn't until today that I realized the people I was willing to die for had turned my home into a slaughterhouse.

The rain fell in thick, relentless sheets.

I stood beneath the old oak tree at the edge of the territory, staring at the distant, warm lights of the Pack House. My throat tightened. Five years. I had counted every single night I couldn't return. Now, as I finally stepped into the territory I had bought with my life, I froze the moment I crossed the threshold.

Her scent was gone.

From the moment she was born, my daughter carried the unique, metallic tang of my hunter bloodline. But now, the air was thick with the musky stench of the pack and the cloying sweetness of cheap perfume. She was completely missing from it.

Relying purely on instinct, I tracked a heartbeat so faint it was barely there, bypassing the grand foyer and slipping toward the backyard.

It was the kennel where the pack kept their hunting dogs.

Heavy iron cages stood in the middle of the mud. Inside one of them, three massive feral wolves viciously snapped and snarled at a tiny, shivering figure curled up in the filth, fighting over a rotting slab of raw meat.

I took a step closer, and my breath caught in my throat.

It was a child.

She was incredibly frail and impossibly small, a rigid anti-bark muzzle strapped ruthlessly over her face. One of the wolves clamped its jaws around her fragile ankle, dragging her away from the meager scraps.

I ripped the heavy iron door open. The feral beasts snarled, but the moment my eyes flashed with a lethal, blood-red glow in the dark, they tucked their tails and scattered into the farthest corners of the cage.

"Hey... hey, it's okay."

I gently grasped her trembling shoulders and turned her around, revealing her left shoulder blade.

My heart stopped.

Stamped clearly upon that pale skin was a birthmark—the sacred crest of my hunter bloodline.

"My daughter!"

"No... no, no, no!" I sobbed, tearing the cruel muzzle from her face. Her tattered clothes slipped down, exposing arms entirely covered in needle tracks.

Some punctures were old, leaving raised, ugly scars; others were painfully fresh, oozing blood tainted with the unmistakable toxic hue of wolfsbane.

She let out a feeble, puppy-like whimper against my chest. Fumbling, I dug out the last vial of Hunter's emergency serum I had on me and carefully slipped the needle into her withered arm.

"Mommy is here."

"No one is ever going to touch you again."

I slowly lifted my head, glaring through the torrential downpour toward the floor-to-ceiling windows of the banquet hall.

My mate—the man who had sworn his life to protect our family—stood there in a crisp suit. He wore a smile, a gaze so full of tender love that I hadn't seen directed at me in over five years.

Cradled in his arms was a beautiful, chubby little girl. She brimmed with vitality—a stolen life force siphoned directly from my own daughter's veins. Leaning intimately against his shoulder was his former "Beta girlfriend"—the sickly woman he had always claimed was just a friend. She laughed as she watched them slice into a massive, seven-tiered cake.

They were the picture-perfect family.

While my five-year-old daughter fought feral wolves for rotting meat in the freezing rain.

The dormant blood in my veins began to boil. I carefully wrapped my dying pup in my heavy jacket and tucked her safely into the hollow of an ancient tree in the yard. Then, I stood up.

I reached behind my back, my fingers closing around the cold, familiar grip of my hunting knife.

"Five long years, spinning a perfect lie on top of my daughter's blood and bones..." I wiped the blood from my bitten lip, my gaze locking onto my smiling mate through the rain-streaked glass. "Tonight, I'm going to carve your entire world to pieces, one cut at a time."