Hunter sped back to Damien’s house. They would be using his garage as a meeting place, and after talking briefly on the phone to Blake, he knew to expect a good number of people there. Indeed the drive in front of Damien’s cabin was packed with vehicles, and Hunter parked at the rear of the line.

Inside the garage long fold out tables had been set up, with metal folding chairs to go along with them, but no one was sitting down. Hunter did a quick head count, there were twelve people there aside from him. John found him quickly.

“This is who answered the call.”

Hunter nodded. “We can only hope it’s more than Kurt gets.”

John smiled and placed a friendly hand on Hunter’s shoulder. “I think it is. I trust that it is.”

Hunter nodded once more. “Let’s get started then,” he said, turning away from John then and raising his voice. “Could everyone take a seat?” he asked, and everyone did so quickly and quietly.

Hunter looked about the room, and he felt his pulse quicken. This was a line he was about to cross. And once he did, there would be no going back. Once he took command of this pack, it was his. And that was exactly what Connor wanted, it was exactly what they spoke about briefly in that hospital room.

“I spoke with Connor. He is gravely injured, but he will live. He was attacked not once, but twice. Kurt attacked him the first time, and then Kyle Rose, who you all know no doubt, attacked him in Kurt’s name a second time.”

There were murmurs throughout the crowd at that news, and Hunter stayed quiet for a moment, letting them run their course. When everyone had stopped talking once more, he pressed on.

“First of all, I want to stress to you, that I have Connor’s blessing. His support. He wants me to take point on this, and he has put me forward as the new pack leader. I will take the position. I want to know now if anyone in this room has a problem with that.”

Another pause, but this time no one spoke. Hunter suppressed a smile and went on.

“I’m not sure if anyone here is unclear of this, but we will be killing Kurt.”

Hunter hated speaking so bluntly, especially about another member of his pack, but there was simply no way around it, and Connor had agreed with him. They couldn’t give Kurt another chance, he had made his own bed, and now he was going to have to lie in it.

Heads were nodding in the garage. Hunter looked from face to face, mentally making a note that these men (well, two were women) were the ones who stood by him when he needed it the most. They were loyal, and he would make sure to keep them close.

“Does anyone know where Kurt is?” Hunter asked.

Silence.

“Does anyone have an idea?”

Slowly, one of the women stood up. Her name was Heather, and she was blonde and pretty. “He was dating my sister. Well, not dating, they just, I don’t know, friends with benefits or whatever.”

Hunter nodded, that was helpful.

“Your sister isn’t a shifter, right?” Hunter asked.

“No, she wanted to be, but it didn’t take. But she met Kurt through me, and they hit it off, it’s been a thing for a couple years now.”

“You think he could be with her?” Hunter asked.

Heather nodded. “I think it’s possible.”

“Great. Anyone else?”

To Hunter’s surprise, a few more people had good leads on where Kurt could have gone. Hunter called John, Blake, and a very tired Damien over while everyone else stood and broke into small groups to chat about what was going on.

“What do you think?” Hunter asked with his attention on John.

“Four good ideas there. We could check them first, send a few people to each.”

“I’d hate to find him, and he have more than a few people,” Damien said, and Blake nodded in agreement.

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Blake told the older man.

“Well, we can do some looking, and hopefully not tip him off, and then get everyone there,” Hunter suggested.

“I think that’s a promising idea,” John said, and when nobody contradicted him, Hunter got everyone in the garage listening again, and broke down what was happening.

Hunter had come to think of John, Blake, and Damien as his generals, and it was decided that each of them would head up a group to investigate one of the possible places Kurt may be laying low.

Hunter himself was going to take Heather and three others to check out her sister’s place. Heather’s sister was older, a woman named Holly. (There was even a third sister who no longer lived in Alaska named Hailey. Their mother must have had a thing for the letter H.) Holly lived an hour or so away from Tall Tree proper, out on a large lake that saw a lot of tourists come hunting and fishing season. Hunter climbed behind the wheel of his truck, Heather beside him. The other three men followed along in one of their SUV’s, and they began to drive.

Heather didn’t speak much, and that suited Hunter just fine. He was nervous, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Sasha. He was worried about the woman, he wanted to solve this problem quickly, so he could ensure her safety. He felt bad that everything had gone to shit when she had just come up to spend time with her grandfather before he passed away. Now she had seen him attacked twice, moments from death during the worst of it, and had almost become wolf food herself.

When they neared Holly’s home, with Heather giving directions, Hunter pulled over to the side of the road. The SUV pulled up next to them, the driver, a man in his forties named Stephen, rolling his window down.

“What’s the plan?” Stephen asked.

“She says it’s about a quarter mile up the road. There’s a dirt road to the right there, which stretches down to the lake and her house is on that. Only one there, right?” he asked, looking back to Heather, who nodded. He turned back to Stephen. “Let’s get to the road, go a bit past it, and pull off there. We’ll walk through the woods to the house, and see what we see.

Stephen nodded and rolled his window up, gunning his SUV forward and taking the lead. It wasn’t long before they saw the dirt road, and both vehicles moved past it and then shortly after that pulled off to the side of the road.

They all got out and stood together by Hunter’s truck. “Remember, we don’t want them to see us coming if they are here, alright? And we don’t know how many people could possibly be here. So just be quiet, get a look, and if we need to call in backup, well that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

Everyone nodded, and Hunter took the lead, stepping off  the paved road, and into the woods.

It wasn’t a long walk before he saw Holly’s house through the trees. It was white and big, and running down a small slope from one end was a paved walkway which led to a dock, where a small row boat sat rocking on the slowly churning water. The wind picked up a bit, and Hunter could hear the boat clunking against the side of the dock. He sniffed, but couldn’t smell anything. They were downwind, which would suit them well. He turned to his group.

“Let’s go furry,” he said, knowing it would sharpen their senses. A moment later they were all wolves, their clothes in piles about their feet. Hunter turned, keeping low to the ground, his belly almost running along the dirt, and he crept forward.

He picked a good spot and lay down on his stomach, his keen wolf eyes remained trained on the house. The others did the same on either side of him. They watched the house for a long while, but no one came in or out, and they didn’t see anyone pass by a window, and they didn’t smell or hear a thing.

Hunter was disappointed. He felt like he had surely picked the right place to investigate, he had been sure Kurt would go to a girlfriend’s house, but it appeared as if no one was there.

Hunter got to his feet and trotted forward a few steps. The others stayed where they were. Slowly Hunter stepped out of the trees and into the small clearing where the house sat. He stood there, canine heart pounding in his broad chest. He half expected Kurt to come flying out of the house towards him in his wolf form, teeth bared, drool slipping into the wind. But nothing.

Hunter went on up to the house. He walked around the side, glancing back to where he had left his friends, seeing that they were now on their feet and had moved to the edge of the clearing. He went to the front porch, walked up the stairs. A rocking chair sat moving gently in the breeze. The screen door was closed, as was a solid front door beyond that.

There was a window in the wall above where the rocking chair sat, so Hunter climbed up into the chair and looked through the window. He was looking into a living room, a couch, some chairs, a TV set on the wall. There was no one there.

Hunter returned to his friends, and they shift back into their human forms and dressed quickly.

“I don’t think anyone’s home,” he said.

“I’ll just knock,” Heather suggested, and Hunter nodded.

“Might as well,” he said, and then the girl turned and made her way towards the house. Hunter and the men crouched down at the edge of the woods, watching the girl. The disappeared around the corner of the house, and Hunter moved down some so he could see her once more. She was on the porch, and she knocked. Heather waited a moment and knocked again. There was no answer.

She had turned to come down off of the porch when they all heard the roar of an engine and a black car pulled down the dirt road which led to the house. Heather froze on the stairs.

Hunter could see four men in the car, none of them Kurt, but all of them men he and Damien had reckoned would be loyal to the little shit.

“Well, well, well,” the driver said, getting out of the car. He was a tall skinny man with a shaved head named Seth. He was looking at Heather, it didn’t seem as though any of the four in the car had noticed Hunter and the other men.

“Came looking for my sister,” Heather said.

“You can see her real soon,” Seth said with a laugh.

“What does that mean?” Heather asked.

“It means she’s dead,” Seth said, and then with a speed that took everyone by surprise he pulled a gun from the back of his pants and fired at Heather. The bullet tore into her shoulder, knocking her back and spinning her around as she fell.

Hunter was moving before she even hit the ground, shifting and screaming and jumping forward all at once. He was a wolf by the time he slammed into Seth’s back, the man hadn’t even had time to turn. He went falling forward, beginning to shift himself but Hunter put a stop to that, bearing his full wolf weight down upon the man’s back and closing his jaws over the back of his throat. He had just enough time to jerk his head up, tearing a large section of Seth’s throat out before a wolf slammed into him, one of Seth’s friends, knocking Hunter aside.

The fight was on in earnest then, Heather lying in the snow holding her injured shoulder, Seth dying some feet away from her, stuck in a transformation, halfway between a wolf and a man, and the rest wolves, snapping and biting and slashing at one another.

Hunter was enraged by the assault on Heather, and it served to make him fight more ferociously than he ever had before. The three men who had come with him seemed to feed off of his energy, and it wasn't long before they had bested Seth’s friends, killing them all, leaving them dead or dying in their wolf forms.

Seth shifted back to a human and went to Heather while he was still nude.

“Holly,” the woman said, gritting her teeth as she held her bleeding shoulder.

“I’ll check,” Hunter said, and he turned and saw that one of the men had brought his clothes, and he pulled them on quickly and then went to the cabin while the others set about tying a tourniquet around Heather’s shoulder.

Hunter found the door locked but a solid kick from his boot clad right foot broke the door inwards, and he stepped in. The cabin was still. Hunter stood just inside the doorway for a moment, his sensitive ears straining for any sort of sound, but none came.

He found Holly upstairs in one of the bedrooms, lying on the floor, her throat slashed, her eyes glazed and unseeing. He thought for a moment and then took the blanket from the bed, wrapped the woman’s body within it, and then carried it downstairs and out of the house. Heather was sitting up by then, and when she saw the blanket, she let out a soft wail.

“No!” she said, climbing to her feet and rushing forward.

“I’m sorry,” Hunter said, setting the body down, making sure to keep it wrapped.

“Let me see her,” Heather said, and Hunter did so, pulling the blanket away from her face but staying careful to keep the ragged wound in her throat covered. Heather bent her head over his sister’s face, setting their foreheads together, and she wept. Hunter let her do so.

“We have to bury her,” Heather said, and Hunter nodded. It was the right thing to do, and they would never go to the police with what had happened, and so they would need to bury Seth as well. The Wolves could keep, they would never revert back to human form, and some dead wolves seeming mauled by other wolves would arouse no suspicions.

They took their time burying Holly, digging a deep hole in the woods, close enough to where you could still see her home. They laid her in gently, said some words, and then covered her up.

For Seth, they weren’t nearly as gentle or careful. The man was grotesque, thick hair jutting out of his body, his jaw, and nose in the process of stretching into a snout. He was hardly recognizable as a man, but not nearly wolf like enough to be left behind with the others. They dug quickly, well away from Holly’s grave, and when it was deemed deep enough Hunter kicked the body in with his foot. They threw dirt unceremoniously over it, letting it fill his open eyes and gaping mouth.

“What now?” one of the men asked Hunter as they returned to their vehicles.

“We have to get back to Tall Tree,” Hunter said. “We have to find Kurt.”