I ran a hand over my throat because I was fond of my head. The visions he mentioned, did that include the apparition or ghost or vision I’d had last semester near the woods? I decided not to mention it because it might give the guy a heart attack. I’d already said hallucinations, so that counted.
“Be honest, Holden, do you think hunters are real?”
He sat back and folded his arms. “I can’t answer that yet. So far it reads like any other legend or myth, but there are patterns of deaths that could be attributed to hunters. Or they could be what the people in power conjured up to keep the population in line, telling everyone to report anyone who was different. We all know how that works. So I can’t say yet or maybe ever.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and while I wasn’t a hunter shifter, maybe I was just a hunter. And what did that mean for Eira?
Perhaps we had to leave shifter society and go live in the woods in a hut. Phelan could hunt and I’d fish and we’d be happy. But I was never very good at fishing. Farming, that was what I could do. I’d grow stuff.
There was someone else I was biologically related to who, if I was a hunter, he might be too.
“Atticus.”
“What about him?”
I didn’t give a shit about that fuckwit, but as he shared my DNA, he could be one. Present-day Atticus was bad enough, but the thought of him with a killer instinct was horrifying. But I repeated in my head what Phelan had said. If hunters were real, the hunter of this generation had already killed their mark.
“Nothing.” I changed the subject. “I haven’t heard the voice since I gave birth, and it was almost muted during the pregnancy.”
Holden shuffled papers and pulled out one with highlighted text and sticky notes.
“This is maybe too personal, but the rumors going around are that your heart stopped after the baby was delivered.”
What was with this guy? He was a real party pooper dredging up my worst memories.
“Mmmm. Phelan brought me back to life.” I rubbed my chest, thankful I had no memory of that. Though what came afterward was even more horrifying, when I discovered Atticus was my brother.
“Okay, well, I need to do more research, but from what I've gleaned from my reading, dying kills a hunter, and technically, you did die.”
That was a cheery thought, me dying and leaving my daughter and mate. But if what Holden was saying was true, I was in the clear. We could forget about hunters and live our lives, though I was still lying about being latent.
And that was a huge deal.
TWENTY-FOUR
JACK
“Hey.” Bardoul dragged me outside the library and took me behind the building near the parking lot.
I wasn’t in the mood for dealing with anything or anyone today. All I wanted was a nap.
Sleep hadn’t been my friend recently. I was still processing everything with Rawling, struggling with what came with finding my bear, and I was trying to get my schoolwork strong enough for my scholarship. I’d been doing really well this semester, until… until I wasn’t. I had time, but that meant taking it away from sleep.
“We have to talk.”
“Can it wait?”
“Remember when I said we were delaying the inevitable?”
“Yeah.” And I still resented that, because by “problem”, he meant Rawling.
“Yeah, well, we can’t do that anymore.”
That had me stopping dead in my tracks.
“Would you be quiet?” I spoke through my gritted teeth, and then pulled him between two buildings. We weren’t exactly in private.
“What are you doing?” He tried to yank his arm from my grasp and failed miserably.
