Evelyn

Pops and Roary were hot on my tail.

"Slow down, lass," Pops said. "We can't rush into this before we know what we are up against." I ignored my father as I pulled out the trunk under the bed, strapped on additional weapons, and loaded my rifle.

"I know what I am up against. It's a lycan; it has to be."

Roary stood over me. "How can you be so sure?"

"Henry said that it was a werewolf, and it spoke to him, some gibberish about 'you will be one of us.'"

Pops sank onto the bed, combing his fingers through his salt and pepper hair. I did not miss the uneasy glance between him and my brother, who positioned himself next to the window.

"What? Do you know something?" I stopped my mad dash to look at them.

I sat beside him on the bed, waiting for him to speak, but it was Roary who said, "We did some snooping around while you were with the boy." He handed me a yearbook, pointing to a picture of a strapping young boy knelt in the center of a football team. I looked at him and shrugged, trying to figure out why he had shown me this.

"That's Henry Gilbert. He was the quarterback of the high school football team."

I looked at the picture again. He was handsome and looked nothing like the beast I'd met in the room. What I saw upstairs was a mangled-up monster.

"Half of the football team has gone missing," he went on, flipping through the book and pointing to a few more pictures. Some belonged to other teams: track, football, and baseball. "All the boys were top athletes."

I shook my head. "This doesn't make any sense. So, the lycan is targeting athletes?"

"It appears that way," Pops finally said.

"A lycan is turning the strongest boys into werewolves? To what end? They all eventually die, no matter how strong or young the human is before they are turned."

Roary's gaze flicked to our father. "We're not sure."

I sighed, noticing the way Pops shifted his head away from me." I didn't think a lycan or werewolf could be involved when we took this job. If I had known, we wouldn't have come here." My eyes darted over him as he paused. "Pack your things."

"What? We can't leave!" I yelled in outrage, my body shaking with anger. "We've already accepted this job! It's our responsibility–"

"Your hatred of their kind is going to get you killed! I will not lose you like I did your mother!" His voice boomed so loudly that I sat back down on the bed. My eyes were wide with shock.

He had never yelled at me like that before.

"It's too risky," he went on. "You do not have the experience or stamina to go against a lycan. I saved you once from their bite. I don't have the strength nor the power to save you again, and neither does your brother. Or have you so quickly forgotten that you were also attacked that day?" Pops lowered his voice and looked me in the eyes.

"Forgotten?" I said barely above a whisper, as hot angry tears burned my eyes.

Memories of my mother being ripped to shreds by a lycan fought their way from the deepest pit of my memories before I could shove them back down. Every night I closed my eyes, I saw that monster in my dreams as it tore my mother to shreds.

"A lycan would kill you in seconds. They are a perfect killing machine." Pop's voice interrupted my trip down nightmare lane and brought my attention back to him. He wasn't wrong. From what I remembered, they were built with the body of a beast but had the incredible ability to think clearly like a man. "I can do this," I tried, but he wouldn't have it.

"I promised your mother I wouldn't allow you to become a Hunter like us. I've broken that promise, but no more."

I glared at him. Hot tears welled behind my eyes. "I'm a Del Val," I reminded him.

"But you're my daughter first."

My heart broke. I snapped to Roary, looking for help. "Pops," he said, "we should at least try to figure out what's happening. Leaving this town to the mercy of a lycan wouldn't look good for us."

"I don't know if any of us will come out of this alive." Pops said the words so low I wasn't sure I heard him correctly.

Get out of this alive? He had never doubted our ability before, especially when we worked together. We were Del Val's with extraordinary capabilities. Not your run-of-the-mill hunters.

"What are you saying?" Roary asked, "You don't think we could take on a lycan?"

"Not just any lycan. Only an Alpha could have turned them."

My heart stopped, and my brother's mouth dropped open. No one—not even my father—had ever encountered an Alpha in all his years.

"If it is an Alpha, it will take all three of us to bring it down. You need me," I tried again, in a desperate attempt. Pops blatantly ignored me as he shuffled around the room, throwing my belongings in a bag. "Eve's right, and I refuse to leave these people to the mercy of an Alpha." Roary chimed in.

Pops inhaled deeply. "Very well, we go out at dawn when he is on the prowl." Hope flared in my chest until I realized he wasn't speaking to me. I followed his gaze to Roary. He shoved the bag harshly toward my chest, and I caught it before it hit the floor.

"You are going home," he hissed in a voice I knew not to argue with. He gripped me under my arm and pulled me outside towards my motorcycle. "Now."

Angry tears etched a path down my cheek as I shoved my bag into the compartment and straddled my Harley. "I'll never forgive you for this." I turned hurtful and hate-filled eyes towards him.

"I can live with your hate. I cannot live with your death," he said barely above a whisper. With nothing left to say, I started my engine and headed in the direction of our home.