Read A Hunter's Passion for Free Online

breath. “I’d thought it was just a dream, until I woke with fire coursing through my veins.”
    “Your mother...” Ryker repeated, his grief overshadowing his ability to understand everything she’d shared.
    “It was the week of my twenty-fifth birthday, the customary age for a witch to come into her power. Only, no one had told me my family had magic. My mother knew who you were the moment she first set eyes on that mark of yours. The Cross of Bennett,” she jeered, her lips curling back, “is very well known in the preternatural world. I don’t know what she’d been thinking, but apparently she felt she couldn’t tell me with you so ingrained in my life, and she paid the price for that.”
    “Wait,” Ryker demanded, his voice heated. “You blame me for this?”
    “No.” Jenna gave a bitter laugh, suddenly too tired to care. Her mother and grandmother had died keeping this secret from her, and now she was alone with no knowledge of how to control it. “I blame me. I should have known, and if I had, maybe we could have better prepared for it. I still don’t know who killed them, but somehow their murderer knew that when I came into my power, they’d be at their weakest. They were well prepared, and I had to watch as that bastard—” Her voice trembled, her chin quivering. “As that bastard murdered them both. For these two years, I’ve lived in fear that the hunter might come back for me. For all I know, it was one of your brothers that did this.”
    “Jenna—”
    “I spent hours trying to reach them, Ryker. I thought it was just a horrible nightmare. But when I finally got here, when I walked in...I found them...”
    Jenna faltered, her words dying on her lips as she remembered the sight that to this day still haunted her. She was a librarian, her days spent hiding among dusty books. What did she know about real-life murder and magic?
    “Do you know what my first thought was when I woke up, though?” she whispered, her eyes opening as she pinned him with a firm stare.
    His throat worked as he struggled to swallow, but eventually he shook his head.
    “You.” She laughed under her breath. “What this would do to you, loving someone as tainted as the creatures you hunt. I knew then I had to leave.”
    “Jenna...” Ryker breathed. “Why didn’t you—”
    “So help me, if you ask why I didn’t come to you...” She shook her head. “The only person I wanted was my mom, but she died protecting me from people like you.”
    * * *
    The words did more than sting, they downright burned.
    This wasn’t right. Ryker should have felt relieved that there were two fewer witches in the world, and soon to be a third. Instead, he felt only sorrow. Everything she’d gone through, and he’d never known.
    Not for the first time, he reminded himself that he couldn’t allow his emotions to sway him. But how could he not? He wasn’t some cold, unforgiving bastard. He was a hunter. And there was a difference between the two.
    “All right,” he murmured, his shoulders deflating.
    Unsure of what more to say, she surprised him when she lifted her chin, an oddly determined look brightening her face. “I-I don’t regret what I did,” she whispered, changing the topic to the one thing both wished to speak about. “But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I hurt you.”
    Taken aback, Ryker straightened, blinking as he watched her. Well hell, that didn’t help soothe his conflicted emotions the slightest bit. Scratching his jaw, he turned his back to her, needing distance to sort himself out. His mind was in disarray, his thoughts unfathomable; he could hardly hear them above the pounding of his heart. Here he stood in Jenna’s house, and damn, did it take him back to happier times. Her style remained the same, from the floral-scented air to the intimate glow of her salt lamps. His head was full of her, and he just needed to clear it.
    “Ryker.” His name fell from her lips in a plea, and his jaw tightened