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that was why. If there was one thing that would galvanize her, it was the death of a child. Not that he expected anything less. Even if there hadn’t been the death of a child, there would be no rest for Rylee until she saw this set right. It was just how she operated and one of the strengths he loved about her.
    “She is not the first child we have lost to the hunters. Nor the last.” Peter reached out to put a hand on her shoulder and she ducked away from him. As if his touch would sting her. Or more likely, she was trying not to punch Peter in the face.
    She sucked in a sharp breath. “Then you are no different than those hunters. You might as well kill each other, save them the fucking effort.”
    Without another word, she spun and strode back the way she’d come. Liam jogged to catch up to her. “Are you all right?”
    “Yeah, the hunters aren’t good fighters. They only got one punch in on my kidney, but that’s fading already.”
    Liam forced her to stop, fear rising through his throat. “Let me see.”
    “Liam, later.”
    “I said let me see.” He put a little of his power into the words and felt her waver. Though she wasn’t a wolf, she was his mate.
    “What was that?”
    He softened his tone. “Rylee, let me see for myself that you are okay.”
    She grimaced and slid out of her jacket, then lifted up her shirt. A large purple bruise had bloomed over the right side of her back. Liam swallowed hard and wrapped his hands around her waist with as much care as he could.
    “What, you know how to heal now?”
    “Just be quiet for a minute,” he said, and then held his breath. It took him a moment before his ears picked up what he was looking for and he was finally satisfied she really was okay.
    She half-turned to him, her eyebrows hitched upward. “Happy?”
    “Yes, just try not to get beat up anymore.” He leaned in and kissed the non-sooty side of her face. She smiled, but the edges of the smile faltered.
    “They didn’t even try. That’s why the hunters are after them. Because they are prey . I don’t understand how they can all be so fucking submissive and not be like Alex, trapped between shapes.”
    “I don’t know, either.” That was the weird thing here; none of these wolves should even be able to shift, not with the way they acted. Yet, every last one of them could shift.
    He grunted, frustrated by his lack of knowledge, and pointed her in the direction they had been headed. “I believe you have something to show me? Someone with big boots.”
    “Yeah.” She gave him a grin that was anything but soft. “Come meet my new friend.”

    My newest, bestest buddy was tied firmly to a tree, his hands bound and stuffed in a bowl of salt water.
    Liam took a quick look at the hunter. “Salt water on his hands? Are they witches?”
    The hunter, whose name I still hadn’t bothered to inquire about, spat at us. “Witches are stories to scare children. We are real; we are hunters of devil’s children, given power to cleanse Earth.”
    I glanced at Liam and then back at the hunter. “See what I’m dealing with?” For good measure I kicked out, landing a solid blow to the hunter’s gut. He couldn’t double over, tied to the tree as he was, but I admit to taking some serious satisfaction in the way his face lost color and then began to go purple as he fought to catch a breath.
    This was why coming out as a community to the general human population was such a bad idea. There would be those who accepted the new and wildly different beings who had shared the world with them in secret for thousands of years. And then you’d get assholes with a serious need to kill things, and suddenly they would have an outlet to blow up shit. To kill innocents. That couldn’t happen.
    Liam beckoned me, pulling me out of my thoughts, and we walked far enough away that the hunter couldn’t hear us.
    “Peter won’t let you torture him, you know that, right? Even though this hunter is one of those who has