Vintage cowboy boots sitting beside the kitchen table, & a wrapped box containing a set of matching jewelry waiting on the table, plus a baby sister in the kitchen with lots of fresh meat from the family's latest hunting excursion, which she is quickly turning into culinary masterpieces.

Cause baby sister loves her big sister liek whoa.

It's the scents that do it. Human scents. Fabric softener and cologne, clean cotton. The harsh chemical scents of the preservatives humans pile into their food. Hot dogs. She hates hot dogs, more chemical than meat, not meat at all--

But it's a human scent, like the other human scents. It pulls her from the animal instincts and back into the shape of a girl.

A naked and filthy girl, skin scraped raw in places, shivering while sitting on the edge of the forest. At least she's near her home, in her neighborhood. She's close to home.

She tiptoes cautiously, keeping to the edge of the forest, until she recognizes her own backyard. Her heart does a quick stutter in her chest--her dogs. How could she have left her dogs...

She breaks the lock on the backdoor and realizes her fears were unfounded--of course her family would've noticed she was gone. Of course they would've taken care of her animals, knowing how much they meant to her. The three dogs, all perfectly well fed but obviously thrilled to see her, come bounding to meet her.

She sinks to the floor and lets them attach her with affection, not even protesting when her Danes enthusiasm knocks her to the floor.

He's still gone. She can feel that the void is still there.

She pulls herself to her feet. She's leaving dirty footprints and smudges everywhere, but she can't make herself care. She sees that her voicemail box is full when she flips her phone open, but she can't make herself listen to any of the messages right now. She needs her family.

come to my house now

It's a short and sweet message she sends to her big sister, but she can't find the energy to say more. She's amazed that she can even still function. She should shower. She should get dressed. Instead she curls up on the floor and lets her dogs form a fort around her, and tries to remember just how to be human.

He didn’t call.

She was at home, cooking. The elk meat was tender and fresh--her kill, that she’d skinned and cleaned with her brother--and as much as she hated to cook it, she wanted to share a meal with him.

Her father called and told her he hadn’t come in to work.

She called his house. She called his cell phone.

He didn’t answer.

There was a thin coating of ice in her stomach as she went to his place. She didn’t have a key yet, but it wasn’t hard to kick the door in.

He was gone. There was nothing of him there. She could feel it deep in her bones. He was gone. He was gone.

The loss hit hardest. Pushed aside the anger and murderous rage. There wasn’t room for it, just for pain. Her insides felt scooped out. She was a hollow shell, moving through the apartment, then leaving it.

She left her car. She walked all the way home.

Her dogs greeted her anxiously at the door, hours later, but she barely saw them. She was barely even aware of where she was going. She walked through her house--straight through her house, through the living room,, through the scents of cooked meat and tomatoes and spices in the kitchen, through the laundry room, out the backdoor and into the yard.

And she began to run.

If she could run fast enough, and hard enough, she could leave the hurt and the hollowness behind. She could find that anger again, the murderous rage--she could DO something about it, and not just feel lost and empty.

She ran to leave her heart behind. And eventually, that’s just what she did.

She didn’t realize what was happening when the change began, just that she felt lighter. And smaller. Like the world was growing, somehow. She began to run even faster--and how, she couldn’t imagine, when she was already so fast…

And then it hit her.

Four legs.

Four legs were faster than two.

She left Cadence Walker behind. And a wolf, a wolf with steel-colored eyes and deep black fur ran through the forests in her place.

Chelsea didn't have a lot of pull at the club she was DJing at, but by helping her set up, C.J. avoided paying at the door and even snagged a few free drinks from the cute bartender that was experimenting with new concoctions. He was cute, but his scent did nothing for her, and it didn't take her long to decide that he wasn't her type.

There were few guys that were. That was the one snag in being one of The Folk: they had specific requisites they needed in a mate, traits that were typically found...only in The Folk. There were distant cousins she could've gone to to scratch her itches, but she'd grown up with them, even if they weren't directly blood related. She didn't think of them that way and never would.

And people wondered why she was so high strung.

She had a feeling she was setting herself up to be disappointed, yet again, but she'd never know unless she gave it a try, and she'd planned to come to the club anyway, so it wasn't like she was going out of her way.

Now she had to wait for him to show up.

"This world's divided into two kinds of people: the hunter and the hunted. Luckily I'm the hunter. Nothing can change that."


She was 12 when her father took her on her first hunt.

It was morning, and the dew on the grass and the damp earth beneath it was cool under bare feet, between her toes. It was the first time she'd been allowed to run without the watchful eyes and sharp reprimands of her mother hovering about, Too far, Cadence, come back. Now there was no too far, no restrictions. There was nothing but the running, and the scents in the air, and the taste of it on her tongue as she ran.

The deer was small, but it was her kill and hers alone. She ran after it, fast as the wind, pounced it and snapped its neck. Her brother taught her how to skin and clean it; her mother and sisters roasted the meant while she sat with the elders and listened to stories of the old country, the proud huntress for the night. No meal had ever tasted so sweet.

She hunted many, many times after that, but no hunt ever matched the exhilaration of the first, no run had ever come close to touching that same feeling of absolute freedom. But she was never the same after that day. It was the first time that she knew, with absolute certainty, her place in the world.

She, like all of The Folk, was a hunter.