The first hunter sighting came from Ivy.
Of course.
She burst into the clinic mid-afternoon, cheeks flushed, hair wild, panting.
“You look like you ran up three flights of stairs,” I said, putting down my pen. “We don’t have stairs.”
“Patrol,” she gasped. “South ridge. Sam and I. We smelled them. Humans. Three. Guns. Boots. Not local.”
My spine snapped straight.
“Slow down,” I said. “Breathe. Start at the beginning.”
She did.
South ridge, near the switchback trail most tourists used. Three men. Camo. Rifles. Moving in a formation that said training, not drunk weekend.
“They weren’t…subtle,” she said. “But they weren’t…idiots, either. They stayed off the main path. Stuck to the cover. Checked their lines of sight.”
“They see you?” I asked.
She grimaced.
“Sam says no,” she said. “I’m…not convinced. One of them…sniffed. Like he smelled something weird. He said something like…‘You smell that?’ And another said, ‘Nothing on thermal.’”
My blood ran cold.
“Thermal,” I repeated. “As in…cameras.”
She nodded.
“Sam says they’re using drones,” she said. “Small. Quiet. We didn’t hear them. We…saw…one…for a second. Above the trees. Then it was…gone.”
My stomach flipped.
Drones.
Thermal imaging.
Silver bullets.
Magic.
Welcome to the twenty-first century.
“Who’s with Hayes?” I asked.
“Vera,” Ivy said. “Theo. Elias. Everyone. I ran here. They told me to…grab you. And Jordan.”
“Where is he?” I demanded.
“Coffee shop,” she said. “He’s setting up some kind of…jammer. He said, ‘On my way,’ and hung up on me.”
Of course he did.
I grabbed my bag.
“Lock the front,” I told Ivy. “No walk-ins. If someone comes in bleeding, call me. If someone comes in asking weird questions about wolves, call…everyone.”
She saluted.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.
Patty popped her head in from the connecting door between the clinic and the diner.
“I heard that,” she said. “I’ve got a shotgun under the counter and Thom’s old rifle in the office. Nobody’s getting in here without my say-so.”
“Do not shoot anyone unless they shoot first,” I begged.
She bared her teeth.
“I’m not stupid,” she said. “I’m pissed.”
I nodded.
Fair.
Outside, the town hummed with an odd, brittle tension.
People moved faster.
Voices were lower.
Everyone smelled…on edge.
Theo met me halfway down Main.
His face was grim, jaw tight, eyes bright with wolf.
“Hunters,” I said unnecessarily.
“Hunters,” he confirmed. “Not Calder’s. Different. Smell like…metal and…sterile. Government, maybe. Or…corporate.”
“Corporate werewolf hunters,” I muttered. “That’s…a sentence I never thought I’d say.”
He huffed a humorless laugh.
“Jordan’s working on jamming their…eyes,” he said. “Thermals. Drones. Cell signals. We’re…lucky…they’re up here, not down in town. For now.”
“Lucky,” I said drily.
“We need you up the ridge,” he said. “Hayes wants you at the stone. The Ridge…responds faster when you’re…close.”
My skin prickled.
“I’m not…a battery,” I said.
“You’re…a focal point,” he said. “We won’t use you like Malachi used Eliza. I swear. But if the hunters start…pushing…against our boundaries, we’ll need your…windows.”
Fear spiked.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Let’s…go.”
We took his truck.
The drive up felt shorter and longer at once.
He didn’t speak much.
His fingers flexed on the steering wheel, knuckles white.
At the clearing, chaos.
In a controlled way.
Pack members moved with purpose.
Elias and Sam unrolled a battered topo map on the stone itself, anchoring the corners with rocks.
Jordan hovered over a laptop, fingers flying.
Vera and Hayes stood side by side, eyes closed, hands on the stone, chanting low.
Nora and Ivy passed out small, black objects that looked like hearing aids.
“Comms,” Jordan said when we approached. “Encrypted. Short-range. Analog fallback. Hunters jam digital, they can’t jam old-fashioned radio.”
“You made these,” I said.
He grinned.
“Don’t tell the FCC,” he said.
He fitted one gently in my ear.
Static fizzled, then cleared.
“Doc,” his voice said, tinny but clear. “Check.”
“Check,” I said, resisting the urge to poke the device.
Theo’s wolf scent sharpened as he took his own.
“We have eyes on three,” Jordan said, switching to broadcast. “South ridge. West of the switchback. Temperatures normal. No…shifting. Yet.”
“Hunters aren’t shifters,” Elias muttered. “That’s the point.”
“Some of them might be,” Hayes said grimly. “Turned against their own. Don’t assume.”
A cold knot formed in my stomach.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked.
“Sit,” Vera said. “Breathe. Listen. Like with the tree. Only…bigger.”
“Bigger how,” I asked warily.
She smiled faintly.
“Hunters are…new,” she said. “To the Ridge. At least at this scale. We need to…teach it…what they are. How they move. How they smell. So it can…flag them. Nudge us. Without us having to…sniff every bush.”
“You want me to…tag them,” I said slowly. “In the Ridge’s…awareness.”
“Yes,” she said simply. “Gently. Windows. Not doors.”
My pulse picked up.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Let’s…do it before my brain realizes how insane this is.”
Theo and I sat on either side of the stone.
It was warm under my palms.
Old.
It hummed under my fingers.
Familiar now.
I closed my eyes.
Breathed.
Reached.
Windows.
Not doors.
I touched the Ridge’s awareness like I had at the ledge.
Felt the network of paths and stones and rivers and roots.
Felt my own scent in it.
Theo’s.
The Pack’s.
Comforting.
I waited.
“Jordan,” I whispered. “Where are they. Exactly.”
“Two hundred yards south of marker fifteen,” he said. “One fifty by now. They’re moving slow. Scanning. Imagine three…heat signatures. Human. One bigger. One smaller. One with a limp.”
I pictured them.
Three men in the woods.
Camo. Guns. Eyes sharp.
I reached for the space they occupied.
Not for *them.*
For the land under their feet.
The rocks.
The soil.
The leaves.
*Where are you,* I thought, not to the men.
To the earth they stepped on.
It answered.
Brief flashes.
Weight.
Heat.
Pressure.
I didn’t pull.
I…tagged.
*This,* I thought. *This pattern. This…wrongness. Remember it. Flag it. Nudge us when it comes close.*
The Ridge shivered.
Not much.
A twitch, like a muscle remembering a new exercise.
Sweat beaded on my forehead.
My nose burned.
Theo’s hand rested on my knee.
Steady.
Grounding.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t need to.
I exhaled slowly.
Let go.
The Ridge hummed.
Different.
A new thread woven through the existing ones.
Hunters.
Marked.
“Anything?” Jordan asked.
“Give it a second,” I said.
We waited.
The air felt…charged.
A breeze slipped through the trees, cool against my damp skin.
Then, faintly, I felt it.
A tug.
South.
A bright, sharp prickle.
Like a splinter.
“They’re closer,” I whispered. “Fifty yards. Maybe less.”
Jordan swore softly.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. Shit. They sped up.”
“Positions,” Theo snapped.
Wolves melted into the trees.
Hayes and Vera stepped back from the stone, eyes open, ready.
“Do we…engage?” Sam’s voice crackled in my ear.
“Not yet,” Theo said. “Watch. Listen. No shifting unless they see you. No teeth unless they raise weapons.”
“You’re very…restrained,” I said under my breath.
“Hunters breed on fear,” he murmured. “The more we look like monsters, the more they multiply.”
I clenched my fists.
The Ridge’s hum stayed sharp.
Uncomfortable.
Like it didn’t like these new threads.
I didn’t blame it.
“Twenty yards,” I muttered. “Fifteen.”
Branches rustled.
Voices drifted, faint but clear through the comms.
“—told you they were out here,” one hunter said. “Look at this. Scat. Big. Not bear.”
“Could be hikers with big dogs,” another scoffed.
“Dogs don’t shit like that,” the first said. “Trust me, I’ve scraped enough off my boots.”
Ivy snorted softly in my ear.
“Gross,” she whispered.
“Shh,” Nora hissed.
“Thermal?” a third voice asked.
“Nothing,” the second said. “At least nothing upright. Just…tree trunks. Rocks. That creek. Weird spike earlier, though. Like…heat without mass. Glitched the sensor.”
“Magic,” the first hunter muttered.
The others laughed.
I went cold.
They weren’t…ignorant.
They knew.
Not everything.
But enough.
“What’s the plan,” Sam hissed. “We going to let them tramp around all day?”
“For now,” Theo said. “We don’t show. We don’t give them a clean shot. We let them…get bored. Cold. Tired. Then we…redirect.”
“How,” I whispered.
He smiled without humor.
“Trail closures,” he said. “Rocks in the path. Sudden storms. We make the Ridge…annoying.”
“You’re going to…prank…the hunters,” I said.
“Death by a thousand inconveniences,” Jordan said. “Classic asymmetrical shit.”
“You two are impossible,” I muttered.
But I reached again.
This time not to the hunters.
To the Ridge.
*Small things,* I thought. *Annoyances. Slippery rocks. Fallen branches. Mosquitoes.*
It felt…petty.
It also felt…right.
The Ridge shivered.
A branch cracked somewhere south.
A faint yelp sounded over the comms.
“Fuck!” one hunter cursed. “Twisted my ankle.”
“Serves you right,” Ivy murmured.
“Shh,” Nora hissed again.
Leaves rustled.
The hunters cursed more.
“We’ll circle back tomorrow,” one grumbled. “This trail’s a mess.”
“Yeah,” another said. “Besides, my balls are freezing.”
Jordan snorted in my ear.
The prickle in my mind eased as they moved away.
The Ridge’s hum smoothed.
“Well,” I said, sagging back against the stone. “That was…less dramatic than last time.”
“Good,” Theo said. “We need…more of that. Less…my girlfriend bleeding from her nose while calling down lightning on people with guns.”
“You just called me your girlfriend,” I said.
He blinked.
“I did,” he said.
Heat flooded my cheeks.
“I’m not…objecting,” I said quickly. “Just…noting.”
He smiled, slow and shy and smug all at once.
“Noted,” he said.
Hayes cleared his throat pointedly.
“Some of us are still here,” he said.
“Tragic,” I muttered.
Vera laughed.
“We’ll need more,” she said. “More…tags. More…rituals. More…small pushes. But this is…a start.”
“A good one,” Hayes said grudgingly. “You did…well.” His gaze flicked to me. “Don’t…let it go to your head.”
“Everything goes to my head,” I said. “That’s how brains work.”
Theo snorted.
The tension in the clearing eased.
For now, the hunters had been…nudged.
Not stopped.
Not scared off.
Just…discouraged.
It wasn’t enough.
But it was something.
A new faultline had appeared between us and them.
Not just guns and fur.
Magic and tech.
Old deals and new tactics.
We’d drawn the first small line.
We’d see how long it held.
***