All My Books (And Where To Find Them)

The Hunter's Daughter (Book 2 of The Second Chance Series)

1. The Trip

Chloe sat with her back ramrod straight as she listened to her father go on about their hunting trip next week. It wasn't as if she hadn't heard it all before, though this time she was expected to take a more active role.

Killing. Death to shifters of the werewolf variety.

She shuddered, trying to keep it hidden as her only parent, Peter McAvoy, explained the area they would be heading off to.

"The woods are a bit denser, and our sources say that much of it is patrolled by a pack of wolves, most likely shifters," he was explaining. She took a moment to sip down more of her hot, herbal tea, a recipe that had been passed on from generation to generation and filled with all sorts of nutrients and vitamins. It was always brewed strong and steeped for a long time, but her father was an avid supporter of herbal medicine. He told her it had echinacea and ginseng root in it as well, the former good for the immune system, the latter a good source of energy as well.

That was probably why it tasted a little more woodsy than regular teas. To be honest, it was an acquired taste, but one he had given her since she was old enough to drink anything other than formula.

Her mother had died in childbirth, so Peter had learned how to be a mom and a dad when Chloe came into his life and took her mother's with it. There were no photographs of Elsa McAvoy around the house, but she knew her father didn't like to talk about her, and she steered clear of the topic of her dead mother. It was anathema to both of them.

As Peter expressed the importance of being completely prepared for their mission the next week, Chloe's mind wandered. Like the wolves they were hunting, she lived deep in the forest in a small cabin she shared with her father. With no nearby neighbors, they were, for all intents and purposes, alone in the woods.

Rifles and guns lined nearly every wall, one room of the small two-bedroom, one bath, on study cabin dedicated to animal heads that had creeped her out from the first time her father had shown her his "prizes".

And Chloe, some deeper, inner part of her, hated the needless violence. She felt it was cruel to kill for the simple sake of killing. When she was only 14, she had expressed this to her father, who had recently told her about the supernatural world as he knew it. He had told her all about the abominations of "shifters" and how they lacked the moral compass that humans had.

Looking at the news every night on their tiny television, Chloe wasn't so sure about that. It seemed humans did as much killing as any other species, and for lesser reasons than that of the animal would. A grizzly bear or wolf might kill for sustenance, for meat in their belly, but what about all the senseless shooting you heard happening during drive-by's and territory disputes between gangs? It didn't happen in her neck of the woods, for lack of a better term, but it was certainly happening somewhere. The news portrayed it like an endless reel of snuff films.

Peter had told his daughter that his parents had been hunters, as were his grandparents. It was a tradition passed down from generation to generation, and she was the next in a long line of descendants, all the way back to the Mayflower—maybe even further.

Chloe didn't want to bear the mantle of killer, but that was what she was expected to do, and do it she must. The mission next week wouldn't be her first one, but it was the one that was most important to her father. Peter was expecting her to kill another living creature, and Chloe cringed inwardly at the thought of shameless taking a life.

For someone so sheltered, she was very open-minded. It was true that they shot deer or bear for the meat, but killing something just for the sake of killing it really rattled her. The shifters had a human side—a skin side, as she liked to think—and was a sentient being that wasn't going to be used for any nutritional value. After killing their prey, shifters were burned to a crisp.