Tempting the Huntress

Chapter 8- Who are you, Zane?

It had become a quiet ritual.

Every Thursday, right around five, Lilith found herself walking the same path, past the row of sun-faded houses, through the park where the scent of cut grass and coffee from the nearby cafe mingled, and toward the garage where Zane worked.

She told herself it was convenient.

That it was just a good spot to work, close enough to watch the late sunlight hit Ravenshore’s rooftops. That she wasn’t there for him, well, not only him. That she didn’t glance at the clock whenever Zane was supposed to finish work, or that her heartbeat didn’t quicken when she heard the faint sound of him talking to the customer from down the garage.

It was all a coincidence, of course.

Except it wasn’t.

Because for the past month, she had been there every single week.

Same time, same easy grin, grease smudged on his forearm, and that damned rag slung over his shoulder. He’d wave her in without saying a word, just a look that somehow managed to be both infuriating and grounding.

And she’d sit in the small park across from the garage, pretending to work while really listening to his voice drift from inside, low, steady, familiar.

Routine. Predictable. Safe.

Words that were never supposed to belong in her vocabulary.

But today, something was different.

The street was the same. The air still carried that faint tang of oil and asphalt. The sky still had that amber softness that always came before sunset.

But the sound, the sound was wrong.

No hum of engines. No clatter of tools. No Zane’s playlist spilling faintly from the half-open garage door.

Just silence.

Lilith slowed, her boots crunching over gravel as she reached the entrance. The place looked… still. Too still. A wrench lay abandoned on the ground, glinting in the dim light. The main door was open just enough for her to glimpse the shadows inside.

“Zane?”

Her voice came out steadier than she felt.

No answer.

Instead, Marco, the owner, an older man with kind eyes and a perpetual smudge of oil on his jaw, stepped out from behind one of the cars. His hands were shoved deep in his coveralls, and he froze when he saw her, like he hadn’t expected her there.

Odd, as he was always happy and welcoming towards her.

“Oh. Lilith.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re early today.”

She frowned. “No, I’m right on time.”

“Right,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “Zane’s… uh, not here. Took off earlier.”

Something in the way he said it– it wasn’t just a casual absence. There was a tightness to his voice, a hesitation that made her spine straighten.

“Took off?” she repeated. “For what?”

Marco’s gaze flicked away. “Just, something came up. You know him.”

No, she didn’t. That was the problem. She knew the way he smiled, the way his hand steadied her when she tripped, the way his voice softened when he thought she wasn’t looking. But really know him? That part, he’d always danced around.

Well, so has she. She couldn’t blame him exactly, but that doesn’t mean she was fine with that. But was she ready to share the core parts of herself? Maybe at the end, she won’t have to. Maybe all of this will pass by sooner than she expected.

Lilith studied Marco’s face, and what she saw there wasn’t just awkwardness; it was nerves. Guilt, maybe. Or fear.

“He didn’t say where?” she pressed, voice low now, controlled.

Marco wiped his hands on a rag that didn’t need wiping. “Nah. Just… said he had to go out of town for a bit.”

Out of town.

Her chest tightened.

“How long?”

“I don’t know. It could be a few days. He will be back soon.”

Lilith’s heartbeat drummed harder in her ears. Marco’s tone was too cautious, like every word had been rehearsed. Like someone had told him exactly what not to say.

“Okay.” She curtly replied to him.

The man’s expression faltered, a flicker of something unreadable passing through his eyes before he pasted that too-polite smile back on. “Really, it’s nothing, Bella. You should head home. He’ll… he’ll get in touch.”

Her throat went dry. She wanted to demand more, to shake the truth out of Marco, to make him look her in the eye and say it. But the weight in the air told her everything she needed to know. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a sudden trip.

Usually, it wouldn’t be something to worry about, but the vague conversation with Marco made alarms go off in her head.

Something was off.

Badly off.

“Sure, thank you,” she said finally, turning on her heel. She didn’t wait for his reply.

The cool evening air hit her as she stepped outside, but it did nothing to cool the heat rising under her skin. Each step back toward the park was too fast, her mind spinning in jagged loops.

She shouldn’t care.

He wasn’t her business.

He was a distraction, a beautiful, dangerous one.

But every instinct, the hunter’s instinct that had been carved into her bones, was screaming that this wasn’t right. Or was she just hurt that the man that has taken so much time of her physically and mentally, could just up and leave.

She sat on the same bench where she’d worked many times before, but now the space felt wrong. Empty. The street is too quiet.

Her eyes darted toward the garage again. The shadows in the doorway hadn’t moved. Marco’s voice still echoed faintly in her head, tight and uneasy.

Something inside her twisted. That familiar cocktail of frustration, fear, and something else she didn’t want to name.

This is what happens, she told herself bitterly. You let someone in, and suddenly the ground starts shifting. You start needing answers, explanations, things you swore you’d never care about again.

She clenched her jaw, staring out toward the fading horizon.

Zane had always been too smooth, too careful with what he said, too evasive about his family. Except for the hunter part of her life, he knows about who is in her family and how they are. She never asks questions to avoid attachment, and now that’s coming back and biting her in the a*s.

Lilith stood, her anger sharp now, clean and cold.

Maybe she had let herself get comfortable. She had let him blur the lines between her world and his. But comfort was an illusion, and illusions got people killed.

She was done with this. He can vanish all he wants; she doesn’t care.

Because one thing Lilith Rothwell never did—

Was let someone make a fool of her.

–

When Zane finally texted her about a week later, she didn’t even open it.

Not the next day, either. Or the one after.

She ignored the soft buzz of her phone during lectures, the faint glow of his name flashing across the screen when she trained. He texted, he wanted to explain everything.

Explain what, exactly? That he could just disappear without a word? That he could make her laugh, make her forget who she was, and then walk away like she didn’t matter?

No.

Lilith Rothwell did not beg for explanations.

She was angry at herself for letting her guard down, and as a result, she was livid at him.

It was easier this way.

By Monday, she was back in the training arena before dawn, her breath turning white in the cold air. The other hunters groaned and yawned through their drills while Lilith moved like a blade come to life.

Faster. Harder. Meaner.

Her hands were raw by the end of training, knuckles split from hitting too hard, but she didn’t stop. Pain was easier than wondering why she missed him.

Every time someone lunged, she dodged sharply.

Every time someone struck, she hit twice as fast.

Every time someone fell, she didn’t look back.

Every punch she threw, every s***h of her blade, every calculated strike was a defiance of the part of her that had softened.

The part that had smiled too easily, that had let a boy with golden eyes make her forget the world she came from.

She could almost hear him saying, ‘You’re pushing too hard, dagger-girl,’ and that made her strike harder.

“Damn, Rothwell,” Harry muttered after she pinned him flat on the mat for the third time in five minutes. “What’s gotten into you today?”

She just wiped the sweat from her brow, lips curling into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Slacker. Get up, we aren't done!” And Harry complied

Her scores in the simulation tests soared. Her reflex times dropped. Her control, flawless.

Maybe this was all for the best.

–

Lilith had just returned from her evening drills, her jacket still damp from the mist, when she stopped dead in the middle of the hallway.

Something felt off.

A faint prickle on the back of her neck. Instinct.

Her boots clicked once, twice, then stopped.

There was a shadow at the end of the corridor, tall, familiar, too still.

And then, as she stepped closer, it moved.

Her heartbeat stumbled.

Zane.

He was standing right outside her door.

He smelled like rain and metal and something wild underneath, a scent she didn’t remember from before. It hit her first, before the sight of him did.

No leather jacket this time, no easy grin. His hair was a mess, his jaw shadowed, his eyes darker than she’d ever seen them. For the first time since she’d met him, he looked… uncertain.

Her grip on her keys tightened. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He exhaled, slowly. “Lilith—”

“No.” Her voice was sharp enough to cut through the silence. “You don’t need to do this; it doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter, Lilith,” he said quietly. “And I deserve that.”

“Please,” he said, and something in his tone, something raw, halted her next words in her throat. “Just give me ten minutes. If you still want me gone after that, I’ll walk away.”

Lilith’s pulse thundered. Every instinct screamed at her to shut the door, to keep control, to not let him pull her into whatever this was.

But under all that, another voice whispered,

She swallowed hard. “You’ve got five.”

–

One week ago…

“Zane, don’t you think it's time you came back home?” The sound of it made Zane’s jaw tighten. He didn’t look up. The wrench in his hand clicked against the engine, steady, precise.

“Not now, Isabela.”

“Zane, seriously, how long do you think you can keep this from everyone?”

“Keep what?”

“Keep what? Seriously, Zane. Everyone misses you back home. Think about us, at least think about your mom.” He said nothing. Just leaned further into the hood, forearms taut, oil-stained muscles flexing as if the motion could block out her words.

Isabela crossed her arms, chin tilting. “Oh, don’t play dumb with me. I see what you’re doing here. You have a responsibility to your family, to the… pack. And instead of that, you’re down here pretending to be human, wasting time with some–”

“Careful,” he warned, voice low, dangerous.

“—some floozy who doesn’t even know what you really are.”

The air changed. The temperature dropped.

Zane’s head lifted slowly, eyes no longer the soft gold of the man she knew but something feral, lit from within, like molten amber caged behind human restraint.

“Watch who you’re talking about,” he said, voice deepening, threaded with something not entirely human. “You are my friend and I really respect you, but don’t you forget who I am.”

Isabela froze. Even she, proud and sharp-tongued as she was, took a step back. His power rolled off him in waves, controlled, but barely.

“I haven’t, but do you remember...who you are?”