Tempting the Huntress

Chapter 1- Lost Everything

The first thing Lilith remembers is the screaming…

Her mother’s.

It tore through the timbered walls of their mountain cabin. It clawed, scraped, and refused to die quietly. Lilith had been six years old, curled beneath a blanket with fading roses, when the sound ripped her from sleep.

Her mother made that blanket for her to combat the cold as they hid in that little cabin for the last two years.

Another scream followed, choked this time.

Then a crash.

Wood splintering. Glass shattering. And the howl.

Her grandmother had always told her that wolves did not howl to frighten. They howled to announce possession and domination. This is ours.

Her grandmother’s stories had always ended with laughter and warm cider by the fire.

This one ended with blood.

Lilith’s bedroom door burst open. Her father stood there, wild-eyed, shirt half-buttoned, a rifle clutched in his trembling hands.

“Under the floor,” he whispered harshly.

She didn’t argue. She knew the tone. It was the same tone he used during storm warnings or when he found tracks too large in the mud behind the barn. This is the same tone he used two years ago, before her mother whisked her away from their home to this mountain cabin, away from everything and everyone.

The night her mother had shaken Lilith awake long before dawn, her hands trembling but her voice steady.

“We’re going somewhere safe, my angel.”

They had left everything behind. The big house in town. The piano. The garden her mother adored. They left without a goodbye or an explanation, even to her grandparents.

Only later did Lilith understand that her mother had seen the signs first.

The tracks in the snow were too large. The livestock was found torn open but not eaten. The gold eyes watching from the tree line. The feeling that little Lilith couldn’t explain, her mother understood it.

Her mother had believed distance would protect them. Despite her father’s reluctance, they left. The cabin in the mountains was meant to be temporary…

He yanked up the loose plank near her bed. Beneath it was the narrow crawlspace her grandfather had once built during the old wars. A place to hide and to survive.

Her mother screamed again. Lilith scrambled into the darkness.

“Dadd…”

Her father lowered the plank before she could speak to him. Just then, something slammed into the hallway wall. She clutched the blanket close to her heart and squeezed her eyes shut, praying to the gods to protect her mother.

The house shook.

Lilith’s eyes were wide open. Through the thin cracks between the floorboards, she saw the flicker of firelight from the hearth down the corridor. She saw shadows…too large, too distorted, and streaked across the walls.

And then she saw them.

Paws.

Massive. Fur matted dark. Claws scraping against the oak flooring.

Her father’s voice rose in a wordless cry from the main room.

Lilith bit down on her fist to keep from screaming.

The smell came next.

Iron. Hot and metallic and thick enough to taste.

There was a snarl deep, guttural- followed by the sickening sound of flesh tearing.

Something heavy hit the ground.

The screaming stopped. Silence swallowed the house. Then a soft dragging sound.

Lilith pressed her eye to the c***k in the wood.

In the dim orange glow of the hearth, she saw her mother’s body crumpled against the stone fireplace. One arm is bent wrong. Her silver hair was soaked red.

Standing over her was a wolf.

It was larger than any wolf Lilith had ever seen. Its shoulders nearly brushed the mantle. Its fur was black, but not soft black. It gleamed wetly, streaked with blood. And it stood on two legs.

Its muzzle lifted slowly.

And its eyes… gold.

It turned its head slightly, nostrils flaring as if it could smell her.

Lilith stopped breathing.

A gunshot shattered the moment.

The wolf jerked back as splinters exploded from the wall behind it. Her father stepped into view, rifle braced against his shoulder, his face pale and feral.

“Get back to the hell you came from, monster!” he roared.

Monster! The word stuck with Lilith.

Another wolf lunged from the darkness, knocking him sideways. The rifle skidded across the floor. Lilith watched as her father grappled with fur and teeth and muscle, watched as claws raked down his arm, opening it to the bone.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t move.

Her eyes were stuck on the obstructed view through the cracks of her mother’s body.

“Lilith, you are my bravest girl. Remember, wherever I am, I will always love you, my angel.” Anastasia’s last word to her daughter before she threw herself to the wolves.

Her father reached the fallen rifle just as the first wolf recovered. The gun went off again. This time, the bullet struck, but not before the wolf attacked for the last time. The wolf howled in pain and in fury, and leapt through the shattered front window into the night. The second followed, vanishing into the black forest beyond.

Snow blew in through the broken glass.

The house fell quiet except for the crackling fire and her father’s ragged breathing. He crawled toward his wife.

“Ana,” he whispered.

But Anastasia Rothwell did not answer.

Blood seeped slowly across the floorboards, slipping into the grooves of the wood. It dripped down into the cracks. A warm drop landed on Lilith’s cheek.

She did not wipe it away.

Her father sat there for a long time, cradling his wife’s lifeless body. His shoulders shook, but no sound came from him.

Something inside him had shattered forever. Their lives were never going to be the same.

When he finally rose, his eyes were hollow. He walked down the hall. Lifted the plank. And stared at his daughter as if seeing her for the first time.

“You saw,” he said quietly.

Lilith nodded. He closed his eyes once, as if sealing something inside himself forever.

“They’re not just animals,” he told her. “And they will pay for what they did, Lilith.”

That was the night Lilith lost her mother. It was also the night she lost her father.

Because the man who climbed into that crawlspace and pulled her into his arms was not the same one who carried her around in town, walking hours to find her favorite crepe place.

The man did not weep. He did not comfort.

He began planning.

And Lilith’s childhood came to an end…

—

Years later, the forest still smelled the same.

Pine sap. Cold earth. And blood.

Lilith Rothwell knelt in the snow, her rifle steady against her shoulder. Across the clearing, a wolf paced between the trees. This was no ordinary wolf. This was the kind that remembered faces. This was like the monster that took away everything from her.

She has been fighting and killing these wolves for more than a decade, but today something was different. It was leaner than the one from her childhood, its fur a mottled gray, but the eyes were the same.

Gold.

Her comms crackled softly in her ear.

“Target in sight?” her teammate whispered.

“Yes,” she murmured.

The wolf’s head tilted. It stepped forward into the open, moonlight glinting along its spine.

It did not look afraid; instead, it looked amused.

Lilith’s finger tightened on the trigger.

She exhaled slowly.

For her mother.

For the girl under the floorboards.

The shot rang through the forest.

The wolf jerked violently, a burst of red blooming against its flank. It staggered, then bolted into the trees.

“Move! On the run heading west!” someone shouted behind her.

Lilith rose and sprinted after it. Branches whipped her face. Snow crunched under her boots. She caught flashes of gray between the trunks ahead, always just out of reach.

Then,

Silence.

The forest swallowed the sound of her team.

“Elias?” she called softly into the comm.

Static.

She slowed, scanning the darkness. The trees here grew thicker, older. The air felt heavier, as if the forest itself were holding its breath. A twig snapped somewhere to her left. She pivoted, rifle raised.

Nothing.

Another sound — behind her.

Too close.

Lilith turned sharply and realized she was alone.

No comm signal. No footprints but her own. No distant voices. Just dark forest.

And the faint, familiar sensation crawling up her spine. The feeling of being watched that has followed her since she was four. The feeling because of which she lost her mother.

From somewhere deep between the trees, something moved.

Not one set of paws.

Several.

Her grip tightened on the rifle.

The wind shifted.

A low howl rose from the darkness. Answering howls followed.

Closer… and closer.

Lilith Rothwell lifted her chin slightly. “Come out, you monster,” she whispered into the trees.

Golden eyes flickered open in the black.

One pair…

Then two…

Then three.

The circle tightened.

Tonight did not feel like a hunt.

Oh, but it was a hunt, all right, but she was the one being hunted.

The brush behind her exploded. Something massive lunged…

And the forest swallowed her scream.