Tempting the Huntress

Chapter 6- The Scar

Next time… Next time?

The words looped in her head like a curse, sharp and sweet at once.

“What the hell is wrong with me?”

Lilith berated herself for saying that, but it was like she had no control over herself. She wanted to bite her own tongue off. It was like that hour in the coffee shop opened some sort of door inside her. She can’t have that.

And yet… as her boots struck the cobblestones, something traitorous unfolded inside her. A picture she didn’t ask for, didn’t want, but one her imagination spun anyway.

Her sitting across from Zane, his laugh shook the air between them, easy and unguarded, making something warm bloom low in her chest. The two of them walking down Ravenshore’s narrow streets afterward, maybe arguing about something ridiculous, her rolling her eyes while secretly enjoying every second of it.

Normal things. Human things.

Things she’d never let herself have.

She exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through her hair, as if she could claw the fantasy out before it rooted too deep. She wasn’t that girl. She was Lilith Rothwell, hunter, weapon, heir to a bloody legacy. She wasn’t made for lazy mornings or easy laughter or someone holding her hand in a crowd.

And yet… the thought lingered.

For one fragile, impossible heartbeat, she let herself wonder what it would be like if she didn’t have to keep her blade sharpened against the world. If she could want things simply because they were beautiful, or sweet, or hers.

The corner of her mouth tilted, not a smile, not quite, but something softer.

For once, she let herself imagine a life made of fragile things — coffee steam, laughter, maybe even a hand to hold. A dream spun thin as glass, beautiful in its impossibility.

The c***k of light through a locked door.

And just like glass, it shattered the moment her fingers brushed the scar, that ugly reminder carved into her arm. Real. Permanent. A mark that said she would never have fragile things.

Hope was dangerous. Hope made you weak.

She wouldn’t let it.

Her world smelled not of chocolate and coffee, but of sweat, iron, and old stone.

This was her world.

Not sunlight on pastries. Not careless grins. Not Zane.

She tugged her sleeve up just enough for her fingers to brush against the scar carved along her forearm, the mark a werewolf left behind. To the world, it was just another wound in a family of hunters. To Lilith, it was the line that split her life into before and after.

She had only been fifteen. Still young enough to laugh too loud, to skip through training drills with a grin, to keep a secret stash of ribbons for her hair tucked under her mattress. She had been good, better than good, her blades sharp, her aim steady. Even her father, impossible to please, had grunted approval now and then. Her grandfather, though… he had already started calling her the family’s prodigy.

And then came the wolf.

It wasn’t even a full-grown beast, barely more than a youngling testing its fangs. The hunt should’ve been easy. She should’ve carved it down before it had the chance to breathe. But she’d been distracted.

By him.

Not the wolf. Her cat. A scrawny gray thing she had found as a child, eyes too big for its head, mewling like it had been born fragile. She had hidden it from her family for years, feeding it scraps under her bed, letting it curl against her stomach when the nights got too cold. It was hers, her one soft, secret thing.

And that day, the cat had darted from her pack, right into the underbrush, right into danger.

Lilith remembered the panic like it was yesterday. Her heart had leapt out of rhythm, her focus shattering as she lunged after it. And in that heartbeat of distraction, the wolf struck.

Teeth tore into her arm, hot and blinding. She had fought back, of course she had, but the pain seared her grip, slowed her, made her clumsy. By the time she drove her dagger into its hide, blood already stained her sleeve, the scar already carved into her future.

The wound healed. The scar didn’t. Neither did her family.

Her father’s disappointment had been a quiet, burning thing. Her grandfather’s fury is not quiet at all. They had called her weak. Emotional. A liability. Hunters didn’t lose focus over pets. Hunters didn’t bleed because they couldn’t keep their hearts in check.

All it took: one mistake.

Her cat was gone the next morning. Sent away, her grandfather said, to remind her that attachments were nothing but chains. She had begged. once, twice, three times, but her father had only stared at her with that cold, flat gaze, the one that saw mistakes instead of daughters.

And that was the day everything changed.

The fun-loving girl, the bright, reckless teen who snuck sweets into her room and joked with her friends, that girl had been buried under the weight of her family’s scorn. In her place stood a hunter who trained twice as long, fought twice as hard, carved her laughter into silence.

And her hatred of werewolves… it was different from the others’. For the rest of the hunters, wolves were just the enemy. For Lilith, they were the thieves of her one soft thing. They had not only scarred her body but also stolen the only creature that had ever loved her without expectation.

Every time her fingers brushed that scar, she wasn’t just remembering pain. She was remembering loss.

And that was why she would never forgive.

A fun life? That was for people who had the luxury of dreaming.

Lilith Rothwell had a legacy to uphold, a war to fight, and an enemy’s blood debt etched into her bones and prove herself to the family of vultures.

The trial was her way of proving that and being done with it once and for all.

Her grip tightened around the scar, grounding herself in the sting. The girl who had laughed in a café was a mistake. A weakness. One she wouldn’t repeat.

Her goal was clear. It had always been clear.

And nothing, not even him, would pull her off her path.

She had buried the girl who wanted softness. She had buried her. But Zane? He seemed intent on digging her back up…