Chapter 18 – Snare Hunt
1141 Words
We moved at dusk.
Stormclaw met us at the old creek crossing, where meltwater carved a crooked line between territories. Mist hugged the ground, turning wolves to shadows and breath to ghosts.
Rylan waited on a boulder midstream, arms folded, wind tugging his dark hair. Stormclaw wolves flanked him on the bank. Behind me, Moonfang fanned out, Kade and Liora at Caelan’s shoulders.
Two packs. One narrow strip of mud pretending to be neutral ground.
“Nice of you to invite the whole forest,” I said, splashing onto the rock beside Rylan.
“Wanted witnesses,” he said. “In case your other king decided this was a good time to push me into the water.”
Caelan snorted. “Tempting.”
“That leg wouldn’t survive the fall,” I muttered. “Nobody’s shoving anyone.”
“Yet,” Kade added under his breath.
I shot him a look. He shut up. Mostly.
Rylan flicked his chin downstream. “Snares are this way. Taryn found the first one. Twice‑set, twice‑sprung, no bodies.”
“No bodies?” Caelan asked. “Sloppy.”
“Or careful,” I said. “If they’re testing range and timing, fresh kills just attract crows.”
We followed the creek, wolves fanning through the brush. The air grew heavier, the usual clean scent of water tainted by something metallic and wrong.
“There,” Taryn called softly.
The snare lay where two deer paths crossed, cable coiled and reset, teeth gleaming under a dusting of leaves. Silver thread winked in the wire.
Same knot. Same ugly, efficient design I’d seen at Ashridge. At the road. In my nightmares.
I crouched, studying it. “Trigger’s hair‑fine. You breathe wrong on this, it eats your leg.”
“Human work?” Liora asked quietly behind me.
“Human hands,” I said. “Wolf mind. Or someone who’s studied one.”
Rylan knelt opposite, careful not to touch the wire. “Tracks?”
“Faint,” Taryn said. “They brushed the trail. Whoever set it knew what they were doing.”
I followed the scuffs with my eyes: light boots, not heavy. One person. Moving like they belonged in the woods.
“Could be one of ours,” Kade said darkly.
“Could be one of mine,” Jace answered from the Stormclaw line.
Both looked at me, like I had a third option hidden in my pockets.
“Or,” I said, “it’s neither. Ashridge’s old ghosts had kids. Or recruits. We’re not the only ones who train our young.”
Caelan’s hand brushed my shoulder—steadying, not claiming. “You know the pattern best,” he said. “Where would you put the rest?”
I swallowed, pushed back three years of ash and screaming, and let my memory walk the old routes.
“There,” I said, pointing. “On the game trail above the bend. And two more near the deer salt lick. They liked triangles. Nets, not lines.”
Rylan’s eyes narrowed. “Move in pairs,” he told the combined patrol. “No one touches anything until she looks at it.”
Wolves scattered, a mix of Moonfang and Stormclaw flickering through the undergrowth.
“Feels wrong,” Kade muttered. “Running with them like this.”
“Feels worse to bury them,” I said. “Or ours.”
He grunted, not arguing.
We found the second snare ten minutes later, exactly where I’d predicted. The third sat half‑hidden near an old stump, a crude charm of bone and wire dangling above it.
My stomach turned. The charm was Ashridge work. My work, once—when I thought those bone tokens were for protection, not bait.
“Kaela?” Caelan asked, voice too gentle.
I forced myself to reach up and take it down, fingers steady.
“They’re not just copying,” I said. “They’re using leftovers. Someone walked my old roads.”
Rylan’s jaw clenched. “Then we burn them.”
“We burn this,” I said, holding up the charm. “But if we don’t find who’s hanging them, they string more the second we turn our backs.”
A soft yelp cut through the trees. Not pain—surprise.
“Here!” Finn’s voice, high and breathless.
My heart jumped into my throat. “If he’s in a trap, I swear—”
I ran toward the sound, Caelan and Rylan at my heels.
Finn stood in a narrow gully, one foot hovering a breath above another snare. Jace had an iron grip on the kid’s collar, hauling him back.
“I didn’t touch it!” Finn blurted when he saw me. “I swear. I was just—looking.”
“Congratulations,” I panted. “You get to live long enough for me to yell at you.”
The snare below his boot was smaller, finer. Pup‑sized.
My vision went red at the edges.
“They’re baiting children now,” Liora said, voice shaking.
“They always baited children,” I said. “You were just looking the other way.”
Silence slammed down.
I crouched, jaw tight, and examined the mechanism. Same knots. Same silver thread. Same ugly intelligence.
But this one had something extra. A scrap of cloth tied to the anchor stake, half‑buried in mud.
Dark blue. Old. Familiar.
Stormclaw color.
Rylan dropped into a crouch beside me, face gone very still. He touched the edge of the cloth with one finger.
“I wore this pattern,” he said quietly. “When I was a pup.”
My skin crawled. “They’re not just copying Ashridge,” I said. “They’re copying you. Us. Everything.”
Caelan’s hand closed into a fist at his side. “So whoever’s doing this knows our routes. Our history. Our children’s colors.”
“And they expect us to rip each other apart over every snare,” I said.
Finn swallowed audibly. “What do we do?”
I lifted my gaze, met Rylan’s, then Caelan’s.
“We stop playing their game,” I said. “We build our own.”
“Meaning?” Caelan asked.
“Meaning,” I said, standing, “we stop just cutting wires and start pulling at the hands that set them. No more cleaning up. We hunt.”
Rylan’s eyes darkened. “Together.”
“Together,” Caelan agreed.
The word settled over the creek bed like a second, sharper kind of truce.
Somewhere out there, someone was threading steel through my past and our borders, counting on packs and kings and one exhausted healer to keep stumbling into their net.
Good.
Let them think we were still walking blind.
They’d just shown me their pattern.
Now it was my turn.
- Writer
