The Hunter and the Hunted: Two Stories of the Otherworld Read Online Free Page B

weren’t nearly so convenient when they closed at five, as the offices emptied.
    Around the corner, I saw yet another quiet street, vacant except for a lone shopper gazing at the display of a closed clothing store. I had to do a double-take to make sure it was Elena. It certainly looked like her—a tall, slender woman in jeans and sneakers, her pale blond hair hanging loose down the back of her denim jacket. But window-shopping? At a display of women’s business suits? This honeymoon must have been boring her even more than I thought.
    As she studied the display, her gaze kept sliding to the right. I squinted to see what was drawing her attention, but the streetlights turned the glass into a mirror, reflecting . . .
    Reflecting Cain across the road behind her.
    She knew he was there. I exhaled in relief. The sound couldn’t have been loud enough for Elena to hear, but she went still before pivoting just enough to see me.
    She grinned and started to turn. Then her smile vanished as she jerked her attention back to the window and motioned, palm out, for me to stay put.
    A quick sequence of charade moves as she kept her gaze on the display. Nose lifting to inhale, fingers gesturing to the alley to her right, the stop signal again—warning me there was a mutt in that alley.
    Another flurry of gestures to say she’d handle it and I could settle into backup mode. Then, mid-motion, she stopped. A slow smile, teeth glinting in the darkness. Seeing that smile, I knew what she was thinking before she glanced over, lips forming the word.
    “Play?”
    My grin answered.
    •  •  •
    No game is fair—or much fun—when one of the parties doesn’t realize he’s playing. So Elena took care of that first. She started by drumming her fingers against her leg, her head twisting his way, a subtle hint that she knew Cain was there and was growing impatient waiting for his next move.
    While I couldn’t see the mutt, I could picture him, poised at the end of the alley, rocking on the balls of his feet, seeing Elena’s signals but afraid to misinterpret.
    She glanced over her right shoulder, hair sweeping back as her face tilted his way, and I didn’t need to see her expression to imagine that, too. I’d seen it often enough. Lips parted, eyes glittering beneath arched brows, a look that translated, in human or wolf, into, “Well, are you going to come get me, or not?”
    Cain slingshot from the alley so fast he stumbled. Elena laughed, a husky growl that made me lock my knees to keep from answering it myself. As Cain recovered, she turned my way with a grin. Then she took off, breaking into a sprint, hair flashing behind her.
    Cain teetered on the curb and stared after her in confusion and disappointment, the human telling him that a woman running in the other direction wasn’t a good sign. She stopped at the next corner and turned to face him.
    He stepped off the curb. She took a slow stride back. Another forward, another back, and it wasn’t until the dance had gone on for ten paces that the wolf instinct finally clicked on and he realized that to her, running away didn’t mean “I’m trying to escape” but “Catch me if you can.”
    His broad face split into a grin. He winced, slapping a hand to his broken jaw. When he looked up, Elena was gone. One panicked glance around, then he broke into a run.
    •  •  •
    Had Elena been a wolf playing this mating ritual for real, she’d have ditched Cain after five minutes, deciding he either wasn’t interested enough or competent enough to track her and, either way, wasn’t worthy of her attention.
    He kept losing her trail and backtracking. Or he’d glimpse a pedestrian down another road and take off that way before his nose finally told him it wasn’t Elena. Without a Pack, a werewolf grows up immersed in human society, feeling the instincts of a wolf but not trusting them or knowing what to do with them. Cain seemed to be running on pure lust and enthusiasm,