Scar’s restraint fractures. His lips peel back from his fangs, a smile cutting across his face that holds no charm, no civility, only predator and promise. “Withgreat. Fucking. Pleasure.”
Wreck tightens his grip, claws digging in as he drags the hunter upright, forcing him to stand on legs already shaking too hard to hold his weight. Panic surges back into the man, thick and sour, rolling off him in waves so heavy I can almost taste it.
Scar steps in close, close enough that the hunter can surely feel the cold rolling off him, can hear the slow, measured sound of his breathing. Scar tilts his head back slightly, throat exposed as he inhales, fangs descending fully with a wet, inevitable sound. The hiss that leaves him is soft but sharp, a sound of anticipation that slices through the night.
“What the fu—”
Scar’s fangs sink into the hunter’s flesh before he can finish his sentence with brutal precision, piercing deep enough to draw a scream that tears free from the hunter’s throat, raw and unrestrained. Blood spills like a river down his throat, dark and steaming against the cold, as Scar lets out a low, broken moan when it hits his tongue. He throws his head back as he feeds, eyes fluttering shut for a moment, his throat working as he drinks, savoring every delicious drop.
I hear it all, the wet pull as he draws blood, the sharp gasp when he shifts his bite, the hitch in the hunter’s scream as strength starts to bleed out of him along with the life in his veins.
The man thrashes weakly, boots scraping uselessly against frozen ground, but Wreck doesn’t restrain him tighter.
He doesn’t need to.
The wendigo leans in instead.
Wreck’s presence changes the air. The forest seems to pull inward, shadows stretching as his elongated form looms closer. His skull-like features angle toward the hunter, his empty eyes locking onto the terror spiraling out of control. Wreck inhales slowly, deeply, and the effect is immediate—the hunter’s fear rips free.
I watch it drain from him as surely as Scar drains his blood, his panic siphoned away in choking waves, his screams faltering as dread is peeled from his mind piece by piece. His eyes go wide, then unfocused, pupils blown as Wreck feeds, absorbing the terror until the man’s thoughts collapse in on themselves.
The hunter tries to scream again.
But nothing comes out.
Wreck exhales, a sound like wind through dead branches, and the man sags further, his muscles trembling while the instinct to fight, to flee, to beg, is stripped down to nothing.
When Wreck finally draws the last of his fear, it isn’t violent, it’s final, claiming what little heat and will remain after fear has been consumed.
Scar pulls back slowly, blood slicking his mouth and chin, eyes glowing bright with satisfaction as he licks a crimson trail from his lip. The hunter lets out one last broken sound, more reflex than plea, before his body gives out entirely.
Wreck releases his grip, and what remains slumps forward, empty and ruined, a shell with nothing left inside worth taking. When it’s finally over, when the clearing holds only frozen meat and scattered evidence, I stand among the trees and survey the aftermath.
And finally… the mountains are silent again.
The message is unmistakable.
Nobody fucks with the Kings.
Three corpses.
Four, counting the one Calder killed.
All the evidence of their surveillance operation.
Every threat to our territory is neutralized.
Almost.
“Movement,” Bennett calls from above, his enhanced vision catching what the rest of us miss. “Southwest, moving fast. Human… running.”
My blood turns to ice, the metaphorical kind this time.
“How many?” I demand.
“One, but he’s already a quarter mile out and gaining distance.”
Scar becomes a blur, supernatural speed launching him in pursuit faster than thought, but even he can’t catch someone with that much of a head start through dense forest.