Wolf Slayer (The Order of the Wolf, #2)(4)
Three weeks had passed, during which time, not only had Jaylon not found the mystery Huntress, but he and the band were set to leave on a European tour for two months. He was ready to claw the walls with frustration, his wolf unrelenting in its need to claim his supposed mate.
He’d searched the forest where he’d last seen her numerous times, and had even found a little cottage not far away from it that was saturated with her smell. But her trail ended there. She’d left the day she was attacked, presumably in a vehicle and had not returned. In his desperation, he’d gone back in his human form and had broken into the cottage, searching for any information that might help him find her. All he’d come away with were a few pictures and a surname. Devlin. Not much to go on, which left him growing more and more anxious as the days ticked by and the upcoming tour schedule loomed.
“Aubrey Devlin.”
Jaylon snapped out of his reverie, his hand still clenched to the bottle of forgotten beer, his ass numb from the uncomfortable stool he sat on. He glanced up to find the band’s manager, Dave, standing at the door of the kitchen, a slip of paper in his hand.
“Sister is Corra, fraternal twins, twenty-three years old, have never been registered in any government run educational system. The family name is old, goes back for hundreds of years.”
“Aubrey,” Jaylon whispered, loving the feel of it against his tongue. He’d never been a romantic man, or even one to indulge too heartily on the plentiful groupies, but for some reason, saying her name made his heart pound a little harder and his gut clench in a way that made him all the more desperate to see her again. “But how did you…”
“Think we might be meeting our first Order Huntress?” Mayhem asked as he walked into the room, coffee cup in hand.
By werewolf standards, Jaylon and the rest of the pack were young. Thirty years old as werewolves, each having been turned in their late twenties, give or take. Mayhem was by far the most informed when it came to the lore of their kind, but even he admitted to being sadly ignorant about where they came from and what their place was in the world. They all knew there were other packs, but typically stuck to their own territory. And with the band’s growing success and popularity, Jaylon and the guys hadn’t really been too worried about turf wars. There just wasn’t time for it. And the Hunters had only become an issue now that the pack seemed to be finding mates. According to the folklore, every Huntress was destined to choose between a werewolf and a Hunter. A heavy decision that would align her with one side and make her enemy to the other.
“Darcy seems to think so,” Dave said as he folded the paper in half and slipped it into his pocket, his voice cutting through Jaylon’s thoughts and getting his focus back on the conversation.
Raven’s mate, Darcy, had been filling in a lot of the blanks since she’d joined the pack. A witch born into the supernatural world, she knew far more than anyone else about the role of the Hunters and their methods of locating the Huntresses.
“What does that mean? What is an Order Huntress?” Jaylon asked.
“It means she will most likely want to kill you on sight.” Mayhem chuckled.
“Great.” Add to that his ineptitude around women, his complete and total lack of knowing the right thing to say or the right time to say it, and he was doomed. “I’ll try to remember that the next time I see her.”
Dave glanced at his watch. “Which will be in exactly five minutes.”
“What?” Jaylon jumped from his stool, knocking it over in a clatter. “You found her? Why didn’t you f*cking tell me that? You *.”
Jaylon’s wolf bellowed his rage, pushing to the forefront, fangs dropping down to hit his bottom lip, claws pushing through the flesh of his fingertips.
Dave raised his hand and Mayhem stepped in between them. “My orders, Jay. Wasn’t sure if we could get her here. Had to come up with a plan.”
Jaylon sucked in deep breaths, panting as he clenched and unclenched his fists, the bite of his claws against his palm helping to keep things real. “What plan?”
“Darcy thinks, given what we’ve seen and learned about Aubrey, that she comes from a family of Order supporters.”
“So what?” His words were guttural, spoken with a mouth full of fang, his brain misfiring, continually cycling back to the idea that she was on her way. To him. Finally.
“It means that she has been raised as a killing machine. She’s had the expectation that she will one day be mated to a Hunter. She’s already on their side, like I said, an Order Huntress.”
Jaylon gulped back his anger. “She’s against us?”
“She doesn’t know what we are. Unless you change in front of her, she probably won’t figure it out. Darcy’s gonna use a spell just in case though, confuse her a bit so her instincts don’t tip her off.”
“How did you find her?” The doorbell rang and Jaylon’s heart leapt to his throat.
“Just so happened she was looking for a job.” Dave smirked. “She’s our new security chief.”
“Security chief?”
“For Darcy,” Dave said with a wink.
“Huh?” Jaylon frowned. Darcy was one of the most powerful witches he’d ever seen. “Why would you hire…?”
Mayhem shook his head and gave Jaylon a hard pat on the back. “I got her here, bud. Now it’s your job to keep her here.”