A shiver ran through his body despite the warmth in his head when the wind pushed under the open jacket, but he trudged on, lifting his knees high in the dense snow. The hardened layer on top broke under his weight, but Radek was already sweating from the effort by the time some of his friends voiced their doubts about this late-night hunt. Cowards. City wimps. They should have stayed at the cabin if they were chickening out. This was his forest. His valley. And if those dirty furbags dared to come anywhere near his home, it was only his right to defend it.
But in the dark, with inches of snow covering every vaguely-horizontal space in sight, all he could see were shades of white and gray. The wind direction must have changed, since he couldn’t smell the unfamiliar fur anymore, but when one of the heavy branches moved, and a large form skirted off, beyond the trees in sight, Radek lifted the rifle and took his first shot.
“Fucking die!”
Spurred on by the whistles and yelling behind him, he ran farther into the forest to see if he’d managed to land a bullet in one of the beasts, but couldn’t sense blood beyond the overpowering odor of gunpowder. When he pushed into the igloo-like space in the shadow of the fir, he couldn’t see dark blots in the snow either, but paw prints were definitely there, leading away from the cabin.
The bastard had gotten scared off, and when his friends cheered in the far-off background, it passed through Radek’s mind that with the wolf chased away his work here was done. But the stars and the moon shone above, giving the forest an eerie blue glow and transforming it into a prime hunting ground. Once he’d walked between the trees, he couldn’t back down.
The ground rose toward a hill where he stepped into a passage of even snow, where tiny trees stuck out, dotting the pristine surface, but Radek’s gaze followed the tracks, and his blood boiled when he saw a shadow at the top of the slope He shot again without thinking. Then again, already trudging through the snow in a parody of a jog, but the lone wolf kept evading him, as if he were luring Radek away from other people.
Yet another howl. Then a yelp. The beast was mocking him. The same beast that had surely killed his dad.
He roared and ran forward, hopping through the deep snow as he chased a large form that disappeared in the dark, as if it were a ghost—not substantial enough to reassure Radek he was chasing the right animal in the first place, but it didn’t matter anymore.
He wanted to see blood in the snow.
“I’ll kill all you motherfuckers!” he yelled and briefly turned around when he realized how quiet it was behind him. Figured. His friends, including his kinda-but-not-boyfriend lacked the balls for this. But Radek’s dad taught him how to hunt, and he wasn’t afraid.
Or it was the alcohol talking, but he wouldn’t know the difference.
He continued his hike with new focus, guided by his inhuman sense of smell. He sped up when the familiar stench of sweaty fur caught his attention, and pressed his nose to the bark the wolf must have rubbed against.
He breathed in the musk of the animal and followed it, now certain he was after a wolf. It smelled young and strong but would be no match for the rifle in Radek’s hand.
The cold was getting to him as he continued through the gray-blue landscape with the half-moon above providing white light. It was getting difficult to breathe, as if the vapor he kept exhaling created a collar around his throat, but Radek wouldn’t let that stop him.
He stilled when a branch broke nearby, only to run to where the landscape dipped lower, creating a shallow ravine. There was something there. Something that smelled of fur and raw meat, but as he placed his foot close to the edge, the snow crumbled under him, and his stunted reflexes didn’t notice what was going on until he toppled down.
Radek yelped despite his best efforts not to, but he landed on his ass and slid to the bottom of the ravine. For half a second, he thought he’d be done for if there was water under the snow, but the ground was solid, and moonlight peeked through the treetops revealing a large wooden… shed?
Radek jumped to his feet, looking around for predators, but he couldn’t hear any wolves despite being able to smell them. Radek knew the woods. Ish. It had been a while, years actually since he’d last gone hunting with Dad. But the hut, with its sloped roof and wooden shutters covering tiny windows, couldn’t be ignored, and he walked along the ravine to reach it, weirded out that there was another smell, one he was very familiar with, mingling with the stench of wolves.
Weed?
He blinked, stepping closer to the wooden structure growing out of the slope of the ravine. The gaps between wooden planks had been filled this year, as the moss still looked fresh enough, so it wasn’t abandoned. The door was partially open, inviting him with the comfort of the herby scent he knew so well. But the odor of a predator? It was dense in the air, so Radek pressed the stock of the rifle to his shoulder and walked toward the shed as steadily as he could.
He hadn’t realized until now just how fast his heart was beating. Everything seemed to still, even the snowflakes hung in the air instead of falling, as if he were the single living being moving through a landscape stuck in time.
Radek set his foot on the wooden floor inside the hut, which was much bigger than it had seemed from afar. He now regretted not taking a flashlight. He regretted many things, but that didn’t mean he would back out.
He’d come here for a kill, and as paws tapped against wood somewhere inside, his index finger twitched against the trigger. His stomach tightened, blood rushed to his frosty cheeks, but a low voice spoke behind him before he could have taken the shot.
“I don’t think this property belongs to you.”
“Huh?” Radek turned so abruptly, he slapped the person behind him with his damp hair, but that meant the man stood far too close, and that he’d managed to approach unseen, like a ghost. Radek stumbled into the hut that smelled like a weed farm, and pointed the rifle at the stranger, painfully aware of the canine somewhere inside. Behind him. “Who are you?”
The man’s form filled the entire doorway, a dark barrier to trap Radek between the wild animal and freedom. The stranger’s face remained shadowed, but the moonlight streaming from outside revealed the pitch black of his longish hair.
He smelled of wood and moss, as if he’d slept buried under the snow, in the safety of some underground lair, and had only come out to hunt.
Radek froze when something tumbled over the floor behind him. Something as heavy as a grown man.
“Put that down,” the stranger said, melodically rounding up syllables with a Ukrainian accent. “You’re trespassing.”
Radek’s hands tightened on the rifle, and he glanced over his shoulder, his chest too tight. “You don’t understand! There’s a wolf—”
“Now.”
“What wolf?” asked a voice from inside the hut, filling Radek with a sense of dread. He was trapped with two strangers in the forest. In a little hut that smelled of marijuana.
Fuck.
“You’re drunk and confused,” said the tall man at the door. “Give me that rifle.”
Radek made a quick turn and pressed his back to the wall, because he didn’t want to be vulnerable to either of the strangers. “There’s no way I’m giving up my gun! Why is he naked?” He couldn’t help his voice getting a higher pitch, but he was starting to freak out when he noticed the man hiding in the shadows was completely bare.