Hunter and Hunted (The Shifter Chronicles 4)

By M.D. Grimm

Orphan Hunter Landon craves a family who will love him unconditionally. When he’s adopted by the Knights, an organization dedicated to destroying shifters, Hunter is grateful, but their ideology never sits right. Finally, on a rite of passage during which he’s supposed to kill his first shifter, Hunter discovers the truth: he meets Glenn Lightfoot, a deer shifter, and asks a lot of questions.

Glenn hates the Knights and worries about the safety of his herd with one in their midst. After all, the Knights have hurt his family before. On the other hand, this is his chance to convert an enemy, and instinct tells him Hunter won’t betray him.

When Hunter sees the Knights for the monsters they are, he knows he must leave the herd and protect Glenn. But Glenn is determined not to lose the man he has come to love and respect to the Knights’ cruel campaign.

Second Edition with updated and revised text.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.D. Grimm
• Release date: May 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005542696

M.D. Grimm

M.D. Grimm has wanted to write stories since second grade (kind of young to make life decisions, but whatever) and nothing has changed since then (well, plenty of things actually, but not that!). Thankfully, she has indulgent parents who let her dream, but also made sure she understood she’d need a steady job to pay the bills (they never let her forget it!). After graduating from the University of Oregon and majoring in English, (let’s be honest: useless degree, what else was she going to do with it?) she started on her writing career and couldn’t be happier. Working by day and writing by night (or any spare time she can carve out), she enjoys embarking on romantic quests and daring adventures (living vicariously, you could say) and creating characters that always triumph against the villain, (or else what’s the point?) finding their soul mate in the process.

Book preview

Hunter and Hunted

The Shifter Chronicles 4

Beginnings Book Four

M.D. Grimm

Hunter and Hunted

The Shifter Chronicles 4

Beginnings Book Four

M.D. Grimm

Cover Art by Catt Ford

Copyright 2021 M.D. Grimm

Smashwords Edition

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Want To Continue The Series?

Healing Minds excerpt

About This Book

Chronological List of Series

About M.D. Grimm

Other Titles by M.D. Grimm

Connect with M.D. Grimm

Prologue

Hunter pressed his ear against the door, struggling to hear what the two people inside were saying. His heart pounding in his ears didn’t help the situation. He closed his eyes and directed his entire focus on listening.

The foster care administrator, a kindly old woman named Mrs. Jenkins, was speaking. Going over his records, Hunter suspected. He crossed his fingers. He really liked Janice, the woman who had visited him every day for the last week. She was nice, pretty, and black. That counted for something. He was black himself, and he couldn’t count the times white folks came into the foster home and overlooked him, going to the white children. And as he got older, he knew his chances of being adopted lessened. He was already thirteen and he’d been in and out of foster homes since eight.

Now Janice was talking. Her voice was soft, melodic, soothing. He wanted her as a mother. He was on his best behavior when around her and hoped he’d made a good impression. The fact she was talking to the administrator was good news. He wanted a family, somewhere to belong. He didn’t want to feel like an outcast anymore. Something unwanted, like a dirty secret.

What ya doing?

Hunter waved a hand to hush Daniel, another foster child. He was a friend, but a year older. He was also white, freckled, and resembled a stick figure. Instead of leaving, Daniel knelt down beside him and pressed his own ear against the door.

Getting out of here? he whispered.

Don’t know, Hunter murmured. Suddenly, his vision blurred and turned inward. He saw a series of images, like a movie on fast-forward, and he smiled. Janice came out of the office and took his hand before kneeling down in front of him. The administrator came up behind her, smiling happily. Janice said he was now her son.

Hunter snapped back into the present. He moved away from the door and tugged at Daniel’s sleeve.

What? What’s wrong? Daniel asked as they stepped to the opposite wall.

Nothing. Hunter grinned. Nothing at all.

Chairs scraped along the floor behind the door and he braced himself. He’d started having visions like that a couple of months ago, and so far, they’d never been wrong. They’d started as visions only a few seconds into the future, and then they grew into minutes. Of course, he’d been freaked when they first started, and whenever he tried to tell any of the adults, wondering if this was normal, they sent him to counseling. He’d learned to keep quiet about them.

He also started to enjoy them.

The door opened and Janice walked out. She was about six feet tall and slender with generous hips. Her hair was short and frizzed around her face. She wore a red pants suit and high heels that probably accounted for several inches of her height.

She walked over to Hunter and knelt before him, taking his hand. Hunter’s heart pounded hard and his stomach clenched with anticipation. It was just like his vision. The administrator stood behind Janice, smiling, and Hunter delighted in the warmth of Janice’s hand and the affection in her eyes.

You’re my son now, Hunter, she said softly.

Hunter grinned. Can we go home?

Yes, we can, she said and stood, still holding his hand. Let’s go.

Chapter One

Out of the mid-wood’s twilight

Into the meadow’s dawn,

Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,

Flashes my Faun!

He skips through the copses singing,

And his shadow dances along,

And I know not which I should follow,

Shadow or song!

~Oscar Wilde, In the Forest

Seven years later

Hunter glanced at his GPS before turning in a circle, nothing but trees and shrubbery for miles. The bag was heavy on his back, and despite his training, the rifle felt awkward in his hands. Scattered sunlight touched the ground, making a patchwork quilt of light and shade. Branches zigzagged above him, covered with moss and leaves, the symphony of chattering squirrels and birds rustling his only companion. He enjoyed the peace and steady rhythm of the forest, and the two days he’d camped here had been a happy change from the confines of the Knights’ substations.

He loved his family but doubt always gnawed at his gut. He learned not to voice it, just as he’d learned not to voice his ability when he was a child, before his adoption. Hunter thought it was odd that what he once hid had been embraced and considered normal by the Knights. The rest of his family had abilities, and that had been a marvelous discovery.

The wind was cold and Hunter pulled his jacket closer to his body. It was March, and he was on a hunt in the Wayne National Forest in Ohio—for a deer shifter—and he wasn’t at all happy about it.

Leaves crunched under his boots as he continued through the brush and ducked under branches or climbed over fallen trunks. It wasn’t deer hunting season, which meant he was alone out here, and he figured this would be the time when deer shifters would be in their animal form. The danger toward them would be lessened. But that also meant he needed to be extra careful. If a park ranger found him, he’d be in big trouble.

Hunter stopped by a mossy tree and dropped his bag. He leaned his rifle against the trunk and took a sip from his canteen. The location and type of shifter had been his choice, and he only had one month to complete his rite of passage. His family, the Knights, demanded he kill a shifter. Hunter rubbed his stomach as it tangled into knots. Now that he was actually here, amid the natural beauty of the park and the silence it offered, his doubt became more pronounced.

Shifters had never done him any harm. His mother would tell him stories about the bloodthirsty shifters and what they did to the weak, the vulnerable. Two wolf shifters had killed her own parents, and she’d vowed that no one else would feel the pain she felt every day of her life. He remembered being inspired by that story, and he remembered hating the shifters for a time, working diligently at his training and learning all the Knights could teach him. But as time moved on and he became more aware of what the Knights actually did to captured shifters, he couldn’t help the questions that formed.

Hunter stared ahead of him, but he didn’t see the ancient trees, the greens and the browns, the blue of the sky. All he saw was the lab and the shifter on that dissection table. He’d been standing with a small group of children his own age, and they’d looked through a one-way glass, watching… something that still haunted him in the dead of night. The shifter had screamed, and he remembered asking the adult behind them why they couldn’t sedate the shifter. He was told the shifter was faking, trying to gain their sympathies. Hunter was told that shifters didn’t feel pain.

The snap of a twig brought Hunter back to himself. He ducked and looked around, quietly grabbing his rifle. Thick shrubbery concealed him, and he carefully peered above it, spotting a magnificent white-tailed deer. The buck was old despite the short antlers. The antlers would have fallen off in the winter, but they were steadily growing back. Hunter watched the buck, admiring the grace and strength in the lithe body. The buck’s ears moved constantly; his head held high in anticipation.

Hunter squinted, silently urging the buck to turn his head, so Hunter could see his eyes. He’d learned a lot from the Knights, such as knowing how to determine whether an animal was a shifter or not. It was all in the eyes. The buck’s coat was the usual dull grey that whitetails took on during winter months, though sometimes the fur or hair of a shifter would be strange or unnatural for the species they could shift into. But the best way to know was the eyes.

The buck abruptly turned, and Hunter felt giddy since the deer was nothing but a regular animal. The eyes were large and black and held no unusual intelligence in them. They were almost blank, the deer concerned only with food and staying out of danger. Relief settled on Hunter’s shoulders, and he wished he could feel disappointment. But he was far from it.

Hunter stood and startled the buck, which froze a moment before leaping away. Hunter hated himself for doubting his family. They would know more about the world than him, right? They knew more about shifters than he did, so who was he to question them? Maybe it was just hard for him to wrap his mind around the idea that all shifters, even the prey shifters, not just the predatory ones, were bloodthirsty brutes. Not even predatory animals should be lumped into the murderous brute category. They were doing what nature trained them to do.

In fact it was humans, who the Knights claimed they were protecting, who were the most bloodthirsty. Hunter sighed and grabbed his bag before walking deeper into the park, frequently checking his GPS. He was two weeks into his hunt, having been in another national forest in another state, and he hadn’t come upon one shifter, neither predator nor prey. He was becoming frustrated. What would he do if his month was up and he had no shifter? Would his family disown him? Despite the scary thought, it didn’t harden his resolve. He still doubted he could actually do it. Actually kill a shifter. To murder.

His family was everything to him, and his mother made this rite of passage sound holy—like he was some crusader. But he didn’t feel that way.

He would be a murderer.

Hunter shook himself and tightened his grip on the rifle. His family was right. They had to be. He was just a coward. That was why this was a rite of passage: it was supposed to be hard, and it tested his loyalty to the Knights.

Taking a deep breath, Hunter followed deer tracks in the mud and found several sleeping places. He knelt, and after counting the number of burrows made into the brush, he determined he was following a good-sized herd. It was almost too big to be natural. Maybe they were shifters. He stood and continued on his way.

Two days later he was following the same trail but hadn’t spotted any other deer. While still finding the park peaceful and beautiful, his frustration mounted. Hunter had encountered a couple of bobcats and a cougar, but they left him alone. He’d almost hoped they were shifters, but their eyes had shown him the truth. He half wished a predator shifter would attack him, and then if he managed to kill the beast, it would be in self-defense. But he’d had no such luck.

Hunter was deep in the forest, trails nonexistent, and constantly yanked spider webs out of his face. Scowling, Hunter dropped his bag, leaned the rifle against a tree, and took a small sip from his canteen. There was nothing but silence all around him. It was near dawn, the time when deer were most active. The air was cold and stagnant, heavy on his lungs, and he wanted to sleep, to simply curl up and forget about everything.

Hearing movement behind him, Hunter swung around and knelt, grabbing the rifle. A buck walked into view. Hunter’s hands