A Hunter's Keep - #1 of "The Hunter's Series"

Lizzy’s POV

“Can I leave the room?” I asked turning to face Kevin. He was the more easy going, while Jack seemed like someone stuck a stick up his ass. I wonder why they always paired those two types together? Anyway, although Kevin is the more easy going, Jack has some amazing comebacks. It’s really funny listening to their bickering.

Jack lifted his eyes up from the magazine and looked at me like I’d grown another head. He never left his spot at the door but did sometimes sit down to eat or read. Kevin had just been helping me in the bathroom with a rather explosive case of diarrhea! Now that I wasn’t always running around anymore, it seemed Sif’s stomach was getting more and more upset. That’s when I decided that a fresh breath of air would be just the thing to get her back to normal.

“What?” Kevin muttered, taking off his now smelly shirt. I tried not to look, but damn these werewolves had the fucking body of a supermodel…

“We haven’t been outdoors in ages,” I just stated picking out my own change of clothes. “I think that’s what making Sif sick. She’s a werewolf, she needs to be outdoors.”

I picked up everything that was stained and threw it in the shower; washing off the worst of it, before handing it to Jack so he could take it to the washroom.

“Are you an outdoor person?” he asked, grimacing when the odor from the basket reached his nose.

“Yes,” I replied. “Walls make me nervous.”

“The alpha has given his permission,” Kevin suddenly said just as his eyes returned back to normal. I guess he was using the mind-link to talk to Alpha Derik.

“YES!” I cried out, jumping over the baby on the floor. I showed some things into my backpack and before taking Sif up.

Getting outside was like getting water in a desert. Even Sif seemed to lighten up at the smell of fresh air and green grass. We found a spot in the sun to sit down. I made a makeshift bed for Sif and it didn’t take her long to doze off. The weather was hot, so her onesie and a blanket was enough to keep her warm. I dug through the backpack and sound some sunscreen that I gently rubbed on her. She frowned in her sleep but didn’t wake up. I placed my backpack behind her, so the sun didn’t get into her eyes.

She was sleeping soundly, and I decided to take a nap as well. It was nice being outdoors. I spent most of my time inside the compound and although we had land and swamps, we didn’t have this! Forest, gras and the absent of the smell of gunpowder and blood. I enjoyed hearing the birds sing and critters chirp. It was almost comical, how badly I wanted to adapt to this life. Not listening to the constant wailing of orders or shooting in the distance. The sound of metal against metal, and the smell of melted silver were as far away from my mind, as a bad dream…

Sif started to stir, and I immediately woke up. A routine I’d gotten used to. To wake up, before she did, so I could have her bottle prepared for her, before she woke up.

I sat up and dug through my backpack, finding everything that I needed. I also soon noticed the curious glares I was getting.

“What am I, the new exhibit?” I asked Kevin, who stood up a up a tree close by, hiding in the shadow. Jack was over at the packhouse, hiding in the shadow there.

“It’s not exactly normal for a human to be in a werewolf pack,” Kevin grinned.

“I figured as much,” I huffed, shaking the bottle, just as Sif woke up. I baby talked to her, picking her up and placed her in my lab. Eagerly she held her hands out for the bottle, gripping in tightly and eating hungerly. Kevin grinned; he always laughed when I was talking gibberish to her.

“Just wait till you have your own,” I spat back, throwing a handful of gras at him. “Then you’ll see who’s being stupid.”

“You have other siblings?”

I turned around, surprised at the voice, but even more so at the man standing behind me. I had to squint my eyes to fully see him, but sure enough: it was Alpha Derik.

“An older brother,” I replied, not seeing the point in lying. “But I never see him.”

“You just look like you’ve done this before,” he said, sitting down next to me, casting a cooling shade over me and Sif.

“Nope,” I said, popping the ‘p’ at the end. “But she’s so easy, a child could practically do this!”

To prove my point, I handed her over to him, giving him the bottle. For a second, he looked terrified, but once Sif started to reach out for the bottle again, it looked like his natural reflexes sat in. She sighed in contentment, relaxing into his arms. I grinned as I watch him smile in excitement and admiration.

When she was done, he sat her in his lab and started to do the same silly voices, I usually did. Making Kevin almost lose his professional mask, when I shot him a glare.

Sif had the time of her life; laughing and screeching while he bounced her up and down. I laughed, Kevin laughed and although I couldn’t see him, I knew Jack was laughing too. Even Alpha Derik looked like he was enjoying himself, making Sif even more energetic and bouncing. Before Alpha Derik could stop her, she’d grabbed his neckless and started to gnaw at it.

“Yeah, she grabs a hold of everything,” I grinned trying to help him get out of the killer grip she had on it. “Sorry.”

He chuckled, before talking the neckless off and let her have it.

“Just make sure she doesn’t eat it,” he said, smiling while he watched her play with it in her hands. I grinned. This was literally the happiest I’d been in a very long time. Unknowingly to me, Derik felt the same.

And as they sat there, the guards’ heart clenched, as they wished it was the alpha and their Luna enjoying their child together.