Chapter 46 Luca
The first thing I smelt was blood. It was not human and not where it was supposed to be.
The wind carried it across the school’s back field threading through the scent of cut grass and teenage sweat and cafeteria fries drifting out from the lunchroom vents. It cut through the normal school noise like a blade. I stopped mid-step, my tray still in my hands with Rafe two steps ahead. He had felt it too.
He slowed but didn’t look back. Just muttered, “You got it too?”
“Yeah. East field.” I put the tray down on a random table and walked away without waiting.
Rafe abandoned his pizza like it was poison and fell into step beside me. Lowering his voice, he asked. “It’s staged, isn’t it?”
“It’s too controlled and clean.” I said.
Students were scattered across the quad laughing, flirting, and yelling but none of them were paying attention to the shift in the air. Only werewolves would catch it.
I knew it was the hunter. The idea simmered in my skull like heat behind the eyes. We slipped around the back of the band room building where no one looked unless they were sneaking a vape. The wind hit right and the smell sharpened into something unmistakable.
Jeez, it was a deer blood. Someone had splattered it deliberately along the chain-link fence that bordered the woods.
“That’s a damn lure,” Rafe muttered, jaw clenching. “They want something coming out of the trees.”
“Or they want people to think something already did,” I said.
We rounded the last corner and stopped and bloody yeah, there it was. A mutilated deer carcass lay in the grass, dragged just enough to look real. Wolves kill clean or fast and rogues tear for sport. But this? This was staged by someone who didn’t know the difference.
Claw marks carved the ground in straight, purposeful lines that were too symmetrical and evenly spaced. The blood was wrong spread in arcs meant to imitate panic except predators don’t paint the ground with stripes. Humans do.
Someone wanted a scene. Someone wanted fear and attention on the woods.
“Son of a bitch!” Rafe crouched near the body sniffed, and grimaced. “No wolf touched this not even a rogue. This is all knife work.”
“Blunt knife,” I added, noticing the jagged edges. “It’s untrained and not a even a clean cut.”
Rafe frowned. “Then who—?”
My stomach sank with an answer I didn’t want.
Someone was pretending and they knew just enough to be dangerous blending into school just like we were.
Rafe stood and scanned the tree line. “We need to move the body before a human finds it.”
I was already pulling my hoodie sleeves over my hands. “Grab the legs. We take it back to the woods and make it disappear.”
We dragged the deer behind the trees. A couple birds scattered but otherwise the forest stayed still. We buried what was left deeper in the woods and covered the disturbed ground with leaves. When we were done, Rafe wiped his hands on his jeans.
“Okay,” he said. “That wasn’t just a stunt. That was a message.”
“Yeah.”
“And the message is what? ‘Hey wolves, I’m here, come get me?’” He snorted. “Bold for someone hiding in a math class with a backpack full of highlighters.”
I couldn’t laugh even if I wanted to because there was something worse gnawing at my gut. It was the timing and how the hunter wasn’t targeting wolves directly.
They were playing proximity games.
“Someone wanted panic,” I said. “If a student found it, teachers will call animal control. Rumors spread and he whole town freaks out. The pack gets blamed.”
“And the pack gets exposed,” Rafe finished.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and paced a short line between the trees. “This is too messy for a pro hunter.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Which makes it worse.”
Because sloppy meant unpredictable.bSloppy meant someone emotional, reactive, and young who might not even know what they were becoming. The same thought drifted through Rafe’s but he didn’t speak it. None of us wanted to say it aloud.
There was a hunter in our school and was pushing us hard.
Rafe stopped pacing. “You telling Greta?”
“I have to.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “She’ll smell the traces herself as soon as she’s near the woods. Better she hears it from me.”
“And if the hunter escalates?”
“He will.”
Rafe nodded grimly. “Well, great. Nothing like a lunchtime murder-drama to spice up our senior year.”
My mind was already shifting, hunting through possibilities, and mapping the faces I knew. Someone had placed that scene where I would find it.
Rafe nudged me with his elbow, breaking my focus. “You’re thinking too hard, man. Whoever it is, we’ll handle it plus the pack’s survived way worse.”
“Not when the threat walks beside us,” I said. “And they know our routines and blind spots.”
Rafe fell silent. That was the problem. This wasn’t an outsider stalking in from the woods.
This was someone inside the school who knew our day-to-day activities and inside lives.
Someone who blended in so well they could stage a kill twenty feet from the gym and slip back into the crowd unnoticed.
And until we knew who it was, bo one was safe.
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
HELLO LOVELIES, IT’S OFFICIALLY CHAOS O’CLOCK.
The hunter said:
“Hmm… how should I subtly blend in?”
and stages bloodbath deer crime scene behind the school
“Perfect. No notes.”
Luca: absolutely NOT.
Rafe: “This is why I can’t have normal high school problems.”
We are now deep into the arc where:
—the danger is rising
—the clues are multiplying
—the vibes are IMM–MAC–U–LATE
—and every student is suspicious (including the girl who still thinks werewolves aren’t real)
Get ready, babes. Because this hunter? He’s bold and they are getting way too close to Luca’s world. Tighten your seatbelt cause the next chapters are about to hit like Luca’s scent-triggered adrenaline spikes🔥🐺💋.