Wolf's Huntress

Chapter One

This chapter contains elements that some readers may find uncomfortable. Please read with caution.

Ruth's POV:

In this world of ours, we find humans, witches, shifters, vampires, and fae. Though they all live on the same planet, they don’t get along. Most humans are blissfully unaware that these nonhuman creatures live among them in hiding. And that’s where they belong, in my opinion, away from other humans and me. Yeah, I’m a human, but I’m also a hunter. Or at least, I was supposed to be.

When I was about six years old, the different hunter fractions got together to wage a final war on the magical world. Their first target was the werewolves before moving on to the other group of mythical and magical one by one. The werewolves got wind of the hunters’ plans due to a mole and teamed up with the other unnatural beings against the hunters. That isn’t what cost us so many hunters that day.

No, it was a single being that was part werewolf and part witch. She unleashed a terrible curse on the hunters that spread throughout the fractions and their bloodlines. Those closest turned to ash and coal while the others suffered slower deaths of their lungs turning to ash. Even those that weren’t in the fight were inflicted. So how did I, a hunter, escape from the clutches of death? Sometime later, we learned that it was because of the blood on our hands and not in our veins that doomed the hunters. All the children who were too young to experience their first kill were spared. Those who were old enough for their first hunt but not to fight were killed.

The fall of the hunter factions also destroyed the hunter hierarchy. There were different levels based on your family bloodlines. The Royal Bloods were direct descendants of the first hunters. The True Blades were descendants of the first pupils. The Loyalists were the new hunters who married into a hunter family or joined in without family ties. The final tier was the Mud Born. The Mud Borns was a single family that used to be Royal Bloods that tried to change the ways of the hunters and failed.

Instead of killing off the family, the hunter leader decided to keep his brother and his family in the fraction where they and their descendants could be watched. The Mud Borns are the shame of the hunters, and I was one. Despite my dislike for the supernatural and my parents’ skills as hunters, we could never leave the Mud Born hierarchy and rejoin the Royal Bloods.

With the death of so many hunters, the hierarchy honestly should have gone down the tubes, except that the lead hunter’s son survived and did his best to keep order. However, with the lack of numbers and all the survivors being so young, I left the hunter faction altogether and started a new life for myself. It wasn’t an easy life; I lived on the streets for a few years before the local cops grabbed me and placed me into foster care.

That was one crap shoot after another. I kept running away and was placed with a new family each time. One family was using the children for kiddie porn, another abused the children in every way possible, and the last one used all the money that was supposed to go to caring for the foster children to their blood child. While the foster children starved and ran around in rags that were falling apart at the seams, the child they gave birth to got all the latest gadgets and clothes. Before leaving that house, I bleached all the brat’s clothes, filled their gaming systems with jello and floor cleaner, and left their phone in the broken, backed-up toilet the foster kids had to use.

When I was caught that time around, I was sent to the orphanage, and things were slightly better. The beds were old and worn, but at least I had a bed. The food was small in portions and bland, but at least I was being fed. I was about twelve at the time when a couple came into the orphanage wishing to adopt. They had one biological daughter, though they couldn't have more due to cancer in the wife. Not wanting their daughter to be an only child, they decided to adopt a child about their daughter’s age.

Of course, they were shown all the “good children” who behaved or knew the parents' history. However, they wanted to adopt me. The skinny, dirty, didn’t play well with others, and ran away from every foster home in the area brat. The couple wanted me for whatever reason. I saw it as another chance to escape until I met their daughter, Anita. She was thirteen, bubbly, and the cutest damn thing I had ever seen. I was naturally drawn to her, and we became best friends and sisters.

Tia and I were complete opposites of each other, but somehow, we got along well. She was bubbly and social. I was more quiet and reserved. Anita loved fashion and bright colors. I was more into comfort and colors that helped me blend in. My sister loved romance and fiction, whereas I enjoyed sipping tea while watching criminal shows and the occasional horror where the good guys killed the supernatural monster.

Tia was a popular girl in middle and high school. All the girls wanted to be as cute as her, and all the guys wanted to, well, do what guys did best. Her followers didn’t care for me much, which was fine. They were all too dumb for my sister anyway. And I was the perfect barrier between her and the boys, making sure their hands stayed to themselves.

This caused some nasty rumors to spread about me, which I never minded. It was all shallow-based junk because I was still stuck in a middle schooler’s body until my second year of college. A few guys tried to get to my sister through me, pretending to like me as a friend or love interest. But they showed their true colors when they were alone with Tia. And Tia was no i***t, heck no. That girl had the looks and the brains! She saw through all of them in a heartbeat. Half the time, she created a scene that made it seem like she was molested or the guy attempted to rape her. So either I or some adults would jump in and beat the guy up.

I caught her in the act on accident once and gave her a printout of a Tony Award later for her acting skills. She pinned it to the wall over her bed. I’m not saying that she didn’t date anyone. There were a few guys that passed my test. But for one reason or another, the relationship didn’t work out for them. Things changed when I was doing an internship for college in another city. It was too far for me to commute, so I stayed at the sister college in one of the dorms.

While I was away, Tia called me and said she finally met the one. The guy was perfect in every way, and she couldn’t wait to introduce me. That was during the first week of the internship, and I hadn’t heard from her since. Our parents were worried because they hadn’t seen her either. I was about to leave the program and return home to join the search party, but they told me to stay and finish the internship. I wish I didn’t listen. It took nearly three months, but I completed the internship and raced home; I still hadn’t heard from Anita. I got a picture of the guy she was seen with at the club where she was last seen alive, and I went to an old connection of mine.