Shadow wolves: The Demon Hunter (Book 9)

Prologue - The beginning

Skye

I remembered the day the demons came, as if it was yesterday. The screaming of my pack as they were being ripped limb from limb. My mother hid me under the floorboards in the kitchen, but when they ripped her throat open, her blood poured down between the floorboards and onto my face.

I couldn’t stop the horrifying scream that escaped my mouth! The demon didn’t hesitate and ripped me from my hiding place, throwing me across the room. My head bounced, and a stinging pain shot through my neck as I hit the wall.

I felt claws grip me from behind and the intense scent of Sulfur was burning my eyes as they dragged me to the center of the courtyard where some other younger members of our pack were being kept together.

Everyone was crying and huddling together, and I didn’t see any of the grown-ups, but there were bodies everywhere. I was only five and didn’t know what was happening, so when I tried to run, I felt this incredible burning sensation right across my back and I blacked out.

When I woke up, we were all locked up in a cage in what looked like a cave. It was stifling hot and the air was so dry that my throat burned. After a while, I got used to the heat. The demons weren’t that bad. They gave us food and water, and didn’t hurt us too much. We were taught to serve them, and I made peace with the fact that I would be the servant of a demon till the day I died.

I would never again see the blue night sky and the stars, or the full moon, smell the fresh air in the forest or feel the cool breeze on my face. I grew up with the rest of the “chosen children” in the underground tunnels, watching the older children as they met their wolves on their thirteenth birthdays.

I met Ady on mine and fell in love with her, and she became my escape. Our gift from the demons when we turned sixteen was to go to a warrior wolf training camp, far away from the only friends we knew. But at least we were able to get out of the caves and into the fresh air. Our wolves weren’t strong enough to run from the demons, and those that tried were brought back in pieces.

I always wondered why the demons killed our families and took us? On my eighteenth birthday, I found out. We were being trained, so they had worthy prey to hunt! On your twenty-first birthday, the demons let you go with the promise of freedom if you were able to outrun or beat them in a fight.

So far, I’d never seen anyone win the hunt. It was agonizing to see the wolves being carried and dragged back after a hunt. Their torn-up and limp bodies were flung onto heaps before being burned unceremoniously. After I found out, I tried to find a way out of here, but my birthday arrived and, as with everyone else, they made a big deal of it with a huge ceremony.

They even gave me a new cloak, but all I wished for was my freedom. I had been training my ass off for weeks, and I would be damned if one of those monsters was going to make a meal out of me!