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them managed to slip away before the hunters decided to break in, it would still be obvious to anyone that people had been here. Recently.

Storm zipped shut the bag as quietly as he could and lifted the now-bulging thing over his shoulder. He gave John the signal to shift.

John did, and he prayed to God that the man wandering around outside wouldn’t hear the snap in his bones as he got down on four paws. It was especially painful now because of the muscle damage to his leg. The shift took the longest sixty seconds of John’s life, and more than once he’d had to bite down a whine of pain as his bullet wound stretched and realigned itself with his new legs.

That had really fucking hurt.

Then John noticed their main problem. He must’ve been a little too out of it when they’d come here to notice it them, because he saw it now, and he bit down a groan.

There was only one door leading out of this little shack, and right now that hunter outside sounded like he was standing near it.

John looked at Storm, and the large cougar glared at the door. He knew about their problem, too.

Only one hunter. They could potentially take the man by surprise.

He had been stupid enough to come wandering around here by himself, after all.

He was about to send the idea to Storm when he stopped himself.

No, this was a hunter he was dealing with. He hadn’t been driving that truck and shooting at them at the same time, not through the trees before he’d crashed, at any rate. He wouldn’t have been able to hit John if he’d had one hand on the wheel.

There were other hunters with him. There always were, and whether they were hiding in the bushes or not, waiting in silence to pick off both John and Storm, was something they were going to have to think about when it came time to run.

The door looked to be in decent shape, even if it was ugly as shit, but the only way Storm would’ve managed to get them in here was if he broke the lock. There was always a lock. It was just a matter of 74

Marcy Jacks

time before the hunter noticed it.

Storm looked at him. “Can you make it to the trees?”

He would. He had to. “Yes,” he replied.

The footsteps of the hunter moved, as though he was about to search around the other side of the shack before coming back to stand in front of the door. John heard the clinking of metal against wood as he examined something.

“Run!” Storm shouted inside John’s head, and he charged the door.

He was so fast and powerful that the door came clean off its hinges with a snap.

The hunter screamed as he was knocked over and trapped beneath the door. He’d tried to push it off himself, but then John jumped out from the shack, landing on the door.

The hunter let out a whoosh of air as all of John’s weight came down on him. It was definitely the same guy from that group.

He growled up at John. “I’m gonna kill you, you fucking monster!”

Just for the fun of it, John snapped his teeth at the guy. He screamed and yanked his head back, but not before John managed to nip at his nose, drawing blood.

It was a shame. He would’ve much rather taken the nose off.

Maybe it would’ve taught him a lesson.

The guy went bananas under the door as he thrashed, trying to shake John off him. “I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill all of you!”

“John!”

He looked up at Storm’s growling face.

Thoroughly embarrassed, John got off his hostage and started to make a run for it. Right when the dirt and rocks beside his right paw exploded as gunfire came down on him.

John ran for his life. Storm kept on looking behind him to make sure that John was following, and now he wanted to yell back at the cat to stop and just go. He didn’t want Storm to get killed because Hunted and on the Run

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John just had to mess around with one hunter.

That other hunter must’ve finally pushed the door off himself because then he got up and started firing off rounds at them as well.

Storm and John leaped into the safety of the trees just as another shower of shotgun pellets and handgun bullets struck the trees themselves.

They weren’t safe here. They couldn’t stop just because they’d made it into the woods. Those hunters were on foot, but they were still following them.

“What did you think you were doing?” Storm yelled inside John’s head as they ran.

“I know it was dumb,” John said, pushing past the pain in his leg.

It hard started to throb like a bitch again now that they were getting farther and farther away from the hunters. Due to the rate of gunfire, John was guessing at this point that there were only two of them.

Not a big group to contend with, but with only himself and Storm, they were still a major threat. Clearly.

Storm growled at him, his tail whipping around in that displeased way cats pulled off.

Now that they were outside and running, John could see the thin slip of light that was peaking up and over the horizon. The stars were fading and dawn was coming.

“So long as we stay in the trees and keep moving they shouldn’t catch up to us,” Storm said.

The only problem with that was that John’s pack was still too far away. There was no way they could make it all the way back without having to stop and rest at least one more time.

John told Storm as much. The cougar was silent for the next thirty minutes, and John didn’t know