Prophecy – Chapter 2 – Hunting For Babes

Chapter 2
Present Day

The frost had not yet lifted when they set out.

The forest was quiet in the way it often was before a hunt, as though even the birds had learned to keep their distance when the Hunters moved in numbers. William had arrived the previous evening without warning, and his presence had shifted the air of the camp. The man who usually ran it had stepped aside without protest. No one questioned William.

Ghost walked ahead because he always did. He knew the woods better than any of them. He did not need praise for it, and he did not need to look behind him to know they followed.

Two natural wolves, not shifters, had broken from their pack three nights ago. Young ones, barely grown. They had been seen skirting the outer territories, too bold or too frightened to stay where they belonged. The Hunters had been waiting for something like this. No wolf, human or natural, was safe and it was easier to make examples of the young.

Ghost crouched when he found the first clear tracks pressed into the frozen earth. The prints were light, the stride uneven, the back paws not yet steady. Another year and they would have been harder to follow. He rested his fingers beside one of them and felt, for a moment, as though he were touching something still warm.

“They’re close?” Gary asked from somewhere behind him.

Ghost nodded once.

William said nothing.

They moved again.

The trail led east at first, cutting through a stand of birch trees where the bark peeled in thin curls. The scent was faint but there. Fear had a smell. Youth did too. It lingered longer than it should.

A pressure began at the base of Ghost’s skull. At first it was no more than a dull ache, the sort that came from too little sleep or too much noise. He ignored it. He had learned to ignore discomfort. But it did not fade. It gathered instead, tightening behind his eyes.

He shook his head once, subtle, as though loosening stiffness from his neck. It did not help.

He straightened and scanned the trees, expecting to see movement, some shift in the undergrowth, but the forest was unchanged. The birch trunks stood pale and still. Frost clung to the bracken. Behind him the Hunters moved louder than they needed to, snapping twigs, brushing against branches. They relied on numbers more than skill. The fact that they ever caught anything still surprised him.

A branch snapped to his left. He turned toward it, but it was only one of the men stepping carelessly through deadwood.

The pressure sharpened, no longer the dull ache he could ignore but something more deliberate, something that seemed to press inward rather than build. It was not pain, not in any way he understood, and that alone made it worse, because there was nothing to push against, nothing to endure.

Then, without warning, a whisper brushed past him, close enough that for a moment he felt it rather than heard it.

Not these two.

Ghost stilled, only for a fraction of a second, before forcing himself forward again, his senses shifting instinctively to the space around him. No one was near enough to have spoken. No one had moved close. The Hunters were still behind him, loud, careless, too far to account for it.

His pulse struck harder, a sudden, unwelcome rhythm against his ribs.

He did not believe in voices. He believed in memory, in damage, in the mind breaking under strain. He had seen that in others, watched it unravel them piece by piece, until they no longer knew what was real and what was not. He had never felt it in himself, never allowed it the space to begin.

When it came again, stronger this time, he had to force himself not to turn. The instinct was immediate, sharp enough to almost betray him, but he held it down, swallowing against it as anger rose quickly to smother the unease beneath. He would not give them anything to see. Not here. Not with William watching.

The trail still ran east.

Ghost turned west.

He did not hesitate, did not look back, did not allow the decision to show in any part of him, but it settled all the same, quiet and certain, as though something unseen had shifted into place and found where it was meant to rest.

Jacob saw it immediately. He always saw everything when it came to Ghost.

He dropped back beside Gary and began talking far too loudly, asking how a grown man could breathe like an asthmatic bear in mating season and whether it hurt.

Two of the others laughed. Gary flushed red.

“Fuck off, you little shit,” he muttered.

Jacob grinned and carried on, piling insult on insult with an ease that made it sound careless. It was not. The noise covered the change in direction, pulling attention away from the trail.

Ghost kept walking, though the tightness in his chest had begun to settle in a way he could not quite shift, as though something unseen had taken hold and refused to loosen.

Blood will come, the voice said, quieter now, no less certain.

He did not react. Not outwardly, not even in the smallest movement that might be noticed. If he acknowledged it, even to himself, it might become something real, something he could not control.

The false trail began to thin as they moved on, the ground hardening beneath their feet until the scent faded into nothing. What had been clear moments before became uncertain, then lost entirely, until there was nothing left to follow.

One of the Hunters muttered under his breath that the wolves must have doubled back, the words carrying just enough irritation to place blame without saying it outright.

William stepped forward then and studied the ground in silence, his attention fixed, unhurried, as though the answer might reveal itself if he simply waited long enough.

“You were certain,” he said at last.

Ghost met his gaze and gave a single nod, steady, without apology.

William did not look away. His eyes lingered, measuring, weighing, and finding something there that did not quite sit as it should.

Jacob chose that moment to shoulder Gary, harder than necessary, the impact just enough to turn him half a step off balance and draw attention away from where it had been settling.

“Maybe,” Jacob said, his tone light, almost conversational, “if someone wasn’t stomping about like he’s trying to court the forest floor, we wouldn’t have lost them.”

A couple of the men snorted under their breath. Gary did not. He shoved Jacob back with more force than was wise, his temper already sitting too close to the surface.

“Watch your mouth,” he snapped.

Jacob’s grin did not shift. If anything, it settled in a fraction deeper, as though the reaction had been expected and quietly welcomed. He stepped in again, close enough that Gary had no choice but to hold his ground, and dipped his head slightly, speaking low, just for him.

Whatever he said was brief.

Gary’s expression changed at once, colour rising hard and fast, anger flaring into something sharper, more personal. He did not think, did not measure, did not look to see who might be watching. He swung.

Jacob moved as though he had been waiting for it.

The blow cut through empty air. In the same motion, Jacob stepped inside Gary’s reach and drove his fist once into the soft space beneath his ribs, precise and controlled, enough to knock the breath from him. As Gary folded, Jacob’s hand shifted and struck again at the side of his throat, a short, sharp hit that dropped him to his knees before he had time to recover.

There was no rush in it, no wasted movement. It was done before most of the others had properly realised it had begun.

A blade flickered into Jacob’s hand, quick as thought, catching the dull light for an instant before disappearing again as the others lunged forward. They seized him, dragging him back a step, more out of instinct than necessity.

“Enough,” William said.

He did not raise his voice and no one argued.

Gary lay on the frost, coughing, dragging air into his lungs in broken, uneven pulls, one hand pressed to his side as though it might hold him together. The anger had gone from him, replaced by the raw instinct to breathe.

Jacob straightened easily as they released him, wiping a thin line of blood from his lip with the back of his hand, though it was barely more than a split. He looked down at Gary with mild interest, as though assessing whether the lesson had settled.

“Touchy,” he said.

William’s attention shifted, not to Gary, but back to Ghost.

“You do not lose trails.”

Ghost said nothing.

William stepped closer and reached for the chain at Ghost’s wrist, tightening it without warning, the metal biting as he drew him forward until there was little space left between them.

“Be very careful,” he said quietly. “You know what happens if you fail us again.”

Ghost lowered his gaze, still and controlled, offering nothing back but silence. He did not resist when one of the others took hold of him and dragged him back toward camp.

The iron post waited where it always did, dark against the ground, as familiar as any part of the camp.

They secured him to it without ceremony.

Ghost did not resist. He never did. Outwardly, he was still, the chain resting cold against his wrist, his breathing even, his gaze lowered just enough to give them nothing to question.

Inside, something shifted.

It did not rise cleanly. It pressed instead, against something older, something buried so deeply it had no clear edges anymore. A woman’s voice carried through it, distant and breaking, not a memory he could reach fully, only the echo of it, stretched thin across darkness that had no shape.

The whisper returned, threading through it as though it had always been there.

Mercy will shape you. It will not free you.

Ghost closed his eyes, not in refusal, but in containment, holding it where it could do the least damage.

Time passed without measure.

By the time the camp settled into its usual rhythm of low voices and small movements, the cold had worked its way through the ground and into everything it touched.

Jacob drifted past as though he had no particular reason to be there, his steps unhurried, his expression carrying the same faint boredom he wore when nothing had yet entertained him properly.

“My brother is a risk taker,” he said, as though the words had simply occurred to him and needed somewhere to go.

Ghost opened his eyes.

Jacob’s mouth curved slightly, not quite a smile, but close enough to suggest he was pleased with something.

“I covered you,” he went on, tone easy, almost idle. “Again.”

He let the word sit for a moment before adding, quieter, “They were just pups.”

Ghost’s fingers tightened fractionally against his palms before easing again, the reaction buried as quickly as it came. He gave a small nod, the feeling already pushed down into the same place everything else went.

Jacob’s gaze flicked to him then, sharp and assessing, catching the movement, measuring it, storing it away.

He leaned back on his heels, his attention shifting to the chain rather than Ghost himself, as though it were the more interesting subject.

“You know,” he said after a moment, voice thoughtful in a way that never quite meant safe, “when we leave here, I’m not living anywhere with damp walls.”

Ghost blinked once.

Jacob continued, as though the decision had already been made somewhere beyond question.

“I want a proper roof. Something that doesn’t leak when it rains. And a door that locks from the inside.” His eyes moved briefly toward the treeline, scanning without really looking. “Somewhere high. I don’t like valleys. Too easy to trap. Everything comes down into them eventually.”

He scratched lightly at the dried blood on his knuckle, studying it as though deciding whether it belonged to him or someone else.

“And a dog,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “Not a wolf. Just a dog.” A faint pause. “Something stupid. Loyal. The sort that doesn’t ask questions.”

His gaze lifted back to Ghost then, steady, unreadable.

“I assume you’ll cook.”

For a moment, Ghost said nothing, then the corner of his mouth shifted, barely there, but enough.

Jacob watched it, and something in his expression settled, as though a piece had fallen into place exactly where he expected it to.

“Good,” he said quietly. “I prefer planning ahead.”

He straightened slowly, rolling his shoulders as though easing tension that had never really been there, and glanced once more at the chain before turning away, already losing interest now that the moment had passed, then lifted his voice toward the others.

“Who’s cooking?” he called, easy enough to pass for casual. “Since we’ve decided to hunt air instead of wolves, I’d at least like something edible.”

He paused, tilting his head slightly, listening to the low murmur of the camp as though weighing it.

“Or shall I start carving up Gary?” he added lightly. “He’s already tender.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the camp, uneven at first, then louder once a few of them decided it was safe to find it funny.

Jacob smiled faintly, though his eyes did not change.

He let the sound carry for a moment, then turned away as if he had already lost interest, the amusement fading from him as quickly as it had come.

William did not laugh.

He stood in the doorway of the main hut, still and watchful, his gaze moving not with the others, but settling on Ghost and then Jacob, and staying there a fraction too long.

As darkness began to settle over the camp, the noise softened, voices lowering, movements slowing, until the place returned to something closer to quiet.

Ghost remained where he was, the chain fixed at his neck, unmoving except for the steady rise and fall of his breath. His eyes stayed open, unfocused on the camp, on the trees, on anything that could be seen.

He listened instead to the whispering just beyond reach.