Hunter Reborn by Katie Reus Read Free Book Online Page A

scented her fear.
    True fear. Sharp and pungent. From the one femalehe’d do anything for. Would die for. And she was afraid of
him
. There was no acidic stench of a lie followed by her words either. She didn’t know who he was. Aiden felt as if he’d been gutted. “You don’t know me?”
    Watching him warily, she slowly backed up until she was at the SUV door. “Should I?” She seemed to finally register his state of undress. “Why are you naked?” she shouted.
    â€œLarissa, it’s me. Aiden—”
    She moved with a wicked fast speed, turning and punching the whole door off the SUV. The metal groaned as it snapped off and slammed against the road with a sickening crunch behind them. Connor slammed on the brakes as Aiden lunged for her. She was too quick, diving out the door while they were still moving. She was a blur of movement, her hair fanning out behind her as she flew across the snowy embankment next to the highway and disappeared into the trees.
    Aiden didn’t waste time. He dove from the vehicle and had gone wolf before his paws hit the snow.
    *   *   *
    Panic thrummed through Larissa as she raced through the forest. Trees and other foliage were a blur as she called on what little reserve of strength she had left. She was over five hundred and sixty years old but after sixty years in stasis she could feel the effects on her powers and even her body. Right now the cold actually affected her. Not much, but enough that she was aware of it and uncomfortable. That wasn’t normal for her. She desperately needed to feed again.
    She tore through the snowy landscape, aware with every beat of her heart that she was being chased. She could feel him behind her, closing fast despite her supernatural speed. A few days ago a witch named Magda had discovered her buried deep in the Carpathian Mountains. Apparently Larissa had been put into stasis, a coma-like state that rendered her virtually dead, for her own protection. A shifter named Aiden had coveted her for his own, and when she’d rejected him he’d waged a war on her coven. Until he could be eliminated her parents had wanted her protected. Unfortunately she didn’t remember any of that. In fact, she couldn’t remember a lot of things.
    All she knew was that her parents were dead and a shifter named Aiden had killed them. So if that shifter in that vehicle was the same Aiden, she wasn’t sticking around to let him attempt to hurt her. The male had been naked so she could only imagine his perverted intentions.
    It seemed impossible that her parents were dead. Her mother had been strong, ancient, but her father—his power had been unimaginable. And Larissa couldn’t understand why she’d agreed to go into stasis. It didn’t make sense. She would have wanted to fight side by side with them.
    But the witch hadn’t been lying. Larissa could sense lies in a way similar to how shifters could scent them. And the female had saved Larissa. Magda had even sent her to North Carolina to meet up with some vampires who knew about her parents’ killer.
    Looked like he’d found her instead.
    Though she hated running from any fight, she’d sensed the power from those two shifters and she wasn’t even close to top fighting form. Truth be told, she was barely hanging on to consciousness. Images from her past moved in and out of her memory bank like photographs, like she was dreaming while she was awake. Some images she remembered, some she didn’t. She had no idea what was real and what wasn’t. It was jarring, confusing, and more than anything, she was so incredibly hungry.
    The witch had managed to get her bagged blood—a strange, new experience Larissa didn’t like—but not much. And Larissa hadn’t trusted herself to feed from humans once she’d arrived in the United States. She was too hungry and not quite in control of herself and she