Cass trudged up the gravel driveway of the Sleepy Tin Motel, her eyes narrowing as she spotted Jamee already astride his motorcycle. He leaned against the handlebars, looking far too comfortable for someone about to drag her into the woods. The setting sun bathed the lot in a muted, golden glow, casting long shadows that made it feel like time was slipping away too fast.
She'd opted to spend the entire day at work and pick up her car afterwards, a decision she was now regretting. The car should have come first.
Jamee tossed her a helmet as soon as she got within range. "Hop on, Officer."
Cass caught it but made no move to put it on. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get out here? I had to ride two buses, dodge an old lady who almost tripped me with her walker, and—" She paused, staring at him in disbelief. "I shouldn't have left my car."
"No, you shouldn't drive drunk," Jamee corrected with a smirk. "Besides, you're a werewolf. You could've just run."
Cass froze, her blood turning to ice. She had never told him what she was. That was a secret she kept buried beneath layers of trauma, duty and professionalism. Uriel had parsed it out because he had the power to, but Jamee…
Her hands gripped the helmet tighter, mind racing as she took a half-step back, studying Jamee like he was an entirely different person.
"How…" Her voice trailed off, unsure whether to confront him or retreat.
How the hell did Jamee know?
Her mind raced, piecing together fragments of conversations, memories, trying to figure out if she'd slipped. But no. She hadn't. She was careful. Always careful.
Uriel knew, of course—he had the power to sense things she couldn't hide—but Jamee? He smells human, she reminded herself. He didn't give off any of the telltale signs of Aetherkin. Yet here he was, throwing out her deepest, most carefully guarded secret as casually as if he'd commented on the weather.
A cold bead of sweat trickled down her spine.
Jamee's eyes softened as he saw her reaction. "Hey, relax. Just hop on." He tilted his head towards the woods. "We're losing daylight. We need to check the ritual site."
Cass didn't move, the weight of his words still pressing down on her. She hadn't sensed any threat from him before, but now her instincts were screaming. He knew. How?
"Jamee, how do you know?" she demanded, her voice firmer now, her heart pounding in her ears.
He raised a brow, the corner of his mouth twitching in a smirk. "Magic," he said simply, starting up the bike.
The engine roared to life, drowning any further possibility of conversation. Typical. She wanted answers, and Jamee just shut it down with a joke.
Cass hesitated for a moment longer, weighing her options; jump into her car and speed off to work now or follow this man whom she'd only recently met but somehow knew her best kept secret into the woods? Only one of those options seemed like a good choice. But something in his easy posture, the nonchalant way he sat there waiting, told her he wasn't a threat. Not to her, at least. She slipped the helmet on and climbed onto the motorcycle, making sure to keep a polite distance. Her hands hovered near his sides, unwilling to wrap her arms around his torso.
Jamee noticed. "What, you think I'll bite?"
Cass's mouth twitched, but she said nothing as the bike surged forward. As they sped down the winding road, her thoughts swirled in a chaotic mess.
Did Uriel tell him? That was plausible but why would Uriel do that? Why would he even think that was an okay thing to do? And he really— actually make her cum over the phone last night only for her to find out today that he'd told Jamee about her heritage.
Allegedly.
She mentally chided herself for jumping into conclusions. Uriel and Jamee didn't even like each other so in what conversation of theirs would 'hey, Cassandra Pratt is a werewolf' come up in?
Cass spent the entire ride in a mental prison of questions and speculation, so much so that she couldn't even give Jamee directions to Ashridge Hill. However, he remembered and rode all the way without even glancing back at her.
The forest was quiet when they arrived at the base of the hill. The dying light of the sun filtered through the trees, casting an eerie glow on the trail ahead. As soon as the bike stopped, Cass practically jumped off, putting a good distance between her and Jamee.
He glanced over at her, eyebrows furrowed slightly, as though her reaction had stung him. "You think I'd hurt you?" His voice was quiet, edged with something like disappointment.
Cass didn't answer, her instincts still buzzing, her mind still reeling from the revelation. He knew.
Jamee sighed, swinging his leg over the bike and standing up. "It's fair, I guess. I was trained to hurt people like you."
Cass's eyes shot up to his face, her heart skipping a beat. He wasn't joking. There was no humor in his voice now, no lightness in his expression. He stood there, his arms crossed, looking at her with a grim kind of honesty.
She felt her stomach twist as his words sunk in. Trained to hurt people like her. The revelation hit like a sucker punch, her breath catching in her throat.
She had heard of hunters growing up—shadowy figures whispered about in wolf dens and pack gatherings. They were always the monsters in those stories, the ones who came in the night to wipe out entire packs or covens. They were the reason why they were forbidden from sharing their secret with humans. But hearing Jamee say he was one so plainly, like it was just another fact of his life... it rattled something inside her.
"Trained?" she repeated, her voice tight.
Jamee nodded. "Yeah. Raised by the Order of the Blackmoon." He glanced toward the darkening woods. "It was an order of hunters. We were trained from a young age to kill Aetherkin. Supernaturals, like you."
Cass felt her throat tighten. "You… you're a hunter?"
"Was," Jamee confirmed, his voice steady. "The camp was more like a prison, really. We were just kids, ripped away from our families, forced to fight each other and our superiors. The training sessions were brutal, I can't count how many survival drills I almost died in. They didn't think they were abusing us. They told us the beasts we'd be hunting would do worse."
Cass felt her stomach churn. "Why are you telling me this? Aren't these the kinds of secrets you swear not to tell in places like that?"
Jamee's smile was humorless. "You can't keep secrets for the dead."
Her breath caught in her throat. "What?"
"Everyone's dead," He turned to face her fully, leaning back against his bike. "It was a raid on a vampire coven. We caught wind that they were partying in a log cabin off some private lake and decided to strike. Everything went wrong. Our superiors were overzealous idiots who'd killed a baby unicorn once and thought that made them gods. They thought they could handle it, but... vampires don't play nice. Especially not when you interrupt their partying."
Cass swallowed, the weight of his words settling in. "You were part of the raid?"
Jamee shook his head. "I was on patrol but that didn't stop me from rushing in once I heard the screaming." He swallowed hard. "I'd never seen so much blood. During my training, it was hard to believe what the elder brothers had said about Aetherkin. After all, what danger did a baby unicorn pose? If vampires were so dangerous, how come they'd never attacked us? But, in that moment, I saw what they were truly afraid of. I saw what we were supposed to defend the world against. And I wanted to get rid of them."
Cass opened her mouth to say something but the words seemed to elude her. How old had he been when he was forced through harsh training? How old had he been when he watched everyone he'd ever called family torn down before his eyes? She was afraid to ask. So, instead she asked, "Did— did you kill anyone?"
He turned to her, a small, bitter smile forming on his lips. "I couldn't. Someone pulled me out before I could do anything."
Cass didn't have to ask who. "Uriel?"
Jamee nodded. "Yeah. That's how we met." He chuckled, though there was no joy in it. "Unfortunate circumstances."
Cass's heart pounded in her chest. Uriel had saved him.
Cass's mind stumbled over the thought, grappling with the image of Uriel as... what? A hero? It didn't make sense. Uriel wasn't the saving type—he was more of a puppet master, pulling strings and letting people dance for his amusement. But to save someone like Jamee? A Hunter that had come to take his life? It added another layer to him, a layer she hadn't anticipated.
For a split second, she wondered how many other people Uriel had saved, how many lives he had touched, and for what purpose. Nothing he did was ever simple. It wasn't like he'd dragged Jamee out of the carnage out of the goodness of his heart. Uriel wasn't good. He wasn't altruistic.
So why had he done it?
The answer gnawed at her, and as much as she hated to admit it, she was starting to realize how little she truly knew about the vampire.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked, her voice soft, uncertain.
Jamee's smile faded, and for a moment, he looked more tired than she'd ever seen him. "Because I'm tired of pretending I've got it all together." He shrugged. "I dunno. Call it trauma dumping."
Cass blinked, unsure how to respond. But Jamee wasn't finished.
"When the elders found out I had an affinity for magic, they didn't know what to do with me. I was the outcast, the runt, always the weakest. Having magic didn't make things better—it made me worse in their eyes. No better than the Aetherkin we were supposed to hunt." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I had a feeling you can relate to that."
Cass's breath caught in her throat. She could relate to that. To being the outlier, the one that didn't fit. The one everyone judged before they really knew her. To the elders of her former pack, she'd never been 'Cassandra, annoying kid who hardly ever did what she was told,' she'd been 'that half blood brat'. And now, she wasn't just 'Cassandra Pratt of Havenfield P.D, she was 'Cassandra Pratt, the one that'll never be human enough to be human.'
She pulled the helmet off and walked over to him, her eyes softening.
"Maybe one day I'll drag up all my shit for you and we can have a trauma dumping party," she said quietly. "But for now... we should check on the magic circle."
Jamee grinned, the tension lifting slightly. "Yeah, yeah, you're right." He pushed himself off the bike and nodded toward the hill. "Let's go."
As they climbed up the slope, Cass glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "Do you know?" She asked in a near whisper. "Why Uriel saved you?"
Jamee sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I was furious when he pulled me out of that place. I mean, I had just watched everything burn, and then here's this vampire, pulling me away like I was some lost child." He paused, staring into the middle distance, his jaw tightening. "I tried to get away from him. Tried to get back to the fight, but..." He laughed bitterly. "He slapped me."
Cass blinked, caught off-guard. "He slapped you?"
Jamee nodded, the ghost of a smirk on his lips. "Right across the face. I stopped fighting immediately."
She couldn't help but roll her eyes at that. It was just like Uriel to stun people into silence, even at the most horrific moments.
"And then what?" Cass asked, her brow furrowing.
Jamee's expression sobered. "He slapped me and told me," His voice grew quieter, more reflective. "'Keep on living. Keep on despising me.'" He paused, glancing at the trees. "Then he asked me to do him a favor."
Cass's curiosity flared. "What favor?"
Jamee's lips pressed into a thin line, his blue eyes dark with something unreadable. His fingers flexed by his side, like he was physically holding something back. He shook his head slowly, almost reluctantly. "I'm not ready to talk about that."
It was just like Uriel to stun her into silence even when he wasn't there.
She stopped walking, her momentum killed by the new information. Why Jamee? Why had Uriel allowed him to live while his vampire buddies were tearing the other hunters limb from limb? What was the favor?
Her frown deepened. 'Don't tell me he wanted Jamee to be his submissive.'
Jamee stopped and turned around to face her, his legs buried in a wave of fallen leaves. "What?"
"Did he ask you to do anything… sexually inappropriate?" She managed to choke out.
Jamee's brows scrunched up in confusion. "No."
Cass let out an inaudible sigh of relief but it still didn't explain anything about Uriel's motives.
"What was his end goal?" She asked. "Why did he tell you what he did?"
Jamee only shrugged. "I feel like he was only giving me somewhere to channel my anger. Either way, I won't give him the satisfaction of seeing my rage again. I used the money from the Order's assets to travel. I learnt magic. I've become a new person."
"But you still hate him," Cass said quietly.
The early evening sun filtered through the trees and caught in Jamee's eyes, making the blues glow like polished topaz. His gaze hardened. "I still hate him," he confirmed, turning around to continue the trek to the top of the hill. "But that's my burden to bear. I won't be the killer Blackmoon trained me to be. I'll keep using the magic they hated to expel evil spirits and I'll keep living."
Cass trudged after him, her footsteps heavy over the carpet of dry leaves and decaying plants. There was a weight to Jamee's words, like he was half a man multiplied by oceans of sadness. But she could recognise it; the anger in his eyes, the heaviness on his shoulders, his sheer defiance of his nature and nurture.
He was right. She could relate.
"For what it's worth," she said, her voice quieter now, "you being here, helping Havenfield— helping me… it means you're a better person than the people who raised you."
Jamee smiled, a genuine warmth in his eyes. "Thanks. That means more than you know."
Cass nodded, a small sense of relief washing over her. She'd told herself the same thing for years—becoming a cop, helping people, that had to mean she was better than the wolves in her former pack who'd scorned her.
Who the hell knew if it was true. But it was a nice thing to believe.
They reached the top of the hill, the air thick with the smell of damp earth and fading light. Cass followed Jamee to the magic circle, peering over his shoulder at the candles he'd planted the day before. The candles were dead, nothing but nubs of wax and charred wick and, there in the center, the small dish of wine he'd left.
Cass's stomach twisted. The wine had turned black.
"So... it's a Vorvolak," she murmured, her voice tight.
Jamee nodded, his face set in grim lines. "Yeah. It's not good news."
Cass swallowed, trying to keep her nerves in check. "What now?"
"I'll spend the weekend patrolling the areas it's already hit," Jamee explained, his voice steady. "Perform some tracking spells, try to figure out where it's hiding."
Cass crossed her arms. "So… essentially, my job?"
Jamee grinned. "It would be your job if you were a mage, but you're not. Besides, you've been chasing it without knowing what it was. You've done enough." He paused, his eyes softening. "Take a break, Cass. I've got this."
Cass clenched her jaw. "I don't need a break."
Jamee raised an eyebrow. "Come on. The past few months must have been rough. You should do something else for a change." His eyes glinted playfully. "Got any weekend plans?"
Cass hesitated. "I, uh... actually have a party to attend."
Jamee's smile widened. "A party? That sounds fun."
She snorted. "I wouldn't describe it like that. I'm not good at… socializing. Besides, with the way Uriel is, I can never be sure what plans he has for me."
Jamee's smile faltered slightly. "It's his party?"
Perhaps she shouldn't have mentioned it after just hearing that all his friends had gotten murdered at a vampire party. Still, she nodded subtly.
Jamee's smile faltered slightly. He looked down, almost as if he was weighing his next words. Then, his eyes met hers, softer now. "Just... don't lose yourself, okay?"
Don't lose yourself.
Cass's chest tightened at the irony of it. She wasn't sure if Jamee meant it as advice or as a warning, but either way, it didn't matter. He didn't understand.
Losing herself was exactly what she planned to do.