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Excerpt From:
Shifter 1:
Stefan’s Mark
By Jaden
Sinclair
Chapter One
The chilly air of the early October night, along with a good chase,
called to his blood. A hunt should be on. Being the one hunted wasn’t
cool, yet Stefan Draeger took it as a challenge. He ran in the woods
with a smile. He loved how the adrenalin felt in his system, loved the
thrill of any kind of chase, even when he was the one being chased.
Many times over the past few years, he would come to this place, come to
these woods to remember his father, and one day, he would come to seek
his revenge for the death that should never have happened.
Stefan stopped running to remember and to catch his breath. His hearing
was alert. It allowed him the ability, not only to hear all the sounds
of nature but also the noise of the footfalls the men were making as
they ran after him. His memory was sharp. He recalled the last time he
was close to this house that had soon turned into his nightmare. The
house that he thought, as a child, had swallowed up his father, never
letting him go, and then caught on fire. He had seen it only for a brief
moment before he was discovered, but it was enough of a sight to have
his anger boiling and all the memories rushing toward him once again.
Hell, he was shocked to discover the place still standing and looking as
if nothing had happened all those years ago. Stefan remembered how he
didn’t get his hunt that night. Instead, he lost his youth and
childhood.
“I think it went over here!”
Stefan snapped out of his thoughts of the past. He felt his anger rise.
The voice, the voice that had filled his nightmares as a child, the
voice that had haunted him for so many years, was once again close.
Unable to control himself, his lip curled up with a snarl, and he sent
out a warning growl with a deadly hiss. Only at the age of nineteen, his
warnings weren’t so effective. His brother always told him that he
needed to work on them, and his mother only said it would come in time.
Dedrick! His brother and head of the family. If he knew what Stefan was
doing tonight, he would skin Stefan’s hide for sure.
Stefan sniffed the air to see how close or how far away they might be
before he once again took off at a run. His shirt was dirty, his pants
ripped, and his thin jean jacket did little to keep the cold air from
his body. His hair was plastered to his face with sweat as he ran.
Stefan once again stopped running, this time to examine an old tree with
a hollow base; the same base that he had been shoved into so many years
ago in order to hide from the men who were hunting him. He was breathing
hard but found that he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the tree. In
fact, he had to walk up to it, graze it with his fingertips.
“I want you to stay here. Do you understand me?”
The hands that always held him, comforted him were now shoving Stefan
into a dark hole in a tree. Tears fell from the little boy’s face at the
thought of his daddy leaving him.
“Don’t leave me, Daddy,” he sobbed. “Please!”
“If they find you, they will kill you.”
Stefan wrenched out of the memory when a twig snapped just behind him.
Hair started to sprout over his body at the sudden tension, knowing a
fight was impending. This change was a special trait for his kind. One
of the things that made all of them sought after for so many years as
well as why they were called a shifter. The ability to change at will,
unlike their ancestors. The only thing Stefan couldn’t control and hated
was when he was in his heat. A painful sexual need that gripped him on
the full moon.
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