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THE COLD AIR was completely still. Tall, thick pine trees blocked the freezing wind from disturbing the forest floor, shrouding the shrubbery from all but the most persistent rays that pierced through the canopy like a lifeline from heaven. Hardly a sound could be heard but for the occasional snap of a twig beneath a scampering squirrel, the melodic hymn of a rare snow bunting that chirped in the bare branches of a deciduous tree.

Nature dominated the forest that belonged to the deer, bucks and does roaming in droves. For a long time, they had lingered on the edge of extinction when they were hunted as fast as they could breed by the wolves that stalked the depths of the woods, ravaged by the packs that preyed on their flesh. The forest was left to nature, hardly an ounce of interference from the people of Buck Pines until tragedy struck and crisis followed uproar.

What was common knowledge now was a horrific revelation almost a hundred years ago: the wolves weren't all that they seemed.

Not all of them, anyway. Amongst the wolves, lurking in murky groves, were the werewolves.

When a pair of deer hunters disappeared in 1921, their bodies later found mutilated and their hearts torn from their chests, it took no time for the werewolves to be villainised, characterised as savage murderers. Those who didn't flee the town at the mention of the beasts banded together to form an elite hunting group: the Honour Guard. Their sole target was to slaughter the werewolves under the guise of protecting the people, orchestrating brutal hunts.

There were casualties along the way. The wolves suffered, caught in the crossfire at the intersection of suspicion and impulse. Lives were lost, sacrificial lambs sent to slaughter in the name of honour.

Now in its fourth reiteration, the Honour Guard was as ruthless as ever, harping back to the organisation's first few years. Creighton Keir, great-grandson of the guard's founder, ruled with an iron fist, a callous leader who wanted nothing but to eradicate the species his ancestors had maligned. He took no mercy; he took no prisoners.

Since the dawn of the Honour Guard, the deer population had thrived. They weren't the prey anymore. They were invisible, unseen by the hunters who craved a kill. A legitimate kill: a verified werewolf. It wasn't easy, which made the prize all the more sweet.

A sudden noise startled a grazing doe. She snapped her head up and froze before she ran, rustling leaves beneath her. A twittering bird took flight at the sound of metal on wood, the blast of an axe swung at a trunk that began to crack.

Adele wiped sweat from her brow with her glove and repositioned her hands on the axe, carefully positioning her feet and the aim of her swing to deepen the slash she had already carved into the wood. It wasn't a thick trunk, an optimistic silver birch that would never survive in the shade of the pines, but it would make for good firewood. She never let her supply dwindle, keeping plenty of kindling and logs stacked in the garage to dry throughout the year, ready for when winter came around.

Winter was right around the corner. It had been for a week and now that October had tipped over into November it loomed even closer, an ominous reality sitting right on the horizon. There was a lot to do before the harsh season made everything so much harder and Adele was determined not to let the cold and the snow get in her way.

The sun wouldn't set for another half an hour but it was already below zero, the sky clear white with no hint of blue between the gaps in the treetops, but she could feel the heat in her cheeks as she hacked at the tree and wished she had a chainsaw. That would make the task infinitely easier: she could be done by now already, the tree sawn down and dragged back to the cabin, but she was still a few miles from home and it was still standing twenty feet above her.

It would be worth it. She had lived alone for seven years now, and it had been four years since Jade had stopped calling twice a day and coming over three times a week, and Adele had spent those years proving herself. Her cupboards were always stocked, her freezer always full, and she had even begun to make money off her wares. It wasn't a proper job, as Jade never failed to remind her, but she hardly needed money when her only expenses were petrol for her car and bullets for her guns.

Jade still paid her bills. One of the criteria she had laid out when she had allowed Adele to live alone was that she would pay her for her water, her electricity and her phone, and she would keep a watchful eye over the figures. That arrangement had stayed in place for seven years now and in exchange, she came over once a week to collect wood and meat. Tit for tat.

The tree creaked when a final blow cut through the trunk, but it didn't fall. Her grandmother had taught her never to cut down a tree without supporting it first, to control its fall, and Adele never broke the rules that had been laid down for her. Once she had the tree in the position she wanted, she untied three of the ropes and slowly loosened the fourth to ease it down to the forest floor. A foot above the foliage, she let it fall with a thump.

There was nothing she loved more than a productive day, skinning a deer she had hunted or gutting the fish she had caught. Felling a tree came under that. She needed the wood to survive the frigid winters, easily four months of each year that she had to keep a log fire burning to stop from freezing in her own home. Her store cupboard was stocked with deer hides that she turned into blankets and rugs, anything she could do to keep warm.

It took another hour to carve the twenty-foot long trunk into four pieces that she could load into the back of her truck, trawling the slow and bumpy miles back to the cabin. She knew every tree on the route, every track and trail in the forest that surrounded her home. In twenty-two years of living in the forest, she was sure that she must have crossed every piece of land, fifteen hundred square miles that struck fear into most people who ventured into the dark. She could navigate it in the dark. She often did.

*

The log pile was growing. Hauling the third section of the trunk out of the truck, it shook the hard ground when she dropped it, angling her feet and flexing her hands around the handle of the axe before the sharp blade sliced into the damp wood. It was hard work but Adele was strong, toned muscles tightening with each blow. With a grunt, she raised the axe over her shoulder but before swinging it down, she heard a rumble on the other side of the cabin.

She was permanently primed to attack, her house well stocked to see off any intruder. Axes and saws lived alongside hunting rifles and shotguns, the weapons her grandmother had left behind, and she handled each with confidence. Adele was fearless: that was part and parcel of living alone in one of Scotland's most dangerous forests. She couldn't afford to be afraid.

A crunch. Then another. Footsteps crushing twigs and squelching the leaves that hardly had a chance to dry between bouts of rain and inevitable snow. The sun had disappeared long ago, the only light coming from the open garage door.

"It's just me," Jade said as she came around the corner, holding up a gloved hand. The other held an empty basket over her stomach. "You can put the axe down."

Adele swung the axe down into the log with a crack.

Jade flinched. She was dressed for the weather in a thick, fur-lined puffer coat and heavy-duty boots. They were new. Every year she seemed to debut a new rotation of her winter wardrobe, donning the latest snow gear like a status symbol. When she had moved, it hadn't taken long for her to suss out her meal ticket and after five years of building her status and two years of dating, she was engaged to him.

"You know, if you texted to say you were coming over, I wouldn't assume you're an intruder," Adele said. "I might have even put the kettle on."

"I did text. And I rang. Four times," Jade said. She reached into her pocket and took out Adele's phone, throwing it over to her. "I saw it in your car. Not sure why I pay your phone bill if you're not going to use it."

"Must've left it in there," Adele said. "What can I do for you?"

Jade dropped her guard a little when her sister changed the subject. "There's a hunt tonight," she said. "Creighton wants me to cook for the Guard before we go out, so I need to pick up some meat."

"For how many?" Adele brushed down her coat and nodded at the garage, leading her sister over to the two chest freezers that could sustain the whole town for a month.

"Twenty. I'll pay. How much?"

"Venison for twenty?" Adele pursed her lips, yanking open the freezer and surveying the individually wrapped hunks of meat and organs. "Let's say fifty."

Jade took off one of her gloves to sort through the notes in her purse, passing Adele a couple of twenties and a ten.

"You could come," she said, tugging her glove back on while Adele loaded the frozen meat into the basket. It wouldn't have a chance to defrost when it was minus two degrees outside. "You're a good hunter. You'd be helpful."

"I hunt deer," Adele said, not looking up as she counted out portions. "I don't hunt people."

"They're not people. They're werewolves. They're monsters."

She looked up. "You know the definition of werewolf, right?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow. "It's a human who can shift into a wolf. And even so, I only hunt to survive. I eat what I kill, and I'm no cannibal." Straightening her back, she lifted up the heavy basket and passed it over.

Jade didn't take it. She stood with both hands in the front pocket of her bulging parka. "Do you mind taking it to my car? That looks heavy."

After a moment, Adele acquiesced. Although she acted as though it was an inconvenience, she loved any chance to prove to her sister that she was capable, even if that was only by lifting a weight she couldn't manage.

Hauling it into the boot of Jade's car, she brushed off her hands. "There we go."

"Thanks," Jade said. It had been a lot easier for them to get along – or at least not fight constantly – since they had lived apart, the split coming just in time to stop them from murdering each other. In hindsight, Adele knew she had been young.

Despite her insistence that she wasn't a child, growing older had shown her that fifteen was painfully young. Part of her couldn't believe she had ever got Jade to agree to the move; part of her had realised later on that for Jade to have said yes, there had to have been a lot of hate in her heart. Part of her didn't really care, grateful for every day that she had been able to call the cabin her own.

"How long're you going to keep doing this?" Jade asked, heaving a sigh as she slammed the boot.

"What?"

"Living out here, scraping by ... it can't be very fulfilling."

"My life's very fulfilling," she said, as her phone buzzed. She took it out to see a text that put a smile on her face, and she chuckled. "Like I said."

Jade rolled her eyes. "That's Angus, isn't it?" she asked. Adele nodded. "I'll be off then. See you soon."

"Bye," Adele said, her eyes on her phone as Jade pulled away, wheels crunching down the track. Angus had sent a solitary character, a lone question mark. She responded with an exclamation mark and tucked her phone into her pocket to return to her log pile.

Two years ago, Adele had bumped into Angus McGregor on a rare Saturday that she had headed into Buck Pines to sell a few things at the market. When she had asked him out for a drink, she hadn't realised that he was an off-duty officer with the Penlark Police Department, nor that she had been his first arrest six years ago. It had been a minor shoplifting infraction and she had only been held for a few hours before Jade had got her out, but Angus still occasionally joked that it seemed a little shady for a policeman to sleep with a criminal.

Adele loved their arrangement. It was everything she wanted from a relationship without having to be in one: they met for drinks sometimes, knocking back a few pints while he was off-duty, but most of their encounters were purely sexual. They had come up with a simple system: a question mark initiated a liaison; an exclamation mark confirmed it.

With a smirk, she tugged the axe out of the log and got back to work.

*

She was still outside when she heard Angus arrive but she didn't move, waiting for him to come around. He always did. His footsteps crunched over the frosted ground until he was so close she could hear his breath right over her shoulder; she could see the air fog when he exhaled.

"Anything you say," he muttered, leaning close, "can and will be held against you."

She turned around, tipping her head back to meet his eye. "Angus."

His hands fell to her hips and he pulled her even closer, their coats a buffer between them. "You said the magic word." He twitched his eyebrows. "It's fucking freezing out here. Can we go inside? I brought Chinese food. I don't want it to freeze."

She raised an eyebrow. "You brought food?"

"Don't worry, there was no romantic intention in the slightest. I was just hungry and figured you might appreciate something you didn't have to kill or catch or dig up or however the hell you get your shit. You don't even have to eat but I will."

That was ok, she thought, though she knew that while she had clear-cut boundaries laid out in her mind, Angus's got tangled. He knew the deal and she had reiterated plenty that they were friends with benefits and no more, but there was one word there that he seemed to want to ignore.

Inside, she shrugged off her coat and hung it up to dry in the kitchen, throwing a couple of logs on the fire. Angus took over from there, peeling off her t-shirt and slipping his thumbs into the waistband of her leggings as he kissed her.

"Maybe we should go to your bedroom," he muttered.

Adele shook her head and pushed him back. He dropped onto the deep armchair, his jeans around his knees. "It's warmer in here," she said, her hand on his chest as she straddled his lap and kissed him, one hand holding her hair off her face. She breathed in his powerful aftershave and the taste of smoke on his tongue; she ran her hands over his tight physique and through his hair.

He held the back of her neck as he kissed her, his cold nose ring pressing into her cheek as he devoured her. Moving his hands down her neck, he pushed her bra straps off her shoulders and she shivered at his cool touch, leaning into his kiss as his fingers trailed further south. If there was a better way to relax after a long day's work, she hadn't found it yet.

*

Angus slouched in the chair in his jeans, a cigarette dangling from his hand. Adele didn't care if he smoked in the cabin. She quite liked the smell, though she had never filled her lungs with smoke. She rested her hip against the oven as she heated up the Chinese food, her eyes on him as his gaze travelled over her body. With the oven on and the fire crackling, it was warm enough for her to stand in her underwear, the flickering light catching on the piercing in her bellybutton.

Angus tapped the ashes into an empty plant pot and dragged on the cigarette. "When're you gonna move out?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You sound like my sister."

"Sorry."

"You just ruined your chances of round two," she said, folding her arms. He lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug.

"I was just wondering," he said, looking around the miniscule kitchen. The cabin was only just big enough for one person, really, and yet there had been a time that four had lived there. "This place isn't exactly safe. These woods aren't safe."

She shrugged. "Doesn't bother me." Adopting a bodybuilder pose, she flexed with a wink. "I think I can do more damage that whatever's out there."

"That I can believe," he said with a dry laugh, blowing out a perfect circle of smoke that floated towards Adele for a moment before disappearing in the air.

She tied her hair up in a stubby ponytail, most of it falling out when it didn't even reach her shoulders. Long hair was inconvenient. There had been times she had considered shaving her head, just so she wouldn't get a mouthful of hair every time the wind blew.

"I like it down," Angus said.

"I like it up," she bluntly said, bending down with a mitt on her hand to pull the takeaway tins out of the oven. She emptied half of each onto a plate, handing one to Angus with a fork and perching by the fire to eat her own.

"You don't even have a fucking table, Del. Don't you ever want to move? Or, I dunno, buy a fucking table?" he asked, sitting straighter to eat.

"Nope," she said through a mouthful of chow mein, sucking up a noodle. "I like living here. I like being far away from everyone else. I like that no-one knows these woods better than I do. I like having complete control, and that includes whether or not I have a table. Which, by the way, I do."

Angus raised his eyebrows. "You have a butcher's table," he said, "and there's usually at least half a deer on there."

She smiled, resting her elbows on her knees with her plate in one hand and her fork in the other, swirling noodles round the fork and piercing a sliver of chicken. "Just the way I like it."

"You're ... you're an interesting one."

Pointing her fork at him, she raised her eyebrows. "If you're just gonna come here and judge me then you can fuck right off, Angus."

He held up his hand. "No judgement. It's just interesting. You're not like other girls."

She scowled at him, her accusatory fork still levered in his direction. "First of all," she said, swallowing her chicken, "I'm not a girl. I'm twenty-two. And second of all, it's-"

"Ok, ok, I get it," he said with a laugh, surrendering his hands. "Sorry. Shouldn't have said anything. It was supposed to be a compliment. I was calling you interesting."

"You were calling me weird," she said. Setting her plate on the floor, she stood and reached up on her tiptoes to take a glass out of the cupboard above the sink, filling it from a huge tub on the floor. Angus grimaced.

"That looks like piss."

"It's cider. Home brew." She took a sip, her tongue fizzing. "Fucking strong, too. Want one?"

He shook his head. "I'm on call. Got the Buck beat for a while." No sooner had he said that than his phone rang and he sighed, finishing off his plate. "Shit. Duty calls."

"Go save the world," Adele said as he pulled on his t-shirt, brushing off the cinders.

"Look," he said before he left, tugging on his coat, "stay safe, ok?" He ignored her when she pulled a face at his attempt to protect her. He was overstepping the mark, making it about more than sex. She hated that. "It's dangerous out there, Del. Trust me. I mean it. There are monsters out there."

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i hope you liked this chapter! it's really refreshing to be writing in the current day again and i'm so excited to get this story kicking off and introduce some more of the characters! let me know what you thought of the chapter in the comments!