The Hunter’s Call
These monster hunters are about to get schooled…
Fighting monsters is all I’ve ever known—and I’ve always fought alone. Until the night I stumble onto an elite monster hunter academy and into the arms of four hottie hunters who not only know the exact Latin classification of the thing trying to eat me, but how to kill it dead.
Then Tyler Perkins, the crazy rich and shamelessly sexy leader of this monster hunting squad, kicks it up a notch. He challenges me to stay. To fight. He’s arrogant and entitled and did I mention gorgeous…and the way he pushes me makes want to push back. Hard.
Tyler and his whole smokin’ hot team tempt me in ways that are far more dangerous than any monster throwdown. I know I should split town—but I can’t.
Because for all its gorgeous old buildings and shiny bright classrooms, something dark, sinister, and deadly is lurking in the shadows of Wellington Academy, waiting to attack…
And I’m just the kind of girl for that job.
**A new Boston Academy book! THE HUNTER’S CALL is book 1 in the Monster Hunter Academy series, a slow-burn urban fantasy romance with a fast-talking, sharp-witted heroine, four hunters-in-training hot enough to make your palms sweat, and way too many monsters to hide in a closet. Keep your blades at the ready and dive in!**
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Read an Excerpt
PROLOGUE: TYLER
I stomped down the stairs from Cabot Hall, striding away from the other guys. They let me go without a word, which was smart. All of us were on edge after our meeting with Dean Robbins, but I wanted to punch my fist through a wall.
I could see what that dickhead was trying to do. Destroy us. Everything we’d worked for, everything we’d dreamed. The academy wanted to throw us away like garbage.
Not gonna happen. I didn’t care how much money was flying around behind closed doors, or who was trying to buy out Wellington Academy’s idiot board of directors, so puffed up over their creaky, barely used magic and generations-old wealth that they couldn’t see how powerful the academy could be again, how important.
Well, my family had money too. More of it than we’d ever known what to do with. And we also had the balls to fight for what was right.
I pushed into a crowd of students who had no friggin’ clue about how lucky they were to even be standing on this campus. Wellington was the only magic academy in the world that had ever specialized in turning out monster hunters. Now there were only a handful of us going through the program, which had been demoted all the way to an obscure minor, but we were trained. We were good.
And no matter what Dean Robbins and the board thought—there were still monsters out there, even if we couldn’t prove it. Never mind that every supernatural sighting called into the school in the past several years had turned out to be a wild goose chase or a total hoax. Never mind that the other students and, hell, way too many of the teachers, eyed each other with barely hidden smirks when we walked by. They were idiots.
I knew that monsters—real, huge, and deadly—still existed, and so did the guys who fought alongside me. So how could the academy be talking about shutting the minor down?
Focus… I blew out a long breath, forcing myself into the mental exercises Commander Frost preached nonstop before our battle classes. Reaching out with my mind, exploring the air around me, taking its measure. As always, the practice helped. My heart rate slowed, my breathing steadied. My body might be tensing for battle, but my mind was quiet, my thoughts were—
A feral, yodeling howl ripped through the air.
I jerked around, hands going wide. Nobody else reacted around me, other than to laugh and get out of my way with the usual mutters about monster hunters. But I had heard that high-pitched roar, dammit. It was almost…I frowned. Almost what I’d expect a Tarken land worm to sound like, but way too loud for those little bastards.
I needed to reach out with my mind, cut through the shadows, and see what was really out there. I needed a spell of discernment.
Except…how did that one go, again? I tried to pull the incantation’s exact wording from the depths of my memory, but I couldn’t remember a friggin’ thing. And Liam wasn’t here to prompt me with the opening words, which were right on the tip of my…
Nope, nothing. My mind remained a complete blank.
“Fuck.” I shoved my hand in my pocket and ripped out my phone, stabbing it to life and scrolling to where I kept my spells in a notes file. As soon as I saw the first few words of the discernment incantation, I locked in the rest. I was the best spell caster Wellington had ever trained, and now that I remembered how it went, I uttered the short, succinct enchantment with absolute confidence. The spell zipped out into the cheerful Boston night, searching on the wind.
A new, chaotic scene flashed bright in my mind’s eye—slashing, thrashing, gore everywhere. Then I saw her. A girl bent over nearly double, hacking the shit out of…something big. Her blade flashed in the darkness, hard and sure. Whoa. Was that actually a person she was—
Another wild howl sounded, sharper this time. I jerked my attention to the streets beyond the girl. Had the land worm scented her, or whatever she’d just taken out? The monster sounded huge though—way too big. This couldn’t be another one of Frost’s simulations, could it?
If so, the man deserved a friggin’ raise.
It didn’t matter. I needed to find this girl and whatever was tracking her. I had to help her. No way could she handle a land worm on her own. She wasn’t a student here. She wouldn’t have any clue what to do.
Doubling down on my focus, I stretched my mind farther, beyond the campus walls, out into the city—searching, hunting, sensing. Time warped and folded back on itself. I couldn’t entirely believe what I was sensing anymore, not at this distance. Was I seeing the future? The past? It was impossible to tell.
Another shout split the night, this one human, female. The girl again—running now—so fierce and focused, my whole body jacked tight, my senses locked and loaded. She had long dark hair, fair skin, and was medium sized. Not petite, but not an Amazon, though everything about her screamed fighter. The image crackled in and out in such a way that I knew I was no longer seeing the present, but the future. Maybe only a few minutes from now, but definitely the future.
I strained forward, trying to see more clearly. The girl’s mouth was stretched into a snarl, and her arms and legs pumped like she was going for Olympic gold. She wore street clothes—T-shirt, jeans, running shoes. Her hair was ripped back in a ponytail, and her wide brown eyes searched everywhere, alert and scared but mostly pissed. In her right hand, she still gripped a knife. An iron knife. Who was this girl?
“Nina,” I breathed, the name flashing in my mind with a burst of knowing that was so intense it nearly knocked me over. This was everything I wanted to see, everything I needed—but I still froze in place, unable to believe my own visions.
Because this couldn’t be real, right? It had to be some sort of a dream. Otherwise, in less than ten minutes’ time, this intense and angry girl would be running for her life, chased through the streets of Boston by a genuine friggin’ monster.
And she’d be headed straight for me.
Monster Hunter Academy Series
