The Little Red Hooded Hunter

Chapter 5

"How much further is it?" He hollered at the brat. While his hasty water escape had allowed them to avoid capture, it had washed away most of his supplies, and according to Eren, brought them far away from their initial start in the southern parts to the far western edge.

"We're almost there! I can smell them!" Came the excited reply.

After a thorough discussion by the water, they had decided to travel together to the shifter's territory. Venturing into the unknowns with a shifter was like prodding a hornet's nest, but Levi's instincts told him it was better than the alternative. Nile Dok and his cronies posed more of a threat than a lone hunter. The man had no qualms butchering and slaughtering anything in his path. In exchange, Levi had promised not to hunt the shifters down and to assist in eliminating the Brigade threat so long as no innocents were harmed.

The hunter never claimed his hands were free of human blood, but those he had dealt with were criminals and thugs, preying on the weak and desperate. Once he had taken out a group of bandits pretending to be hunters and taking advantage of a poor villages' naiveté. While Levi hoped he wouldn't have to do so, the possibility of having to kill the shifter still existed.

This was the third day of their trek and according to the shifter, they would be there soon. Their travels had been slow, due to his injuries which were rapidly healing, and because they needed to cut across the river. Strangely, despite only having known the Eren – the shitty shifter, his mind hastily corrected – for a short while, Levi felt more at ease with the kid than he had been with anyone else for a long time. It had taken some time, but having the shared goal of dealing with the Brigade helped smooth things between them. Levi was reluctant to rely on or grow too fond of the brat in the off chance he would eventually have to kill him, but their situation necessitated cooperation and a level of communication between one other.

Each passing minute made it more difficult to think of the brunet as a nameless shifter and a nonhuman creature that needed to be dealt with. Instead, his mind had begun thinking of the shifter as 'Eren,' a shitty shifter, who despite claiming to be nearly half a century, acted more like a fifteen-year-old brat. From his observations, Eren was anything but the violent, murderous creatures Levi had hunted before. The shifter showed an almost child-like fascination with city life, often badgering him for more information or stories about his travels and hunts. To reciprocate, Levi was regaled with stories of Eren's youth running through the forests and growing up as a shifter.

Had Eren not shown him his transformation, Levi would never have believed the brat was a shifter. He was much too similar to any other human on the streets. A shaggy-haired green-eyed kid with a strange accent and was a little off. The shifter was a little too comfortable hiking about shirtless and no normal person would track things by scent, but other than a few quirks, Eren was distinctly human.

"Over here, Levi!"

"Finally." The hunter muttered, watching as the shifter vanished behind a rocky outcropping. Picking up his pace, Levi let his mind wander to his odd choice of travel companion.

It had taken Levi some time to wrap his mind around the fact that the kid with amazing eyes and a killer smile who looked barely twenty was in fact a shifter and older than he was. Between humping his backside and masturbating in the water, Eren was clearly physically attracted to him. Levi had previously convinced himself not to be distracted by the caramel skin and viridian eyes because the brat was underage, but now he had a different set of problems. They had no spare garments and the cloak the shifter borrowed did nothing to hide the shifter's lean, toned body. Despite how they were both sweaty and gross from walking through the woods, the few whiffs he caught of the shifter's scent didn't disgust him. Instead, Eren smelled like the forest air with hints of salt sprinkled. It reminded him of the scent of wet stones after it had just rained sprinkled with a spicy, musky undertone. Levi had never enjoyed anything beyond the scent of tea, but the shifter's scent was strangely appealing. It was clean in a way that had his senses reeling.