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“We better find her and mate her soon, is what I’m thinkin’. Mama’ll be pissed if I’m out much longer.”
Leroy grunted. “Once we get her, it won’t take long. I watched Trevor screw Megan McReady last week behind her house, and he was done in like a minute. Maybe less.”
Bo scratched his hair again. “I can spare a minute, I s’pose.”
“Listen, we gotta move. It’s ten minutes to midnight. Trevor said she smells like cinnamon toast, and I swear I smelled cinnamon right over there. Take a whiff.”
I smashed my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. The older unmated males had hunted me for years, and most knew better than to fall for the false scent trails I’d laid. Because I didn’t rub my clothes on bushes and trees; I sprinkled a dry powder of cinnamon and ground-up ghost peppers wherever I needed to hide my tracks. And when they got their noses deep enough for a good whiff...
“Ahhhhhh!” Both boys got a snout full of ghost peppers at the same time, and went running, screaming unintelligibly. I didn’t let myself laugh, though, or shift position. I hoped they were the last ones out on the Hunt, but hope had screwed me six ways to Sunday before. I didn’t trust it.
I stayed where I was for a few more minutes, until I heard the air horn that indicated the change of the front gate guard’s shift—midnight precisely. Then I slipped down the tree, careful to stay in the shadows on the way to my room. Hunting hours might have ended for the night, but that didn’t mean I was safe in this pack.
I was never safe, but I should be okay until morning.
Three more days.
I wasn’t even safe for three hours.
“Florida… Floridaaaaaaaah. I can smell you.” The oily, nasally voice slithered into my dorm room and woke me from a restless sleep. “Mmm, smells like my mate-to-be in there.”
Trevor the Toadfucker Blackside.
Instantly alert, I stuck a hand through the slit in the side of my mattress, grabbing the contraband knife I’d fashioned out of a piece of broken pipe, some hemp rope for a grip, and a lot of duct tape. “You’re disgusting, Trevor. Get away from my window,” I hissed back, glancing at the glowing wall clock. It was just past two in the morning.
What was he doing here now? His dad Van had made new rules for the Hunt a few years back, and the most important one for my continued survival was that it ended at fucking midnight. Maybe Trevor didn’t know what time it was.
“You know you’re not allowed to hunt me this late. You’re gonna catch hell.”
“The Alpha won’t know. Dad don’t care.” His dark laughter gave me chills. “By sunup, you’ll be mine, bitch. My property. My mate. Mine to do whatever I like with, by pack law.”
2
A Hidden Knife
FLOR
Fuck. I hated that Trevor was right. The law of our pack was clear. Any female, once she was mated to a male, had to answer to him for the rest of her days. Any order he gave was like a command from the Moon Goddess Herself, and no one other than the Alpha was allowed to interfere when a male was disciplining his mate.
If Trevor Blackside got in here and got his teeth into me, my life was as good as over. He’d lock me in a room and shackle me to his bed for his use, and most likely for his friends’ as well. If I cried foul, said he’d claimed me after Hunt hours? It would already be too late. No one would believe me, or even care if they did.
“Shit,” I whispered, trying to make a plan. I couldn’t yell at him or draw any attention from the other girls on the floor, or worse, the dorm warden, Holly Grier. As she reminded me on an almost daily basis, I was only one more incident away from being kicked out of unmated housing.
It didn’t matter that every “incident” so far had been males harassing me, clawing me when I walked past—and that was during the hours they weren’t chasing me down outside.
I tried not to think about the evenings I’d spent running, holed up underground in the storm sewers, or perched in the highest branches of trees, even in bad weather. After four exhausting years of it, I was almost tempted to give up and let one of them catch me. I’d be mated, and the Hunt would move on to the next unfortunate girl.
But the males hunting me all made my stomach churn with disgust and rage, and Trevor was the worst. He’d caught me once, and Mama had almost killed him defending me.
She’d been punished severely, banished to die outside our pack’s border, for daring to try. Trevor had taken great pleasure in telling me that he’d heard her being torn apart outside the main pack gate by rogues. Smelled her blood.
“She cried like a pup when they went for her throat,” he’d taunted me only days after she’d been sentenced. “She shit herself, and talked gibberish like the crazy ass she was. Our pack’s well rid of her.”
I’d been tempted more than once to follow her out the gate, and let the rogues take me as well. But I was just stupid enough to stay alive, even when I had no reason to. Mama was dead, and I was alone. If I wanted to survive, I had to fight as hard—and as dirty—as I could.
I was allowed to hurt the ones who hunted me, if I could. Van had announced that if a scrawny, five-foot-one, teenaged female who hadn’t even shifted yet could hurt a ranked male, then he deserved it.
That’s why I’d fashioned a knife and hidden it in my room, deep inside the old mattress that smelled enough like piss to keep anyone from touching it, and was lumpy enough that no one would feel it in there. And when I heard the metal bar latch on my window bending with a dull squeal, I knew I’d made the right call.
