Dull, throbbing pain was the first thing my mind registered as it dragged itself back from oblivion.
Thought came in pieces, pulling upward through the pounding in my skull. My left shoulder protested with sharp, white pain.
For a few seconds, I didn't understand any of it. I floated inside the ache, half sunk in darkness, while the world moved around me in a dull, swaying rhythm. For one disorienting moment, it seemed upside down.
Then I realized it wasn't the world that was hanging wrong.
It was me.
My body was bent over something broad and moving, my middle pressed against a hard shoulder, my head hanging too low, my hair dragging against rough fabric and snagging now and then on branches. Every step jarred through me, sending fresh waves of pain through my ribs and shoulder.
I kept my eyes closed.
Something inside me, older than reason, told me not to move. Not yet. Not until I knew.
Voices drifted in and out through the rush in my ears. Male. More than one. Young. Close.
"Careful," one muttered nearby. "Her head hit hard."
A second voice answered, edged with irritation. "I know what I'm doing."
It cut through the haze.
Matt.
The recognition sent a chill down my spine, colder than the wind cutting through the trees.
I stayed limp over his shoulder and listened harder.
Twigs snapped underfoot. Wet leaves dragged against denim. Somebody behind us was breathing too fast, too deep, like he'd just finished a hard run.
The woods.
The truth came in a sickening rush. We were in the woods.
It's a hunting ground , Elise's voice floated to the surface of my mind.
I refused to panic. I focused on my breathing and forced myself to remember.
Memory returned in broken fragments. The curve in the road. The violent wrench of the wheel. The impossible glitter on the asphalt for one single second, small and white and sharp as teeth.
My stomach turned.
It hadn't been an accident.
"...told you she'd take the curve too fast if the tire went," someone said to my left, his voice low and excited in a way that made me sick. "Worked exactly like you said."
Matt hitched me higher on his shoulder. Pain burst through my arm, and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to stop any sound from escaping.
"Of course it did," he said. His voice held that same lazy half-smirk he wore at school, only stripped of anything human. What was left underneath was bare and ugly. "I've been tracking her route for weeks."
My heartbeat kicked harder, slamming against my ribs.
Then another voice came from somewhere close behind Matt's right shoulder.
Ryan.
"You've been watching him, too," Ryan said. "Don't leave that part out."
Matt let out a short breath that might have been a laugh.
"I wasn't planning to. Greystone's golden boy tracks her like a damn mutt every day after school and still thinks nobody notices. Follows her right to the edge of Blackwell's inner ring, then trots home and plays dutiful fiancé." His tone turned openly contemptuous. "You think that sounds like an alpha heir who deserves to keep his place?"
My heart stuttered.
Ethan.
Matt knew. He knew Ethan had been following me to the boundary. He knew enough to build this around it.
I kept my face slack and my body loose, but every muscle inside me had gone rigid.
"He's worse than the rest of us," Ryan said. His voice had that same strained quality as before, as if he were talking through a fever. "She's making all of us itch, but at least we're honest about it."
Somewhere farther back, another boy made a low sound in his throat. It didn't sound human.
Goosebumps climbed my arms.
They were arranged around us. I could hear it now that I was listening properly. A few to either side. One behind. Another farther out in the brush, moving wider than the rest.
They weren't just walking together. They were moving in formation. Like a pack.
I let my eyes open the tiniest fraction.
Weak grey light bled through the trees. The forest was all tangled underbrush and dark trunks, wet bark swallowing what little daylight remained.
I saw only pieces at first. Matt's jacket sleeve. Ryan's jeans cutting through dead ferns beside us. Another boy several feet away, too twitchy and alert, his head turning in jerks at every sound.
I closed my eyes again before anyone could notice I was awake.
"They'll notice she's gone by now," the boy at the back said. His voice cracked slightly. "What if the Blackwells already picked up her scent? What if the Greystones did?"
"Good," Matt said. The satisfaction in his voice turned my fear into something colder.
This wasn't just about taking me.
"You think Ethan won't come?" Ryan asked.
Matt shifted under me. "He'll come. He comes every day." There was ugly pride in his voice. His fingers dug into the back of my thigh hard enough to bruise. I held my breath. "That's the point. He finds her with us, he reacts, I put him down in front of witnesses, and everybody gets to stop pretending he isn't unstable."
The truth hit all at once.
He hadn't dragged me out here just to get me alone.
He had done it to make Ethan come after me and watch him break.
For one second everything inside me went cold and still.
Then bile surged hot in my throat.
I thought of Jack and Elise, what they'd do when they found out. About Hailey, asking when I'll come home.
And Dad, God, he'd lose himself completely.
My chest tightened so hard I couldn't breathe.
"Maybe I should carry her for a while." Ryan's voice came from so close beside me that I nearly flinched. I could hear the smile in it. There was no warmth in it. Nothing human.
Matt didn't slow.
"No."
"It's unfair for you to bear all that weight alone."
"I'll manage."
"Matt, come on. Let me help."
"No," Matt repeated, flatter this time.
The air changed. It wasn't loud yet, but it thickened. Pressurized. I could feel it in the way the others went quieter around us.
Ryan gave a soft huff. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm not asking to take her from you forever. Just for a little while."
Something in the way he said it made my stomach climb into my throat.
Matt's pace slowed by half a step.
"Funny," he said. "Could've sworn that was exactly what you were asking."
Branches dragged across my dangling hand. Something warm slipped down the side of my face and into my hairline.
Blood.
I felt it properly now that I'd noticed it, a wet line creeping from my temple. Each drop sharpened everything.
The boy circling farthest out inhaled audibly. Then again.
A shiver moved through the group. I didn't need to see their faces to know what that scent was doing to them.
Ryan's voice dropped lower. "Stop acting like this was all your plan."
Matt's answer came at once. "No?"
"Who got the nails? Who set them on the road?"
I bit down on a gasp.
So that was what I'd seen. Nails.
My fingers twitched once against Matt's back. I prayed he thought it was involuntary.
Ryan kept going, the words coming a little too fast now. "You know I helped set it up. I watched the turnoff. I made sure nobody else came down the road. So don't stand there acting like she's all yours."
The word struck me harder than anything else.
Yours.
Like I was a thing. A piece of meat. A prize.
I opened my eyes a little wider before I could stop myself.
The woods swam in and out of focus. Ryan was there to the right, only a few feet away, his face pale in the sinking light, his pupils so wide they made his eyes look black. His breathing was too heavy for a normal walk. The tendons in his neck stood out stark and tight.
He looked feverish.
And it wasn't just him.
They all looked drugged.
Matt gave a low warning rumble deep in his chest.
"Watch yourself."
Ryan laughed once, without humor. "Why?"
Matt's head jerked sideways. "What do you care? Don't you have Tess to worry about?"
Ryan grunted. "Tess is fun, not a bond. I don't owe her shit."
Something shifted at the edge of my vision.
One of the other boys drifted closer while Matt and Ryan stared each other down. He was breathing through parted lips, eyes huge and glassy, fixed on the blood sliding down my temple.
Before I could process what was happening, he bent fast. His face brushed my hair. Then his tongue, hot, rough, and wet, dragged against the side of my head.
The scream tore out of me before I could stop it. I jerked hard, twisting on Matt's shoulder in blind revulsion.
Matt and Ryan both snarled. The sound was so raw and animal that for one terrible second my mind refused to make sense of it.
Matt swung me off his shoulder so fast the world flipped. Ryan lunged at the same time, hands reaching for my arm, my waist, I didn't even know.
I slipped through both of them and hit the ground on my knees and one hand.
Agony shot through my shoulder and up into my skull. Pine needles and mud smeared across my palm. The forest tilted.
For one suspended moment, both of them just looked at me, eyes wide and black.
But it wasn't the look in their eyes that scared me most.
It was what was in them.
Hunger.