Lorraine’s POV
I stood frozen, every instinct in screaming that sothing was wrong. Very wrong.
"Lorraine!" Elise’s hand clutched my wrist tightly. "Move!"
"She’s just standing there, Astrid Voss," I whispered. "Why is she...."
"Forget her!" Felix barked. "We need to hide, now!"
The hunting ground stretched before us like an open graveyard. Tall trees lood over narrow paths. Thick underbrush tangled at our feet. The sun filtered in weakly through the branches, making everything feel like a slow-burning fever dream.
Around us, chaos erupted, wolves began to shift with sickening cracks of bone and muscle, launching into the forest. Growls, howls, and the sound of pounding paws filled the air. It had begun.
Professor Alaric Cain’s words still rang in my head:
"Bring your targets back dead or alive. Casualties are common and perfectly acceptable. This hunt doesn’t reward winners, it reveals losers. The dorm with the most captured or killed students loses fifty points. This is not a ga. It’s survival."
Dead or alive.
I didn’t have ti to dwell on the horror of that. Felix yanked forward as we darted through the trees. My ribs ached with every breath, my legs flared with fire, still weak and healing far too slowly. My dormant wolf wasn’t healing the way it should..... not even close.
But pain wasn’t the enemy today. Ti was.
We ducked under a fallen log. Branches slapped against our faces as we tore through the woods. Elise was breathing hard beside , her eyes darting, calculating.
Then I saw them.
A group of ferals sprinting across a nearby path, no formation, no strategy, just pure panic.
I skidded to a stop.
"Lorraine!" Felix hissed. "What the hell?"
"We can’t let them scatter," I said urgently. "They’ll be easy targets."
"They’ll slow us down!"
"No, if we group up, we can work together, watch each other’s backs." I ran toward the group, ignoring Felix’s protests.
"Wait!" I shouted.
The ferals stopped abruptly, eyeing with a mix of surprise and suspicion.
"We need to stick together," I said, moving closer, hands raised. "Running in different directions will get us picked off one by one. If we form a unit, we can hide, fight if we have to, even set traps. We’ll have better odds together."
They didn’t move. No one nodded.
"Please," I continued, desperation leaking into my voice, "I have ideas, strategies. I’ve been thinking about how we could....."
"Don’t," a girl interrupted sharply, stepping forward. Samira. Her hair was tied back in a high braid, and her arms were crossed tight over her chest.
"Don’t what?" I asked, blinking.
"Don’t try to lead us again."
Her voice wasn’t angry..... it was cold. Sharp. Controlled
"You think we forgot?" Samira said. "You think we don’t rember how your last plan went?"
"I..... I never ant for anyone to get hurt—"
"But they did, Lorraine!" she snapped. Our friends died. So bled out on the hospital floor and gave up. Half of us were thrown into the hospital beds struggling to heal!"
I took a step back, breath catching.
"You stood at the front, preaching about unity and survival. And yet, by the end of that day, almost half of us died and you were without a single scratch."
"That’s not true," Elise said, stepping forward. "She almost died too...."
"Really? Didn’t look like it," Samira said coolly. "She stood tall while the rest of us were crawling."
"That’s not fair," I whispered. "You think I wanted that? That I...."
"You were supposed to protect us," Samira cut in. "But you were the only one who didn’t pay a price. Not one scar. Not one broken bone. So forgive if I’m not lining up to die behind you again."
Her words sliced deeper than any Lycan’s claws.
"You think I didn’t suffer?" I whispered, barely able to hold her gaze. "You think I sleep at night? I hear their screams every ti I close my eyes."
Samira looked away, jaw tight. Behind her, the other ferals fidgeted uncomfortably.
"Don’t follow ," I said hoarsely, "but don’t run blind either or they’ll kill you. All of you."
"Then that’s our choice," she said, brushing past .
The others followed her without a word.
I didn’t stop them this ti.
Felix and Elise walked back to my side. I stood there, hollow, watching the trees swallow the last of the group.
"Let’s go," Felix said softly. "They made their choice."
I nodded even though my heart broke. And it was worse because I understood them.
If I were them, I wouldn’t ever listen to too.
"We need to find shelter," I said, scanning the forest with quick eyes. "Sowhere covered. Sowhere people won’t look imdiately."
Elise glanced around, frowning. "I heard the sound of m stream flowing from that side. If we follow the slope down, maybe there’s a ridge or sothing."
"Worth a try," Felix muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "This whole place gives the creeps."
We moved quickly, careful not to leave an obvious trail. Every crack of a twig or rustle of a branch made my heart jolt. Even though the hunt hadn’t officially started, it felt like we were already being watched.
As we crept downhill, I spotted a small hollow beneath a low outcropping of rock, thick with overgrown vines and brush. It wasn’t deep, but it was shadowed and dry, and just high enough to crawl inside.
"This," I said, pointing. "This is perfect. Help cover the entrance."
We snapped small branches and dragged thorny vines over the mouth of the hollow. Elise found a patch of moss and laid it along the ground to cover our footprints. We worked fast, hands shaking.
When it was mostly camouflaged, I backed out carefully and whispered, "Now, traps."
"Traps?" Felix blinked. "We’re not gonna fight, Lorraine, we’re gonna hide."
"We won’t fight," I said. "But if soone stumbles on us, we need a few seconds to run."
I grabbed a coil of vines, and together we set a tripwire between two trees leading toward our hiding spot. Not lethal, just enough to knock soone off balance.
Elise followed my lead, digging a shallow pit and covering it with twigs and leaves. "Soone might twist an ankle if they’re careless."
"That’s the idea," I said, nodding. "Buy ti to run"
"Alright," I whispered, wiping sweat off my brow. "Now we crawl in and stay silent."
We turned toward the hollow.
And then the siren blared.
A sharp, shrieking wail split through the forest like a banshee scream. It echoed off the trees, long and terrible, the official signal that the hunt had begun.
Elise gasped. "They started!"
"Go!" I hissed.
Panic surged like a wildfire. I shoved Elise ahead of , Felix scrambling behind as we dove into the hollow. My heart hamred against my ribs, blood roaring in my ears.
The woods exploded with sound, growls, howls, snarls, wolves charging into the forest in full pursuit. Sowhere in the distance, I heard soone scream. Sothing.... or soone.... had already been caught.
And this was only the beginning.
Inside the narrow hollow, pressed between roots and stone, I curled into myself, holding my breath. Elise trembled beside , her fingers clutched tight around mine.
I closed my eyes and whispered silently to whatever gods were listening:
Please.... let us survive this day.
*************
The forest floor was littered with broken branches, torn limbs, and the stench of blood. Trees trembled with each howl that split through the air, and leaves fell like ash in the wake of slaughter.
Selene Ashthorne and her brother, Alistair, moved through the woods like shadows, silent, ruthless, and unstoppable.
The hunt had barely begun, but they were already drenched in crimson.
A young feral boy darted from a thicket, panic etched into every line of his face. Alistair caught him mid-stride, slamming him into a tree with a sickening crunch that silenced the boy’s scream before it fully left his throat. His lifeless body dropped to the floor.
Selene didn’t even glance at it.
Another feral, a girl this ti, stumbled into view, her collar ripped, her eyes wide in terror. She barely got to turn before Selene’s claws tore through her midsection. Blood sprayed against the tree trunks like so grotesque art, and the girl collapsed, twitching once once before going still.
"Are we taking them back to Professor Cain?" Alistair asked, flicking blood off his fingertips.
Selene scoffed, stepping over a corpse without sparing it a glance. "Please. What would we even gain from that? A few pathetic dorm points?" Her lip curled with disdain.
Their kills were left where they fell, forgotten corpses amidst fallen leaves.
It wasn’t about the hunt.
Not for them.
Selene paused in a clearing, eyes flicking upward to track the shifting clouds. Then she held out a hand without turning. "Give it to ."
Alistair reached into his jacket and pulled out a small object wrapped in cloth.
"I got in and out of their filthy dorm right before the hunt started" he said with a smug grin. "She hid her things like a feral rat. Took a minute to find it."
Selene unwrapped the cloth to reveal a simple, worn hairbrush.
There were still strands of long black hair caught in the bristles.
She brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply.
Then she looked around, inhaling the air
A slow, satisfied smile curled across her lips. "She went that way"
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