“You’ll find water located throughout the tunnels,” he continued. “If you become injured, you can tend to your wounds at the first aid station.”
I glanced at the small folding table with the haphazard first aid sign above it, and a bark of dry laughter escaped my throat.
The masked man lifted his eyebrows. He stared me down, his eyes cold.
I had to force myself not to shrink from his gaze.
Silence stretched long and taut before he spoke again. “The first aid station is a safe zone. You can stay as long as you like, but if you’re still there when the game ends, you lose. One group of men will mark you. Once marked, you are officially their prey. They might end the Hunt then and there. They might not.”
His last sentence sounded ominous. If we were marked, why wouldn’t our captors end the game and claim their prize? What would they do to us instead?
“Once caught, you’ll wear one of these.” He held up the object he’d been swinging and I realized it was a thin gold collar.
My stomach twisted.
He picked up the clipboard on the table behind him. “You can still leave, but once the door is bolted and this consent form is signed, there are only two ways out of the tunnels: as a victor or a slave.”
He walked toward us. Toward me.
When he stopped, he was so close I could smell him, and I was horrified to realize I was wet.
He held out the clipboard, a challenge in his eyes.
I took it and read.
I consent to be hunted.
I consent to be stripped.
I consent to be marked.
I consent to be owned.
It was followed by a brief paragraph of legal jargon, but I got the gist: I was doing this of my own free will.
Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to run, and I thought of June, wondered if she’d had the same instinct with Chris in the days and weeks before he’d killed her.
Had she wanted to run? Or had she been too beaten down, too gaslit to try?
I didn’t know. What I did know was that shehadn’trun. I wished she had, but she hadn’t, and now I was here, trying to exact justice the only way I had left after the failed attempt to do it myself.
I signed my name.
Game on.
3
POE
I’d knownshe was ours even before Titus told us about the gun.
She’d entered the room with an air of defiance I understood, if only because I’d been around Bram for so long. But there was fear in her eyes too, and I’d known she was here despite it.
I didn’t get off on fear quite like Bram, but I did get off on strength, and I was willing to bet the curvy little brunette had that in spades.
The fact that she’d come with a gun only made her more interesting.
She scanned the waiver Bram had handed her. I knew what she was reading: that she was here of her own free will, that she consented to the Hunt and its consequences if she lost, although those consequences were vague as laid out in the contract.
