I want to hunch, to curl into a ball, but I don’t. I tip my head up and straighten my back.
There’s a silence then, long and slow. The kind that settles on your skin like a film.
Every eye in the crowd is on me.
I want to run, now. I want to run so badly I could scream. But I don’t.
Instead, I meet every gaze that stares right back. I let them see me. The real me. The girl whose mother stood against them all.
Steele nods, satisfied.
He steps back, and for a second I think the ritual is over.
But then the sound of shoes on grass, from behind the boulder.
Colton.
He steps into the ring, dressed in black, his hair slicked back from his forehead. His hands are at his sides, fists clenched, and his jaw is locked. He looks at me, then at the Board, then at the boulder. His eyes flick over the camera, and for a second, I think he’s going to smash it.
Instead, he walks to my side.
He doesn’t touch me, but I feel the rage pouring off him. I could reach out, I could grab his hand, but I don’t. He’s not here for comfort. He’s here to do what needs doing.
Steele clears his throat. “Do you, Colton Ellis, accept the role of hunter?”
He nods, just once.
“Then the Hunt will proceed as tradition dictates,” says Steele, stepping back into the ring of torches. “Tonight, Rhett will lead us in the ritual.”
He nods to someone at the edge.
Colton’s hand finds my wrist. He squeezes, once, and lets go.
Then he steps back and waits.
The torches flicker. The smoke thickens. I look up at the moon, just to have somewhere to look that isn’t the boulder, or the camera, or the crowd.
“Flowers.” Colton says and someone steps forward with a flat wooden box.
He walks toward me, every movement slow and deliberate. In his hands is a wreath, rough and wild, nothing like the fragile flower crowns you see on festival girls. It’s ugly and beautiful at the same time: a nest of thick green stems, leaves still breathing, and in the center, a crown of proteas.
The petals are fierce, spiked and blush-pink at the tips, pale at the base. I wonder if he picked them this afternoon, or if he stolethem from some garden as an afterthought. The scent hits me first—smoky and sweet, almost like honey but with an edge.
He stands before me, just outside arm’s reach.
For a moment he just holds the crown, like he’s memorizing it, or maybe memorizing the moment. The crowd behind him is silent, and even the Board leans forward, caught in the weird gravity of what’s about to happen.
Colton lifts the crown. I brace for the cold, the weight, the public humiliation. But his hands are careful—his fingertips slide under my hair, barely touching my scalp, and he sets the crown on my head with the care of a priest at a child’s baptism.
I smell the flowers, and for a second, I’m not here. I’m a girl in a garden, safe.
Then I’m back.
Colton takes my hand, not by the wrist, but by the palm. He brings it to his lips and kisses the knuckles, eyes still locked to mine. His mouth is hot, almost fevered. He presses his forehead to my hand and breathes me in.
Then, softly, for just me: “You’re going to survive this. I swear it.”
Behind us, movement. Rhett, sharp-suited and half-awake, emerges from the crowd and sets down a velvet tray on the boulder.
