“The Alphas are coming. We must run.”
She said this before but it means no more to me than it did the last time. “The who?”
“The Alphas! This way…” Reaching back, she grabs my wrist again and tugs me through a prickly bush, shushing me when the leaves scratch me and I squeal.
Once we’re through the bush, she stops and lets go of my wrist. We’re in a tiny alcove, surrounded by dense foliage. She narrows her eyes, assessing me from head to toe. “Who are you?” she says. The sounds she makes when she speaks don’t sound like English at all, but the garbled syllables somehow make sense.
“Who are you?” I repeat.
“Sian.” The tips of her pointed ears twitch.
“My name is…” I rub my head with chilled fingers. Why can’t I remember my own name? What the fuck is going on? “Haley,” I manage. “Please tell me where we are. Why are we running away? Why are we out here in the middle of the night?” We’ve gone too far into the forest for this to be a party. Maybe I’ve gotten into geo-caching? In my sleep?
Her eyes narrow. “You don’t know?”
“I don’t know!” I wipe my mouth, fighting back the wave of panic which has been threatening to crash over me ever since I opened my eyes to find myself in this bizarre nightmare.
“It’s the Hunt of the Moons,” she says, as if speaking to a small child. “Where the Alphas hunt for Betas.”
“Betas?” I repeat dumbly.
“The Alphas used to hunt Omegas, but now there are none left. Well, almost none. But we maintained the tradition here on Arboron.”
“Arboron?” I squawk like a parrot.
“The Forest Kingdom.”
“Forest Kingdom.” Sounds like something from Dungeons and Dragons. “Is this like a Ren Faire, with some sort of fantasy theme?”
“A what?” Sian’s ears twitch again. She’s gone all out with her elf costume.
I swallow, wincing when the skin on my lips cracks. “Do you have anything to drink?”
Sian looks around for a moment, then glides over to a nearby branch and plucks something round off it. She punches a hole in the top by sliding her thumb in, and raises it to her lips. She takes a sip before handing it to me.
I mimic her movements, upending the thing—which is about the size of a grapefruit—and letting the sweet liquid slide down my raspy throat. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before but it’s so damn good. “Thank you,” I tell her after I’ve sucked the thing dry.
She regards me. “Where are you from?”
It’s a good question. WhereamI from? Trying to recall anything from my past is like trying to wade through toffee. I have small bits of memory but so much is hazy. I know my name is Haley… and I’m not from aroundhere. “Um…”
“No matter. We have to keep moving or they’ll catch us. We don’t want to be caught this soon.”
“We don’t?”
“The best Alphas prefer a challenge.” Moonlight limns the curve of her lips. She bounces her eyebrows at me.
“Wait,” I rub my forehead. “Do youwantto be caught?”
“Of course. That’s the best part of the hunt. But we don’t want to be caught right away. Follow me.” She spins on her heel and sets off again, and I scramble to follow her. My thighs are trembling, and pain blazes in my bare feet when I skid over some moss-covered rocks. Sian dashes down an unseen path, her dark hair rippling like a flag behind her. She never slips or bangs into a bush. I follow like a baby elephant, ping ponging between tree trunks and smashing into thick clumps of glow-in-the-dark ferns. The fronds are neon orange.
“Holy hell.” The organizers of this Forest Kingdom event thought up some insane decor. I catch the tip of a frond between my fingers. Feels real.
“Shhh,” Sian hushes me.
“I’m trying,” I huff back. “I’m not used to running at night.” Or running at all.
Sian reaches back and pulls me onward before I can tell her I don’t want to be caught by an Alpha. I have a ton of other questions I want to ask, but the most pressing is: what happens if an Alpha catches us?
