At night,the forest tells its secrets. The trees breathe every time the wind rustles their leaves. Night birds call from their secluded nests. Insects sing. The grasses whisper back.
A breeze gusts through the shivering trees, carrying a potent perfume. I lean back and sniff the air. My chest and arms are bare, but the night is not cold. Nor is it dark. The pale purple glow of the five moons lights my way.
I pull my tyrlee to a stop and pat her neck before leaning back and drawing deep lungfuls of the damp night air. Brokk has ridden up beside me, and there are a few more Alphas behind us, laughing and calling to each other. Their scents rise in a thick haze—the musk of lust.
I'm wearing simple breeches and boots, with a few leather straps to hold my daggers criss-crossing my chest. The other Alphas are wearing armor. One of them is wearing a ceremonial robe.
“Let’s place bets on who can find the most Betas,” Brokk says. “Can you even run in such ornate armor, Golzon?”
Golzon, a big Alpha with polished weapons, glares at Brokk, and turns back to a cluster of his friends.
“You need to be more like our king,” Brokk calls, nodding to me. “Carry little, move lightly. Become one with the forest. The rocks and the trees.”
I nudge my tyrlee onward, not wishing to be a part of this conversation. There are too many people in this grove. Too much heat radiating off the tyrlees’ heaving bodies. Deeper in the woods, glow bugs float over the bushes, creating a rippling carpet of reddish light. Patches of brilliant orange—the yaknos fern groves—shimmer through the trees.
The forest is my home. Being out here at night, under the light of the moons, in the forest—I am at ease. As the chosen king of Arboron, I have no choice but to spend some time in the palace, but this is where I’m truly free.
Out here, among the trees.
My tyrlee slips away from the crowd, but Brokk keeps pace easily.
“It’s time.” Brokk pulls out a giant horn from his saddlebag and offers it to me. “Come on. It’s your duty, as king, to announce the start of the hunt. It’s tradition.”
I stare at him. It makes no sense for a hunter to announce himself. A hunter must run silently, without clanking armor or a clumsy sword. He must creep like the smallest forest scuttler, and roll in the mud to hide his scent. He does not stomp or shout, or blow an ulfdamn horn.
Brokk rolls his eyes as if he knows what I’m thinking. “Very well. I know how much you love tradition and your kingly duties. Permission to start the hunt, my king?”
I jerk my head.
Brokk raises the horn to his lips and blows. The sound fills the forest, blasting like the bellow of a dying tyrlee. The birds and insects fall silent. The Alphas whoop and cheer and urge their tyrlees forward, in the direction of the subtle Beta females’ scents. The best trackers follow their noses. The worst follow their friends.
Brokk whoops. I lean over my tyrlee and she surges forward, weaving through a copse.
A few tree lengths away, Golzon curses when a branch whips him in the face. He rode right into it. He might as well be blind.
The Alphas are all hunters but the night is mine. We’re all hunting for the same thing: pussy.
The Hunt of the Moons. An Arborii tradition for generations, yet these days it is nothing more than lip service to the great before times, when Omegas were still plentiful. Lacking Omega females, we hunt Betas. They have the same anatomy, the same holes, we are able to slake our basest desires on their curvaceous bodies—and yet. And yet.
No slick.
No rut.
No knot.
No claiming bites.
No offspring.
There’s a holler behind me and I twist in my seat. One of the Alphas leaps off his tyrlee and rushes toward a cluster of Cex trees, chasing a flash of white. The sweet, pleasing smell of an Ulfarri Beta female tickles my nostrils.
“He’s found one,” Brokk mutters, pushing his braid back over his shoulder.
I nod. The scent should spur me to ride my tyrlee hard to find a sweet Beta of my own to use. But I lean back and pat my tyrlee’s neck instead, hushing her when she grunts in eagerness to move.
I used to love the Hunt of the Moons. But over the past couple of years, it has grown tiresome. Fake. Pointless.
Brokk and I watch the Alpha drag his prize out into the clearing and push her into the soft grass. The warrior is almost demented with lust—it is apparent in the brusque way he tears the Beta’s gown clean in two, exposing her naked, plump body just moments before he plunges himself inside her. Her cries are muffled by his hand over her mouth as he fucks her with ruthless abandon.
