As we patrol the grounds, moving silently through the shadows andstalking our prey, I can’t stop thinking about Edith. How she felt in my arms as I guided her hand toward my chest. She makes me feel vulnerable in ways I can’t explain.
One thing’s for sure. I can’t tell Val how I’m feeling about Edith. She wouldn’t understand. No hunter would. Except Idris.
Val frowns. “No sign of anyone.”
“Yet,” I add.
Static crackles over the radio, making us both jump.
“Help!” Dorian screams, sounding frantic. “Shit, we need some help!”
I press the button. “On our way.”
Radio static answers.
Val and I exchange a look. “The hunter campus.”
It’s hard to believe Isaac would attack inourterritory.
The farthest away, we’re the last to arrive. The rest of the patrolling hunters are crowded on the training grounds. We join them, but no one moves a muscle. They’re all staring ahead in shock, mouths agape. Val and I have to push our way through, shoving shoulders aside, to get a better—
A hunter lies sprawled in the grass.
Blond curls. Pale skin.
Not Dorian.
Idris.
My heart stops. Isaac didn’t kill just any hunter. He killed our best. A hunter only my father could rival. How is this possible? I look around the frightened faces of my classmates. They must all be thinking the same thing. If even Idris could be killed… none of us would have stood a chance.
Dorian or any one of us could be lying there instead.
“This is what happens when we waver, isn’t it?” Val sounds shaken. “Show sympathy for a berserkr, and you wind up dead.”
“Idris was still one of us. Fucking berserkir,” Dorian mutters. “They should pay for this.”
“Damn right they will,” Michael says.
That’s the last thing Idris would want.
He was the best of us. As not just a hunter but ahuman. He wanted us to do better.Bebetter. Tears well up. I’ve looked up to Idris as long as I can remember.
Now I’m looking down at his disemboweled body. He wasn’t wearing his leathers when he was attacked. Maybe if he had been, his abdomen wouldn’t be ripped open like this, his organs on gruesome display.
“We can’t allow ourselves to forget what they really are,” Val says slowly. “Animals.”
Her words cut through me, cold and sharp. I know Father and others believe this is a wild berserkr. But as I look over Idris’s body, it doesn’t ring true. When wolves kill, they start by eating the heart, liver, or lungs.
Only his entrails are missing.
Wolves won’t consume the stomach contents of larger prey. In the Wilds, it’s how we can tell if a wolf or bear berserkr was responsible for the kill. Unlike wolves, bears not only eat the intestines, they begin with them. But our killer is a wolf. I saw that for myself: It was a wolf that attacked Edith.
So if the entrails are the only thing missing… itcan’tbe a wild berserkr like everyone is saying. That would go against its animal nature. Which means Idris and I were right about the killer being a student. If only I’d warned him about Isaac…
Wait. Something is smeared on his chest. Idris is covered in so much blood, I nearly missed it. Three interlocking triangles. The same symbol Edith once asked me about. My stomach churns. The killer must have some greater purpose we don’t know yet.
Now even the hunters have become the hunted.
