One chance, it’s all I have, and I’m strong enough now. I’m skilled and capable. I’m not a kid, and I’m not a slave to my body’s urges.
There is something I have to fight for. Six people who are worth saving. Who belong in the world and deserve their freedom.
I stand up and ignore the clench of my body, the slick that gathers between my thighs, the ache inside. Pictures of my shiver flash through my mind, but I bite my cheek until it bleeds and pull out a scrap of fabric from mid-air, hanging the delicate veil from my horns to cover my eye sockets. Brio’s beautiful mask I leave on the forest floor.
Must keep moving.
I pick a direction and start walking. With determination, I avoid the cities and towns, staying to the wilds, the forests and mountains. I leave my scent trail, deliberately cloying. Thick and vulnerable.
Several predators come, drawn by my scent, but they take one look at me, and they run.
As they should.
I find a clearing and walk the perimeter, claiming the land. Marking the trees with claw marks full of my scent.
They come sniffing as my heat drives me higher and higher into an agony I’ve never felt before. I sweat, I shake, I suffer.
But I don’t call for them. I wait. I hunt.
The perfect huntress, I am exactly what he made me. What they all made me.
My senses seep into the forest, into the environment completely. I can hear the movement of bugs, feel each shadow. The Earth’s groans are mine, and I use that to center myself and not fall into a mess.
My heat rages and ravages my body.
I ignore my hunger and my thirst.
I ignore the pain, even though I feel like it’s taking my sanity with it.
I don’t think about them.
I shove all thoughts of them into a box, and I bury it.
On the fifth day, the forest falls silent.
I stay relaxed, waiting.
“Rowwannneeee,” Deux whispers, his voice sounding like the grim death rattle from a thousand dying men. “I found you, and now I shall feast, at last.”
Chapter 37
Ronit
Istare up at the spot where she was just five days prior. We’re on the beach at the bottom of the cliffs, hoping. It was stupid. We’ve searched everywhere. We’ve called, we’ve divided and hunted. She’s just gone.
What happened?
There’s a fear, a crushing, terrible fear inside me, and I have never been afraid like this before, not before any battle or fight, not in the oceans, not here.
But I am afraid now.
I am the leader of this shiver. I’m supposed to know how to fix everything. There is no answer to this. I am lost, and I have never been lost before.
I am Ronit, the warrior, the leader. I amneverlost.
Without her, what am I?
We did her wrong, so wrong, and all the confidence in the world that we could fix it didn’t make it so. She was the only person who never deserved any of it, and we have brought nothing but agony on her.
