Page 33 of Hexy Beast

He finishes his fourth sandwich and follows it with the final gulp of his third protein shake. “Anyone who doesn’t make it back to Arcadia before the moon turns back to white is jinxed until the next blue moon.”

I roll that around in my head. Crappy things happen all the time to everyone; it’s just part of the natural order of things. But being jinxed? That’s not a spell or a hex; it’s a curse—the kind that sticks to a person like gum on the bottom of your shoe in August.

“How long does the moon stay blue?” I ask, already hearing a countdown clock in my head.

Darius sighs. “As long as it feels like it.”

Of course, why wouldn’t the woods be their own magical playground of no rules and fuck you. “So how big are the woods? How long does the race last?”

“The woods are as big as they need to be during the gauntlet, and the race lasts as long as the moon wants it to,” he says, his tone totally unbothered.

“What stops people from cheating?” I mean, we’re talking about werewolves; they don’t exactly play by the rules.

“How?” He lets out a snort of disbelief. “By going a different route than the one dictated by instinct to Arcadia?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

He sits back and leans against the cave wall. “Once the race starts and the pack is in the woods, you can’t get back to Arcadia unless you follow the correct path, which is determined by the moon, which can’t be cheated.”

“What, the moon makes the whole village of Arcadia just disappear?” The absolute fairy-tale ridiculousness of it all is astounding. He has to be bullshitting me.

“More like the moon moves the woods around at night so folks can’t get there before it wants them to.” He looks up as if he’s trying to figure out how to explain something that is simply known to everyone, then nods as if he’s come up with a way. “Think of the woods during the gauntlet like a game board, like I said before. The moon turns it in between plays—sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. You can’t control that. You just have to run, guided by your instincts, or if you’re me, as much of your instincts that you can access without letting your wolf free, which there is no way I’m doing, until suddenly you’re outside of Arcadia.”

I sit with that information for a second, rolling it around in my head. The woods move. The path is only known by instinct. The race lasts for as long as the moon wants it to. Pack members use the race to even scores and move up within the hierarchy. There’s only one thing I can say.

“That is all completely arbitrary and stupid.”

He shrugs, but with a low chuckle as if he’s enjoying watching me—someone who usually loves chaos—deal with some not of my own making.

Cocky werewolf.

“So what happens if I go out when it’s dark?” I ask.

“Nothing. You just wander around lost. You can’t make any progress on the path. It’s like it doesn’t even exist,” he says. “The whole point of the gauntlet is that nature is in control, not us. You can’t game the system.” He pauses. “But you can tag others, or worse, during the night.”

I don’t understand it. The lack of clear rules and regulations should be making him ready to go feral. But he’s not. I’m about to ask what’s going on and if that’s the moon’s fault too when another round of howls that sound much closer than before punch their way through the waterfall and bounce off the cave walls, an aural reminder that this race isn’t all fun and games—and just because the other werewolves can’t find the path back to Arcadia doesn’t mean they can’t locate us.

“And if it’s the alpha who gets tagged or doesn’t make it back in time?” I ask.

Darius shrugs. “Bad luck for the alpha is bad luck for the pack, so they won’t be alpha for long after that.”

I let the back of my head rest against the wooden crate dryer, the soft vibrations of its tumbling giving me the same almost high feeling you get from spinning too many times or licking the pointed hat of a tree gnome.

Letting out a soft sigh of understanding, I turn my head and give Darius a commiserating grin. “No wonder Nikos seemed so excited about this race.”

He gives me a whatcha-gonna-do lift of his eyebrows. “You picked up on that, huh?”

“It was kinda hard to miss.” Subtle, Nikos is not. “But you know what they say, you never count your chips at the table. He’s gonna regret that unearned confidence in the gauntlet’s outcome. Of course, that means you actually have to play.”

He sits up straight and pivots so he’s facing me. “What have I been doing?”

“No, you don’t understand.” I give him a don’t-be-a-dumbass look. “Nikos and his supporters are going to be gunning to tag you or worse. You have to really, actually play.”

I can tell from his grimace and the sexy low growl he lets out that he gets it. The rest of the pack may be playing for fun and position within their society, but Nikos is playing for keeps. This whole thing may be completely foreign to me, but the stakes are all too understandable. Everything is at risk. Darius can’t afford not to let his wolf out. He needs every advantage his alpha instincts give him to go up against Nikos and his minions, who will definitely find a way to fight dirty out here.

“So,” I go on, “when we win this—”

“We?” he scoffs.