Page 360 of Hunters and Prey

He sighed and dusted his hands on his thighs. “If you want to survive, you must be prepared to kill.”

My stomach growled.

“Do you feel that ache in your belly?”

I nodded, pushing my matted hair away from my face.

“That ache will only abate once you feed it. To do that, you need to hunt and kill your prey.” He poked the fire. “To cook it like this.” He pulled another rabbit from the bag behind him and began to skin and gut it with his lethal claws.

“Who taught you?” My voice was a whisper.

He stopped and looked up, his eyes burning like embers in the gloom. “I don’t recall. I guess I’ve always known how.”

He went back to preparing the meat, and my mouth watered even though he hadn’t put it on the spit yet. He stopped and threw the bag at me. It landed with a thud by my side. There was one left.

For me? I looked up questioningly.

“Skin it. Gut it. Cook it and eat it,” he said. “But tomorrow, you will hunt for your own.”

I surfaced from the dream, heart pounding. Not real. He hadn’t been real—just a figment of a lonely child’s imagination, a fabricated companion to keep the nightmares at bay as I’d navigated the big wide world alone for months. Thank goodness Illyrian had found me when he had. Who knew what madness I’d have spiraled into? Who knew what I’d have become?

Helgi moaned softly in her sleep. Her fingers were still laced with mine and her grip tightened fractionally.

Nightmares.

Always the fucking nightmares.

Shifting closer to her, I pressed my lips to her temple and then closed my eyes. She sighed softly and her grip relaxed. No nightmare was a match for the two of us.

“Unit four, prepare for extraction. Unit four, prepare for extraction.” The voice was a loud buzz accompanied by static that put my teeth on edge. It was beginning. Whatever was meant to happen was happening right now.

The Skins in the relevant cage began to buzz with action. This was a group of five—three guys and two women. The men looked strong, but the women were average size. Their bodies looked soft, not hard and muscular like the average Skin. Their Skin blood was probably mega-diluted. Sophia had said we’d have to fight, and the fear in their eyes told me they weren’t brawlers. The anxiety etched on the men’s faces said they knew this too.

“Unit four, prepare for extraction. Step away from the doors. Any act of defiance will result in lethal force.”

My hand went to the collar at my neck. Yeah, lethal force like blow-your-head-off lethal. Everyone must have been having the same thoughts because several hands climbed up to finger their collars.

My attention was on the exit door that Sophia had used when delivering the food, but another set of doors behind the far cages opened up, and a line of Bloods dressed in the Vorn colors of royal blue and crimson marched in. They strode to unit four’s cage and stood in a line, guns at the ready. The doors to the cage beeped and then slid up smoothly.

“Unit four, file out. File out and make your way to the exit. Make no sudden moves.”

The Bloods ushered the Skins out of the cage, and with guns trained on their backs, led them to the exit and out into the complex.

The room broke into a cacophony of sound. Where the heck were they being taken?

“At least we’ll know exactly what to expect once they get back,” someone from cage five said.

“If they come back,” Helgi muttered.

Long minutes ticked by, maybe five or six, but it felt like a lifetime, and then the crackling voice filled the air once more.

“Unit seven, prepare for extraction. Unit seven, prepare for extraction.”

That was the cage opposite us—the cage with the other mercs, Jasper’s twin, and Dunstan inside.

Jasper rushed to the bars. “Will?”

His brother tucked in his chin, his expression determined. “I’ll be fine. It’s going to be okay.”

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