Hunted [Wild Hunt Series: 1]

25: Opportunistic

Play with Fire -- Sam Tinnesz

We might've moved faster crawling. Dakota was awash with drying blood; I was still trying to get my head right and track at the same time. Luckily Chiro's trail wasn't exactly impossible to suss out, even at night. The giant beast had smashed through the undergrowth, leaving behind, like his canine companion, wide swatches of smeared blood and stomped plants. It was the battered undergrowth that gave him away more than anything else; the fresh scent of torn leaves, trampled berries and churned earth gave my straining eyesight a much-needed break. For a while, anyway, until it seemed my prince had changed back into a man and disappeared.

There weren't any signs of Leda, not that we expected to find a struggle or anything.

"Did you see her fall, or were you stone cold then?" Dakota asked in a hushed voice as we navigated through the gloom.

I shook my head, trying to dislodge the awful sight from my memories. "I saw."

"Do you think there's any chance she could survive something like that?"

"We owe it to her to find out," I said, but the words rang false even to my ears. I stopped against the flat ground, sensing a small descent ahead- nothing too dire, just an uneven slope of winding roots and stone. Dakota bumped into me with a soft exclamation. "You know, you should go back. This time tomorrow I'll either be strapped down on his horse or we'll be making introductions. The others need someone to take over if I don't come back."

Dakota snorted. "Well I can't find my way back now with my bad shoulder and all. I'm a liability."

"Thanks for the reminder."

She stepped beside me, rubbing her arm. To get down the slope quickly we held hands, grabbing onto whatever saplings we could reach to make life easier on ourselves. She was an off-color shadow in the growing darkness, her filthy dress the last pale hue to vanish. "This is a trap," she said as night pressed in. The leaves on the ground hissed and rattled like snakes as we disturbed them.

My fingers brushed an oozing stain across the brush. I wiped it away on my pants. "Which means Chiro won't be  playing hard to get." 

"Chiro?" I didn't need to see Dakota's face to know a heavy scowl had crossed her lips. "You've raised animals. You know killing gets a lot harder when you keep referring to them by their first names."

"Not always," I said, reflecting on Akta. While I wasn't confident that I could kill him, there wouldn't be any hesitation when push came to shove. Where was the Stag tonight? I wondered. Whose life was he ruining tonight?

"And just what are you intentions with this Chiro?" she continued.

We reached the base of the hill. I dropped her hand. "You sound like my step-dad."

"As I should," Dakota said. "Look, I know this guy helped you and he might help us now, but we can't just forgive him for what he's done. He brought more than one of us here, I'm sure, and he just got Leda killed."

"We got Leda killed," I said, letting go of that dim faint hope her heart was still beating. "And if he wasn't there, who's to say someone else wouldn't have died, or more of us? This is dangerous. We're not all getting out alive, and even if we are, there's no guarantee we'll be okay."

Dakota's feet were angry stomps behind mine. "Tay, c'mon. He needs to die."

I trekked on. "You saw what he turned into. We could use one of those. He's a lot more effective than a couple sticks and stones."

"I saw a monster," she continued. "I saw a top competitor in a sick game. Maybe your weird friendship is an advantage, but you've got to be the one to use it first."