Page 77 of Breaking Ophelia

“Why you?”

“Why me, what?”

“The God Son. The Night Hunt. Why you? What’s so special about YOU?”

She shifts, tucking one knee up under her chin, pulling the hem of my shirt down to cover the rest. The collar slips off her shoulder, baring the purple handprint I left there. It’s beautiful.

I answer her, eventually.

“Because the last ones failed.”

She snorts. “What do you mean? Your little secret society?”

“Yeah.” I pick at a hangnail. “The Pineridge boys. You know the story?”

She shakes her head, curls tangling in the air. “No.”

I wait. She’s not going to ask, but she wants to know.

“They were supposed to carry the legacy,” I say. “The Board’s wet dream. Five heirs, five girls, one night. Simple.”

She leans forward, interest kindling behind her eyes. “So what happened?”

“They went off script. Left campus, found their own girls. Hunted them on some old money property up North. Broke the chain of command and left The Board scrambling. There were no more old money heirs. The Hunt was revamped last year, but it wasn’t the same as it is now.”

“We botched it,” I say, my fingers playing with the sheet. “One of the runners died.”

She stops moving. Just—stops. The coffee cup hangs in the air for a beat, then she sets it down, hands going white at the knuckles.

“Died how?”

I shrug. “Doesn’t matter. Dead is dead.”

She stares at the table, then at me. “So they canned the whole system? You said you botched the Hunt last year. So you were what? Picked?”

I nod. “No more Board legacy kids left. They had to pick from Funders’ lines. The ones with enough money, enough dirt on everyone else to make it stick.”

“And that’s you.”

“Yeah.”

She shakes her head, lips curling. “I don’t get it.”

“I know.”

She chews on her thumb, then stops herself. “Why not just quit? Leave?”

I laugh. “You don’t leave this life. Not alive.”

She grins, but it’s sharp. “Nice pep talk.”

We lapse back into silence. I watch her process. She’s good at that—taking raw facts, digesting them, making them into something useful. She was never meant for this world, but she adapts like a virus.

After a minute, she speaks again.

“What happened to the girl?”

I don’t want to answer, but I do.