Page 65

Beau

Catch yourself a friend.

Use a net.

I wake to a rustling. Hard roots digging into my back. A tugging. The warm, soft body draped over me being ripped away.

My eyes fly open.

Eden is wriggling in Jayk’s arms, her eyes wide over the hand he has slapped over her mouth. In the pitch dark of the night, he spares one stupid, unholy smirk for me—then bolts.

“You asshole!”

I lurch to my feet, my muscles stiff and aching from where they were wedged into the tree and hard earth.

I only make it two steps before something cracks, then whistles, and my feet are whipping out from under me, and I’m launched up into the sky.

The tight-woven camo net snaps into place around me, bound tight at the top, and I flail, pushing at it, kicking and ripping and doing everything in my God-given power to tear free, but it’s professional grade and professionally rigged.

I reach for my hunting knife—the only thing I might be able to use to cut myself free... but he’s taken that too.

Son of a goat-breeding pissbucket.

I’m guessing that Jayk’s not taking too kindly to Dom’s new Eden schedule.

I slump inside my net as it bobs under the heaviest branch of the apple tree.

“Anyone!” I call out. My sorry, flaunting ass decided today was a good day to go shirtless, so I don’t even have the whistle on my kit, but the civilians had to have seen that. “Anyone? Get me down?”

No footsteps approach. In fact, I can hear almost nothing at all, until...

“Anyone have a bet on that?”

Sighing, I settle in for a long, uncomfortable night.