Page 25

I can’t quite understand what I’m looking at initially. Humans? Animals? Their shapes blur with the shadows. One has a distinct feline walk, sleek and graceful, that should be beautiful, if it weren’t so wrong. Cats shouldn’t walk on two legs.

Then, amongst them, I recognize Dev as he slowly approaches. And Nate is following right behind him.

Relief floods me so fast it makes me dizzy. I forget that I’m naked. Humiliated. Used. It doesn’t matter.

Thank God.

It was a stupid joke, just some awful fucked-up prank, boys being boys, a scare. They’re here now. It’ll stop. Ghost will stop. This is over.

But as they get closer, something feels wrong. They aren’t moving right. Their arms twitch out of rhythm with their legs. Their heads tilt too far. Like their bones are breaking and reforming as they walk. Like something else is crawling beneath their skin.

My stomach flips. I can’t breathe.

“Nate?” I whisper, the name breaking like glass in my throat, my voice barely audible. “Please, don’t do this…”

He stops. His head snaps toward me, eyes locking onto mine in an almost mechanical motion.

And for a single, shuddering heartbeat, something lightens his expression. A flicker of emotion, recognition, something familiar. I’m not sure, but his hesitation is mirrored in the others. Dev falters, only slightly. The others behind them stay still in the shadows like someone hit pause.

Even Ghost’s grip on my hair slackens. His weight shifts off my thighs.

This is it .

I don’t think twice about it.

With everything I have in me, I lurch forward, my shoulder wrenching painfully, my legs kicking, as I twist out from under him. Scream breaks out of my throat as I shove against the dirt, then I’m up. Moving. Running.

My body is in survival mode, every nerve wired to the single goal of escape.

My bare feet tear through moss, rocks, and pine needles, branches whip at my face, sharp twigs slash across my arms, legs burn with literal hell’s fire, but the pain is distant.

Background noise. The forest looks the same in every direction—green, black, endless.

I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t care.

I just know I have to move. I have to get away.

Behind me, the movement explodes. I hear them. All of them. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Not human footsteps, but something faster, heavier, wrong.

Ghost’s voice—that low, raspy gravel of his—is somehow distant and right in my ear at the same time. “What did I tell you about running in the woods, little bunny?”

I risk a glance over my shoulder.

And I almost fall.

They’re gaining. Dev is the closest one behind me, too tall, his limbs are too long, as if he’s shedding his human features. And his eyes— God —his eyes are black now, like there’s nothing behind them but hunger.

Nate is practically running on all fours like an animal, his hands grow claws as his clothes rip to reveal dark patches of fur.

“Tease.” His teeth snap with a loud snarl. “Making us chase you.”

What the fuck is going on?

I make a sharp turn, then a shape drops in front of me out of nowhere—Kendra is standing right there, all bloody and pale. Her arm is ripped off, her other hand holding her stomach, and one of her legs is all torn up and twisted backward at the hip.

“Look what you did to me, Bunny.” Blood spews from her mouth as she speaks. Her hand trembles, unable to handle the pressure, then her intestines spill out of her torso.

Bile rises in my throat, but I turn and run the other way.

The forest hits me like a wall—thicker here, darker. Tangled with vines and rot and heat. I can’t see the sky. I can’t tell how far I’ve gone. My lungs can’t keep up. My vision tunnels. But I don’t have time to think, or scream, or even breathe. The only thought in my head is to push forward.

I just want to live. I want to wake up. I want this to end.

The last traces of daylight bleed through the trees, making it more difficult for me to see.

“Wrong turn,” Ghost’s voice echoes through the trees.

And as I crash through a clearing, I nearly scream again, met with another figure ahead.

At first, I think it’s a deer standing upright, but no…

Its body moves like it’s forgotten how limbs are supposed to work.

Bent in the wrong places. Joints too loose, or too many.

Its eyes zero in on me, glowing, and it sniffs the air, then growls… like something otherworldly.

I choke on a sob and bolt.

Behind me, laughter ripples through the trees.

“You can’t hide, little bunny.”

His words crawl under my skin, hot and sticky like summer humidity. He’s everywhere. In the trees. In my head.

“You belong to the woods now.”

My breath is coming in short, ragged sobs. The world spins around me. I hear twigs snapping, leaves rustling. Something fast. Too fast. They’re circling, weaving through the trees just out of sight.

The laughter is behind me. Beside me. Ahead of me.

I cover my ears, but I don’t stop running. My chest aches. The taste of panic is metallic in my mouth. Every time I change direction, something is there, just out of reach.

They’re not chasing me in a straight line. They’re closing the loop. They’re toying with me. Herding me like an animal.

Something hisses to my right—low and guttural.

To my left, a voice I swear is Dev’s murmurs, almost tender, “Do you like being hunted?”

Another voice laughs behind me—perhaps Nate’s, but it’s too distorted for me to be certain. “Is that what gets you off?”

Then, a wild huff next to my ear steams the air. With the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of a huge, furred figure with an oxlike head and large horns. And I’m not sure whether I hear the sound of the hooves thumping on the ground or my own heartbeat hammering in my chest. Maybe both.

I scream, even though I know they like it.

But I don’t stop running. Even though my body’s quitting on me. Even though every breath feels like it might be my last. The woods are endless. They stretch and stretch, hot and green and close, like they’re pressing in on me. Like they’re part of the hunt.

And they are.

The Appalachian Mountains are alive. I feel it now—like something deep and old is watching me. Hungry. Approving.

Suddenly, the ground gives way, and I skid down a slope through dirt and old leaves.

My palms tear open as I scramble for leverage, then I hit the bottom hard, and feel my knee split open.

Blood slicks my leg, my fishnet tights rip entirely, bunching around my ankles together with my ruined panties.

I yank them off before I drag myself up again, wheezing, blinking sweat and tears out of my eyes, my mouth full of the taste of earth and blood.

Ghost is suddenly behind me. I don’t hear him approach. I just feel the heat of him, the weight of his presence. Then that low chuckle rumbles out of the trees.

And I run again. Limping. Screaming. My body isn’t mine anymore. It’s just meat moving through space, pushed by fear.

But even in the horror—even with death panting at my back—something else twists inside me.

Shame.

The heat between my legs won’t go away. The rush of it—being chased, hunted, wanted —makes me feel sick and alive and confused. I hate it. I hate that it’s there. I hate that they know.

I hate myself.

“Don’t you know I can smell you, Princess?

” Ghost calls. “Your fear… the adrenaline rushing through your veins… the arousal pulling between your legs. You’re running like you want to be caught.

” His voice slithers between the trees… between my thighs, low and hot.

“Because you know exactly what happens when I catch you. And you crave it.”

My stomach twists. “No—” I sob, but my voice breaks.

He’s not alone. They’re all there, I can hear them moving together, breathing together. They laugh again, that awful chorus of voices I used to know.

The trees are closing in. I can’t see straight. I can’t think. I’m shaking so hard I can barely stand. The exhaustion is slowly hitting me. I trip over my own legs and fall again.

“Get up,” I whisper to myself. “Get up, get up, get up—”

I haul myself forward on hands and knees, then stagger upright. More blood runs down my body, and I’m not even sure what exactly is bleeding.

I hear them in the distance, whistling. The same noise we heard at the Airbnb. Now I’m sure they were there that night, whatever they are.

“You were made for this.”

A sound rips out of me. I don’t know if I’m crying or laughing anymore. I feel delirious.

“You’re already ours.”

Something brushes my hair. Too soft to be a branch. Too deliberate to be the wind.

I try to scream, but my voice dies in my throat.

Then, arms wrap around me from behind—tight, possessive, so strong.

“Got you,” Ghost breathes against my ear.

He flips me like I weigh nothing, and suddenly I’m flat on the ground. Cold dirt bites into my back, sticks and stones digging into my skin. My legs kick wildly beneath him.

“Guess what I’m gonna do with you now?”

I swing. Fist slamming against his chest, weak and frantic. I claw at his mask, try to rip it off, push him away. But he doesn’t budge. He’s solid, heat and muscle and menace, pressing me down like I’m prey he’s already caught.

He shifts his body, so close I feel every twitch of his muscle, and the knife appears again. The blade glides up slowly, just a hair from my skin, until it hovers at my throat.

I freeze, gasping, every muscle locked, paralyzed by fear. My eyes flutter closed, and I brace for pain, for death, for whatever twisted version of love lives inside his hollow heart.

But the cut never comes.

I open my eyes slowly and look at him. The mask hides what’s underneath it, but his body is warm and familiar, his chest rises and falls the same way it always does around me.

He still seems like my Ghost.

Then why am I trembling from head to toe? I can’t stop it. I’m naked, covered in sweat and tears and little rivulets of blood. And it’s all his doing.

“Please, please, please…”