Page 21 of Rule the Night

I moved deliberately, listening as I walked, feeling every bit like there was an hourglass out of sight, the sand running out.

12

BRAM

I wasn’tmad they’d let her go. We didn’t need the fucking Hawks to do our work for us.

We caught our own prey.

I wasn’t even surprised she’d lasted this long, although it definitely fell at the tail end of our longest hunts. But I was getting edgy, eager to catch her and be done with the Hunt.

Eager to know she’d be ours for the next three months.

It was unusual. The Hunts were fun, but that was all they were. I never had any investment in the outcome beyond winning for winning’s sake.

So why did I keep thinking about the dark-haired girl who’d tried to bring a gun into the tunnels?

“I can’t believe we lost her scent,” Remy muttered.

We were walking, taking our time, looking for clues about where she might have been.

“I can,” Poe said.

The underground complex was vast and complex, a warren of tunnels, some leading to dead ends, others colliding and intersecting, a hamster maze gone mad.

We’d picked up the scent of other girls along the way, an array of perfumes and body lotions and laundry detergent: rose, vanilla, lavender.

But none had pulled us forward like the hint of strawberries, as fresh and faint as newly ripe berries on the vine.

We could have followed one of the other scents, caught one of the other girls, but the longer we hunted for the gun-wielding spitfire, the more we wantedher.

Plus there was the matter of pride. We’d chosen our prey at the start of the Hunt. Switching now would be an admission of defeat.

And we didn’t do defeat.

“Wait.” Poe held up a hand and lifted his head, turning it from side to side.

We stopped moving. Poe had either heard something or caught the scent of something. It didn’t matter which because when Poe picked up a scent or sound, you let him take the lead. Raised by his grandparents on native land, he’d been taught how to track and hunt when he was barely old enough to go to school.

If he smelled something, if he heard something, it was there.

“This way,” he said, stepping toward an intersecting tunnel on the right.

I fell back, let him take the lead. I liked to be in front but I also wanted to win, wanted to find the girl. What was her story? The challenging shine in her eyes had been clear as day, but my gut told me she didn’t belong here.

Most of the girls who came to the Hunt — who were in a position to even know about it — were from Southside. They hung with one of the MCs or street gangs, drank at Syd’s, all the places I’d worked to keep Cassie, my little sister, away from since our parents died when I was nineteen.

But I didn’t get a Southside vibe off the girl who’d stared defiantly at me in the holding room. She wasn’t one of us. Sowhat had brought her to the Hunt? Who did she hate enough to want them dead?

“I smell her,” Remy said, his voice low and quiet.

My dick got hard as the scent of strawberries hit my nose. “She’s close.”

We came to another set of intersecting tunnels and Poe lifted his hands to point at them both, indicating that Remy should take one and I should take the other.

It was time to close in, corner our prey.

My blood ran hot, my body buoyed by something I told myself was adrenaline, natural for the Hunt.