Page 11

CHAPTER 11

POV: Briar

The second day of the Hunt greets me with a misty dawn and the unsettling suspicion that the forest is awake.

Not just alive—actively aware. And watching me.

My makeshift shelter—a hollow beneath twisted roots like the cupped hands of some buried giant—kept me hidden through the night, but staying any longer would be a mistake. The alphas will be sharp, awake, and ready to hunt.

I stretch my stiff limbs, wincing as my joints crack and pop and sensation floods back to my fingertips. The silver bracelet catches morning light as I stretch, and I frown at the spreading frost patterns that have spread like tiny winter vines.

"That's concerning," I mutter, running a finger over my skin, which feels soft and warm to the touch but looks like ice crystals. "And definitely not normal."

The heat that began yesterday has spread through my body overnight, a persistent warmth pooling low in my abdomen. After years of suppression with herbs and iron, my omega biology seems determined to make up for lost time. My skin feels too tight, too sensitive against the fabric of my clothes.

I force these sensations aside. Survival first. Discomfort later. The dead can't feel anything, after all.

Moving through this section of forest is more difficult than I expected—the trees grow unnaturally close together, their black trunks nearly merging in some places, crossing in others. I squeeze between two ancient blackthorns, their silver leaves shivering overhead like nervous whispers, and pause.

Something isn't right.

I look back at the path I've just taken. The passage between trees should be barely wide enough for my body, yet it seems... wider now. As if the trunks had shifted slightly apart to let me through.

"Ridiculous," I whisper, but even as the word leaves my mouth, I watch a low-hanging branch slowly bend upward, clearing my path ahead. Not swaying in the breeze—there is no breeze—but deliberately raising itself like a theater curtain.

The forest is making way for me.

I've heard stories, of course—every border village child grows up on tales of the sentient Bloodmoon Forest, how the trees remember the original Wild Hunt, how they sometimes favor certain participants. I always dismissed these as comforting lies told to omegas before they're sacrificed, like promising a lamb the butcher's knife won't hurt. Now here the evidence is right before my eyes, impossible to dismiss.

I approach the next cluster of trees cautiously. They stand so close together that passing between them should be impossible, their trunks forming what appears to be a solid wall of bark. I step forward anyway, and—slowly, almost imperceptibly—they shift apart, creating a passage just wide enough for my shoulders.

"Thank you," I say softly, feeling somehow both foolish and reverent to be speaking to the ancient forest.

A gentle rustle of silver leaves answers me, even though the air is still. Great. Now I'm having conversations with trees. I'm either losing my mind or…something big and ancient is happening. Neither option is particularly comforting.

I keep going this way for hours, following paths that seem to form just for me, through sections of forest that should be impenetrable. Whenever I stop to rest, the leaves above rustle strangely as if the trees are having a conversation. They remind me of village gossips sharing secrets over garden fences.

At midday, I find a small stream and use it to refill my water skin. My reflection shimmers back at me—Willow's delicate features and platinum hair still startling. The glamour is holding, though maintaining it while I push my body all day feels like trying to keep a lid on a pot of boiling water. Each time I push myself too hard, I feel it flicker, like a candle flame in a draft.

The water soothes my parched throat but does nothing for the heat building inside me. If anything, the cool liquid highlights how fevered my body has become. Sounds that should be distant reach my ears with perfect clarity—the call of a bird half a mile away, the soft pad of animal feet through underbrush, the faint crackle of leaves beneath someone's careful step.

I freeze, water dripping from my chin.

That last sound was no animal.

I stand slowly, scanning the trees around me. Nothing moves. Nothing breathes. The forest has gone absolutely still, as if holding its breath. Even the stream seems to quiet its babble.

"I know you're there," I call out, keeping my voice steady despite the thundering of my pulse. "Show yourself."

No response comes, but the sense of being watched intensifies. Not from any particular direction—from everywhere at once, as if the forest itself has eyes.

After several tense minutes, I accept that whatever watches me isn't ready to reveal itself. I continue on, hyperaware of every shadow, every rustle, every shift in the air around me.

The heat makes rational thought increasingly difficult as the day progresses. My body responds to scents I shouldn't be able to detect—faint traces of alpha pheromones carried on the breeze. Each one sends an unwanted shiver of awareness through me, hunger of a different sort gnawing at my insides. I fight against the instinct to follow these scents, to seek out their sources, disgusted at how my body craves what my mind rejects.

Instead, I focus on practical matters. I create new false trails despite the growing discomfort, using the same techniques that served me yesterday—dragging branches to obscure my actual path, doubling back across my own tracks, wading through water whenever possible.

The forest continues to help me in subtle ways. When I need to hide my scent, aromatic flowers bloom suddenly along my path, their strong perfume masking my increasingly potent omega pheromones. When I need to rest, root systems shift to create natural seats or sheltered hollows. When my stomach grumbles, edible plants sprout at my feet, and fish flop onto the shore from freshwater streams, practically begging to be roasted over a campfire.

I experiment once, deliberately placing my palm against a blackthorn trunk. The bark warms beneath my touch, a gentle pulse like a heartbeat running through the wood. Silver leaves overhead shiver in the still air, and a sense of ancient awareness flows between us—like my consciousness is touching the mind of something that has watched centuries pass in slow blinks.

"What are you?" I whisper.

The tree can’t speak, of course, but knowledge seeps into me through my palm—impressions rather than words, pictures instead of sentences. The forest remembers a time before the courts divided the fae, before the Hunt became a brutal breeding program. It remembers the original purpose, the sacred balance between human and fae, the willing sacrifice and joyful reunion. Images flash through my mind of something older, purer, a ritual that strengthened both worlds rather than depleting one to feed the other.

I pull my hand away, unsettled. It feels strange to commune with something so inhuman. It's like trying to read an entire library by touching its foundation stone.

"These trees are older than the Hunt itself," I realize aloud. "They've witnessed everything. The beginning. The corruption. All of it."

As if in confirmation, a shower of silver leaves spirals down around me, catching the afternoon light like metallic rain. The forest's approval feels strangely comforting, like finding an unexpected ally in enemy territory.

The forest's behavior raises more questions than answers. Why is it helping me? What makes me different from the dozens of other omegas fleeing through these woods? I'm nothing special—just a blacksmith's apprentice who stole her friend's identity and picked up a few tricks from those who came before me.

The silver bracelet catches my attention again. The strange patterns have spread further up my wrist, delicate crystalline structures that glow with an inner light. None of the other omegas at the haven mentioned experiencing anything like this. Is it connected to the forest's response to me? Another part of the puzzle I can't see clearly yet.

My peaceful commune with the trees ends abruptly when I catch a new scent on the breeze—blood. A lot of fresh, sharply metallic fae blood. It smells different from human blood—sharper, more electric, like licking a copper coin during a thunderstorm.

Every instinct screams to run in the opposite direction, but something in me is too curious to be cautious. That much blood can only come from a dead fae. I step carefully toward the source, staying downwind and using the trees' close trunks for cover.

A small clearing appears in front of me, and in the middle of it is the body of a fae alpha.

I approach it cautiously, on edge for any sign of danger. The alpha wears Summer Court colors, his once-golden skin already dulling as magic leaves his corpse. His throat has been torn out with inhuman savagery, the wound gruesome and bloody, flaps of skin hanging off his ruined neck. His eyes are open, wide-eyed and frozen in a shocked expression.

This isn’t some kind combat death, typical when alphas compete for the same omega. The slain in those battles are supposed to be treated with dignity, and there’s no sign the alpha fought his attacker at all. This is a slaughter meant to be seen—a warning written in flesh and blood.

I search the surrounding area, looking for tracks or a scent trail from the attacker, but find nothing. Whoever—or whatever—killed this alpha left no trace behind The forest floor is undisturbed other than my own footsteps coming in, as if the killer materialized from thin air, committed the murder, and vanished just as mysteriously.

A chill runs through me, cutting across the warmth of my heat. Is this connected to the forest's strange behavior? Are the trees protecting me by eliminating alphas who pick up my trail?

That theory doesn't feel quite right. The forest seems ancient and indifferent to the Hunt's outcome, willing to assist but not intervene so directly. This killing was personal, passionate in its violence—like the killer was full of rage when it was done.

The fading light warns me that I've spent too long investigating. Sunset is coming, and I need to find shelter before it gets dark. Alphas hunt most actively at dawn and dusk, their vision adapted to low light like nocturnal predators.

As I turn to leave, the alpha’s body catches my attention again. His limbs look like they were arranged after his death, his arms positioned straight out from his body, his legs twisted together precisely.

A warning, then. But who is it for? Me, or the other alphas?

I leave the clearing behind with more questions than answers, moving quickly but silently through the darkening forest. The trees continue to part before me, creating a path away from the dead alpha and toward what I hope is safety.

The sense of being watched returns as darkness falls, stronger than before. Eyes follow me from the forest depths—not hostile, but intensely focused. I feel their attention like a physical touch against my skin, a presence as tangible as a hand hovering just above my shoulder.

I stop suddenly, turning to face the sensation directly.

"I know you're following me," I call into the darkness. "I know you killed that Summer Court alpha. What I don't know is why."

I don’t get an answer, and almost feel foolish. But I know something or someone is there.

The silver bracelet around my wrist pulses once, the frost patterns glowing briefly in the darkness like veins of blue fire beneath my skin. A cold breeze stirs the trees around me, carrying the faintest trace of winter magic—clean snow and ice crystals and something else, something masculine and powerful that makes the omega in me respond with frightening intensity.

Prince Cadeyrn. The Winter Prince has been following me, eliminating any alpha who picks up my trail.

The question is whether he sees me as something to protect or merely as his own personal prey. The difference matters, though the end result might be the same.

I back away slowly, maintaining eye contact with the darkness where I sense his presence. "I'm not yours," I say firmly, though my body betrays me with a rush of slick warmth between my thighs. "I don't belong to you or any alpha."

For a moment, I think I see a flash of ice-blue eyes in the shadows, watching me with predatory intensity. Then it's gone, and I'm alone again. Or as alone as anyone can be in a forest that listens and remembers and chooses sides in an ancient game whose rules no human fully understands.

I find shelter for the night in a hollow formed by three trees growing together, their trunks creating an enclosed space barely visible from the outside. As I settle in, pulling my meager shift tight around me against the evening chill, I notice the frost patterns have spread further up my arm, reaching my elbow now in intricate whorls.

The implications terrify me. The Winter Prince has marked me somehow, claimed me without even touching me. It’s starting to feel like the forest is helping me evade him, as if it has its own agenda separate from fae politics and Hunt traditions.

I close my eyes, trying to ignore the persistent heat in my core and the unwanted awareness of the Winter Prince's presence somewhere in the darkness around me. It seems impossible to fall asleep.

I've become the center of something larger than my simple plan to save Willow—something that involves ancient forest magic, fae court politics, and a prince who hunts alone against all tradition.

Whatever game is being played here, I'm no longer merely a pawn. I'm a piece of value, sought by powers I barely understand.

But I didn't survive years as a hidden omega by surrendering to fate. If I'm to be a player rather than a piece, then I'll play to win—even against a prince, even against the forest itself if necessary. I've been hammering unyielding metal into submission my entire life. This is just another challenge to be shaped by will and strength.