Page 11 of Hunted

The Academy didn’t tend to nurture strong relationships within recruit cohorts. Their view was that you never knew who was going to wind up dead before Graduation; ours was that you never knew who’d be digging the knife into your back to get there. Any one of the other five people in this room could rat me out to Sebastos if they overheard—or worse, carry it straight to Commander Varco for talking shit about his son.

I scowled. “Seb and his goons were going to throw me off Widow’s Drop.”

Fleur gasped softly, whipping her horror-filled gaze my way.

“I evaded them across the zipline, but dropped my gloves in a scuffle beforehand.” I grimaced, holding out my mangled palms for her keen blue eyes to inspect.

“Ouch,” she said with a wince, pulling a hand closer to her face. “These might need stitches.”

I shook my head firmly. “No stitches. I still need to be able to use them. Glue will do.”

Fleur’s lips flattened as though she disagreed but knew better than to argue. She also knew that I’d just do it myself while her back was turned if she didn’t run with it.

“Very well, then. And what about this shoulder?” One perfect blonde brow rose in question.

“Seb again. Dagger, while I was traversing the line,” I snarled. My fingers twitched, itching to stab him again, but my palm wounds flared, tempering the urge.

Fleur, contrarily, seethed, leaping to her feet. Her fists clenched by her sides, notably un-mangled. Her face darkened in barely restrained fury, and I was struck once more by the juxtaposition of such a girl in such a place.

She was runway-ready. She had a face—and a name—that could see her pasted across the front page of every tabloid just for attending a certain party, or because she was dating this year’s hottest actor.

Instead, she was here. Dropped unceremoniously into a literal den of assassins. She had been pitted against the sneakiest, deadliest people the Academy had kept tabs on for god knows how long—and she was rivalling all of them.

She flourished in this darkness like a moonflower vine—a flower that bloomed because of the night, not in spite of it.

“Wait until I see that waste of space, fils de pute⁠—”

“Woah-kay, you adorably overprotective, multilingual goddess.” I laughed, grabbing her arms to yank her back down, ignoring the sting in my hands as she acquiesced.

The other recruits were staring, captivated by Fleur’s outburst.

“I got him back,” I explained, gesturing vaguely to my thigh. “And he’s got more coming to him, don’t you worry about that.”

She exhaled forcefully, flicking the loose, damp strands of hair around her face outwards, then plonked back down onto the thin mattress.

“Sorry,” she spat. “I just… after what he did today, and what he’s already done to all three of us…”

“I know,” I agreed, my mind flicking back to the moment Fleur, Ethan, and I decided we were in this together, till death do us part.

My lips twitched at the memory of that awkward three-way handshake, after one high-stakes assessment wherein Seb, Eric, and Bodie decided to be extra-malevolent bastards and throw the evaluation altogether for the sake of murder.

Ethan had been paired with Bodie, I got Eric, and Fleur drew the short straw and got stuck with Seb.

After the hellspawn trio went rogue and started taking out other recruits in the fake-compound-takeover, Fleur and Ethan bolted, coincidentally hiding in the same tiny crawl space, wedged in together like a pair of sardines.

Eric had turned his pistol on me, but I got away by a well-timed punch to the dick.

Fleur ended up leaping in front of a knife meant for Ethan, copping it in her left ass cheek, after which he immediately fell in love with our resident French model and her ass. And then I came racing in like a comic book heroine, saving both their asses—well, I guess technically not Fleur’s—shooting Bodie’s pistol hand before he could take either of them out of the assessment permanently.

The rest was history. It worked because each of us owed our lives to the others, and had enough dirt on the other two to fill a grave—ironically.

“Alright.” Fleur straightened, yanking me out of the memory and back into the painful reality of my ruined body. “Grab some clean clothes and meet me in the bathroom upstairs. I’ll get the first aid kit, and maybe some alcohol if I can find any.” She shot me a wink, then set off to raid the supply cupboard—and probably a few of the other recruits’ trunks, or the desk drawers of an Instructor or two.

My lips tugged up into a smile as she strutted away—then immediately dropped into a scowl as I locked eyes with a glowering German initiate across the room.

Her brows lowered as she zeroed in on my bloodied clothes, eyes probing for any sign of weakness. I sent her my best the-fuck-are-you-looking-at glare as I rifled through my trunk, grabbing the first set of clothes I touched. She broke eye contact first, and I smirked at the tiny win before storming out the door.

The drop in temperature in the hall was like a slap to the face. My breath exited my body in visible clouds, blanketing me in the illusion of warmth, and the pain in my hands intensified. A splitting headache greeted me, signalling that the adrenaline that had flooded my system to keep me alive was waving goodbye, leaving me alone with the consequences of surviving.