The Hunt

16. Everly

16

Everly

Nothing happened.

We all stood on the beach, motionless and silent, with no idea what to do next. I felt like I was in one of those movies where a giant tumbleweed was about to roll past.

“Well… that was anticlimactic,” someone finally said, breaking the tense silence.

A few chuckles rippled through the group, hesitant and uneasy.

“Yeah,” another guy said, shrugging. “Does anyone actually know what to do?”

“Well, I guess we have to wait for the hunters to leave their starting zone, right? They’re probably on their way to—”

Crack.

A sharp, almost-deafening sound split the air, and the guy’s words ended abruptly as his head snapped back, blood spraying like a macabre fountain. He crumpled to the sand in a lifeless heap.

For a moment, everything froze.

I stared at his body, my mind struggling to catch up with what my eyes were seeing. The metallic scent of blood filled the air, blending with the salt of the ocean.

Then the screaming started.

Chaos erupted around me as everyone bolted in different directions, their panicked cries overlapping.

More gunshots shattered the air, sending up puffs of sand as bullets slammed into the beach. My legs locked in place. I couldn’t move. All I could do was gape at the body lying in front of me, blood pooling beneath it, and all I could think was: Rhett was right about me.

I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t a badass. I was just a scared little girl who caved under pressure.

“Everly!” Nikki’s voice pierced through the chaos.

I turned my head numbly, catching sight of her waving frantically from the edge of the forest.

“Come on! Get to the trees for cover!” she screamed.

Another bullet whizzed past me. That snapped me out of my stupor. I stumbled forward, my legs finally obeying, and sprinted toward Nikki, heart pounding so hard it felt like it might burst.

A voice crackled through my earbud. “Player 13, eliminated by Hunter 7,” it announced. “Players, the first safe zones are at coordinates 12.5, 89.3 and 10.4, 85.9. I repeat: 12.5, 89.3 and 10.4, 85.9. They open in one hour and will remain safe until midnight. Good luck!”

I caught up to Nikki, and we hurried into the forest. She lifted a hand a few seconds later, abruptly stopping me. “Don’t run unless you absolutely have to,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “It makes a lot of noise. You’re practically announcing your location to anyone nearby.”

I nodded, gripping the straps of my backpack tightly. The air felt tense, each step a challenge to keep steady.

Suddenly, the sound of frantic panting and twigs snapping reached my ears, growing louder with each second. Someone was running through the trees not far from us. Then, a sharp crack split the air, and the sound stopped abruptly.

Nikki froze, her head turning toward the direction of the shot. Her lips pressed into a grim line as a voice crackled through our earbuds. “Player 19, eliminated by Hunter 13.”

She shook her head and sighed. “See?” she whispered. “Running just makes you an easy target.”

I nodded, heart pounding, and kept treading lightly through the forest. Nikki moved ahead of me, her footsteps barely a whisper, and I did my best to mimic her careful movements. Every now and then, she turned back to share a quick tip on evading capture.

“How do you know so much about this stuff?” I eventually asked in a hushed tone.

“I used to hunt with my dad when I was a kid growing up in the boonies,” she whispered back. “I thought all that knowledge would come in helpful for a game like this. That’s why I signed up. I thought I could actually win. But I didn’t know it was real. ”

“It’s so fucked up,” I said, voice almost cracking with fear. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

She turned and gave me a hard look. “You can survive this, Everly. You just need to listen to everything I say. Okay?”

I nodded and swallowed hard, my pulse thudding in my ears. We kept walking, every step deliberate. My head was still swimming with fear and confusion, but I tried my best to focus on Nikki’s calm, measured movements.

Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks and held out a hand to halt me. Her head tilted slightly, and her brows furrowed.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

She turned toward me, her voice low and steady. “Do you hear that?”

I frowned, straining to listen. “I can’t hear anything.”

“Exactly. It’s too quiet.”

She was right. The usual forest sounds—the chirping of birds, the rustling of leaves, the distant hum of insects—were gone.

“That means someone’s here,” Nikki continued, her eyes scanning the trees. “Or they passed through here very recently. Could be a player like us, but…”

“We don’t want to risk it,” I finished for her, my voice barely audible.

She nodded and looked over my shoulder. “Let’s go back the way we came and find another way to the closest safe zone. Do you remember the coordinates for either of them?”

“Um… 12.5, 89.3 and 10.4, 85.9.”

“Hm. I think that sounds right.” She gave me the faintest of smiles. “See? You’re not totally crumbling under pressure. That’s a good sign that you can do this, even if you feel like you can’t.”

“I guess so,” I murmured.

“I mean it, Everly. Half the people here probably can’t remember jack-shit about those coordinates, let alone know how to read a map. So we’re already off to a good start,” she said, quietly dropping her backpack.

We crouched to look at her map for a couple of minutes. Then we put our packs back on and took off again, retracing our steps southward until we found another natural path toward the eastern part of the island.

As we walked, I forced myself to draw deep, slow breaths, trying and failing to calm the frenzy of fear inside me. The forest didn’t feel like a refuge from the open air of the beach anymore. It felt like a trap. Every crack of a twig or rustle of leaves made me want to jump out of my skin, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t alone. That someone, or something, was always just out of sight, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

An arrow suddenly whooshed through the air, landing with a sharp thunk into the bark of a tree just ahead of us. My breath caught in my throat as I froze, staring at the quivering shaft.

Nikki didn’t waste a second. “Okay,” she hissed, grabbing my arm. “Now we can run.”

We bolted through the forest, my legs burning with every stride as adrenaline propelled me forward. Branches snagged at my clothes and scratched my arms, and the ground felt uneven and treacherous beneath my feet. I didn’t dare look back, focusing only on Nikki as she darted ahead like she’d been doing this her whole life.

After what felt like an eternity, Nikki pulled me down behind a thick shrub. I crouched low, chest heaving as I tried to catch my breath as quietly as possible, and the leaves around us fluttered with every shaky exhale.

Then I heard it: footsteps crunching through the underbrush. Slow, deliberate. My heart hammered in my chest as a figure came into view, and I clamped a hand over my nose and mouth to stop myself from making a single sound.

The hunter wore a full camo outfit, blending into the greens and browns of the forest, with a matching mask pulled down to reveal a face smeared with skull-patterned paint. His dark eyes scanned the trees as he held a bow loosely in one hand, an arrow nocked but not drawn.

“Thought I heard someone, but they ran,” he muttered, speaking into a radio clipped to his chest. His voice was low, rough, and slightly annoyed. “Yeah, I guess it could’ve been an animal. I didn’t actually see anything. For fuck’s sake, man.”

Nikki pressed a finger to her lips, her other hand gripping my wrist like a vise. I stayed as still as I could, even though every muscle in my body was screaming to move.

The hunter shifted his weight and sighed. “I’m gonna check my snares. Yeah, man, talk to you later.”

He turned and walked off, his boots crunching faintly against the forest floor. Nikki and I stayed behind the shrub, barely daring to breathe, until his footsteps faded entirely. Even then, Nikki didn’t move. She held up a hand, signaling for patience, her ears tuned to the slightest sound. Minutes passed like hours.

Finally, she whispered, “Okay. I think he’s gone. But let’s give it five more minutes, just to be sure. Or even ten. He could be one of those assholes who pretends to leave and then doubles back when he thinks the prey feels safe enough to move.”

I nodded, my pulse still pounding in my ears as we waited in tense silence. After the final excruciating minute, we slowly rose from our hiding spot.

A voice crackled through my earbud just as we began to move, and we both instantly crouched again, just in case.

“Player 1, eliminated by Hunter 13,” it said. “A reminder to all players. The safe zones are now open. Coordinates are 12.5, 89.3 and 10.4, 85.9.”

I frowned, racking my brains to recall Player 1, but their identity eluded me. That made a twinge of guilt flicker within me.

Nikki glanced over at me, reading my expression. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I mean, apart from the glaringly obvious.”

“I just feel bad,” I whispered. “I don’t even remember who Player 1 was, and now they’re just… gone.”

“Don’t feel bad,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I know who he was.”

“Who?”

She swallowed thickly before speaking up again. “His name was Eric Kane. I met him last night, at the beginning of the yacht party, and he told me he was in prison before the game recruiters found him. I was curious, so I looked him up before my phone service dropped, and… well, he did bad stuff. Really bad stuff.”

“Murderer?”

“No, but just as bad.” She hesitated. “Maybe even worse. It involved… kids.”

My stomach dropped. “Oh. Shit.”

“Yeah. Like I said, he was a bad guy,” she said, forehead creasing. “I’m not saying that I’m in any way glad that we’re all stuck in this fucked-up murder game, but if someone had to get killed here, I’d much rather it was him than you. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah. I get it,” I said. “It doesn’t seem fair. There are people like him here, but then there are others like us. We didn’t do anything wrong. At least not enough to deserve this .”

“No shit,” she muttered. “I still can’t believe I ended up here.”

“How did the recruiters actually approach you?” I asked. “Was it at Hollingsworth?”

“Yeah. But I have absolutely no idea how they knew about all my debt,” she said. She sighed and went on. “I’m still trying to figure out how it’s possible that you’re here. I mean, you weren’t even recruited.”

I pursed my lips. “I have a feeling my ex is behind it all, but I have no way of knowing for sure.”

“Is that the guy you told me about when we first met? You said I should avoid him or something?”

“Yup. That’s him.” I gritted my teeth. “He’s in The Wild Hunt. So he must’ve decided to sign me up without me knowing.”

“That doesn’t seem possible. I mean, I had to sign so much stuff to get in.”

I shrugged. “I’m sure he found a way somehow. Rich assholes like him always do.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she muttered. She let out another heavy sigh, sinking lower into the shrub. “God, I’m already so tired.”

“Me too.” I sank down next to her, lying flat on my belly. “I feel like we walked for hours earlier, even though I know we didn’t.”

As we lay together behind the shrubs, I closed my eyes, trying to pretend for a few seconds that I was simply trapped in a nightmare that I could wake up from at any minute. My heart was still racing, and my body was trembling as I tried to control my breathing. The silence of the forest felt suffocating, and the way the underbrush closed in on us, the way the cold air felt so oppressive—

Wait.

My eyes flew open as something in my chest twisted, and an old memory came crashing back with a force that left me breathless.

"Oh my god," I whispered.

Nikki glanced over at me, brows furrowed. "What?"

“This island.” I blinked and took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. "I think I might know where it is.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” I swallowed and went on. “Us doing all this stuff… lying in the shrubs and running around the forest. It just reminded me of something. I honestly used to think it was all a bad dream.”

“Everly. Spill. ”

“Jake’s family owns a huge manor called Wildercliff. It’s on an island off the coast of Massachusetts,” I said. “I visited once when I was a kid, because my dad worked for his dad. We weren’t allowed to go past the estate fence when we were outside, but we all sneaked out one night, and we saw…”

I trailed off, faltering as the awful images flashed in my mind.

“Saw what?” Nikki asked. Her eyes were like saucers now.

“There was a group of people in dark robes and skull masks. They were all standing in a clearing, and—” I stopped and frowned, straining to recall the next part of the foggy memory. “One of them said something about a test, I think. That bit is really fuzzy. But there was also an unmasked man there, tied to something. They let him go and told him to run, and then… they killed him. At least, that’s what it looked like.”

“Holy fuck. You saw all that when you were just a kid ?”

"Yeah. I think I was only eight or nine. I ended up having nightmares about it for years . But then, after a while, I thought it was just a bad dream all along. That I imagined the whole thing. But now..." I trailed off as I looked around. “It wasn’t a dream. It really happened. On this island. It has to be the same place.”

Nikki was silent for a moment, her eyes narrowing slightly as she took in what I’d said. Finally, she spoke again. "You said Jake’s family owns the island, right?”

“Yes.”

“And they’re involved in The Wild Hunt?”

“Well, I know for sure that Jake is, because he wears that ring and hangs out with the other Wilders on campus. But I bet his dad is too,” I said. “That’s why I think this has to be the same place. It’s just too much of a coincidence. Even the name—Wildercliff. It all makes sense.”

“Shit. Yeah.” Nikki’s brows dipped in a contemplative frown. “If they own the island, then they’re probably really high up in the society, and that could explain how it was so easy for Jake to set you up like this, without you even applying for the game.”

I nodded grimly. “Exactly. But if I’m right, and it is the same island, that could be useful to us, right?”

“For sure.” A glimmer of hope and enthusiasm had appeared in Nikki’s eyes. “If you know this place, then maybe you know a way to escape. So… just think. Try to remember as much as you can.”

“Well, we sneaked through a tunnel to get off the estate that night, and I think Jake said there was more than one of them,” I said, forehead creasing. “That could be how the hunters get around the island. But it could also be a way for us to escape.”

“Yeah, if we’re careful. Do you know where any of the tunnel entrances are?”

I shook my head. “No. The island is huge. But if we find that same clearing, then I think we can probably find the tunnel I went through as a kid. It wasn’t too far away, and it goes to the manor.”

Nikki nodded slowly. “We could sneak into the manor somehow. Find a phone that actually works.”

“Yes. But it all depends.” I paused for a beat, gnawing at my bottom lip. “I mean, like I said, the island is huge, and most of it is forested. There’s probably tons of different clearings, so it’ll be hard to find the right one. Also, I doubt I can remember exactly what it looks like, and it’s been over a decade since I was there, so it could’ve changed a lot anyway.”

“But it’s the best chance we’ve got to get out of this hellhole, isn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“Then that’s our plan. We’ll try to find that tunnel. We might even get lucky and find another one,” she said. She paused and glanced up at the sky. “We should get moving again. We’ve been here for ages, and it’s going to start getting dark soon.”

I nodded, and we rose to our feet and slipped away into the trees.

We moved cautiously through the forest, every sound amplified in the tense silence. Nikki stayed just ahead of me, her movements deft and fluid. I tried to match her pace, but every time the shadows shifted, I found myself glancing over my shoulder.

Eventually, we reached the closest safe zone—a small, weathered cabin tucked deep in the woods. The area around it was delineated with a spraypainted blue circle. Nikki held up a hand for me to stop and then motioned for me to drop.

We crouched together behind a cluster of bushes, watching the cabin. It was eerily quiet, the distant chirp of insects the only sound breaking the stillness.

“Okay, it seems safe,” Nikki finally whispered. “I don’t see any traps.”

I nodded and rose to my feet, and we hurried toward the front door of the cabin. As I ran, I heard a twig snap behind me, and I turned to look over my shoulder again.

My heart skipped a beat at what I saw.

A hunter was moving toward the cabin from the same direction that Nikki and I had just come from. He must’ve been right behind us all along. Either he hadn’t spotted us before now, or he had and felt like toying with us, like a cat playing with its food to scare it stiff before it finally moved in for the kill.

He wore full camouflage—dark green, brown, and black—and he was tall and broad-shouldered, body packed with muscle. But it was his mask that really caught my attention. Black with silver details; a menacing skull design that covered his face completely.

As he approached the blue line at the edge of the safe zone, he stopped short. Clearly, and very surprisingly, the hunters actually respected the rules despite their total psychopathy. Or at least this one did.

I kept staring at him, heart racing as a jolt of recognition hit me.

The logical part of my mind knew that I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, not with the mask covering his face. But from the way he carried himself, the way his muscles tensed as he surveyed the area, and the way his presence seemed to make the air hum with undeniable tension… I was certain anyway.

It was Rhett.