Chapter 7 The Hunt
Chapter seven
The Hunt
Nora
Easter morning drags out with unbearable slowness.
Sorren and I wake at dawn. We creep to the egg and stand before it, ready for it to crack open and admit us.
It does…nothing.
Just sits there like a lump.
Sorren puts his hand on its surface and frowns, deep grooves forming between his brows. He tilts his head like he’s listening intently, then drops his hand and steps back.
“It’s awake, but…waiting.”
“How do you know?” I ask, glancing between him and the egg, which, to me, looks quite frankly like a giant stone egg.
He shrugs and runs his hands through his hair. “It’s hard to explain. As if we speak the same language but different dialects. Does that make sense?”
“Not really.” I take his hand in mine. I’m still bubbling from last night, from being with him. Becoming one with him. “But I believe you.”
Whatever happens today, I’m not letting him face it alone.
We stay hidden behind a cluster of cherry trees at the edge of the garden, close enough to keep the egg in sight while the park slowly fills with people.
Parents. Teenagers. Children in ruffled dresses racing between bushes and trees. A stroller bumps over gravel. Someone yells about a missing shoe. A toddler wails while a dad hoists the child onto his shoulders for a picture in front of the giant egg.
“Look how much taller you are this year, Jimmy,” a mother exclaims. “Last year you couldn’t even reach a quarter of the way up.”
Jimmy grins, then pinches his sister the second their mom turns away. The little girl pinches him back and sticks out her tongue.
“Aren’t they adorable?” I ask, my voice dreamy.
In my mind I’m already picturing it. Our children. How they would look. With his hair and my eyes. The logical part of me realizes it’s way too early to think about these things, but words like claimed, mate, and mind-melding have clearly fast-tracked my hormones.
The children are full-on squabbling now, kicking and hitting while their parents drag them apart.
Sorren watches, his expression carefully neutral.
“They are attempting to injure one another,” he says after a moment.
“Yes,” I sigh, leaning against him. “But in a really cute way.”
He looks down at me like he’s reconsidering everything he knows about humans.
“Why aren’t the hunters here yet?” I ask a few minutes later, after I text my mom to make sure she’s okay.
Turns out she and Aunt Renee are in the middle of a Harry Potter marathon. They’re rewatching each movie for approximately the 800th time, the books stacked beside them on the coffee table for easy reference in case the films get anything wrong, which, according to Mom, they frequently do.
Sorren stands stiffly at attention, like he should be wearing epaulettes on his shoulders. “I don’t know. I assumed my uncle would guess this was my destination, but perhaps I was wrong?”
I pull off a piece of cotton candy I got from the snack shack earlier.
It’s pastel pink, the same color as the eggs that garden workers now place carefully on the lawn in front of us.
I take another bite, my fingers tacky with sugar.
It dissolves in my mouth like snow melting in sunlight.
The sweetness hits my bloodstream, and I bounce lightly on my toes, like if I keep moving I won’t have to think about what’s coming.
I remember how Seth called me boring when he broke up with me.
Which is interesting.
Because I’m standing in a park eating cotton candy while waiting for a magical egg to open so my fate-bonded bunny-shifter prince and I can go inside and fight for an enchanted sword.
So, yeah.
Clearly Seth knew what he was talking about.
Idiot.
Sorren taps my shoulder and points to the edge of the grass where a long line of children has formed.
They jostle and jockey for the best position.
Bright plastic eggs scatter the lawn now, waiting for the hunt to begin.
Somewhere among them is a golden one, with an extra-expensive prize inside, and every child is desperate to be the one who finds it.
Sorren and I are waiting for our own kind of hunt.
Not the one for eggs.
The one for weapons.
The crowd grows larger and larger until it’s finally time. A park employee in a neon vest raises a whistle to her lips. For one strange, suspended moment, everything goes quiet. Parents lift phones. Children lean forward onto their toes. Wind moves softly through the trees.
Sorren’s hand tightens around mine.
Not nervous.
Calm. Steady. Dangerous.
The whistle shrieks.
Children surge forward with delighted screams.
Sorren goes stiff as his head snaps toward the garden entrance.
I follow his gaze just in time to see them, the men who walk through the gate. Tweed coats. Leather patches at the elbows. The same bland, forgettable faces I saw in the lobby. All three of them are here.
The cotton candy slips from my hands, forgotten. Pink sugar collapses against the grass.
“They found us,” I whisper.
A sound begins. It’s low at first. A buzz. A vibration more than a noise, like something vast shifting beneath the earth.
Sorren tenses beside me.
The buzz builds. Higher. Louder. Like a swarm of angry wasps. Until it drills straight through my skull, and I clap my hands over my ears. Sorren does the same, his teeth bared.
Around us, children rush from egg to egg, scooping them into baskets while parents laugh and shout encouragement.
Phones are held high. Cameras flash.
None of them seem to notice the thick plume of smoke that now bleeds from the crown of the giant egg. The ground shivers beneath my feet. The air smells suddenly sharp, like lightning before a storm.
A crack splits the egg’s surface with a sound like ice breaking across a frozen lake. A seam of golden light rips from the very top to its base. It widens. Peels apart.
Opening.
No one reacts.
Not the parents standing ten feet away.
Not the volunteers in neon vests.
Not the children scrambling at our feet.
It’s like it isn’t happening. Or like it’s happening somewhere just beside the world they live in.
Sorren’s grip tightens around mine.
“They cannot see it,” he breathes.
Across the lawn, the hunters stand at the far edge of the garden, just beyond the line of cherry trees. They watch the egg as well.
The egg yawns wider between us, its interior blazing gold.
Sorren and me on one side.
The hunters on the other.
For one suspended, terrible moment, no one moves.
Then.
The hunters break into a run. Headed for the egg.
Sorren drags my wrist to his mouth and bites, just like we planned last night.
“You should bite me and transform,” I had told him just before we went to sleep.
“You run faster as a rabbit. Can dodge through a crowd easier. If you get to the egg before me, don’t stop.
Go in. I’ll try to follow you and, if I can’t, well, I’ll wait for you outside.
” I’d kissed him then, told him one more time, “I’ll wait for you, Sorren. ”
Now his teeth break my skin. Sharp and fast. Pain flares, then warmth flows through my veins as he drops from my grasp, shrinking mid-fall into a blur of white fur that hits the grass already running.
Straight for the egg.
Children shriek with delight as he darts between them.
“Look, Mommy! A bunny!”
“It’s the Easter bunny!”
Laughter erupts around us while I sprint after him, the open egg blazing ahead.
The hunters are running as well, charging in from the opposite side.
I shove through the crowd, dodging broken plastic eggs and tiny pastel sneakers. A stroller swings into my path. I grab the handle to keep from vaulting over it. The baby inside stares up at me, unimpressed, a chocolate smear across his face.
“Sorry!” I gasp, already moving again.
Somewhere ahead, Sorren flashes white between legs and picnic blankets, a blur of fur weaving through the grass.
Behind me a man shouts.
I glance over my shoulder just in time to see one of the hunters shoulder-check a teenager clean off his feet. The boy goes down with a startled yelp, eggs flying everywhere. The man doesn’t even glance down. His eyes stay locked on the egg.
Another hunter catches his loafer on a dropped basket and stumbles. Not enough to fall, but enough to slow.
They’re not ghosts.
They have to fight the crowd too.
The egg hums louder. Light spills from the widening crack, gold and strange and bright enough that it burns my eyes.
Almost there.
A boy barrels into me chasing a glittering blue egg, and I stagger sideways. My shoulder slams into a woman in heels. Who wears heels to a garden? Her mimosa tips over, and sticky champagne splashes across my arm.
“Hey!”
I don’t stop.
Sorren reaches the base first. His white ears flatten back. For a split second, he glances over his shoulder at me, making sure I’m still there.
A flicker of worry and something softer, maybe an apology, brushes across the bond between us. Then he disappears into the seam, which blazes like a wound in the world.
I sprint harder, a sudden fear clawing up my chest that I might never see him again.
One of the hunters is only yards away. His eyes lock on me, and he picks up the pace. If he keeps that up, he’ll reach the egg before I do.
Not a chance.
I throw myself forward with everything I’ve got and dive into the light.