Chapter 9
RYKER
“New rules,” Mitchell reminded us, as if we hadn’t already memorized the script.
“I thought there was only one.” I eyed him. Mitchell had tightened everything after last week—new land, new boundaries, and a panic system he swore he’d “always had,” even though we both knew that was a lie.
“Shit changes. Keeps you on your toes, so nobody gets comfortable. It keeps the game fair for the newcomers too.” He flashed us a wide grin.
The check-in shed looked the same as Tuesday with mini lockers lining the wall, dart guns racked like toys, the unmarked steel door behind him that never opened unless you were already paid up.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too white, and for a split second, my body wanted to associate them with cuffs and beeping monitors.
I leaned on the desk, fingers flexing once, then stilling. Four other men stood to my left, all shifting with anticipation.
Mitchell clicked a locker shut, and my keys and phone disappeared behind metal.
“Remember.” His attention landed on the steel door behind him. “You never saw this place.”
I nodded.
Mitchell slid black bands across the counter. “Push the button if there’s an emergency. Press it and everything stops. No questions.”
The men grabbed theirs, strapping them on with easy confidence.
I snapped mine around my wrist, a twinge of disgust gnawing at me. That button was the easy way out. It wasn’t for me.
Mitchell tossed out the rest of the information for the Ritual. “Creek line is out. East fence is out. Ridge markers are in. No blades and no live rounds during the hunt. Dart guns only.” He gestured toward the guns. “Five players. One runner.”
One guy rolled his shoulders. Another bounced on the balls of his feet. The third’s jaw worked like he was chewing gum. The fourth guy looked new and stared at the floor like he was trying to remember which part of this he’d agreed to.
Mitchell’s smile slipped into place. “You’re quiet.”
“I’m focused,” I replied.
Mitchell smirked. “Good. You’ll want to be.”
The steel door hissed, and the air cooled. The noise in my head went thin and sharp, like a wire pulled tight.
The runner appeared. And at first, I didn’t register who she was because she didn’t stand still.
The boots barely whispered on concrete as she cut left past the lockers, already heading for the back exit like she’d been shot out of the door.
Dark cargo pants. Long-sleeve thermal. A vest strapped snug over her chest. She wore it as though it was second nature to her.
Mitchell called out. “Runner starts at Marker Three. Five-minute head start.”
She didn’t slow. Then before she hit the back door, she turned her head a little.
Brown eyes.
Fury.
That wicked little spark underneath it.
Her.
My pulse didn’t spike. It dropped. Heavy and slow. Predatory.
Mitchell watched her disappear into the woods, then glanced at me. “Are you good, Ryker?”
I didn’t look away from the door she’d vanished through. “You didn’t tell me she’d be the runner.”
Mitchell’s grin sharpened. “Didn’t have to. The smile on your face the other day said it all, and you needed to get your ass here today.”
My brow arched.
One of the guys snorted. “She’s fast.”
Another laughed. “Good. I like it when they make you work.”
Something inside me stirred. I didn’t appreciate how they were talking about her. She was fucking mine.
During her head start, I mentally and physically prepared.
Mitchell walked to the door, lifted a flare gun, and tipped it toward the sky.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
A flare whistled overhead outside, painting the sky red for three heartbeats before it died.
The other men ran out like wolves smelling blood.
I didn’t. I walked because I didn’t need adrenaline to pull me forward. I had something better. Experience hunting with a serial killer.
The moment I crossed the threshold, the woods swallowed the shed behind me. Shadows dappled the forest floor, a canopy filtering the late afternoon light. My boots sank into leaf litter that muffled sound if you placed your weight right.
I moved uphill, taking a switchback trail that wasn’t on any map. Mitchell didn’t hand out maps to me anymore. Not after the first run, when I slid it back across the counter and told him I didn’t want the crutch.
Today, the terrain was different. A new slice of land. The woods opened into a narrow saddle between two hills, the wind cutting through it. Beyond that, the ground dropped into a shallow basin littered with boulders and deadfall, and farther down I heard water.
I counted breaths anyway. In for three steps, out for two. Scan the ground. Scan the branches. Listen for movement that didn’t belong.
To my right, an old hunting blind with rotted wood, half-collapsed, sat on stilts like a watchtower that had died standing.
Farther up, a ridge marker glinted faintly in the dim light.
I cut toward it, staying off the main path.
The players would fan out loud and eager. Their noise made them sloppy. Good.
The woods went quiet as if someone was holding their breath. Then a soft rattle. Not a twig snapping. A tiny cascade of gravel. Downhill.
I dropped to a crouch, letting the world narrow, and tracked the slope. My ears tuned to the space between sounds.
A dark blur cut across an opening between trees, low and fast, hair swinging. I didn’t see her face this time, only the angle of her shoulders, the way she moved like she belonged to the dark.
I launched after her. My boots hammered against the dirt, and the leaves scattered as my lungs pulled in the cold air.
She wove between the trees, using every shadow as if she’d mapped them in advance.
She didn’t crash through brush. She wasn’t panicked.
She flowed. Which meant she was choosing her route, not reacting to mine. She wanted me to follow.
That realization hit a half second too late. A taut, nearly invisible line kissed my shin. I jerked my leg up, and something snapped above me. A damn net.
It dropped from the right in a shivering curtain of black, weighted at the corners. I twisted, the mesh catching and dragging across my arms. I tore free and the net hit the ground behind me with a wet slap.
My breath came out in a short, rough laugh. “Dirty.”
Something shifted in my chest. She wasn’t evading. She was baiting. Setting traps. Turning the whole game inside out.
I wanted to catch her. I also wanted to see what else she had.
Whiz.
A dart hissed through the woods and sank into the trunk beside my head. I froze for a fraction—because the shot didn’t come from in front of me. It came from above. I looked up fast. A shape crouched on the broken edge of the old hunting blind, the dart gun braced, body still as carved stone.
She wasn’t running anymore. She was aiming.
“You’re loud,” her voice carried down.
I lifted my gun, but I didn’t see her. Then, a whisper of movement to my left. Leaves shifting in a pattern that didn’t belong to wind. She dropped from the blind and vanished into the basin, using the rocks for steppingstones.
I went after her anyway. I wanted it. Something about being pulled forward—into a chase, into a trap, into her—felt better than standing still in my bathroom staring at a mirror that didn’t feel like it belonged to me.
I slowed and tracked her instead. A still-vibrating branch bent low. A fresh smear of mud on bark. Then—silence. The kind that meant she’d stopped moving and was waiting for me to make a mistake.
I didn’t. Instead, I circled wide, staying downwind. My breathing smoothed out. My pulse steadied. Useful. Controlled.
Hiss—thunk.
The dart struck my vest right on the plate, a solid hit that felt more like getting punched than tagged. I went still from the inside out and then turned slowly.
She stepped out from behind a boulder ten feet away, the dart gun hanging low. Her eyes were bright. Her mouth curved in that wolfish smile that wasn’t cute. It was a fucking threat.
“Marked,” she said.
I stared at the dart on my vest like it had the audacity to exist. “You’re not supposed to hunt.”
She shrugged. “Think what you want. No rules except one, remember?” Her attention dropped to my chest, then back up.
A laugh scraped out of me. “You think a dart to my vest means you win?”
“It means I caught you,” she stated simply.
The way she said it, too certain, too practiced, put a prickle along my skin.
She moved closer. Not cautious, but confident. Her boots crunched on gravel. Her breathing stayed steady, controlled. She took a half step back just enough to make it look as if she was resetting. My stance widened on instinct, ready to take the angle from her.
The moment I widened, she cut in tight and fast, skating over the loose gravel and disappearing into my blind spot.
Then she moved—wrong for prey. Too aware. Too practiced. And my focus sharpened like I’d been waiting for her without knowing it.
She stepped into my space, reached for the strap on my vest as if she was going to tug me forward. I let her long enough to see what she wanted.
Her fingers closed, her knee drove in low, fast, and aimed for the back of my leg.
I shifted too late. My balance broke just enough.
I went down to one knee on wet gravel, my palm slapping a rock to catch myself.
She was on me in the next heartbeat with her weight on my back, forearm across my shoulder, with the dart gun pressed against the side of my throat.
My breath punched out because it shouldn’t have felt like this. Something in me liked being under her, pinned, owned for a second by a woman who didn’t flinch.
She leaned in until her mouth was close enough that I could taste her words. “You thought I was your prize. But I’m not something you win.”
My palms slid up her thighs. “You’re right,” I said, voice low. “You’re something I take.”
Her smile didn’t falter. “Try.”
I moved and trapped her wrist as she lifted the dart gun, rolled my hips, and shifted my weight under her.
The world narrowed to gravel and breath and the damp cold rising off the drainage run, and for a half second, she fought the flip, then I had her.
I rolled her, pinned her back into the mud, one hand catching both wrists above her head.
She bucked once, twice, trying to throw me.
I gave her enough slack to make it count. Never enough to get free.
Water chattered over stone behind us, loud enough to swallow a scream, and the mud sucked at our knees every time she fought.
Her breath went ragged, but her gaze stayed locked on mine; bright, furious, and alive.
And when she tried to twist out again, I tightened my hold, crowding her with my body until there was no space left to pretend this was anything but what it was.
She bucked her hips, knocking me off balance as she twisted beneath me and clawed at the earth, crawling away.