Chapter Ten
Valli
For the last three weeks, we have been fully focused on Harvest Moon preparation, and tonight we will see all our hard work pay off. I have barely seen my men lately. Every night I fell into bed and was out cold as soon as my head hit the pillow, then I was up again before the sun.
Cave has been training and running test after test to make sure he is ready. Cipher has been buried in generators and backup systems because Nixie is leaving no room for error. Noa has been getting the cemetery ready and helping people in other zones.
I miss them and can’t wait to be able to breathe again. After tonight, everything goes back to normal, or our version of it anyway.
Tonight the island doesn’t look like it normally does; it looks possessed.
Every zone is live and every hunter on the island is out.
Tonight there are no wristbands, and the people who visit will be pushed to their limit, to the point that they might regret ever signing up.
They have paid to scream, and Nixie calls those screams the sound of money.
Everyone who steps through those gates tonight will have their fears thrown at them.
Each person had extensive background checks run, and experts have gone over them and picked them apart.
Some hunters have targets, but everyone has been briefed on each person’s fears to play into, faces to remember.
As people arrive and everything transforms in front of my eyes, it’s amazing seeing all the hard work pay off. Time blurs, and Nixie and I become a two-woman army. Guest check-ins, rotation changes, a sprained ankle in one of the mazes, a VIP guest who wanted to negotiate his limits mid-event.
“Breathe,” Nixie tells me at around one in the morning, pressing a coffee into my hand. “Look around and see how magical it is.”
Looking around and across the grounds, I can see the cornfield, where the queue wraps around the cemetery fence.
Grown adults are waiting an hour to be hunted by the Scarecrow, who is normally off-limits.
From this viewpoint, I can see the stalks moving and know he is doing exactly what we made sure he is comfortable doing.
Every few minutes a guest breaks free from the stalks—some leave crying, others laughing.
My chest tightens, knowing he is mine.
By four in the morning, the night is winding down. The last session is running through, and guests are drifting toward the courtesy buses ready to take them across to their accommodation.
Nixie finally lets me off the hook. “Nothing is on fire. You’re now off the clock.”
I have no idea where Noa and Cipher are, so I cut down Sideshow Alley, where all the stalls are now closed, but the hairs on my arms stand on end.
I don’t see anyone when I scan my surroundings, yet I swear I feel them watching me. But I shake it off. It’s the atmosphere, being in complete darkness, and working for almost sixteen hours straight.
My phone rings, and Leni’s number flashes on my screen. It’s four a.m., so my stomach drops. You do not call people at this time with good news.
“Len, what’s wrong?”
“Valli,” she whispers. “Help me. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come. I wanted to surprise you, but it’s so dark.”
“Come? Where are you?”
“I’m on the island—there are headstones. Valli, I think someone is out there.”
The line drops out, and all ability to think rationally leaves my body.
I run, diving off the path and heading down the back toward the cemetery.
My heart is trying to exit through my throat in the two minutes I take to sprint to the gate.
My baby sister is somewhere in the dark, and it’s tonight of all nights that she comes.
The one when the hunters think everyone is fair game, and she has no idea what we do here.
“LENI!”
The gate is open, and the lights we normally use here are off.
I switch on my phone’s flashlight, but three steps into the cemetery it dies, turning my surroundings to pitch black.
I keep walking, allowing my eyes to adjust, all the while feeling someone watching me.
Then I push into a run, hoping Leni will see me, but pull to a halt when something drops in front of me.
My scream shatters the air as I come to a stop, then slowly back up.
A hand comes over my mouth, and a second person catches my legs as I kick out. Something is pulled over my head, and I am sent back to that day. Every fear is coming back to haunt me.
There is no way I will give up so easily, not when my sister is here. So I fight, buck, and kick as I’m carried away.
“Let me go!” I scream, though it’s muffled by the fabric. “You have no idea what will happen when they find you.”
Terror washes over me when I think about what my men will do when they can’t find me. This is not what they need right now. I have to fight; I am not weak.
As I’m carried away, a scent I’d know anywhere hits me, but the fear doesn’t leave me all at once. Relief crashes into me first, then a half-sob, half-laugh merges into an anger that holds no real weight. “I’m going to kill all three of you!”
“I told you she would know it was us,” Noa says through a laugh.
“Where is Leni?” I demand.
“In her dorm,” Noa reveals from somewhere beside me. “Eating pizza and counting her money after the best performance of her life.”
Tears prickle behind my eyes. “I thought she was out here alone.”
I’m lowered to the ground, but the bag over my head stays on.
“What is a fear that cannot be outrun?” Cave murmurs beside my ear.
I’m shaking, but I know what this is: the Harvest Moon is all about facing your deepest, darkest fears.
“Losing the people I love.”
“She is safe, you are ours, and nothing on the island touches what is ours,” Cipher says, and I love how much bolder he becomes around me.
They know my fears; I have a file in Nixie’s drawer just like everyone else.
My biggest fear is losing the people I love, and I don’t know if I could handle it a second time.
“Color,” Cipher says, his thumb moving across my wrist, checking my pulse.
I could end it all now. There is always a way out on the island; they don’t want to trap you if you don’t want to be here. My heart is pounding in my chest, but the panic has gone while the adrenaline remains.
“Green,” I pant. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“Oh, thank god. The debrief would have been so awkward tomorrow.”
“Noa,” I whine.
“Shutting up now,” he says with a laugh.
Their hands touch me everywhere, removing my boots and undoing the buttons on my work shirt.
They remove all my clothes, not that I’m worried about being out in the open, as I know they would never expose me like that.
I place all my trust in them. Once I’m naked, they continue to run their hands over my body.
“The blindfold,” Cipher says, even though we all know it’s a bag over my head. “It stays or goes—your call.”
Being unable to see when you think someone is kidnapping you inspires pure terror, but when you know you’re safe and your men have their hands on you, it sparks every nerve ending alive. There is no way I would miss this.
“Stay.”
The wind moves over my bare skin, and so do their mouths. The bag is moved upward, so now it’s just covering my eyes, and instantly I know it’s Cave’s lips touching mine.
Noa’s lips drag down my stomach, and he narrates as he goes. “Gorgeous, just look at you. Best night of my life, and once I found a coffin full of whiskey.”
Cipher’s mouth closes over my breast, and I arch up off the grass, splayed out between the three of them, unable to tell whose hands are whose.
Noa’s head keeps going lower, and he stops narrating when his tongue slides through my slickness.
My hips jerk and Cave’s arm pins me down as Noa works me over. He doesn’t ease up on me, licking and sucking like his life depends on it until I come embarrassingly fast.
“One,” Noa says smugly from between my thighs.
Cipher gathers me into his lap, my back to his chest, then takes his time sliding his fingers inside me while his mouth moves on my neck.
“I used to think I understood how things worked,” he whispers.
“I would take them apart to see what they did.” His fingers curl and my thighs shake against his, the trinkets on his jacket pressing into my back.
“But you’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I didn’t have to fix you.
You just walked in, utterly perfect, and you’re mine.
I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”
His thumb finds my clit, and my head falls back against his shoulder as he turns his mouth to my ear. “I get to wake up next to you. I get to be one of the men who loves you. Come for me, Valli. I want to feel how lucky I am.”
And I fall apart on his hand, with his name spilling from my lips and his arm locked around me, his heartbeat hammering against my spine.
The bag is pulled from my head, and I see Cave, fire blazing in his eyes. He lifts me off Cipher and lays me back on the grass, while Noa and Cipher move to my sides. They each take one of my hands as Cave undresses, then his weight comes down over me.
“Feed the beast,” I whisper.
The growl that rumbles in answer feeds my soul.
He pushes into me in one long, slow thrust, and my whole body melts beneath him. Cave drives into me with a deep, rolling force, while Noa voices pornographic commentary on one side. “That’s it, take him. God, you should see how his cock looks going inside you.”
Cipher’s grip is laced through my other hand.
He squeezes in time to Cave’s thrusts until I come apart again, and after a few more pumps of his hips, Cave pulls out and flips me over onto my hands and knees.
It’s then I realize that right in front of me is the bluff, and all I can see is the ocean extending out to where it blends into the night sky.
He thrusts back inside me, and my fingers curl into the dirt.
The world tilts as I feel the wind against my skin and the boom of the waves below, so loud that I can’t believe I didn’t notice them until now.
Cave’s huge hands wrap around my hips and drag me back to meet him as his every thrust rocks me forward.
He fucks me hard, one hand leaving my hip and sliding up my spine until his fingers wrap around the back of my neck. I press back into it and into him, relishing the sensation.
“What weighs nothing, and I could not carry on my life without it anymore?”
His riddle wrecks me more than his body does, which is saying a lot because his body is doing some devastating things.
My arms give out and I slip down to my elbows, and he follows me, covering me completely and driving in deeper at this new angle.
Noa swears under his breath, and as I catch a glimpse of Cipher’s euphoric expression, I come hard, pressing my face into the crook of my arm.
Cave changes his rhythm as he lets go, arms caging me in as his roar echoes around us.
After Cave has pulled back, Noa scrambles over and drags me into his arms, and Cipher drapes his jacket over my cooling skin. My phone buzzes from my pile of clothes, so Cipher digs it out and hands it to me.
Leni
Did it work? Did I scare you? Also, your boyfriend’s pizza guy is so nice, he TIPPED me.
Noa laughs. “That was all Cipher. He made them tip her, since he felt bad about what he had convinced her to do.”
“I’m not great in high-pressure situations. I had to get Noa to talk to her, and I felt bad stealing her number from your phone,” Cipher explains, his ears turning red.
“And what part did Cave play in all of this?”
“He is the muscle, you know, in case she didn’t agree. Then we would have used our attack scarecrow,” Noa adds, and Cave flips him off.
I text Leni back, asking her which one of my boyfriends she spoke to. She quickly sends me a reply saying that I’d better call her when I’m not up to my eyeballs in dicks. Now that is not the reaction I was expecting.