Chapter 4 – Billie
Four
BILLIE
My feet are going to fucking murder me in my sleep. If I survive long enough to sleep again, that is.
I've been trudging through this godforsaken forest for what feels like days but is probably only hours.
Time gets weird when you're lost, dehydrated, and possibly dying from whatever toxic shit they pumped into my neck.
The sun's position tells me it's late afternoon, maybe early evening, but the thick canopy makes it hard to be sure.
The worst part? I'm walking in circles.
I know these woods. Not these specific woods, but woods in general. My training included extensive survival courses, navigation exercises, tracking lessons. I can find north with my eyes closed, follow game trails, read the subtle signs nature leaves for those who know how to look.
But this forest? This forest is fucking with me.
I've passed that same twisted oak tree five times now.
The one with the trunk that splits into three parts like a pitchfork.
First time, I thought maybe there were just multiple trees with similar deformities.
Second time, I got suspicious. Third time, I carved a mark into the bark with my pathetic excuse for a knife.
Fourth and fifth times, I confirmed what I already knew.
The forest is enchanted. Of course it is. Can't have random humans stumbling into Fae territory, can we? No, that would be too fucking convenient.
I lean against the traitorous oak, trying to catch my breath.
The injection site on my neck throbs with each heartbeat, and when I touch it, my fingers come away sticky with clear fluid.
The skin around it burns angry red, raised and hot.
Infection? Allergic reaction? Some kind of delayed-release poison designed to make me suffer before I die?
Knowing the Shepherd, probably all three.
A wave of heat rolls through me, different from the fever heat of infection.
This starts low in my belly and radiates outward, making my skin prickle and my clothes feel too tight, too rough against suddenly sensitive skin.
It's like the initial rush from the injection but muted, simmering instead of explosive.
"Get your shit together, Moreau," I mutter, pushing off from the tree.
That's when I hear it. Water. Actual fucking water, not just the phantom sound my dehydrated brain has been conjuring for the last hour. The sound pulls me forward like a rope around my waist.
I stumble through undergrowth that seems to part before me now, as if the forest has decided to stop playing games. Or maybe it's just leading me into a different trap. Either way, I need water more than I need to be paranoid right now.
The trees open up to reveal a stream that belongs in a fairy tale.
Which, considering where I am, makes perfect sense.
Crystal clear water tumbles over smooth stones, creating tiny waterfalls and pools that catch the dying sunlight.
Moss covers the banks in impossible shades of green, and flowers I can't identify bloom in clusters of silver and blue.
The air here vibrates with magic. I've always been able to feel it, even before my resonance was revealed. A thrumming in my bones, a taste on the back of my tongue like electricity and honey mixed together. Here, it's so thick I could probably grab handfuls of it from the air.
Beautiful and unsettling. Like everything else about the Fae.
I drop to my knees at the water's edge, not caring that the damp seeps through my worn pants.
My hands shake as I cup the water, bringing it to my cracked lips.
It's cold enough to make my teeth ache and tastes like nothing I've ever drunk before.
Clean in a way that makes every other water source seem polluted by comparison.
I drink until my stomach cramps, then splash the excess on my face and neck. The cool water on my injection site brings momentary relief from the burning.
Movement catches my eye. Across the stream, maybe twenty feet away, sits a fox.
But calling it just a fox would be like calling a tiger just a cat. This thing is massive, easily the size of a large dog, with fur that shifts between red and gold as it moves. Its eyes are too intelligent, too knowing, watching me with an intensity that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
Fae familiar. Has to be. Normal foxes don't get that big, don't have eyes that seem to look through you rather than at you.
We stare at each other, predator recognizing predator. Part of me wants to look away, to pretend I didn't see it, to avoid whatever confrontation this might lead to.
But I'm a hunter.
Was a hunter.
Either way, I don't back down from magical woodland creatures, no matter how unnaturally beautiful they are.
I pull out my knife, holding it loosely at my side. Not threatening, exactly, but making it clear I'm not prey. The fox tilts its head, almost like it's amused.
"Yeah, I know," I tell it, because talking to potentially magical animals seems reasonable at this point. "It's a shit knife. But it's what I've got to turn you into pretty little taxidermy, so unless you want to loan me something better, we're going to have to make do."
The fox blinks slowly, then stands. For a moment, I think it might actually respond. Then it turns and melts into the forest, moving like water in a way that makes me realize just how clumsy humans are in comparison.
"Right. Good talk," I mutter, getting to my feet.
The encounter leaves me on edge. If that was a familiar, its master can't be far. And while I'm supposed to be found by the Fae, I'd prefer it happened on my terms. Or at least when I'm not feeling like my skin might spontaneously combust.
I follow the stream, figuring water has to lead somewhere eventually.
The heat in my belly grows worse with each step, spreading through my limbs like liquid fire.
My clothes feel like sandpaper against my skin, and I have to resist the urge to strip them off.
It feels dangerously close to the time I got trapped in a cave during a blizzard on a hunt gone wrong and almost died of hypothermia.
My logical brain was telling me I was freezing to death, but it was all I could do to keep my hands from peeling my own clothes off.
Humans are strange, illogical creatures that way. The very instincts meant to keep us alive so often lead us right into the jaws of what wants to kill us. Nature. Monsters. Sometimes even ourselves.
The pain starts maybe an hour later. Low in my abdomen, cramping and twisting like someone's reached inside me and grabbed hold of my organs. I double over, barely catching myself on a tree before I face-plant in the dirt.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck." The words come out through gritted teeth.
I force myself to keep moving, one hand pressed against my stomach, the other using trees for support. The forest spins around me, colors too bright, sounds too sharp. Every step sends new waves of pain and heat through my body.
My legs give out near a cluster of boulders. I collapse against the largest one, curling into myself as shivers wrack my body despite the fever burning through me. Sweat soaks through my clothes, and I want nothing more than to tear them off, to press my bare skin against the cool stone.
No. Not just the clothes. I want to tear off my own skin, to escape this body that's betraying me in ways I don't understand.
Except I do understand. The realization is a knife twisting deep in my gut.
Heat. This is heat. The biological fuckery that makes omegas... available. Willing and desperate.
Those fucking bastards. They didn't just mark me for the Fae to find. They forced my body into the one state that would make me irresistible to them. A virgin omega in her first heat, alone in the woods. Might as well have tied a bow around my neck and stamped "free to a good home" on my forehead.
The forest has gone silent. Not the normal quiet of animals being cautious, but an absolute absence of sound. No birds, no insects, no wind through the leaves. It's like the entire forest is holding its breath.
Something moves in the undergrowth. The heavy, deliberate step of something that knows exactly where I am and doesn't care if I know it's coming.
Panic floods through me, mixing with the heat in a flurry that makes thinking nearly impossible.
But underneath the civilized thoughts, something else stirs.
Instincts I didn't know I had, old as humanity itself.
Instincts that fly in the face of nearly two decades of training that taught me my own survival is always secondary to the death of my prey.
Run.
I'm on my feet before I fully process the decision, stumbling through the forest on legs that barely work. Behind me, whatever was stalking me gives chase. I can hear it now, matching my pace, herding me like a sheep dog with a wayward lamb.
This is what prey feels like, I realize. Strange to be on the other side of the equation.
The thought should terrify me, but all I feel is rage.
A lifetime of being the wolf, and now I know what it is to be the rabbit.
The knowledge that something faster, stronger, more dangerous is coming for you.
The certainty that you can't escape but trying anyway because what else can you do except run into its jaws?
I dodge between trees, leap over fallen logs, crash through undergrowth that tears at my clothes and skin. My pursuer keeps pace easily, close enough that I feel its presence but never quite see it. Playing with me. Enjoying the chase.
I, at least, am a pragmatic predator. I savor the hunt, but I don't drag it out. I don't toy with my prey. A hunter is still a human, once you strip away the resonance and the armor and the years of training. Still too vulnerable to indulge such petty luxuries.
The Fae have no such qualms. Neither does anything else that might be lurking in these woods.
A howl splits the air, so close it seems to come from inside my own chest. Wolf, but not any wolf I've ever heard. This sound resonates in my bones, vibrates through my soul like a tuning fork struck against my heart.
My body responds without my permission, stumbling to a stop as every muscle goes liquid. The heat flares so intensely I actually cry out, dropping to my knees as my legs refuse to hold me.
"No, no, no." I force myself back up, but my body moves like I'm underwater.
Voices carry through the trees. Male voices, calm and assured.
"Circle around to the north. Cut off her escape route."
"Carefully. You saw what happened to the last group that mishandled an omega."
"She's in heat. First one by the scent of it. She won't get far."
A third voice, gentle in a way that makes my skin crawl because it sounds almost familiar, the same way the fox's eyes looked familiar, even though I know that's impossible.
"If any of you hurt her, I'll personally remove every digit from your limbs and every limb from your body, in that order, saving the head for last. Understood?"
Murmured agreement. They know what I am. Of course they do. I probably smell like a fucking beacon to every supernatural in a five-mile radius. Just like the Shepherd said.
I push through a curtain of hanging vines and see it.
A cave mouth yawning in the side of the mountain.
Too unobtrusive and plain to be the portal I was looking for, but shelter.
Somewhere defensible. Somewhere I can make a stand with my pathetic knife and whatever dregs of training I can access through the heat-fog in my brain.
I run for it, hearing shouts behind me as they realize where I'm headed.
My feet hit stone as I plunge into the darkness, and too late I see the circle carved into the cave floor.
Symbols that hurt to look at, thrumming with power that makes the magic by the stream feel like a candle compared to a bonfire.
A Fae circle. A fucking Fae circle, and I've just thrown myself into it like a lamb to the slaughter.
Blue light erupts around me, so bright it burns through my closed eyelids. It wraps around me like tentacles, pulling me down, down, down into something that isn't quite here but isn't quite there either.
The last thing I hear before the light swallows me whole is that familiar voice cursing in a language I don't understand, a language that tickles my brain in ways both wrong and ecstatic, but I somehow understand means trouble.
For them or for me, I don't know.