Page 24 of Hunted

A warm set of arms wrapped around my torso, hoisting me off the floor.

But all I could see was red.

Dark red.

Never the same.

Never again.

Never, never, never.

[ 8 ]

BECK

IKE DWECK – BITTER THIEF

Her funeral was sad—no, really, it was.

Fleur’s was the only initiate death that had ever caused the Academy to come to a complete standstill, largely due to her surname. The Commander was here—out of respect to the Deveauxs—as were all of the faculty and every recruit, barring one.

Sebastos Varco had been a thorn in my side since the moment his father dropped him into my lap eighteen months ago. He had single-handedly taken out eight of his classmates—nine, now—notching up the highest pre-Graduation kill tally this institution had ever seen.

His father believed it made him a valuable asset to our program. My brothers and I were inclined to believe differently.

He was a loose cannon. An unpredictable variable. A liability.

And then there was the girl. The one I’d personally nabbed off a London street, dragging her straight to her doom. Five foot fuck-all, beautiful, clever, and completely lethal. At least, she was until Varco fucked up and took out the wrong blonde three days ago—though I’d wager she’d have made it through the night had they not switched bunks.

That assumption was irrelevant now.

Fleur had probably assumed Varco wouldn’t dare come for her once he realised who she was. She had probably also assumed that the lightning lit up the dorm enough to give her away the moment he roused her.

But assumptions could kill just as easily as a cut throat.

And timing was everything.

If the Taylor boy had swapped instead, she’d still be alive. Or if they’d taken turns on watch like they would on assignment. Or if they simply hadn’t slept at all. One night wouldn’t kill them.

Except it had.

If only she’d just come to me. Sinclair could have just told me about the threat and I’d have… Well, I couldn’t have done anything, could I? My hands were tied bureaucratically, given whose son was making the threats… but morally, I was sure I would have come up with something.

But those were just sentiments now, because Sinclair wasn’t the same person she’d been three days ago. Losing someone like that—someone you loved—hit harder than you’d expect it to.

Now, she was just an empty shell—coincidentally, exactly what the Academy wanted their initiates to be. She was pliable. Broken. And for some reason, that irked me more than it should.

Van blew through the apartment doors after class that night completely baffled. Intrigued by a puzzle he wasn’t expecting to have encountered.

“Someone completed the assessment,” he said by way of greeting, dropping into the armchair by the couch with a bewildered expression plastered across his face.

Fuck. I knew that look.

“No shit? The unbeatable rat trap?” Dek called from the couch over the sound of engineered automatic gunfire. “Ha ha, got you, you little son of a bitch.”

Van and I shared an amused glance just as Dek twisted in his seat to acknowledge our existence now that his first-person shooter game had flicked back over to the menu screen.

“What? That kid from Singapore was hanging me out to dry.”