Page 65 of Hunted

“Adelaide Eliza Sinclair, where the fuck are your undergarments?”

Turns out, I was wrong.

“You’re kidding. Eliza’s your middle name?” Mercy stifled another giggle.

“No,” Ethan answered on my behalf. “But she refuses to tell anyone her middle name—and therefore it must be ghastly—so I made one up in the event of needing to full-name her. Like right now for instance. When she’s wandered back to her bed, irate and panty-less.”

Mercy sucked her cheeks in, looking for all the world like she was trying real hard to suck in whatever snide commentary was rattling through her brain.

“Care to explain, Miss Sinclair?” Ethan hummed.

“Not even a little bit,” I snapped, climbing into bed with underwear in situ.

Thankfully, Ethan dropped the interrogation—though I knew it was only a temporary reprieve—favouring Mercy’s attentions instead.

Go Mercy. Someone might as well be getting some around here. And it certainly wouldn’t be me.

I lay there pretending to sleep until well past lights out; well past the staggered times each inebriated recruit came traipsing in. The hours trickled on, the minutes rolling by whether I slept or not, until the sky lightened with the day’s first fractured rays of cold, winter sunshine.

Fuck this.

I slid out of bed and padded over to my trunk on silent, sock-covered feet—not that anyone would have noticed considering the state they’d all been in when they’d fallen into bed, as well as the racket of their snores across the room now. I threw on what I found, layering on whatever passed through my fingers. My nose wrinkled when I grabbed the same pants I’d worn last night, but I didn’t exactly have options, so on they went.

Three pairs of socks, my boots, a beanie, and two sweaters later, I crossed the threshold into the frosted hallway. My breath, visible in the air as I ambled along the walkway and down two flights of stairs, was my only companion. Blissfully silent and quickly disappearing—the only evidence I’d ever been here at all.

It wasn’t until I pushed through the external doors and inhaled that first deep, chilled lungful of frozen air that I felt like I could actually breathe again. The ice needling my senses was invigorating—exactly what I needed after a night of no sleep. Of tossing and turning and thinking and overthinking. Of growing more irritable with every sleepless second that passed.

“Couldn’t sleep either, huh?” A deep voice rumbled from behind me, so close and unexpected that I yelped.

And I would have fallen ass-first into the fresh, powdery snow, too—if not for the very large hand that snapped out to halt my descent.

“Get your fucking hands off me!” I yelled, shoving him backwards—though the oaf may as well have been hewn from granite for all the good it did me.

“You’d be dealing with a wet backside if not for me,” Beckett answered, bewildered.

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” I snarled. “I’m as dry as the Sahara around you. And that’s the last time you’re ever going to be thinking about my backside.”

Spinning on my heel, I took off in the general direction of away-from-Hunter-fucking-Beckett.

“Sinclair, stop,” he rumbled, snagging my wrist.

I snatched it back, changing direction again because I had an ogre on my tail, clinging to it like an unwanted shadow.

“Adelaide—wait!”

This time he stepped in front of my wayward path, forcing me to pull up short lest I slam into him again.

“Move,” I growled, voice as cutting as any knife, ignoring the way his stupid mouth uttered my name.

“No.”

“Move!” I tried shoving him again.

I failed again.

Which prompted a stupid smirk to appear on his stupid face.

“Not until you hear me out.” Beckett crossed his arms over his chest.