Page 27 of Beautiful Prey

“Doesn’t matter.” His arm presses harder, grinding me back against the bark. “You got his attention. That makes you worth more than the rest of us.”

Holding out his hand, he curls two fingers. “Come on, princess. Two purification tablets.”

“No. I need those.”

“Yeah? That’s too bad, because so do we.”

I look past him to the other two. “You know this is wrong. Help me, please.”

The tall one drops his eyes. The one with the knife keeps cleaning his nails.

“Nobody’s helping you here.” He is crushing the breath out of me now. “Now, be a good princess and pay the fucking price.”

I try to drag my pack around, fingers scrabbling for the buckle, but before I reach it, the taller one steps in, yanks it off my shoulder, and drops it into the mud. Tearing open the front pouch, he fishes out the purification tablets. “There. Told you he had them.”

I drag in a breath that doesn’t quite reach my lungs. “You... can’t...”

The big man pats my cheek. “Of course we can, princess.”

Plucking the tablets from the other man’s hand, he weighs them in his palm.

Two tablets. Two chances to drink.

Closing his fist around them, he gives my cheek another pat before taking his forearm off my throat. “There. Painless.”

I double over, coughing, one hand clamped to my neck as I drag air back into my lungs.

“Be seeing you, princess.” He kicks my bag deeper into the mud. The other two snort and follow him.

For a second, I’m eleven again, cornered because someone decided I was easy.

I’m so tired of being the one who has to fight back.

Just once, I want to know what happens when I don’t have to. What it feels like when someone else does it for me.

Before I know it, I’m moving. I hit him between the shoulders with everything I’ve got. He stumbles and curses before we go down together in the mud. His elbow catches my mouth. Mine finds his ribs. Someone shouts. Someone grabs for me and misses.

A visor catches the light uphill, and we all freeze.

Between the pines, the storm cloak hangs black against the trunks, mirrored glass turned toward us. Hands clasped behind his back, the Adjudicator simply watches.

“Shit.”

The big man stares too long.

Driving my elbow into his arm, I twist out of his grip, snatch my pack from the mud, and bolt through the gap between the other two before his shout finishes leaving him.

“GET HIM! Cut him fucking off! Go! Earn your food for once!”

The tall one doesn’t argue. He scrambles up the bank instead of following me, taking the high line to get ahead before disappearing into the pines. The big man crashes into the brush behind me.

I shove through branches and wet shrubs as fast as I can. A root catches my boot, and I land on one knee hard, groaning as I push myself back up.

“Down the drainage!” the big man bellows behind me. “Move!”

The streambed narrows between wet rocks, and when I come through, the tall one drops from the high bank ahead of me, landing in the gap with his knife already drawn.

There’s nowhere through. Nowhere out.