Chapter Seven

Chapter 7:

The Hunt Begins

The morning of the Hunt dawned blood-red.

I hadn't slept. How could I, after everything Zephyr had revealed? The leather book lay hidden under my mattress, its secrets burning through my mind like acid. Moonsinger. The word echoed with every heartbeat, foreign yet familiar, like remembering a dream upon waking.

Sophie was already up, practically vibrating with nervous energy. "Today's the day," she said, her voice pitched higher than usual. "Are you ready?"

"As ready as anyone can be for being hunted by werewolves."

She laughed, but it came out shaky. "At least we'll be together. Safety in numbers, right?"

I wanted to tell her the truth—that there was no safety here, that we were all pawns in a game we didn't understand. But looking at her hopeful face, I couldn't. Let her have this morning of ignorance. Reality would crush her soon enough.

Breakfast was a tense affair. The dining hall buzzed with anticipation and fear in equal measure. The werewolf students looked relaxed, almost bored, while the humans clustered together like sheep sensing wolves.

Which, I supposed, we were.

Headmaster Thorne stood at the front of the hall, his presence commanding instant silence. "Tonight, when the moon rises full, the Hunt begins. Rules are simple: humans run, werewolves chase. You have from moonrise to sunrise. If you're caught, you're claimed for the remainder of the year. If you evade capture, you earn your freedom to choose your own partner for projects and social events."

A murmur ran through the human students. Freedom to choose—it was more than any of us had been offered since arriving.

"The boundaries are the entire academy grounds, including the Forbidden Forest," Thorne continued. "Violence resulting in permanent injury or death is prohibited. Everything else..." his smile was sharp, "is fair game."

My eyes found Zephyr across the hall. He was watching me, expression unreadable. Beside him, Kaine looked like a cat anticipating a particularly amusing mouse chase. The twins flanked them, mirror images of deadly grace.

"You'll have a one-hour head start," Thorne added. "Use it wisely. Dismissed."

The hall erupted into chaos. Humans scrambled to form groups, plan strategies, find hiding spots. I stood to follow Sophie, but a hand on my arm stopped me.

Professor Blackwood stood beside me, her expression grave. "A word, Miss Blackstone."

She led me to a quiet corner, casting what looked like a privacy ward around us—the air shimmered, and suddenly the noise of the hall became muffled.

"I know what you are," she said without preamble.

My heart stopped. "I don't—"

"Your grandmother contacted me before she died. She knew this day would come." Blackwood pulled out a small vial filled with silver liquid. "Moonsbane. It will mask your scent completely for three hours. After that..." she shrugged. "You're on your own."

"Why are you helping me?"

"Because the world needs balance. Because the princes need to be challenged. Because—" she paused, her eyes flickering to something behind me, "because some of us remember what it was like when Moonsingers kept the peace."

She pressed the vial into my hand and dropped the ward. "Choose wisely, child. Tonight changes everything."

She walked away, leaving me standing there with what felt like liquid lightning in my palm.

"Aria!" Sophie called. "Come on, we're making a plan!"

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Sophie had gathered a group of five humans, and they spent hours mapping out hiding spots, discussing strategies. I participated, but my mind was elsewhere, on silver eyes and forgotten bloodlines and the vial burning a hole in my pocket.

As the sun began to set, we were herded to the main courtyard. The werewolf students had disappeared—presumably to prepare for their hunt. We stood in nervous clusters, watching the sky darken from blue to purple to black.

The moon rose like a silver eye opening.

"Run," Thorne's voice echoed across the grounds.

We ran.

Sophie grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the plan we'd made—a hidden room in the library's basement. But as we ran, something in me resisted. The book had said the Hunt would awaken what slept within. Hiding wouldn't do that.

"Go," I told Sophie, pulling free. "I'll catch up."

"Aria, no! We stick together!"

"Trust me. Go!"

She hesitated, then nodded, disappearing into the shadows with the others.

I stood alone in the courtyard, listening. In the distance, howls began to rise—beautiful and terrible, promising chase and capture. My blood sang in response, something wild and ancient stirring in my chest.

I uncorked the vial and drank it in one swallow.

The effect was immediate. My scent—whatever it had been—vanished. But more than that, my senses sharpened. I could hear heartbeats from hundreds of yards away, smell fear and excitement on the wind, see in the darkness as if it were daylight.

The Hunt had begun, and I wasn't going to hide.

I was going to hunt the hunters.

I made my way to the Forbidden Forest, my footsteps silent on the frost-covered ground. The trees here were ancient, their branches forming a canopy so thick that even moonlight struggled to penetrate. This was werewolf territory, where their power was strongest.

Perfect.

The first werewolf I encountered was a lesser beta, probably a third-year student. He passed within feet of me, nose twitching, but the Moonsbane held. He never sensed me following him.

I watched him track another human—a boy I recognized from my Medieval Literature class. The boy was hiding poorly behind a tree, his breathing too loud, his fear-scent probably visible from miles away.

The werewolf pounced.

I moved without thinking.

My body flowed like water, like shadow, like something that had always known how to move this way. I struck the werewolf's pressure points—points I shouldn't have known existed—and he collapsed, paralyzed but unharmed.

The human boy stared at me in shock.

"Run," I told him. "And tell no one."

He fled.

The werewolf at my feet glared up at me, unable to move but fully conscious. "What are you?" he gasped.

"I don't know yet."

I left him there—the paralysis would wear off in an hour—and continued deeper into the forest.

I found three more werewolves hunting humans. Each time, I intervened. Not to save the humans, exactly, but to test myself. To see what I could do. My body moved with inhuman grace, my strength far beyond what it should be, and something else—something that let me predict their movements before they made them.

The Sight, the book had called it.

Two hours in, the game changed.

I felt him before I saw him—Kaine, moving through the forest like death itself. He'd caught the scent of something wrong, the pattern of fallen hunters leading him straight to me.

But the Moonsbane still held. He couldn't smell me.

I watched from the shadows as he examined one of the paralyzed werewolves, his expression growing darker with each discovery. He pulled out his phone, speaking in rapid werewolf tongue that I somehow understood:

"Someone's hunting us. Not hiding—hunting. Find them."

The real Hunt had begun.

I should have been terrified. Instead, I felt alive.

I moved through the forest like I was born to it, avoiding the searching werewolves, occasionally "helping" a human escape just to confuse the trail. But I knew my time was running out. The Moonsbane would fade soon, and when it did...

"Impressive."

I spun to find Zephyr leaning against a tree, arms crossed, watching me with those honeyed eyes.

"Though I have to ask," he continued, "did you really think we wouldn't notice the pattern? Seven werewolves down, all struck in the same precise manner, all found along a very specific route through our territory?"

"How long have you been following me?"

"Since you entered the forest. The Moonsbane masks scent, not sound or heat. And you, little mystery, burn very bright to those who know how to look."

He pushed off the tree, moving closer. I tensed, ready to fight or run, but he held up his hands in peace.

"I'm not here to catch you. Not yet. I'm here to warn you."

"About what?"

"The twins have decided you're too interesting to leave alone. They're coming, and they're bringing friends. Whatever you are, whatever you're hiding, it won't matter if they catch you."

"Why warn me?"

His smile was sharp and sad. "Because I recognize a fellow predator playing prey. And because the game is more interesting if you survive the night."

A howl split the air—close, too close. Then another, and another. They were surrounding us.

"Three minutes until the Moonsbane wears off," Zephyr said, though I hadn't told him about it. "After that, every werewolf in a ten-mile radius will smell what you really are. So tell me, Aria Blackstone, what's your next move?"

I looked at him, this beautiful, dangerous prince who held my secrets in his hands. Then I smiled, feeling something wild and ancient fully wake within me.

"I'm going to show them exactly what Moonsingers were capable of."

His eyes widened—the first time I'd seen him genuinely surprised. "That's impossible. You can't—"

The Moonsbane wore off.

The world exploded into sensation. Every scent, every sound, every movement for miles around crashed into my awareness. And with it came the power—raw, untamed, singing through my veins like liquid moonlight.

The werewolves burst through the trees—six of them, including the twins. They skidded to a halt when they saw me, when they smelled me.

"Impossible," one of the twins breathed.

"Hello, boys," I said, my voice carrying a resonance it had never held before. "Want to play?"

The moon above pulsed, and I felt its call in my bones. Not the forced change of werewolves, but something older, purer. The power to choose my form, to be human or wolf or something in between.

The Hunt had awakened me.

Now it was time to show them why Moonsingers had once been feared by both races.

The real game was about to begin.