CHAPTER 4: First Attack

Senna’s POV

They came on the second morning, exactly when I said they would.

There were six of them, breaking the tree line below the ridge in a loose arrowhead. They weren’t hunting; they were displaying. The one in front was older than most of us, mid-twenties maybe. He had a fighter's stillness and a wolf already pacing behind his eyes. He stopped just outside bowshot. He knew exactly where bowshot was.

That told me all I needed to know.

"The ridge is a good spot," he called up. His tone was conversational. "I hate to see it wasted on just three people."

"Then don't look," I quipped. I had got an arrow knocked but not drawn. "There’s plenty of island. Go find some of your own piece."

"Well, the thing is, I've seen the rest of it." He spread his hands, trying to look like a reasonable man. He wasn’t. "You fold in with us, you keep the ridge. You keep breathing. That's the offer."

So he’d come to make a deal.

"Pass." I didn’t even have to think about it. There was no way I was joining up with him.

"You haven't heard the other option," he chuckled sardonically.

"I don't need to." I narrowed my eyes. Behind me I could feel Thor shift his weight. Kulos was holding his breath. "You've got six. But I've got high ground and forty arrows. Do the math. Walk away. I’m not asking."

He looked at me for a long moment. Really looked. Then he laughed, short and surprised, like he'd found money in a couch cushion.

"I'm Korrigan," he said. "Sector 2. So now you know the name of the man who’s going to kill you."

"Senna. Sector Six. And I wouldn’t bank on that."

He flicked his hand at me in mock salute. His pack peeled off after him, all but one. A small, scrawny boy at the back lingered a moment too long, staring up at our overhang like he was trying to decide its worth.

I drew my bow, aimed, and put an arrow into the tree trunk six inches left of his ear. It slammed into the tree and his face contorted into a shocked expression.

He left too, fast, catching up with the rest of the pack.

Thor let out a long exhale. "Forty arrows?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

"So I lied." I shrugged, retrieving the arrow from the tree. "Isn’t that what we do here? Lie?"

Thor nodded, but I could tell he was uncomfortable. Korrigan’s threat had rattled us all. He’d found himself a pack, collecting the strongest of the participants. Or at the least the most the loyal.

I’d scared him off, but it was only a matter of time before we came face to face again.

We stayed on our ridge, doing our best to fortify it, knowing it was a good location. It was roughly midday when a girl called out to us.

She came up the stream bed on her hands and knees. She was in rough shape, with blood streaming down one leg from a fresh gash on her leg. She wasn’t crying. She was past crying. Her eyes were wide and terrified. She crawled up onto the edge of our ridge and looked up at me. Thor and Kulos stood behind me.

 "Please," she whispered.

"Senna," Thor said, in a tone that meant ‘don't’.

But I was already moving.

It was a feral bite, ragged and deep. The edges had already turned a bad color, a deep blue with an outer yellow tinge.

“It’s okay,” I said softly to her. She trembled as I scooped clean water from the stream and dripped it over the wound. Then I packed the wound with moss and tied it off with a strip from my own shirt. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do. She watched my hands the entire time, completely silent.

Up close, I could see that she was younger than I initially thought. Fourteen maybe? Fifteen at best.

"Can you walk on it?" I asked.

She tried to stand up, testing it. Then she nodded.

"Okay, good. Find a tree. Climb it. Stay up high while you recover.”

She couldn’t stay with us. It was one thing to help her. It was another thing entirely to bring here into our group. We didn’t know anything about her.

She went two steps, her head hung low.

But then she turned around, fast. Faster than I could process.

And before I knew what was happening, the little Capital-issue knife was in my thigh. I gasped. She started scrambling backward down the stream, with my pack in her hand, the knife held out in front of her.

“Don’t follow me,” she said, but her voice shook.  

Thor and Kulos rushed to my side. The wound in my leg felt like fire. Blood seeped from it, thick and red.

"Senna," Thor said, pressing his hands into the gash on my thigh.

I couldn’t  believe it. I’d help her. And the bitch had stabbed me?

Thor and Kulos helped me sit down while I examined the damage. It wasn’t good. The wound needed stitches. The knife had gone right through my quad muscle. It risked infection.

Within five minutes, though, a pack dropped out of the sky.

We watched it descend, a red canister on a chute. It drifted down through the canopy and landed only a few feet away from us. It was stamped with a crest, the same crest I’d seen at the estate the night we’d arrived at Wolfspine City.

Blue with a black wolf silhouette. It was the crest of House Moren.

Opening the canister, we found a first aid kit and a thick salve that numbed the skin.

"It’s a sponsor gift," Thor said slowly. "Someone in the Capital's watching you."

The thought of it made me sick. Those rich elite bastards watching us on flat screen TVs. Sending us gifts just to keep us alive a little longer, so the games would go on.

But…

The wound on my leg was  pretty bad. I wasn’t in a position to be proud.

So I opened the first aid kit and got to work on my leg.