“So…” I said what he wouldn’t. “Barefoot. Those fuckers are gonna make me run around outside essentially naked and barefoot while they chase me?”
Another jaw flex. And then, “I’ll leave you to it.”
With that, he grabbed the rest of his hunting finery and disappeared back to the bathroom to dress. Ridiculous really, since we saw each other naked all the time. But if he was going to exhibit some manners, I wasn’t going to stop him.
I fingered the cloak, running my hand down the cracked, aged leather.
On the inside, it was nicer. It seemed like the inner silk lining had been replaced at some point in maybe the last twenty years.
Then I frowned. There was a little pocket on the inner lining, and it was slightly bulging.
I slid my hand inside and pulled out a small, cracked and crumpled piece of paper, brown around the edges.
A note.
I had to squint to make out the small script:
To the woman who wears this after me,
The leather is doused with fox scent.
Ditch it ASAP.
Get in the lake, wash.
Never stop running, dogs don’t.
Good places to hide:
Ridge at SE edge property - rocky, bad scent trail
Dry goods cellar
Places foxes get caught most:
Ravine N property line - water too shallow
Old Barn by lake
Open fields
I flipped it over and on the back was a crude property map, arrows pointing at the spots mentioned on the opposite side.
It was then that the reality of what I was about to go through actually for realsies hit. I mean, on the one hand it was ludicrous. The note read like elaborate rules to a children’s game. Good places for hide-and-seek.
Except what the invitation and Sully had failed to mention was what happened to me when I was inevitably caught beyond whatever the hell “blooding” was—which by the way I hoped was something ceremonial maybe involving red ribbons? And no, I wasn’t examining the naivete of that particular thought too hard, just holding on to it because I really, deeply hoped it was true.
But beyond the “blooding,” what happened next? Even if I was naive about what “blooding” might involve, I wasn’t stupid enough to not get that the little naked fox-assed belle who got run down and pinned by the Big Man was not going to get her brains fucked out by Said Conquering Male With The Obviously Biggest Penis Of All His Friends.
It was obvious.
To the victor went the spoils, right?
I’d always only be an object to these men. A trophy to be won. And shared.
Sully had already shown he didn’t mind sharing.
Oh God, I was going to be sick. I thought maybe things had been changing between Sully and me, but I’d always been a too-sentimental idiot.
What had happened to the woman who wrote the note?
There was nothing more about who she’d been, what had happened during her Fox Hunt, or if she’d gone on to get everything she ever wanted. Had she made it through the trials, and did the dreammakers grant her the biggest, most bestest shiniest dream life?
Whatever had happened to her, her experience with the Fox Hunt probably wasn’t good if she’d felt moved to leave this warning note, hoping to prepare the next girl better…
You could say your safe word, a dangerous little voice inside me whispered. Hightail it out of here before the insanity really began.
My sisters would understand.
If I explained even half of what had been asked of me here, neither Reba nor Tanya would fault me for leaving.
Especially Reba. Angel-hearted Reba, always wanting the best for everyone. She was the mediator, stepping in when things got too heated between LeAnn and Tanya, the two hotheads in the family.
No one could stay mad when Reba lifted her quiet voice and asked for us to listen to one another and stop fighting. But each of my sisters had superpowers like that.
Tanya was brash and brave and outspoken and a lot of days I wished I was more like her. Reba was the peacemaker and she’d mastered being fully content with her small, repetitive little life. LeAnn was the beauty—popular, and talented, too. She was the only one of us who could actually sing, in spite of being named for country singers.
My sisters were women who were going places.
But their futures depended on me not wimping out just because I had a little… humans-wanting-to-hunt-me-for-sport problem.
I wouldn’t leave them high and dry.
After all, I wasn’t my father.
Now I was sprinting for the lake. I was coming around from the back side, and in the dark, no one should be able to see me.
But I was close enough that, even though I really did believe they couldn’t see me and the men were just screaming out for shits and giggles—it was eerie as hell to see lights in the distance and hear voices calling out cheerily to: “Chase the bitch down! First to blood drinks free for a year!”