HUNTER'S PRIDE

The training yard's air clung to my skin like a second layer of sweat, thick with the iron tang of old blood and the musk of unwashed bodies. My boots sank into the packed earth with each step, the soles worn thin from years of pacing these same circles—circles that had become a cage long before I realized it. Above me, the Order's banner snapped in the wind, its crimson fabric stiff with starch, not blood. 

No one spoke of the initiates who had bled for their vows. No one *had* to. I'd been twelve when I'd watched my first Binding—the girl's palms sliced open over the altar, her blood dripping onto white stone as she recited the Litany of Severance. *I sever the flesh from desire. I sever the heart from hunger.* They'd made us watch as the Inquisitors collected her blood in silver bowls, watched as they painted it across her lips like a mockery of a kiss. She hadn't made a sound. Neither had I, even when my own turn came two years later, even when the blade bit deep enough that I still bore the pale lines across my palms.

The banner wasn't a reminder of sacrifice. It was a *threat*.

*Untouchable. Unbroken. The edge that cuts, not the flesh that bleeds.*

The words settled like a blade against my throat. I did not flinch. I never did.

The High Inquisitor stood at the center of the yard, his robes immaculate despite the dust swirling around his ankles. His hands were clasped behind his back, fingers laced so tightly the knuckles had bleached white. He didn't speak. He never did at first. The silence was part of the test—part of the game they played to see who would crack.

I stopped three paces away, my own hands loose at my sides, fingers curled just enough to hide the tremor in them. The Order's lessons had been drilled into me since I could walk: *Control is the only virtue. Desire is the first sin. The body is a weapon, not a plaything.* The words were iron scripture, carved into the marrow of my bones. They had never wavered before.

Until three months ago. Until the Blackwood.

I forced the memory down—the way the corrupted stag had pinned me against the oak, its impossible anatomy pressing against my thigh, the shameful slickness that had bloomed between my legs before I'd driven my blade through its throat. I'd told myself it was fear. I'd told myself it was adrenaline.

I'd told myself I hadn't touched myself that night in my cell, fingers working my clit until I bit through my lip to keep silent.

"Seraphine Veyne."

His voice cracked like a whip, sharp and precise. My pulse jumped in my throat, a traitorous flutter beneath my skin. I locked my jaw, but not before I caught it—the slight flare of his nostrils, the infinitesimal tightening around his eyes. He'd noticed the reaction. Of course he had. The Inquisitors noticed *everything*.

"For the hunt."

It wasn't a question. It was the only reason they ever called me.

The Inquisitor's gaze raked over me, slow and deliberate, like he was measuring the worth of a blade before the forge. His eyes lingered on the scars along my arms—the ones I'd earned in the wilds, the ones that told a story the Order pretended not to see. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped half an octave, rough in a way that made my skin prickle.

"Your mother completed the Hollow Court trial." A pause, weighted with something that might have been memory. "She returned... changed."

My breath caught. They never spoke of her. Never. Not in fourteen years.

His jaw worked, tendons standing out beneath papery skin. Then, quieter: "She lasted six months before the corruption took root. Before we had to—" He stopped himself, his throat bobbing with a swallow. For just a moment, his fingers trembled against his robes before he stilled them with visible effort.

He wanted me to fail. The realization hit like cold water. He wanted me to return *changed*, so he could justify whatever he'd done to her. So he could finally put down the daughter as he'd put down the mother.

My fingers twitched against the hilt of my sword—just once. A habit. A tell. I stilled them.

*Control is the only virtue.*

"The Hollow Court," he said, his voice restored to its usual clipped precision. "The reports speak of a new beast. One that doesn't just feed on flesh."

A cold finger traced down my spine. The Hollow Court was a place of whispers and wet sounds, where the air itself pulsed with the rhythm of fucking. I'd heard the stories—hunters who returned with their thighs sticky, their minds fractured, their bodies marked in ways that had nothing to do with blades. Hunters who *liked* it.

My stomach clenched. The Inquisitor's nostrils flared again, and I realized with cold horror that he could *smell* my fear. Or worse—my anticipation.

"You'll go alone," he said. "No reinforcements. No mercy."

I swallowed. The word *alone* echoed in my skull. No reinforcements. No mercy.

I lifted my chin. "I don't need either."

A lie. But the Order had been built on lies.

The Inquisitor's lips thinned. For a moment, I thought he might smile. But the Order didn't smile. Not at hunters. Not at women. Not at anything that bled.

"Prove it," he said.

---

The armory smelled of oil and steel, a cleaner scent than the rest of the Order's complex. I moved through it alone—they always sent hunters to collect their equipment alone, as if solitude might scour away any last weakness. My fingers trailed over familiar hilts, the leather wrappings worn smooth from other hands, other hunts.

I selected my blades with the efficiency of long practice. The longsword first, its edge sharp enough to split silk in midair. Two hunting knives for close work, their blades blackened to prevent reflection. The silver-chased dagger I wore at my thigh—mandatory for any hunt in corrupted territory, blessed by the Inquisitors in rituals I'd never been permitted to witness.

A sound made me turn. One of the younger initiates stood in the doorway, no more than fifteen, her eyes wide as they tracked my movements. I recognized that look. I'd worn it myself once, watching the senior hunters prepare, wondering if I'd ever be strong enough, skilled enough, *worthy* enough.

"You shouldn't be here," I said.

She flinched but didn't leave. "Is it true?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "That you killed a corrupted stag in single combat?"

I should have told her to leave. Should have reported her for violating the sanctity of preparation. Instead, I found myself answering. "Yes."

"Were you afraid?"

The question hung between us. I could give her the Order's answer—*fear is weakness, control is strength*. I could reinforce the doctrine that had been beaten into both of us.

"Yes," I said again. "And if you're smart, you'll be afraid too. Fear keeps you sharp."

Her brow furrowed, confusion warring with something like relief on her young face. I turned away before I could say anything else, before I could tell her that fear wasn't the worst thing I'd felt that day.

The gates of the Order closed behind me with a finality that resonated in my bones. I didn't look back. Looking back was weakness, and I couldn't afford weakness. Not now.

The city fell away as I walked, the cobblestones giving way to packed dirt, then to the wild grass that marked the boundary between civilization and the wilds. With each step, I felt the Order's grip loosening, the invisible weight of constant observation lifting from my shoulders. Out here, there were no Inquisitors watching for signs of corruption. No initiates measuring themselves against my example.

Out here, I was just a hunter.

The thought should have been liberating. Instead, it terrified me.

I made camp as the sun bled into the horizon, the sky turning the color of old bruises. The Hollow Court was still two days' travel, and I'd learned long ago that entering corrupted territory exhausted was a death sentence. I built my fire small and efficient, ate the dried meat and hard bread from my pack without tasting it.

When I rolled out my bedding, the loneliness hit like a physical blow. How many nights had I spent like this? How many hunts had I survived through skill and discipline and the certainty that the Order's teachings would keep me pure?

My hand moved before I could stop it, sliding beneath my shirt to cup my breast. The contact sent a shiver through me—when was the last time I'd been touched? When was the last time I'd touched myself, not in shameful secrecy but with actual intent?

The Blackwood. Three months ago. The memory of the stag's impossible heat against my thigh, the way my body had responded despite my horror—

I yanked my hand away, my breath coming too fast. My fingers drummed against my thigh in the meditation pattern the Order had taught me, the rhythm designed to center the mind and quiet the flesh. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, the familiar cadence usually soothing.

Tonight, it felt like a leash.

I lay awake for hours, watching the stars wheel overhead through gaps in the canopy, trying not to think about what awaited me in the Hollow Court. Trying not to remember my mother's face in the single portrait the Order hadn't destroyed—the way her eyes had held something wild and hungry even in paint.

*She returned... changed.*

What had changed her? What had the Hollow Court done that the Order's rituals couldn't scour away?

And why did part of me—small, shameful, undeniable—*want* to find out?

---

The forest swallowed me whole.

The moment I crossed the threshold of the wilds on the second day, the air changed. It was thicker here, heavier, like breathing through wet silk. The trees loomed, their bark blackened as if scorched from the inside, their branches twisting into shapes that made my stomach clench—curves that looked too much like spread thighs, knots that resembled parted lips mid-moan. The scent hit me first—iron and something *sweeter*, like copper and honey, like the inside of a throat after a scream. The ground beneath my boots was soft, spongy, giving way too easily, like flesh beneath a blade.

And the *sounds*—wet, slapping, the groan of wood bending under unseen weight, the high, keening whine of something in heat.

My skin prickled, the fine hairs on my arms standing on end. I kept my hand on the hilt of my sword, the leather wrap worn smooth from years of grip. The metal was cold against my palm, a reminder of what I was. A hunter. A blade. *Untouchable.*

But the deeper I went, the more the forest *breathed*. The damp *licked* at my skin, like a tongue. The air pressed against me, an invisible weight that made my chest tighten, my breath come faster. I told myself it was the cold. I told myself it was the damp.

I found the first sign an hour in—claw marks on an oak, the gouges deep and deliberate, arranged in a pattern that might have been random but felt *intentional*. The wood around the marks was darkened, not with sap but with something thicker. I touched it carefully, brought my fingers to my nose.

Musk. Sharp and animal and undeniably male.

My pussy clenched, and I hated myself for it.

I followed the trail deeper, marking the signs as I went. More claw marks, always at the same height, as if the creature wanted to be sure I knew how large it was. Patches of disturbed earth where something massive had crouched. And everywhere, that *scent*, growing stronger with each step until it seemed to coat the back of my throat.

A stream cut through the forest, the water running dark and oddly warm. I knelt beside it, meaning to refill my waterskin, and froze.

My reflection stared back at me from the surface. Except it wasn't quite my reflection. The woman in the water was naked, her skin flushed and gleaming with sweat, her thighs spread wide around an invisible lover. Her mouth was open in a silent scream of pleasure, her hands clutching at breasts I'd kept bound and hidden for years.

I jerked back, heart hammering. When I looked again, there was only my own face, pale and wide-eyed.

*Just the corruption playing tricks. Don't let it get in your head.*

But my hands shook as I filled the waterskin. And when I stood, I could have sworn I heard breathing that wasn't my own.

The trail led me in circles. I realized it after the third time I passed the same lightning-struck tree, its trunk split down the middle in a way that looked obscenely like parted flesh. He was toying with me. Leading me deeper, wearing down my defenses, making sure I was thoroughly lost before—

Before what?

A branch snapped behind me.

I spun, blade drawn in one fluid motion, the edge catching the dim light filtering through the canopy. Nothing. Just the trees, their trunks glistening with something that wasn't sap. My breath came faster, shallow, my chest rising and falling too quickly.

Another snap, this time to my left. I whirled, and thought I saw—something. A shadow that moved wrong, too fluid, too *aware*. I lunged, my blade biting into bark, and came away with nothing but splinters.

"Show yourself!" My voice echoed through the trees, swallowed almost immediately by the oppressive silence.

A whisper slithered against my ear—

*"Little hunter."*

I spun again, blade cutting air, but there was nothing. Only the trees. Only the *sound* of wet flesh, the groan of wood bending under unseen weight.

My heart was a war drum in my chest. This was wrong—I was better than this, trained better than this. I'd tracked corrupted beasts through terrain worse than this without losing my nerve. But something about the Hollow Court was different. Something about knowing I was *expected*, that this creature had been waiting for me specifically—

A whisper of displaced air was my only warning.

And then—

A hand, *cold*, closing around my wrist.

I reacted on instinct, twisting, driving my elbow back into what should have been a solar plexus. But my strike met only air. The grip on my wrist tightened, fingers digging into the tendons hard enough to make my hand go numb, and I felt my sword slip from nerveless fingers. My sword clattered to the ground. I was yanked backward, my boots skidding in the damp earth, and then I was pressed against something *hot*.

A body.

Not human. Not *anything* I'd ever felt before.

The beast behind me was massive, his chest a wall of muscle against my back, his breath scorching the shell of my ear. His skin was rough, ridged in places—not like armor, but like *scars*, like the inside of a mouth after a feeding. Textured and alien and *wrong* in ways that made my hindbrain scream even as my cunt clenched with traitorous heat.

His cock—*gods, his cock*—was already hard, the thick length of it pressing against the small of my back. I could feel every ridge along the shaft, the texture scraping against my leather armor even through the fabric. The head felt wider than any human's, flared and blunt, and it pulsed with a heat that seemed to seep through my clothing, burning against my skin. It *twitched*, as if it had a mind of its own, as if it *knew* what it wanted, and I felt slickness—his pre-cum, hot and copious, soaking through my armor until the leather darkened with it.

The wetness spread, and with it came a tingling warmth that sank into my skin like poison. Not painful, but *insistent*, a slow-building heat that made my back arch involuntarily.

"Little hunter."

His breath was hot against my ear, his voice a growl that vibrated through my bones. The sound of it bypassed my conscious mind entirely, heading straight for something primal and responsive low in my belly.

"Smell like fear."

I bared my teeth, tried to wrench my arm free. "Let. Me. Go."

His laugh was a dark, wet sound, his breath hitching as he inhaled deeply, his nose dragging along the side of my neck. The rasp of whatever-he-was against my skin made me shudder. His free hand slid down, rough and possessive, over my stomach, my hip, then—

Lower.

A wet sound. A groan that rumbled through his chest and into my back.

"There it is."

His cock twitched against my back again, thick and *hungry*, leaking more of that burning slickness.

"The truth of you."

My stomach dropped. My thighs pressed together—tight, too tight—but the heat was already building, a traitor fire spreading through my belly. I thrashed, throwing my weight forward, but his grip was iron. His other hand joined the first, both now sliding down, down, until his fingers—clawed, I realized with fresh horror, tipped with something sharp enough to part leather—found the waistband of my leathers.

He didn't ask. He didn't hesitate. He *took*.

The leather parted like silk beneath those claws, the sound of tearing fabric obscenely loud in the quiet of the forest. The cool air hit my bare skin first, a shock after the suffocating heat of the forest, after the burning pressure of his cock against my back. Then his fingers were there, rough and calloused and far too knowing, parting my folds with a possessiveness that made my knees weak.

No.

*No.*

But my body didn't listen. My cunt was already wet, slick with a need I hadn't given permission for, the evidence of my arousal coating my inner thighs. His fingers found my clit—already swollen, already *aching*—and circled it with his thumb, the rough pad of it creating friction that shot straight up my spine.

"So wet," he growled, and I could hear the smile in his voice, the dark satisfaction. "Such a good little cunt."

I should have fought. I should have screamed. But the sound that tore from my throat was something else entirely—a broken, needy thing, a whimper that turned into a moan as his fingers slid lower, two of them pressing inside me without warning.

"*Fuck,*" I hissed, my head falling back against his shoulder.

His fingers were thick, impossibly thick, and my cunt resisted for just a heartbeat—a moment of pressure, of my body trying to deny what it wanted—before yielding with a wet *squelch* that made my face burn with shame. I was so slick he met no resistance after that initial give, my walls clenching around him, rippling along his length, trying to pull him *deeper* even as my mind screamed at me to fight.

He groaned, the sound vibrating through his chest and into my back, and began to move. Long, slow strokes at first, pulling nearly all the way out before sinking back in, each thrust accompanied by the obscene *schlick* of my arousal. My hips bucked—once, twice—my body moving on its own, riding his fingers like I was starving for it.

The sounds were impossible to ignore. The slap of his palm against my soaked folds. The wet glide of his fingers sawing in and out of my cunt. My own ragged breathing, punctuated by whimpers I couldn't suppress. And under it all, his breathing, harsh and hungry, his cock still grinding against my back, still leaking that burning slickness that made my skin tingle everywhere it touched.

The beast chuckled, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, and I felt the scrape of teeth—too sharp, too many. "That's it. Take what you need."

I *hated* that I *needed* it. I *hated* that my body remembered what my mind refused to acknowledge—that this wasn't the first time I'd been wet for something inhuman, that the Blackwood had awakened something in me that the Order's disciplines couldn't suppress. His fingers curled inside me, hitting that spot deep inside that made my vision white out, made stars burst behind my eyelids, and I clenched around him, my cunt dripping, my thighs trembling so badly I would have collapsed if he wasn't holding me up.

I was not the hunter here.

I was the *prey*.

His fingers pumped into me faster now, brutal and relentless, his thumb never leaving my clit. Each circle of that rough pad sent fresh jolts of pleasure through me, building on the last, the sensation compounding until I couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything but *feel*. The pleasure built, coiling tight in my belly, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I could feel it—the edge, the fall, the moment when I would shatter.

"Come," he commanded, his voice a dark promise, and something about the *authority* in it, the absolute certainty that I would obey—

I did.

The orgasm hit me like a blade to the gut, sharp and sudden, stealing my breath. My back arched, my body locking up as my cunt seized around his fingers, clamping down in rhythmic spasms—three, four, five, I counted them helplessly—each contraction dragging a fresh gush of slick heat from my core. My thighs locked, muscles cramping with the force of it, and I felt the wet splash against my inner thigh as I gushed, the evidence of my surrender pooling in the dirt beneath me.

Wave after wave of pleasure crashed over me, each one ripping a broken cry from my throat. My vision grayed at the edges, my entire world narrowing to the stretch of his fingers inside me, the pressure on my clit, the impossible heat of his cock still grinding against my back. It went on and on, longer than any orgasm I'd ever given myself in shameful secrecy, until I was trembling, my legs barely holding me up, my voice hoarse from screaming.

When it finally crested and began to ebb, I was gasping, tears streaming down my face—from pleasure or shame, I couldn't tell. The beast's fingers slid out of me, slow and deliberate, and I whimpered at the loss, at the sudden emptiness. My cunt clenched around nothing, still fluttering with aftershocks.

He brought his fingers to his mouth—I heard the wet sound of him licking them clean, heard the groan of satisfaction that rumbled through his chest.

"Delicious," he murmured, and the word was almost reverent.

When I finally looked down, my thighs were streaked with my own slick, glistening in the dim light filtering through the canopy. The dirt between my knees was dark, wet—I'd come so hard I'd left a fucking puddle. The scent of it rose, heady and shameful, mixing with the forest's copper-honey stink until I couldn't tell where I ended and it began.

Then his hand closed around my throat—not crushing, but *possessive*—tilting my head back until I met his eyes.

Gold. Piercing. Unnatural. Pupils slit like a cat's, but the intelligence behind them was anything but animal.

"Next time, little hunter," he growled, his cock still hard against my back, still leaking, still *wanting*, "you'll *beg* for it."

He released me. I collapsed to my knees, gasping, my hands sinking into the wet earth—into the mud my own arousal had created. When I looked up, he was gone—nothing but the scent of musk and copper, and the wet heat still dripping down my thighs.

I didn't run.

I *should* have.

But I stayed on my knees, my chest heaving, my cunt still aching for more. My fingers sank deeper into the mud, and I realized I was gripping it like an anchor, like if I let go I might chase after him.

The mantra tried to surface—*Untouchable. Unbroken.*—but it crumbled in my throat, unspoken. The words were ash. The doctrine was lies.

And for the first time, the truth was undeniable.

Touchable.

Broken.

And *hungry* for more.