An Unauthorized Field Guide to the Hunt Read Free Page A

his feet promising blisters he’d been too rushed to check at the pond. Exhaustion weighed him down. Willing his body to relax, he closed his eyes.
    They popped wide at the distant rustle of branches in the tree canopy overhead.
    Just birds.
    The arena was full of them, not to mention the millions of small animals he’d spotted as well as the tracks they’d left in damper soils. Shane had camped in the Badlands enough to understand jumping at every sound would result in a restless night that robbed his body of sorely needed sleep.
    He’d never been hunted, though. Not like this. The whisper of leaves and every scrape of phantom twigs set his heart to pounding. The cats weren’t on his trail yet. Shane had been smart, conservative, devotedly applying the tips he’d learned at the screening center. Why would the cats go after him when much more entertaining targets like the Nambians were so thick on the ground? He’d never followed reports or betted on the Hunt because the violence of the chase spooked him, but even he knew the first days were dominated by sexual gluttony. The real Hunt started days from now when the cats grew weary of mindless fucking. Once the fog of arousal faded, and the cats had spent their lust on the most readily available prey, only then did the cats play.
    Shane trembled anyway, fear growing as the black of night swallowed him whole. If he lifted his hand to his eyes, he wouldn’t see his fingers. Not in the arena. Maybe not anywhere on Mariket. The tree canopy blocked the glow of the Seskeran moon and smothered starlight. With his eyes deprived of information, his sense of hearing sharpened. His stomach clenched at the faintest, most innocuous sounds.
    No cats were here. That scratch to his far left was twigs rubbing in the breeze, not claws skittering over tree trunks and limbs. He was safe.
    He shivered, though, because he didn’t feel safe.
    He felt like he was being watched.
    Cats were unlikely to be nearby, but wardens were rarely far. Nothing mattered to them except orchestrating the most productive Hunt that would attract more competitors for the next mating cycle. They couldn’t physically touch Shane. Hunt rules forbade that, but they could steer cats and competitors in any direction they wanted. Toward safety. Or danger.
    Making an enemy of the wardens by vanishing had been a colossally dumb idea.
    When he jerked in his sleeping bag at the chirp of an insect near his cheek, he disturbed the thicket. Shane silently cursed. His competitors and the cats wouldn’t need to go to the effort of hunting him. Shane’s nervous stupidity was as good as a clarion alarm. At least the cats were too busy fucking Nambians to press the advantage of his embarrassing lapse, and he had this first night to correct his mistakes.
    Although he’d been right about the bush concealing him, it wasn’t the best choice for shelter. Nearby wardens would drag him out and into the open. Darkness increased his claustrophobic paranoia, and the sensation of being trapped in the brush made him too jumpy, tricked him into small nervous tells that pinpointed his location anyway. If he sat and leaned against the tree near the tangle of briars instead, where he could use some of the prickly branches as cover, he would be partially exposed to the night, but steadier. Less prone to anxious twitches. He’d also pacify wardens disgruntled with him for disappearing.
    He might even manage some rest.
    He just needed to slither from the thicket without alerting the entire arena. Since moving quietly at night was a skill he must master to succeed in the Hunt, he might as well start practicing while the cats enjoyed their whores elsewhere.
    First step?
    Lowering the zipper of his sleeping bag, and to do that without noise revealing his presence, he must move the fastener down the teeth of the zip one by one. Slowly. Glacially. To ensure panic didn’t rush him, Shane counted his heartbeats between each incremental descent.