Chapter 16: Eyes Hunting Me in the Dark

I wrapped my arms around myself as I continued walking deeper into the forest, rubbing my hands over my shoulders in a hopeless attempt to fight the cold. The farther I moved away from Reign’s mansion, the more the darkness seemed to close around me, swallowing every clear shape and every familiar point that might have helped me determine where I was heading. At this point, I could no longer tell whether I was truly advancing toward freedom or simply circling inside a giant wilderness that looked endless from every side. Still, I forced my feet to keep moving because remaining in one place felt even more terrifying.

The faint glow from the fireflies that had surrounded the area where I landed was gone now, left somewhere far behind, and only thin traces of moonlight filtered weakly through the thick canopy above. My eyes had adjusted enough to make out the giant trunks of trees and the darker masses of bushes around me, but the ground remained unreliable. Sometimes my feet stepped on soft earth, sometimes on exposed roots, and more than once I nearly stumbled because I could not properly judge the uneven terrain. The jump from the terrace had already left my ankles throbbing, and the rough fall through branches earlier had scattered painful scratches across my skin. Each passing gust of wind found those scraped places and made them sting.

I exhaled slowly and tightened my hold around myself.

The forest was far too quiet.

That was the one thing I could not ignore no matter how much I tried to focus on escaping. A place this large should have been alive with sounds. There should have been insects, distant birds, small animals rustling through leaves, or at least some proof that life existed around me. Instead, there was only the soft stirring of leaves high above and the sound of my own shoes brushing against the ground. The silence was so complete that it felt deliberate, as though the entire forest had paused to watch me pass.

Even with that discomfort crawling under my skin, I could not deny that another feeling kept surfacing every few minutes.

Relief.

A ridiculous, almost hysterical relief.

I had escaped.

The thought still amazed me enough that a breathless laugh slipped from my mouth. Against all logic, against all fear, and against the better judgment of every functioning bone in my body, I had climbed over that terrace railing and thrown myself into darkness. I was no longer inside Reign’s gigantic polished prison where every maid bowed like a wind-up doll and every hallway looked expensive enough to make me afraid to breathe near the walls.

“Oh my God,” I whispered to myself, half laughing, half panting. “I actually escaped.”

For one brief moment I allowed myself to smile, though the pain in my feet quickly reminded me that this was not yet the time to celebrate like a victorious athlete. Freedom was still incomplete. I had only traded one danger for another, and the second one currently involved being lost in a freezing forest with no clue where the nearest road was.

My smile faded as thoughts of Reign inevitably returned.

Elliott had said Reign would be back after a week, but I still did not know if that man was trustworthy or if he simply enjoyed saying random things with that permanently unserious face of his. Even so, I found myself wondering whether Reign would truly bother searching for me once he realized I was gone. Part of me wanted to believe he would not. Men like him should have larger concerns than chasing one poor college girl who wanted nothing to do with his twisted world.

Unfortunately, that hopeful thought did not survive long.

A man did not spend that amount of money at an underground auction if he intended to forget the thing he bought.

I pressed my lips together as the memory returned with uncomfortable clarity. The stage. The chains. The masked men throwing outrageous numbers over my head while I stood there like a packaged item waiting for shipment. And above all of them, Reign’s calm baritone voice cutting through the bidding as if money itself was only a toy in his hands. The more I remembered it, the more certain I became that his reason for buying me was not something I wanted to stay around and discover.

I shook my head and focused on the forest again.

Then another thought crawled in.

Isaac.

I remembered asking Thraia about that name when Elliott had been called away. For a short while I genuinely thought Isaac was another prisoner under Reign’s authority, some unfortunate person hidden inside that oversized mansion. Instead, Thraia had calmly told me that Isaac was a Siberian Husky. She had not elaborated much, but the warning in her voice had been enough to make it clear that Isaac was not the harmless fluffy dog my imagination first tried to produce.

Now, alone in a silent forest large enough to hide anything, my mind began creating scenarios I did not appreciate. Isaac had escaped his cage on the same day I escaped the mansion, and with the absurd amount of land surrounding Reign’s property, it was not impossible for both of us to be wandering somewhere under the same darkness.

I slowed my pace and listened.

Nothing answered me except the wind moving through leaves.

I let out a shaky breath and mentally scolded myself. Elliott and those men had been searching since noon. Surely they had found the dog by now. There was no logical reason for me to imagine some runaway beast waiting behind every tree like an unpaid horror movie villain.

Still, logic was not doing much for my nerves.

By then I had been walking long enough for exhaustion to start settling heavily into my limbs. My feet alternated between throbbing pain and numbness, my stomach twisted from hunger, and my shoulders ached from constant tension. I had no watch, no phone, and no idea what time it was, but the darkness around me had deepened enough to make me certain that the night was far from ending.

I was just beginning to think that perhaps I should sit somewhere for a minute when a sharp cracking sound burst from behind me.

I stopped walking so abruptly that my breath caught.

At first I told myself it might have been a falling branch, but that weak explanation died the instant another sound followed it, closer this time, along with the unmistakable crushing of leaves under something moving with force. My fingers curled tightly against my own arms. I strained my ears, and the silence around me only made those approaching sounds clearer. Dry twigs snapped one after another. Bushes shifted. Whatever was behind me was not moving lightly, and it was certainly not something tiny enough to ignore.

Cold panic spread through my body.

I wanted to turn around, but fear locked every muscle in place. I stood there listening to that disturbance push nearer and nearer until the rustling suddenly changed into the heavy rhythm of something running.

My body reacted before my mind could.

I ran.

I bolted forward without caring where my feet landed, shoving past low branches and uneven roots while my lungs immediately began to burn. My injured ankles protested every step, but the pounding behind me kept coming, loud enough to convince me that whatever chased me was much faster and much larger than I wanted to imagine.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I muttered between ragged breaths as I forced myself onward.

The sounds behind me did not fade.

If anything, they grew closer.

Panic surged harder, making me reckless enough to throw a glance over my shoulder, and that single second of distraction cost me. My foot landed on nothing but empty air, and before I could understand what had happened, the ground beneath me vanished. I pitched forward and rolled violently down a hidden slope, my body slamming against rocks, roots, and hard earth while branches scratched across my skin. I could not stop myself. Gravity dragged me lower until I finally crashed at the bottom with enough force to knock every remaining bit of breath from my lungs.

I lay there groaning, dizzy and aching, trying to gather enough strength to move. My entire body felt bruised, and my legs throbbed so badly that I was no longer sure whether standing was still possible. As I slowly pushed myself upward, faint yellow lights began appearing around the hollow where I had fallen. Fireflies drifted lazily through the darkness, their soft glow spreading just enough brightness for me to see what stood several feet away.

A husky.

Its silver-gray fur caught the dim light, its ears stood alert, and its mouth was slightly open in a low growl that made my skin crawl. But it was the eyes that truly rooted me in place. The dog was staring at me with a hostility so focused that I suddenly understood why Thraia had sounded concerned when she mentioned his name.

I swallowed hard.

“That,” I whispered shakily, “does not look friendly.”