Page 19 of The Hunt

“I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you just enough to make you understand,” Rhett said. “And this stays between us, okay?”

“Got it.”

He gave me a hard look. “I’m serious. You can’t tell anyone. Especially not your roommate.”

“Tessa?”

“Yeah. She has a bit of a reputation,” he said. “Nice girl, but she has a big mouth.”

I wondered how he knew who my roommate was. Did someone simply happen to mention it to him during a conversation? Or had he been checking up on me?

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Fine. I promise I won’t breathe a single word.”

“Good girl,” he said, lips quirking in the tiniest of smirks. The dark, commanding tone of his voice coupled with his choice of words made my pulse spike, but I managed to keep my cool as he went on. “I’m sure you’ve already been told that I’m a member of The Wild Hunt.”

“Yes.” I raised a brow. “Are you about to spill all the society secrets to me?”

“You wish,” he replied, still smirking as he rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “Anyway, Ryan Gardner—the guy from the tunnel—was a member like me. Key word:was.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“Basically, the way it works is: you get initiated in freshman year, go through training and trials, and then in the summer before senior year, you have your final trial. If and when you pass that, you become a full-fledged member, and you gain access to the encrypted society files.”

“So you’ve just become a full-fledged member, then?”

“Yeah. About three months ago. Ryan passed too, which surprised everyone, because no one thought he’d make it throughanyof the trials, given what a fucking pussy he is.”

“What exactly happens in these trials?”

“I can’t tell you that that part. We’re sworn to secrecy. But the point is: Ryan had full access to all the society secrets.” Rhett’s jaw tightened. “Anyway, The Wild Hunt only has male members, but we have both men and women working for us in various capacities. Like event planning, admin, and so on. One of those women is named Lila. She’s like a secretary, I guess. Sends out the meeting invites, and so on.”

“Right.”

“Ryan asked Lila out after the last trial. She wasn’t interested. But he doesn’t like to hear the word no. So he decided to go with blackmail as his next move.”

My brows rose. “Blackmail?”

Rhett nodded, eyes flashing with malice. “He told her he was going to leak all the society information online. Make it look like it came fromher.Even though she’s not a member, she’s still around us a lot, so it makes sense that she’d know some stuff.”

“Let me guess,” I said in a low voice. “He said he wouldn’t do it, but only if she slept with him?”

“Yup. She was scared of retribution from the Wilders, so she felt like she had to fuck him to stop him from doing it.”

“That’s coercion.”

“No shit. He basically forced her to fuck him even though she didn’t want to. So he might not be the same as some asshole who drags a woman into an alleyway and holds a knife to her throat, but the way I see it, he’s barely half a step away.”

I nodded slowly. Perhaps Rhett had some morals after all. “Yeah, I agree,” I said. “It’s horrible.”

“We only found out because one of the members heard her crying in the bathroom at the last meeting,” he went on. “She refused to say anything at first, because she was so fucking scared. She thought we wouldn’t believe her.”

I didn’t blame her for that. All-male organizations had reputations for closing ranks around members to protect them. The poor woman was probably terrified.

“But you did?” I asked, brows rising.

“A few of us did. But some of the older members didn’t,” Rhett said. “So she was given a chance to prove it. We gave her a bug and told her to meet with him and say no to his demands. With that bug, she was able to get a recording of him spewing all the bullshit about leaking the secrets.”

“I’m guessing he’s no longer a member, then?”

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