Page 77 of Moon Tamed

“Obviously.”

“Did your informant give you the hunt schedule?”

“No. I don’t even know which day it starts. Every time I asked your father, he laughed at me. He then told everyone not to tell me so I could be hunted to bring to the hunt.”

Calden’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry, Coraline, but I can’t tell you when the hunt is starting. I want to be the one to hunt you.”

Of course. While he did a decent job of hiding his competitive side, once he decided he was going to participate, he gave every challenge his all. “If you ask your father to babysit his grandbunnies, you could start your hunt in, say, an hour. An hour is enough time to go buy camping supplies, right? Quarantine has been lifted, so we can go hunt some of those mean rabbits. If I get some good skins, I get to buy more books.”

“I could be dastardly and hold your books hostage. You won’t be able to leave. If you do, you won’t be able to read your books.”

“I’m not sure I have enough reading material to run away for the weekend,” I confessed.

“There’s a bookstore next to my favorite camping supply store.”

As far as I was concerned, I’d located heaven and intended to visit it immediately. “Please take me to the bookstore.”

Calden laughed, got out his phone, and sent a text. “There. I told my father to take care of and play with my bunnies tonight, and that I was going to be out running some errands. There’s a clothing store we can go to, so we don’t need to head home first. I have my SUV with me today.”

“We can pretend you have used rope to secure a captive, and I’ll follow you around. I’m fine with this.”

Laughing, he shook his head. “You’d be the easiest person ever to kidnap. All I’d have to do is write ‘free books’ on the side of a van, and you’d just climb on in.”

“It’s true. I’d be easily lured to my death. I should be ashamed of this, but I’m not. You’ll have to help me pick clothes and camping supplies, though. I’ve never been camping before.”

He looked me in the eyes and said, “You might regret leaving your clothing choices in my hands, Coraline.”

“All important bits must be covered, and I don’t want to get sick again, so there must be warm clothing available.”

“That’s a reasonable request. Any other requests?”

“I want an Earth-style lantern.”

“Easily acquired. Anything else?”

“I’m going to need to get my sling.”

“Captives don’t have to work for dinner. Dinner is provided. But if you’d like to learn how to hunt with a bow, I will get you one and provide the arrows. There aren’t a lot of people hunting right now despite the lifted limits. We should have the entire weekend to read books without seeing anyone else.”

“Let’s get out of here before someone stops us.” If Calden’s father guessed what we were up to, he’d find some way to put an end to our fun. “Just no alcoholic beverages this time.”

“On that, we are agreed.”

Calden took me to the bookstore first, and he followed me around, snagging a collection of books at random and taking anything I showed interest in and adding it to the pile. In the accessories section, he bought two reading lights along with bookmarks, a couple of journals, pens, and writing accessories.

“How are we going to charge the lights?”

“We’ll use solar battery packs we’ll be buying at the camping store next. I’ll charge everything in the SUV on the way to the site, though, and in a jam, we’ll just visit the vehicle. We should be fine.”

“And the journals?”

“I like journaling the things I see and do while camping. I got enough you can do a journal, too. I collect leaves and things like that if I find them interesting and press them.” He shrugged. “They usually just turn brown and eventually crumble away, so I take pictures before trying and failing to keep dead leaves in my collection.”

“That’s interesting. I’ll give it a try. I have no idea what I’m doing, so I expect I will create chaos, but that seems like a fun thing to do.”

“I usually go through four or five journals a year. I just finished filling one, so it was time for a new one. Well, I have two pages left, but I can’t do a single camping trip on two pages, so they’ll stay blank.”

“And you have pencils to go with the pens?”

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