Beautiful Lies (Breaking Belles #2) - Alta Hensley Page 0,26

calling the Costume Box. It was still sitting on the antique desk nestled against the wall by one of the huge windows.

“It’s the rules.” He walked over to the box, his back to me, then he brought it over to the bed and handed it to me. “This is it. You aren’t allowed to wear anything other than this cloak.”

I grabbed the box from him. Other than the cloak and the… uh, buttplug, it was empty. Completely empty. “What about shoes. Surely they’ll give me shoes at least.”

Sully hadn’t said much about what a “Fox Hunt” was—he himself didn’t know much, only rumors about what he and his friends had heard whispered in the halls of the Oleander—but he knew the gist. The “belle” was released on the grounds and the Order members, on horseback, completed a traditional Southern Fox Hunt. That was all he’d known. They caught the fox and “blooded” the fox to celebrate the win.

Yeah. I hadn’t known how the fuck to respond to that either.

Sully froze where he stood a moment, and, staring me straight in the eyes, a muscle in his jaw ticking, he said, “No. No shoes. Just what’s in the box.”

“So…” I said what he wouldn’t. “Barefoot. Those fuckers are gonna make me run around outside essentially naked and barefoot while they chase me?”

Another jaw flex. And then, “I’ll leave you to it.”

With that, he grabbed the rest of his hunting finery and disappeared back to the bathroom to dress. Ridiculous really, since we saw each other naked all the time. But if he was going to exhibit some manners, I wasn’t going to stop him.

I fingered the cloak, running my hand down the cracked, aged leather.

On the inside, it was nicer. It seemed like the inner silk lining had been replaced at some point in maybe the last twenty years.

Then I frowned. There was a little pocket on the inner lining, and it was slightly bulging.

I slid my hand inside and pulled out a small, cracked and crumpled piece of paper, brown around the edges.

A note.

I had to squint to make out the small script:

To the woman who wears this after me,

The leather is doused with fox scent.

Ditch it ASAP.

Get in the lake, wash.

Never stop running, dogs don’t.

Good places to hide:

Ridge at SE edge property - rocky, bad scent trail

Dry goods cellar

Places foxes get caught most:

Ravine N property line - water too shallow

Old Barn by lake

Open fields

I flipped it over and on the back was a crude property map, arrows pointing at the spots mentioned on the opposite side.

It was then that the reality of what I was about to go through actually for realsies hit. I mean, on the one hand it was ludicrous. The note read like elaborate rules to a children’s game. Good places for hide-and-seek.

Except what the invitation and Sully had failed to mention was what happened to me when I was inevitably caught beyond whatever the hell “blooding” was—which by the way I hoped was something ceremonial maybe involving red ribbons? And no, I wasn’t examining the naivete of that particular thought too hard, just holding on to it because I really, deeply hoped it was true.

But beyond the “blooding,” what happened next? Even if I was naive about what “blooding” might involve, I wasn’t stupid enough to not get that the little naked fox-assed belle who got run down and pinned by the Big Man was not going to get her brains fucked out by Said Conquering Male With The Obviously Biggest Penis Of All His Friends.

It was obvious.

To the victor went the spoils, right?

I’d always only be an object to these men. A trophy to be won. And shared.

Sully had already shown he didn’t mind sharing.

Oh God, I was going to be sick. I thought maybe things had been changing between Sully and me, but I’d always been a too-sentimental idiot.

What had happened to the woman who wrote the note?

There was nothing more about who she’d been, what had happened during her Fox Hunt, or if she’d gone on to get everything she ever wanted. Had she made it through the trials, and did the dreammakers grant her the biggest, most bestest shiniest dream life?

Whatever had happened to her, her experience with the Fox Hunt probably wasn’t good if she’d felt moved to leave this warning note, hoping to prepare the next girl better…

You could say your safe word, a dangerous little voice inside me whispered. Hightail it out of here before the insanity really