The Lunar Crest Academy: Marked by The Lycans
Chapter 54: The Hunt

Chapter 54: Chapter 54: The Hunt

Lorraine’s POV

It’s been two days since the Lycan dorm incident.

Two days since I flung myself out a second-story window and shattered what little strength my body had left.

Two days since Adrian bled for me.....and then he left without a word.

I haven’t seen him since. Not even a glance.

The moment we made it out of the Lycan dorm that day, bruised and half-dead, he walked away. Just like that.

No goodbye.

No "Are you okay?"

Just silence.

Maybe it was because I reminded him of Aveline. Maybe he saw her death playing all over again through me, and he couldn’t bear to look. I understood it. I didn’t blame him.

This morning, I took a bath, if I could even call it that. The water was cold, and every inch of my skin burned like fire. My bruises were still angry purple and sickly green, slowly healing at the pace of a dying snail. My wolf was dormant. Silent. Always silent. And without her, I healed like a fragile human child.

There was no chance of visiting the hospital. Not when we obviously can notafford it.

We had no lunars left.

The last handful we scraped together went into raw food, bare necessities that barely last us the week. We were surviving on instinct and desperation

A week left until the month ends.

A week left to keep breathing.

A week left to endure, before we were give new lunars again for the next month.

Felix, Elise, and I, we were doing better than most of the others. That wasn’t saying much. Yesterday, one of the feral girls collapsed in her room. Died. No announcement, no mourning, not even a proper burial. She starved to death. Her eyes were open when they found her, like she’d been waiting for someone to come help.

Astrid didn’t even flinch.

Just another feral down. Another bed freed. Everything was perfectly normal here.

I slipped into my purple-collared uniform with Elise helping me fasten the buttons. The fabric pressed against my tender skin like sandpaper, but I gritted my teeth through it.

"You ready?" Elise asked softly.

"Does it matter?" I replied, pulling my sleeves down.

We stepped out of the room and found Felix already waiting in the common area, arms crossed, his hair a mess but his eyes alert.

"Today’s the big day," he said.

I raised an eyebrow.

"Hunting class," he clarified grimly.

Ah, right. That.

A special "practical" session. One the entire academy had been murmuring about for days. All the students from every dorm were going to be released into the academy’s vast outer grounds. A sprawling, forested terrain beyond the main walls.

Each dorm was a team. And the hunt had one objective: don’t get caught.

We were hunting each other.

Every student was both predator and prey.

Whichever dorm had their students caught most by the end of the class would lose a brutal fifty points. For us ferals with only forty dorm points left, that kind of loss would mean we’ll have to start vacating our dorm and wander around the academy with no accommodation making it easier for us to be preyed upon.

They were throwing us into the woods like game animals.

And we weren’t even armed.

"I don’t like this," Elise whispered, her voice tight with fear.

"Neither do I," I said.

But it didn’t matter what we liked. We had no say. Not here.

Not in Lunar Crest.

As we walked toward the courtyard, I tightened my fists. The bruises on my knuckles ached from the effort. The air outside was cool, the sun filtered through tall, black-barked trees that loomed around the edges of the academy grounds like sentinels. Students were already gathering. Elites dressed in blue collared uniform. Nobles in green. Lycans in red. Us, in purple.

Target practice.

My heart beat faster, but I forced myself to breathe. One step at a time.

No matter what happened today..... none of us were dying.

Not Elise. Not Felix.

Not me.

The moment we stepped through the towering iron gates and into the hunting grounds, my chest tightened.

Trees stretched for miles, thick, ancient, and unforgiving. The academy’s outer terrain looked more like a battlefield than a schoolyard. Vines twisted around jagged roots, the air damp and sharp with the scent of earth and blood. Yes... blood. This place had seen more death than sunlight.

All the students were gathered here now, divided by dorm colors like pawns on a game board.

But we ferals, we stood out like bruises on pale skin.

Professor Alaric Cain was already there, waiting by the stone platform erected at the edge of the forest like a gallows. He was our Combat and Strategy teacher, a man built like a warrior. No one dared cross him.

The murmuring faded as he raised one gloved hand.

"Silence."

There was instant obedience.

He scanned us with the kind of look that measured our value, not our presence. Like we were weapons.... or waste.

"This is not a game," he began, voice booming across the clearing. "This is not practice. This is real. You’ve spent the last few weeks learning tracking, stealth, and close-quarters combat. Today, we see what you’ve learned..... or if you’ll die trying"

I swallowed hard.

He paced along the platform.

"You are to hunt students from other dorms. When you capture someone, you bring them back here."

He paused, and then smiled, but it wasn’t kind.

"Dead.... or alive."

My breath caught in my throat. What?

The words echoed like a death sentence.

"Dead casualties happen frequently," he added casually, like he was announcing the lunch menu. "And they are perfectly acceptable. Expected, even."

Gasps rose from the nobles. Some elites smirked. The Lycans didn’t even flinch. And we.... we ferals stood frozen in horror.

"This academy does not tolerate weakness," Alaric continued, gaze slicing through us. "You are expected to survive. Period."

Felix shifted beside me, his jaw tightening. Elise grabbed my hand, trembling.

I couldn’t move. My heart was racing, my skin burning despite the cold.

"This hunt is not about finding a winner," Alaric said, his voice low and venomous now. "It is about finding a loser. The hunt will last for three hours and the dorm with the highest number of captured students at the end of the hunt, will lose fifty points."

He turned and walked back to his position.

"We will give everyone a ten minutes headstart, disperse into the forest, decide on your strategies and when you hear the siren, you know the hunt has started. So your ten minutes headstart, starts now! "

The command hadn’t even fully left his mouth when students began shifting, stretching, scenting the air like wild beasts.

But then..... I saw her.

Standing just beyond the clearing, cloaked in shadows beneath the branches of a dying ash tree.

Astrid Voss.

Her arms were crossed, her red lips curled in amusement as she watched the chaos unfold from a distance.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t part of the teaching staff for this class.

She was just.... watching.

Like a vulture.

Her eyes found mine.

I didn’t look away.

No, I couldn’t look away. Because suddenly, everything in me knew, this wasn’t just a hunt.

This could be my execution.

And Astrid was here to witness it.

Or worse...

Ensure it.