Page 39 of The Chosen Fae

"How will we know if it has piglets?" Iris asked.

"They will stick by her side. You might not know if a female is pregnant. It would be safer to choose a bull boar. Also, no young ones or older ones. You must find one that is suitable for a feast and to show your prowess."

Neither Stone nor Rune had ever taken down a boar. He hoped they could manage this task. They would all have to stick together because getting skewered by a boar's tusks was deadly.

"If you accomplish this mission, you will have a pork feast afterward. Beware of the boar's tusks though. They have killed several fae over the years. You'll be transported to Darkland Forest after you've gathered whatever you need."

They headed to their rooms. Silas said to Stone, "Have you ever taken down a boar?"

"By myself? No."

Silas laughed. "Okay, dumb question."

"What about you with your pack mates?"

"With older pack mates. Sure. It was a rite of passage. But this time we're on our own." Silas got his weapon.

Stone grabbed his backpack. He always had his sword with him because of the trouble he had with Vesper. He hoped he would be all right on a boar hunt. He really didn't know what to expect or how everyone from the two different packs would work together.

"We need to work together," Stone said.

"I agree, though I don't know about the other pack or even if my own will work together all that well."

"We have to learn to do it on missions like this."

"Yeah. So you sat with Rune this morning."

"You were right. It's time we were seeing each other as more than just lone wolves."

"You're lucky."

"Why's that?"

"None of us are seeing anyone else. We're all family in the pack, so we can't have a relationship with our own members unless someone new joins us. And we can't develop feelings for anyone in the other pack."

"That's a shame. There are a lot to choose from, I'm sure."

"Yeah, that's true. For you and Rune, you don't have much of a choice if you want someone more like yourselves."

"We always have a choice."

Then they left the room and headed to the great hall, where they were taken to Darkland Forest.

When they finally arrived there, it looked like any other forest, Stone thought. No darker than the others. But he didn't like the idea that they might find traps that could hurt any one of them.

Then they spread out as they had in the Phantom Fae forest before they tried to cross No Man's Land.

If they walked in a straight line like this, they might find traps and mark them, but if no one was following them, it wouldn't do much to warn others of the danger. On the other hand, if they caught sight of a boar, they would all tear off to take it down, and then they wouldn't be in a horizontal line any longer.

Rune found a leg trap and set it off with a stick. It clanked; the trap disarmed. Stone thought that was a better way to “mark” a trap like that: set it off so it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Then he saw a string in front of his feet, and he moved away from it and threw a rock at it. Nothing happened. He threw another rock, and this time it moved the string. Immediately, a log flew through the air at whoever should have tripped the string.

He wondered who had set these traps. He hoped everyone was looking for them also, and wouldn’t be hurt by them.

Then he headed out to look for the boar again, but stayed cautious about the traps.

They had walked for maybe a mile when Iris shouted, “I see one.”

Several of the fae ran for the boar, but Rune and Stone did not. They kept looking for a boar, hoping they would find one that was suitable for the hunt, just in case the one Iris found wasn’t.