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I’ve reviewed hundreds of them. Hers was the first I read twice. Then five times. She had carefully considered every answer. Her boundaries were clear. Her desires were detailed without feeling rehearsed. But one sentence held me…

I want to feel hunted, but I also want to feel chosen.

I knew that kind of hunger. She wanted someone to pay enough attention to understand the difference between her genuine fear and the fear she wanted to explore. I could do that. I chose her ribbon before Dante finished reading. Callum had already taken one. That should have warned me.

On Halloween night, Sloane entered the maze wearing white. She looked at the three of us and smiled as if we were the answer to a question she had been afraid to ask. Then she ran. I counted every second before catching her. Eighty-three. When she bit my glove, I nearly laughed. When she answered green, something inside me settled.

When she surrendered, it wasn’t because I frightened her into obedience. It was because she trusted me to hold what she willingly offered. That trust means more than submission. It is the one thing I will never misuse. I can share her body with Dante and Callum. I can listen to her scream their names with pleasure. I can release her back into the maze because she asked for all three of us. But if either man forgets the rules—even for a second—the Reaper will remind them. Sloane may be our willing prey. She will never be our victim.

DANTE

THE DEVIL WHO LEARNED TO LAUGH

People hear me laugh and assume nothing has ever hurt me. That is the purpose of the laugh. I learned young that if I made people smile first, they were less likely to ask questions I didn’t want to answer. Why was I wearing the same shirt three days in a row? Why did I sleep through class? Why did my mother disappear for weeks before returning with promises she couldn’t keep?

I became entertaining because entertaining children were easier to forgive. Teachers forgave the unfinished homework. Friends’ parents forgave the extra place at their dinner tables. Girls forgave me for never allowing them close enough to discover that beneath all the charm was a boy already waiting to be abandoned. My mother loved me.

I believe that. She simply loved every new addiction, man, and disaster more. By seventeen, I stopped waiting for her to come home. By nineteen, I stopped having a home. I arrived at Blackwood Farm after stealing a plastic skeleton from the public attraction. It was a dare. A stupid one. Rhys caught me before I reached the parking lot. He didn’t shout. That would have been easier.

He stared at me with the exhausted disappointment of a man who had expected better despite never meeting me. Then Callum appeared from the corn holding an ax. The ax was real. I returned the skeleton. Instead of calling the police, they made me work off the damage I caused while attempting to climb the fence. I planned to stay one week. I never left.

Callum taught me how to build sets and mechanisms. Rhys taught me that rules could create freedom instead of destroying it. Together, they taught me what it felt like to belong somewhere without constantly earning my place through laughter.

They became my brothers. Not by blood. By every choice that mattered. The Devil was my idea. Callum’s Scarecrow frightened people. Rhys’s Reaper controlled them. I wanted something different. Temptation. The Devil doesn’t drag anyone into sin. He opens the door, smiles, and waits for them to enter willingly. That became my role in the hunt. I flirted. I taunted. I turned fear into laughter and laughter into desire. I made people feel naughty without making them feel ashamed.

No one should be ashamed of pleasure. Especially not Sloane. Her application was so carefully written that I could see every answer she had deleted before settling on the safe version. Except one.

Make me scream for reasons I can’t admit in daylight.

There she was. Not the polite woman who checked every box responsibly. The hungry one beneath her. I wanted to meet that woman. When she entered the maze and told me to fuck myself, I knew I was in trouble.

When she laughed while running, I knew I was doomed. Rhys made her beg. I wanted to make her forget shame existed. I wanted her wild, loud, and shameless enough to look in a mirror and adore the woman reflected there. Then she asked me to kiss her. I refused. Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I wanted it too much. Kissing wasn’t listed as part of our game. Not the way I would have kissed Sloane. I would have removed my mask. I would have held her face and let her see that the man touching her wanted more than one night. I came to the maze expecting a gorgeous stranger I could fuck, pleasure and release. Instead, Sloane laughed at my jokes. Challenged me. Trusted me enough to say yellow, then trusted me again when she said green.

That wasn’t anonymous pleasure. That was intimacy. Rhys noticed the difference. Callum already knew. Now the woman I was supposed to release at sunrise is inside the chapel with the two men I trust more than anyone. I should be satisfied with one night. I’ve spent my whole life pretending temporary things don’t hurt when they end. Sloane is the first person who makes me want to stop laughing long enough to ask her to stay.

CALLUM

THE MONSTER IN THE CORN

Blackwood Farm has always belonged to the dead. My family planted the first cornfield beside the churchyard more than a century ago. Every generation added something—a barn, a chapel, another acre of land. They buried their bodies beneath it too.

My mother used to tell me the corn grew taller over graves. I believed her. She died when I was twelve. After that, my grandfather raised me on the farm. He wasn’t affectionate, but he was reliable. Breakfast at six. Work at sunrise. Supper when the light left the field. He taught me that land remembered everything done upon it.

Blood. Grief. Promises. He also taught me how to repair a roof, sharpen a blade, and recognize when a storm was coming by the ache in my hands. People in town thought Blackwood Farm was cursed. I never corrected them. Fear kept strangers away. I preferred it that way. The first scarecrow stood in the north field. My mother stitched its burlap face herself. After she died, I moved it closer to the house because seeing it through my bedroom window made the farm feel less empty.

That was how the Scarecrow began. Not as a monster. As something silent that stayed. Years later, my grandfather turned part of the farm into a Halloween attraction to keep us from losing the property. I hated crowds, but I understood fear. Fear is honest. People scream before they remember to lie. Rhys arrived during our third season. He had the kind of stillness I recognized—the stillness of someone who had survived chaos by refusing to become it.

Dante came later, climbing our fence with a stolen skeleton over one shoulder. They stayed. The farm became ours. We created the private hunt after discovering how many adults wanted something darker than cheap masks and fake blood. Rhys demanded rules. Dante demanded fun. I built the maze.

Hidden paths. Locked rooms. Observation platforms. A chapel at the center where every route eventually ended. We hosted the hunt for four years. I caught dozens of willing participants. I released every one of them without remembering their faces. Then Sloane came to the public attraction. I saw her as soon as she entered the field.

She wore a dark sweater and laughed whenever her friends screamed. She wasn’t frightened by our actors. She watched the shadows rather than the performers, searching for something real beneath the illusion. I followed her from inside the corn. She never saw me. Near closing time, her friends headed toward the parking lot. Sloane stopped outside the private gate.

She wrapped her fingers around the iron bars and stared into my maze. I stood twenty feet away. Hidden. Watching. Her expression changed. The smiling mask fell away. For one breath, I saw the lonely hunger beneath it. I knew her because I carried the same thing.

“Maybe next year,” she whispered.