POV: Darius
The woods were quiet except for the sound of my ragged breathing and the constant crunch of dried leaves under my boots. The evening light was going down fast and the shadows were creeping in from every side.
Pain throbbed in my thigh, sharp and burning where Maximus’s knife had gone in.
“Stupid… f*****g pride of mine,” I muttered, pressing a hand against the wound as I kept running.
We’d been at this since Monday—four straight days of hunting each other across this cursed island.
I’d been an i***t for agreeing to his challenge in the first place. When I stabbed him in the shoulder that first day, I knew what I had signed up for. And Maximus did not disappoint… Maximus was like a dog with a bone. Since then, he’d been trying every dirty trick in the book to hurt me.
But
