Free Emergence (The Primogenitor Chronicles Book 1) by Siana Wineland

Taking a deep breath, she looked up at the sky, then squeezing her leg tighter, she continued on.
    How do I get out of this place? She thought a while later as she turned around in another dead end. The neighborhood was worse than a carnival maze. She was lucky that the recovery teams hadn’t found her yet.
    Something caught her eye. She hurried her pace, her leg dragging slightly. Ahead there was a paved walkway, nearly hidden between two of the houses. She ducked down it, hoping to just get off of the road and rest. Instead, she discovered a park. The ribbon wound through a manicured, grassy field enclosed by the backyards of the houses that surrounded it. Following the path, she limped along looking at her surroundings. It curved around a tennis court then on up past an empty playground. Other branches connected into the main walkway, showing where additional entrances to the park lay.
    She sank down to rest on a bench and listened to dogs bark in the nearby houses, while birds picked worms out of the grass under the midday sun.
    It was all she could do not to stretch out on the bench and fall asleep in the sun. Her stomach growled, distracting her. A quick glance around the park showed that she was still alone, so she pulled her backpack onto her lap. Opening it, she grabbed a handful of trail mix. A majority of the first bite scattered to the ground as she convulsively clenched it in her fist. Her stomach cramped viciously. She had to let the spasm ease before she tried again to eat it. The smell of the grain made her wrinkle her nose, but she forced herself to start crunching. All she could manage to ingest were two small handfuls before her stomach rebelled. Gagging, she shoved the trail mix back into the bag, dreaming of prime rib for dinner. With a sigh, she ignored the hunger pains and wriggled her sore feet before pulling her pant leg up enough to look at her calf. The butterflies seemed to be mostly holding the gash together so she let the material fall. There wasn’t a good way to inspect the wound on her thigh, so she twisted to the side and tried to feel through the denim how the bandaging was holding up. Not as good as she could hope. Blood seeped through the layers.
    Rubbing her face in her hands, she rested her elbows on her knees and hung her head. Her exhausted body craved sleep, and now that she had finally stopped, she was close to giving in to it. No, wake up. You can’t give in now. She pulled one of her water bottles out and splashed some on her face. Come on, get up.
    She zipped up her backpack then stood and started to sling it over her shoulder when some unknown inner alarm made her freeze. Cocking her head, she listened, and like a vixen that had heard the horn and the belling of the pack nearby, she shivered.
    Too close.
    That same unfamiliar feeling, that inner awareness that had warned her when the recovery team had come for her last night, started screaming at her again. Adrenaline jacked her system. Alert, she looked around. They must have picked up my trail. Now what? Scanning all the available cover, she noticed a large evergreen tree standing alone by the playground near one of the park entrances. That just might work. Ignoring her leg, she pushed it into a run, and slipping both her arms through the straps on her backpack, she cinched them up tight. She reached the tree and, without pausing, crouched and leapt to the lowest branch, stifling a scream as her thigh tore open. Climbing limb over limb, heedless of the pitch sticking to her hands and clothes, or the way the gashes in her leg pulled, she could feel the blood trickling down her leg. The branches grew smaller. She stopped. If she went any higher, the branches wouldn’t conceal her. She just hoped the Hunters didn’t notice the tree swaying.
    Just in time. She peered through the needles and watched the recovery teams enter the park.
    Thank you, she thought fervently. Squeezing her thigh, her hand grew sticky from the wetness