She doesn’t try to run. Doesn’t scream or cry or beg me to let her go. Instead, she slowly slides down the wall until she’s sitting on the cold stone floor. She pulls her knees up to her chest and watches me pace. “It’s okay,” she says softly. “We’re safe now. You got us out. You did good.”
The words barely penetrate, but something about her tone makes the roaring in my head quiet slightly. She keeps talking, murmuring soft things I can barely understand. And gradually, so gradually, the red haze begins to fade.
But the feral instinct doesn’t disappear. It just... shifts.
Mate is safe. Mate is here. Mate is MINE.
I stop pacing and turn to face her fully. My chest heaves and my claws are extended. My tusks feel enormous, longer thanthey’ve ever been, and I know without looking that my eyes have gone full black. No white remaining.
Anna swallows hard. “Keric,” she whispers. “You’re scaring me a little.”
I take a step toward her.
Mine.
Chapter Twenty
Anna
Keric takes another step toward me.
Molten eyes fix on my face with an intensity that makes my breath catch. He’s said only one word since setting me down:Mine. And the way he’s looking at me says he means it.
Jeez. This can’t be good. Or…
My back is already against the cave wall. Cold stone seeps through the torn flannel shirt I’m wearing, his flannel, the one I threw on this morning over my jeans and sweater because it smelled like him. Now it’s ripped at the shoulder where he grabbed me, and I’m pressed against rough rock with nowhere to go.
He takes a heavy step towards me. Then another.
Daylight streams from the opening in the cave’s ceiling and illuminates his muscular body. I get my first real look at what the scent bomb did to him.
His clothes hang in tatters, shredded by the expansion of his muscles. Usually he’s bare chested but today he chose toactually wear a shirt. The flannel he wore this morning is now nothing but strips of fabric clinging to shoulders that have grown impossibly broad. His jeans have split along the seams, barely decent, revealing green skin stretched over a body that’s gained at least fifty pounds of pure power. Every muscle is defined and bulging in a way that shouldn’t be possible.
His tusks jut from his lower lip like ivory daggers, longer than I’ve ever seen them. The tusks I kissed around last night are now weapons, curved and sharp and terrifying. His black horns have grown into wicked points that catch the light filtering down from far above us.
Steam rises off his green skin despite the cold cave air. Heat radiates off him, and I can feel it from three feet away, like I’m standing near a furnace.
And between his legs, visible through what’s left of his pants...
I swallow hard.
An enormous erection strains against the torn fabric. The sheer size of it makes my mouth go dry. I’ve felt him pressed against me during our kiss, knew he was big, but this is something else entirely. This is a beast from ancient times standing over me in a dark cave, and every instinct screams that I should be terrified.
But those black eyes... somewhere in there is Keric. The male who leaves me notes in neat handwriting. Who sneaks meat to Dinah when he thinks I’m not looking. Who pressed his forehead to mine this morning and murmuredI’ll be back soonlike it was a promise.
The events at the cabin crash over me in waves. Alarms alerted me that danger was imminent. The wailing siren meant everything was about to go wrong.
I’d been at the kitchen table with my laptop, working on lesson plans, when the sound ripped through the quiet morning.My training kicked in before my brain caught up. I was moving before I consciously decided to move.
I scooped Dinah off the couch where she’d been napping and ran for the bedroom. The carrier was in the closet, exactly where we’d set it up. Four seconds—that’s how long I’d practiced. Dinah yowled in protest as I shoved her inside and latched the door.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I whispered. “Stay quiet. Someone will come for you.”
Then the panic button. My hand found it automatically, just like I’d practiced with my eyes closed. I pressed it hard.
Then the barricade. I shoved the heavy dresser in front of the bedroom door, my arms burning with the effort.
And then I waited.
