And there's a sound.
A wet, clicking sound, coming from my own throat.
I try to slow down, to stop and figure out what's happening, but my legs won't obey. They keep pumping, keep carrying me deeper into the trees, and I realize with a lurch of terror that I'm not in control anymore.
Something else is driving my body.
My wolf rises up inside me, and he's wrong. He's always been the part of me that runs on instinct and loyalty and the fierce protective love of pack. The more reliable half. But the thing I feel now isn't him. It's wearing his shape, using his senses, but underneath there's something hungry and cold and utterly alien.
It looks out through my eyes at the dark forest.
It smells the air.
It finds what it's looking for.
Regina.
The hunger slams into me. My stomach cramps with it, my jaws flooding with saliva, and suddenly I can think of nothing else. I'm starving. I'm so fucking hungryit feels like I haven't eaten in years, like my body is consuming itself from the inside out, like I'll die if I don't?—
If I don't feed.
No. No, no, no?—
My wolf howls, and the sound that tears from my throat makes my own blood run cold. It's the howl of a beast that hasn't been a wolf for a very, very long time.
And then I'm running again, faster now, muscles screaming in protest as the thing inside me pushes harder. The trees blur into streaks of black and silver. The ground disappears beneath my paws. I'm moving faster than I've ever moved, faster than should be possible, and every stride brings me closer to that scent.
Prey.
The word surfaces in my mind, and it's wrong, it's so fucking wrong, but I can't shake it loose.
She's not prey.
She's my mate.
She'severything.
But gods, she smells so fuckinggood.
I can hear her now, the crash of her footsteps through the undergrowth, the ragged gasps of her breathing, the thundering of her heart.
She knows I'm coming for her.
She's trying to escape.
STOP. FUCKING STOP!
I'm screaming inside my own skull, throwing everything I have against the walls of my mind, but it's like trying to stop a river with my bare fucking hands.
The forest opens into a clearing, moonlight pooling on the grass like liquid silver.
And there she is.
She's standing in the center of the open space, chest heaving, eyes wild. Her dark hair is tangled with leaves and twigs. Her clothes are torn from running. Her beautiful face, with its constellation of scars I've kissed countless times, is filled with pure terror at the sight of me bearing down on her in this form.
Mytrueform.
I've been hoping and praying she won't look at me like this when the time comes for her to see me as anything but a man, and now, she's looking at me like this because?—
