I don't have a destination. I barely have a plan. All I know is that I can't stay in that room with his bite mark throbbing on my neck and his scent clinging to my skin. I can't spend anothernight listening to my body beg for something my mind refuses to accept.
Death in the snow feels cleaner than surrender.
The thought should frighten me. Instead, it brings a strange peace. At least this choice is mine. At least I'm not spreading my legs for a monster because my genes demand it.
The keep disappears behind a curtain of white. Good. I push harder, faster, ignoring the burn in my thighs and the ice forming on my eyelashes. The mountain pass is two miles north. If I can reach it before dawn, before anyone notices I'm gone, I might actually make it. I might actually be free.
Something howls in the distance.
My heart stutters. The sound echoes off the peaks, long and low and ancient, a song of hunt and hunger that resonates in my bones. Another howl joins the first, then another, a chorus of wolves calling to each other across the frozen wilderness.
None of them are the howl I fear.
I keep moving. The snow is deeper here, drifted against the rock faces until it swallows my legs to mid-thigh. Each step becomes a battle, my body burning calories faster than I can replace them. The cold that felt numbing an hour ago now cuts through my layers like knives. My fingers have stopped hurting, which means they're probably frostbitten.
I don't care. Better to lose fingers than to lose myself.
The eastern sky lightens from black to gray. Dawn approaches, and with it, discovery. Someone will check my room. Someone will raise the alarm. And then he'll come for me, because Stellan doesn't strike me as a man who tolerates escape.
The howl that splits the air this time is different.
Closer. Much closer. And even through the wind and the snow and the distance, I recognize it. The sound burrows into something primitive at the base of my skull, triggering responses I can't control. My pulse spikes. My thighs clench. Arousal floodsthrough me despite the cold, a wave so intense it nearly brings me to my knees.
My body knows that howl. My body wants to answer it.
"No," I whisper, but the word comes out cracked and desperate. "No, no, no."
I run.
The mountain pass is still a mile away, maybe more. The snow drags at my legs like hands trying to hold me back. My lungs burn with every breath of frozen air, and the heat inside me wars with the cold outside until I can't tell which is winning. Somewhere behind me, a massive shape moves through the blizzard, and I don't need to see it to know what's coming.
The wolf bursts from the treeline like a silver ghost.
He's enormous. Larger than any natural wolf, larger than any shifter I've ever seen in Helena's research materials. His fur gleams pewter-bright against the snow, and his eyes blaze even through the driving ice. Muscle ripples beneath his coat with every stride, power and grace combined into something that steals my breath entirely.
He's beautiful. He's terrifying. And he's gaining on me with every heartbeat.
The chase becomes primal. Some rational part of my brain knows I can't outrun him. He's built for this terrain, for this hunt, while I'm stumbling through drifts in borrowed boots with my body tearing itself apart from the inside. But instinct doesn't care about logic. Instinct demands that I flee, that I make him work for his prize, that I prove I'm not just prey to be taken.
And beneath the terror, beneath the fury, a dark and shameful thrill stirs.
The thrill of pursuit.
Something ancient and instinctive recognizes him. Recognizes him and wants to be caught. Wants to submit, to present, to offer my throat and my body and everything I haveto the predator running me down. The thought sends shame burning through my cheeks even as fresh slick coats my thighs.
I hate myself for it. I hate that every treacherous nerve ending craves submission to the same man who stole my pills and backed me against a wall and kissed me until I couldn't remember how to breathe. I hate that some broken part of me is excited by this chase, by the knowledge that he wants me badly enough to hunt me through a blizzard.
The wolf gains ground. I can hear his paws now, the rhythmic thud of his weight against the snow. My legs are shaking, my lungs screaming. The mountain pass looms ahead, tantalizingly close, but I know I won't reach it. I know this ends here, in the snow and the cold, with his teeth in my throat.
I spin to face him instead of letting him take me from behind.
The wolf slows, then stops, barely ten feet away. His breath plumes white in the frozen air. Those eyes hold intelligence, calculation, and a flicker of approval. Even in this form, he exudes authority. Even as an animal, he expects obedience.
"Go ahead." My voice cracks from cold and exhaustion. "Finish it."
For a long moment, nothing happens. The wind howls between us, driving snow against my back. The wolf watches me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle, and even through the terror and the fury and the cold seeping into my bones, I feel my flesh responding to his presence. My nipples harden beneath my frozen clothes. The ache between my legs sharpens into something almost painful.
Silvery mist erupts around the wolf's form.
