He thought about the females he had assessed before. Dozens of them, over the years. Candidates who passed theinitial screening, who agreed to training, who thought they were ready for what the Hunt demanded.
Most of them would have fled the moment they saw him on that ridge. Would have abandoned their position, crashed through the jungle in blind panic, made themselves easy prey. The ones who didn't flee usually froze, that paralysis of terror that came when the body recognized a predator it had no hope of escaping.
She had done neither.
She had raised her weapon. She had aimed. She had held her position and met his gaze across the space between them.
Something in his chest shifted. More than want, though want was there, hot and insistent, demanding satisfaction. Something else.
Respect.
She was not the soft creature from a soft world he had dismissed when Zhoren first told him about the human candidate. She was... worthy.
The word surfaced unbidden, and he let it settle into his bones. It did not ease the hunger. It made it worse. Because now he wanted her as more than a body to claim. A mate who would match him. A bond that would mean something.
The pressure behind his sheath pulsed, and he made a sound low in his chest, somewhere between a growl and a keen.
She would make him earn her.
He had never wanted anything more.
He settled deeper into the darkness, his body still, his senses attuned to every shift in her breathing, every small movement she made in her makeshift shelter.
The Hunt had only begun.
He could wait.
CHAPTER 19
She woke stiff, exhausted, and alive.
Grey light filtered through the overhang, and for a moment Serafina didn't know where she was. Then the jungle sounds rushed back, the drone of insects, the distant call of birds, the constant drip of moisture from leaf to leaf, and memory returned with them.
The island. The Hunt. Him.
She pushed herself upright, every muscle protesting. She'd dozed in fragments throughout the night, never more than a few minutes at a time, jerking awake at every unfamiliar sound. Her body ached for real sleep, but there was no time for that. No safety for that.
She checked the camp perimeter. The earth was undisturbed, holding only her own tracks from the night before.
But she knew he had.
She could smell it.
A musk, alien and thick, lingering in the humid air like a signature left behind. It was almost pleasant. That was the strange part. It should have been wrong, should have triggered every prey-instinct in her body, sent her scrambling for higherground or deeper cover. Instead, she found herself breathing it in, letting it fill her lungs, her chest, her belly.
Heat prickled across her skin. Low. Unwelcome.
She shook it off. Focused.
He'd been here. Close enough to touch her if he'd wanted. Close enough to end this whenever he chose. But he hadn't. He'd watched instead. Waited.
The thought should have terrified her. Instead, she felt a grim satisfaction settle into her bones. He was keeping tabs on her, which meant she mattered. She was worth tracking. Worth watching through the long hours of darkness while she pretended to sleep.
She ate a ration bar that tasted like cardboard, drank water from her canteen, and broke camp as the sun began to burn through the morning mist.
Time to move.
The jungle grew thicker as she pushed inland, the canopy closing overhead until she was moving through a twilight world of green shadows and filtered light. Vines snagged at her armor, roots threatened to trip her with every step, and the humidity pressed against her like a wet blanket.
