She had claimed him back.
And then she had let him hold her while she slept, her body warm against his chest, her breath soft against his throat. He had stayed longer than he should have. Had watched the tension drain from her face as unconsciousness took her, had memorized the curve of her cheek, the dark fan of her lashes, the small sounds she made when she dreamed.
He had left before she woke because if he stayed, he would not be able to stop himself from finishing what they had started.
The Hunt had rules. Even now, even after everything, the rules mattered. She had to come to him willingly. Had to fight him and lose—or fight him and win, though nobody ever had—before the bond could be sealed. The claiming they had spoken aloud meant nothing without the physical proof of combat.
But the old forms felt hollow now. The careful distance, the measured pursuit, the pretense that this was still a game—all of it had burned away in the moment he saw the Khelar's claw descending toward her throat.
She was his. He knew it. She knew it.
Now they just had to prove it.
He found a clearing near the island's heart as the sun climbed higher, an open space where the canopy thinned and morning light fell in golden shafts through the leaves. No terrain tricks. No easy cover. Just open ground and honest combat.
He waited.
She would find him. She always did.
He did not have to wait long.
She emerged from the jungle reborn. Her armor bore the scars of yesterday's fight, scoring marks and discoloration where the Khelar's claws had found their marks. The gash across her side had sealed, the bio-material knitting the wound closed, but he could see the faint lines where the damage had been. His webbing was still wrapped around her bicep. She had kept it.
The sight of his armor on her skin sent heat flooding through him.
Her weapon was raised, tracking toward him the moment she cleared the tree line. No hesitation. No softening. She moved like she had every other day of this Hunt: like a predator stalking prey, like a warrior entering combat, like a woman who had every intention of making him bleed.
Good.
He had wondered, in the long hours of the night, whether yesterday would change things. Whether the violence of the Khelar attack, the tenderness that followed, the words they had spoken in the darkness of the cave—whether any of it would make her gentle. Make her careful. Make her treat him like a lover instead of an enemy to be defeated.
She fired.
The shot scorched across his shoulder, a line of heat that would have killed a lesser creature. She was not aiming to wound. She was aiming to win.
Pride cracked open in his chest, followed by adoration, then a hunger so fierce it made his vision narrow and his claws extend without conscious thought.
Magnificent.
She had held him last night. Had touched his helm with gentle fingers, had spoken his name like a prayer, had let him carry her to safety and tend her wounds. And now she was trying to put a hole through his chest like none of it had happened.
This was why she was worthy. This was why she washis.
He moved.
She tracked him instantly, pivoting to follow his advance, her weapon spitting fire in controlled bursts that forced him to choose between evasion and closing distance. She used the terrain—the scattered rocks, the fallen logs, the slight depression in the earth—to limit his angles of approach. She fought like she had been born to it.
She fought like she meant to hurt him.
He let her.
He let her land a blow to his midsection that cracked his armor plating. Let her drive him back three steps with a combination that showed real tactical thinking. Let her believe, for a few precious moments, that she might actually win.
Not because he was toying with her. Not anymore.
Because she needed this. Needed to fight him, to test herself against him, to know in her bones that she had earned whatever came next. The Hunt was not about submission. It was about recognition. Two predators meeting in the wild and deciding, through contest and combat, that they belonged to each other.
And she was proving herself with every strike, every shot, every furious assault on his defenses.
