I ran.
The forest blurred around me as I gave chase. Branches whipped at my face and I didn't feel them. Roots caught at my boots and I didn't stumble. Every sense I had locked onto Dalvin's trail with the precision of a heat-seeking missile,tracking scent and sound and the scattered evidence of his passage through the wilderness.
The hunter in me had fully awakened. Not the civilized man who shaped metal with patience and precision, but the primal creature underneath. The alpha who had been waiting all these years for this moment, who had dreamed of this chase in the darkest hours of countless sleepless nights.
He was fast, even heat-dazed, even desperate. He'd put two hundred yards between us in that minute of head start, crashing through underbrush and leaping fallen logs with the grace of a deer fleeing a wolf. But I was faster. Stronger. And I wasn't fighting my instincts anymore.
I closed the distance in seconds. Saw him ahead, stumbling over a fallen log, white linen bright against the dark forest floor. His hair was wild, his breath coming in ragged gasps, every line of him trembling with need he could no longer control.
Beautiful. He was so fucking beautiful. Even now, even covered in dirt and sweat and the evidence of days in the wilderness, he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
I caught him in a small clearing carpeted with pine needles and dappled with afternoon light. My hand closed around the back of his shirt and I pulled, yanking him to a stop, spinning him around to face me.
His eyes were glazed with heat, pupils blown wide, barely a ring of brown visible around the black. But beneath the haze, I saw recognition. Relief. Want.
"Min-ho." My name on his lips, broken and breathless.
I didn't answer with words.
I took him down.
We hit the ground hard, my body covering his, driving him face-first into the soft carpet of pine needles. He gasped at the impact but didn't struggle. Didn't fight. His back archedbeneath me, pressing his ass up against my hips, seeking the hardness he could feel through layers of fabric.
"Please." The word came out wrecked, barely audible. "Please, please, please."
I fisted my hand in his hair and pulled his head back, exposing the long line of his throat, the faded mark of Vernon's claim still visible on his bonding gland. The sight of it sent rage spiking through my chest. Another alpha's mark on what was mine. Another alpha's claim on the man I'd loved since we were teenagers.
Not for much longer.
I ground my hips against his ass and felt him shudder beneath me. The thin white linen was soaked through with slick, clinging to his skin, outlining the curve of him in obscene detail. I could smell his arousal, thick and sweet, mixing with my own scent until the air around us was heavy with it.
"I'm going to claim you," I said against his ear. My voice came out rough, barely human, scraped raw by the need I'd been suppressing for hours. Days. Years. "I'm going to make you mine. And then no one else will ever touch you again."
Dalvin moaned. The sound went straight to my cock, made my hips jerk forward involuntarily, made my control slip another notch.
"Yes." He pushed back against me, desperate, shameless. "Yes, do it, please, I need you."
I released his hair and grabbed the collar of his shirt with both hands. Pulled. The fabric tore with a satisfying rip, splitting down the back, exposing the smooth tan skin beneath. I did the same to his pants, ripping them open at the seam, baring him to the cool forest air.
He was perfect. Slender and beautiful, his skin flushed with heat, slick glistening between his thighs. I ran my handsdown his sides, feeling him tremble, feeling the desperate need radiating off him in waves.
"Ass up," I commanded.
He obeyed instantly, rising onto his hands and knees, spreading his legs, presenting himself with a vulnerability that hollowed out my chest. This was trust. This was surrender. This was everything he'd been too afraid to give anyone since Vernon, offered to me in the middle of a forest with pine needles pressing into his palms.
I freed myself from my pants, my cock springing out hard and heavy, the head already slick with pre-come. The sight of him open and waiting, his hole clenching around nothing, slick dripping down his inner thighs. It nearly broke me.
I positioned myself behind him. Pressed the head of my cock against his entrance. Felt the heat of him, the wetness, the desperate flutter of muscle trying to draw me in.
"Dalvin." His name came out like a vow, like a promise, like the answer to a question I'd been asking my whole life.
I pushed inside.
The sound he made was inhuman. A cry of relief and pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. His body opened for me, took me in, swallowed me whole like he'd been made for this. For me.
I sank into him inch by inch until my hips pressed flush against his ass, until I was buried so deep I could feel his heartbeat around my cock. The heat of him was incredible, tight and wet and perfect, and I had to stop moving, had to press my forehead against his shoulder blade and breathe through the overwhelming urge to come right then and there.
"Move." Dalvin's voice cracked on the word. His hips pushed back against me, trying to create friction, trying to get what his body needed. "Please, Min-ho, move, I can't wait anymore."
