I tear his throat out with one savage motion. Blood sprays across the frost-covered ground as his body convulses once, twice, then goes limp. The threat ends with his last breath.
Standing over the corpse, I lift my head and roar. Victory. Dominance. Warning to any other predator who might think to challenge what's mine.
The cottage door slams open. Catriona bursts onto the porch, weapon raised in a two-handed grip, her training evident in every line of her stance. She sweeps the area, finds me standing over the dead tiger, and freezes.
Our eyes meet across the blood-soaked clearing. Her face is pale, pupils blown wide, but her hands don't shake. She's seeing me as I truly am now. Not the man who explained shifter politics in her kitchen. Not the exile who offered protection. My tiger who kills to defend what belongs to him.
Her scent changes. Fear, yes. The sharp metallic tang of adrenaline and shock. But beneath it, something else. Something darker and more complicated that makes the beast rumble with satisfaction even as my human mind recoils.
Arousal. Raw and undeniable. Her body responding to violence and dominance and death in ways her conscious mind would probably deny.
Some primal part of her recognizes the predator and wants it. Wants the protection. Wants the savagery. Wants the absolute certainty that nothing will ever harm her while I'm breathing.
Her weapon lowers slowly, trembling now. She doesn't speak, doesn't move, just stares as I stand there in tiger form, the dead assassin at my feet, her scent telling me truths she'd never admit aloud.
Silvery mist and thunder mark my shift back to human form. Naked, blood-streaked, still riding the high of violence andvictory. Cold air hits bare skin but I barely feel it, too focused on the woman frozen on my porch.
"He was syndicate." My voice comes rough, barely human. "Sent to kill us both. Me first, then you while you were still vulnerable and alone."
She manages a nod, her gaze flicking to the corpse then back to me. Professional training warring with something far more primitive in her expression.
"Now you know." One step toward the porch, watching her track the movement. "I'm not civilized. I'm not reformed. I'm barely controlled on my best days, and what you just saw? That's what I am under the skin I wear to pass for human."
Another step. She doesn't back away, doesn't raise her weapon, just watches me approach with that same conflicted hunger in her expression.
"If I claim you, you become this too. The violence. The killing instinct. The absolute certainty that you'll tear apart anyone who threatens what's yours without hesitation or remorse." Close enough now to see the rapid flutter of her pulse, to smell the complicated mix of fear and want rolling off her skin.
"The claiming doesn't just change your body, Catriona. It changes your soul. You'd look at that corpse and feel satisfaction instead of horror. You'd remember the taste of his blood and crave more. You'd become exactly what you've spent your career trying to stop."
Her breath comes fast and shallow. She's still processing, still trying to reconcile the man who made her coffee with the predator who just killed in her defense.
"So when you're trying to process this, when you're thinking about mate bonds and transformations and what it would mean to accept the claiming, remember this moment. Remember the blood. Remember what I am when everything else strips away."
I turn away, heading for the cottage door, needing distance before the beast decides proximity is permission.
"And remember that some things, once done, can never be undone."
CHAPTER 9
CATRIONA
Blood pools in the grass at my feet, still warm enough to steam in the cold air. The dead tiger lies twisted on its side, throat torn open, the white of its fur matted red. Kian steps over the corpse like it's nothing more than driftwood on a beach, headed for the cottage door with gore dripping from his hands.
I should be horrified. The rational part of my brain—the police chief, the woman who's spent years enforcing order—screams that I just watched a man kill someone with his bare hands, tear out a throat with teeth that weren't even his own anymore.
Heat pools low in my belly, sharp and urgent.
My pulse pounds in my throat. My skin feels too tight. Every breath pulls the scent of blood and violence and Kian deeper into my lungs, and some dark, primal thing inside me responds with hunger that has nothing to do with food.
What is wrong with me?
Kian stops at the door. He doesn't turn around, but his shoulder muscles bunch beneath skin still streaked with blood. When he speaks, his voice carries the rough edge of his tiger still too close to the surface. "You should be inside."
The words aren't an invitation. They're a command wrapped in concern, like proximity to the body might contaminate me somehow, like I'm fragile and need protection from the reality of what he is.
Anger cuts through the fog of arousal, sharp enough to make me move. "Don't treat me like I'm delicate."
"I'm treating you like someone who just watched me kill a man." He turns then, and the sight of him steals what's left of my composure. Naked. Blood streaked across his face, his throat, his chest. His eyes hold that amber glow, not quite human, the tiger riding too close. He should look vulnerable—stripped bare, covered in evidence of violence—but there's nothing vulnerable about the predator staring back at me.
