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Gleaming amber eyes fixed on his prize, the hunter watched from downwind. He watched as slender, female limbs were slowly stripped of the leathers keeping her hidden. Her clothing a shield that reeked of death and rancid fat, but beneath it all? The scent of breeding female.
Hisfemale.
The taste of her coated the roof of his mouth, etched in the lining of his nostrils. Scrawled in elegant pen along the inside of his skull, imprinted on his brain in a way that let him filter all else out. The complexities and subtle textures that were unique to her alone, committed to the hunter’s memory. Obsessively focused on the one thing he wouldn’t walk away from.
His mate.
At no point in his mad dash did the hunter stop to wonderwhy. Why this slight creature? A female of a species not his own, stained in the fluids of other males. Soiled. Used. Beautiful and wild.
He only knew that she’d been created for him. A gift of the Nine he’d forgotten to worship. A lure he couldn’t refuse, and one he wouldn’t allow to slip through his fingers no matter how many others had touched her first.
And so he watched as she dared to bathe when she should have been running, her lips frozen in a sharp grin with blunted teeth. Eyes over-bright with the sheen of victory.
Hunger pulsed through his veins. An itch to wipe that smirk off her face, to replace it with simple, enthralled adoration as she was remade to suit his needs. To worship all that he was.
To master this female whose wildling spirit had been fed by lesser males, left untamed.
The beat of his pulse throbbed along his girth, heavy and hot. Swollen with desperate, aching need. And yet, he had merely stalked her through the wood.
Watching.
He kept himself secreted away, downwind. Loping along at her back as she fled through the brush, planning as he hunted, as she put distance between her and the pack. Learning her scent, her limits.
Even now, with a vulnerable female exposing herself to his ravenous gaze, he contented himself with the show. Claws extended where they dented his palms, he lurked out of sight. Drinking down her scent in one deep lungful after the next, while she remained oblivious. Waiting so his prey might continue undisturbed, scrubbing those rejected pack males from her delectable skin, she prepared herself to be drenched inhisscent. To reek not of death and fear, but of belonging. Ownership.
To him.
Unbidden, a growl rumbled through his diaphragm. Pert, reddened nipples exposed to watching eyes. Fingerprints marred her hips, arms, her neck and ribs. Evidence of the other males who’d had her first. How brutal their joining, how careless and greedy they’d been with so precious a commodity as this.
Hackles rising, the hunter sucked fury between clenched teeth. Exhaled a steady stream of hard-fought patience, for this female had proven herself a cunning warrior. One who wouldn’t appreciate a simple, brutal fuck in shallow waters, but deserved the rigors of a proper taming hunt. She deserved to be worshiped with a chance to pit herself against a worthy suitor, to lose, only because she’d been bested and tamed.
Her match met, her place at his feet earned.
It was nothing less than what she deserved, to be broken over his cock, her primal needs serviced. Her appetite for rebellion smothered by a male equal to ruling her. Eating nothing, he’d let her feast onhimas she was knotted and made to still.Her thirst quenched with what he’d pump down her throat. And then, when she’d been made to submit, when her eggs began to drop in honor of his conquering, he’d fill her belly with life. Take pleasure in watching her grow ripe with the evidence of his virility, she’d fast and beg for more.
Carefully hidden, he watched her shimmy free of the remainder of her clothing. Shucking putrid leathers on the sandy banks before plunging naked into the stream with a musical sigh.
And then she offered grave insult.
Fingers plunging beneath the surface, she scrubbed between her legs. Treating her abused flesh as if it wasn’t the source of divine beauty that had drawn him in from leagues away.
He planted one hand on a tree trunk, claws sinking deep into the bark. Exerting himself to remain hidden in the shelter of shadows instead of charging into her life and fucking everything that was wet and wanting. Watching as her fingers delved between reddened thighs, as she plundered swollen tissue with deft movements, and cleansed herself of their leavings. Scoring her insides until that shallow stream was laced with the flavor most coveted in the Silver City and beyond it. Her slick flowing freely, despite a night of rutting with unworthy males.
The hunter stood sentinel through the rough ritual, seething, he guarded her against the legions of corrupted unworthy. Those who would slake their needs, their hunger, and leave her broken. Those who would reduce her to little more than a tribute to monsters reigning in the dark.
Plunging her head beneath the surface gave the hunter a moment’s reprieve. A moment to vent the tension winding tighter and tighter through his core, his breath exploded from frozen lungs. Cock jumping where it hung fat with need.
Dripping and angry.
But it was only a moment. She popped back up with a dainty, feminine squeal. Purpled nipples tightened into points, gooseflesh pimpling every available hint of bared skin.
She was quick about dressing. Slipping into leathers with the sort of efficiency that spoke of an innate need for speed over comfort. Still wet, the leather squeaked where it was dragged over her limbs, concealing his prize once more. Her mop of dark hair was twisted and wrung free of excess moisture, bunched in a messy knot, then tucked beneath her hood. Kneeling, she brought a palm full of chilly water to her lips and drank deep, her gaze locked not on the dangers watching from the gloom, but the stream itself.
A fatal mistake born of inexperience, speaking of just how lucky she’d been to survive this long. For to expose herself like this, was to show herself to be a babe among beasts. An innocent, utterly ignorant of the true dangers that was life beyond the wall.
Unforgivable that she would be so bold. So careless with her safety.
