He was toying with her. Herding her toward the light.
But she didn’t turn. Didn’t grace the hunter with even the slightest glance, or broadcast her spine-bending terror—she merely lengthened her stride. Tucked her chin, ears flat, her shoulder bunching around pumping arms. Spear held tight in a white-knuckled grip, she pushed herself to the limit of her endurance, gaze narrowed. Her field of vision tunneled down to a narrow prick of light. Focused only on the next step, dodging trees that grew progressively more slender. From ancient behemoths, to spindly saplings, Renegade was pushed beyond anything that might be used for shelter. Any fleeting shred of sanctuary she might have sought, for beyond the forest’s edge there was nothing. Barren, dimpled hills of limestone pocked by volcanic activity, but nolife.Nowhere to hide. Nothing to use.
Nothing but certain death.
Without giving a moment’s respite, a savage blow was struck.
Her right ankle swept out from beneath her, leveraged, and the hunter sent her tumbling to the forest floor in a confused heap of limbs. Rolling over and over herself, she screeched once before her breath was stolen. Her ribs impacting the trunk of a sapling no thicker than her thigh.
A painful stroke of good luck, for with thundering feet, the hunter was unable to stop on such short notice.
From her peripherals, she took note of the beast. His bulk, the sheer size of the behemoth that snarled as he skidded to a halt, claws flashing as he tried to snatch at her shoulder and missed.
Shaking, her ribs frozen where her wind had been squeezed from her chest, she crouched right there in the dappled sunlight of early morning. Trapped. Spear at the ready, clutched in a white-knuckled fist. Petrified and utterly helpless to do anything but look, she took him in. Watching as the hunter righted himself and turned—a stolen moment that couldn’t last, but one that shocked her still, nevertheless.
A mess of shaggy dark hair speckled with mats and burrs, he was unkempt. Mangy and disheveled.
Andbig.
Easily the weight of two Anhur males combined, she might have taken him for a hybrid if it wasn’t for the unmistakable scent that hung thick in the air between them.
Alpha.
AnhurAlpha.
Straight down to his marrow, the scent of pure, virile dominance seeped from his very pores. A menacing cloud of primal, possessive rage clung to the fibers of his tattered clothing as he remained still, glaring. Seemingly content to let her drink her fill, he took a huffing breath and mirrored her pose. One comically large fist planted between spread knees, he balanced on his haunches as clumps of matted fur lifted from his shoulders. Posturing for her, utterly saturated in pheromones that broadcast exactly what he thought of finding a lone Hathorian female in the woods.
His intentions outlined in the obscene girth tenting the front of ruined pants.
But it was his eyes that truly caught her attention. Gold. Streaked with green and flecks of chocolate. The mark of a feral infected with the Trax virus.
Without a second thought, she bolted. Mindless terror nipping at her heels, for after everything—all that she’d suffered at the hands of a species not her own—this was it.
This was where it ended.
Before it had ever truly begun.
From the start, she’d been doomed by the Nine. Promised to fall beneath rutting hips. All it would take was a single bite of infected teeth, and she’d become nothing more than a mindless feral, if she survived at all.
Keening, Renegade whined as her lungs heaved, her gaze turning back as she fled.
The Trax had marked him.Deeply. He was a mutant, his genes warped, his nature altered only half as much as his body.
And he was toying with her.
It was the insult, more than anything else. The look of inevitability burning in that heated, rotten gaze.
Was she to suffer defeat without a fight? She, who’d learned to thrive in the beyond? Who’d taken a whole pack of males, and slighted a Karahmet prince with a spark of callous joy flicking in her chest?
No.
Baring blunted teeth, she fought the rush of instinct begging for her submission, and turned to save herself. Short spear at the ready as she darted through the trees.
In answer, heavy, careless footfalls crashed through the gloom at her back, long legs devouring the distance she’d fought so hard to claim. And with a flash of heated breath on her nape, a palm landed between her shoulders.
Renegade stumbled, knees buckling beneath the weight of a single push. Palms skinned when she tried to brace, she went down with a breathless squeal. She hadn’t the time to squirm before she was pinned face-down in the dirt. Her spear caught beneath her, pressed into the earth.
Useless.
