Half an hour later he crouched at the edge of a natural amphitheater carved into the mountainside, surveying the crash site. The destruction was worse than he’d expected given the lack of explosion. The impact had torn a gash through the alpine meadow, the trail leading to a small escape pod half-buried in a snowbank and tangled in a thicket of thorny alpine brush. The kind of escape pod carried by civilian vessels rather than military craft. Its hull was scorched black on one side and crumpled inward on the other where it must have struck rock during its violent descent. But it was largely intact, either a miracle of engineering or sheer dumb luck.
He made his way down the steep bank and approached slowly, his senses extended to their limits. The burning metal smell was overwhelming here, mixed with the acrid stench of fried electronics and the copper tang of…
Blood.
His beast surged forward before he could stop it, his claws extending and his canines lengthening. Someone was hurt. Someone was bleeding. The protective instincts he’d spent six years suppressing roared back to life with terrifying force.
He forced the shift back, breathing hard through his nose. Control. He needed control.
The pod’s clear cover was cracked in a spider-web pattern but still held its seal. He wiped frost from the glass with one hand, and peered inside. His world stopped.
She was beautiful.
She lay suspended in the pod’s acceleration couch, her head tilted slightly to one side, pale hair spilling across her shoulders like moonlight. Her skin was pale as well, almost translucent, and he could see the delicate tracery of veins at her temples. An intricate necklace sparkled around her throat and a thin nightgown clung to curves that made his beast howl with appreciation—soft and small and perfectly formed.
Human.
Relationships between human and Vultor were difficult at best, violent at worst, but it didn’t seem to matter. He couldn’t look away.
Her eyes were closed, her expression peaceful. She might have been sleeping, except for the frost gathering on her eyelashesand the bluish tinge creeping into her lips. Any lingering heat from the crash had long since dissipated.
One small hand was pressed against the viewport glass, fingers splayed as if reaching for something.For someone.
His chest tightened.
She’s dead. I’m too late.
But then he saw it—the faintest rise and fall of her chest beneath the thin silk. The shallowest breath, barely perceptible, but there.
Alive.
His beast exploded through his control. His claws extended fully, black and curved and sharp enough to shear through steel, and he drove them into the seam where the pod’s hatch met its frame. Metal screamed in protest. The thorny brush tore at his arms and face as he worked, drawing blood he barely felt. The pod’s emergency locks engaged, fighting him, but he was stronger.
He wasalwaysstronger.
With a final wrench of muscle and fury, the hatch tore free—and with it came her scent. He staggered back as if he’d been struck.
Sweet. Floral. Something like the wildflowers that bloomed in the high meadows during the brief summer months, but richer, deeper, more intoxicating. The scent wrapped around him like silk, sinking into his lungs, his blood, his bones. His beast roared in recognition, a sound that echoed through his skull with deafening intensity.
Mate. OURS.
“No,” he snarled through lengthening fangs, but he already reaching for her.
He unclipped her harness with trembling fingers, then slid one arm beneath her shoulders and another under her knees. She weighed nothing—a fragment, a whisper, a thing that might shatter if he held too tight. He gently lifted her from the pod and into the cold mountain air.
She was freezing. Her skin was ice beneath his palms, her breath so shallow he could barely detect it. Whatever stasis system had kept her alive during her time in space had failed with the crash. Without help she would die of exposure.
Cannot allow. Will not allow.
He opened his heavy coat, then tore open his shirt and pulled her against his bare chest, tucking her head beneath his chin. Like all Vultor, his body ran hot and he willed that heat into her fragile form. She was so small. So vulnerable. Every protective instinct he possessed was screaming at him to carry her somewhere safe and warm, where no threat could ever reach her.
Her eyes fluttered open and he went absolutely still.
Her eyes were grey like storm clouds, like morning mist, like the smoke rising from a winter fire. Unfocused at first, they sharpened as they found his face.
He knew what she would see. His beast was still surging against his control, and he hadn’t fully suppressed the shift. His eyes would be glowing gold and his canines would be visible. His features would be harder and more angular, caught somewhere between male and monster. He braced for the scream, but it didn’t come.
Instead, she studied him with those clear grey eyes. No fear. No panic. Just a calm, curious assessment that shouldn’t have been possible from someone half-frozen and barely conscious.
