He counted them slowly, savoring the anticipation building in his blood. Then he gave chase.
The shift came easily, flowing through him like water finding its natural course. His bones reshaped themselves into something larger and more powerful. Muscles rippled beneath skin that thickened and darkened with emerging fur. His senses sharpened until every scent and sound in the forest blazed with crystalline clarity.
He didn’t complete the transformation. The full beast form was too large for the pursuit he had in mind—too powerful, too likely to end the chase before it properly began. Instead, he held himself in the space between, elongated claws digging into the earth, fangs extending past his lips, golden eyes blazing with predatory light.
Her trail was easy to find. Crushed grass and displaced leaves marked her passage through the garden, and beneath them, the intoxicating sweetness of her scent. He followed it past flowering hedges and ornamental trees, through a gate left deliberately ajar, into the wild forest beyond.
Clever female,he thought with fierce approval. She hadn’t run in a straight line. The trail twisted and doubled back, using the terrain to her advantage. She’d remembered his lessons about evading pursuit, about using water to mask her scent and choosing paths that made speed impossible for larger predators.
She made it harder than he expected.
But not hard enough.
He found where she’d crossed the stream, the water still disturbed by her passing. He found where she’d climbed a rocky outcropping, her handprints visible in the moss. He tracked her through a dense thicket, ducking under branches that still swayed from her passage.
And then he heard her—the rapid beat of her heart, the quick rhythm of her breath, the soft sound of her footsteps on fallen leaves.
She was close.
He moved faster, silent despite his size, closing the distance between them with predatory intent. Through the trees, he caught a flash of pale hair, a glimpse of her lithe form weaving between the trunks.
She glanced back. Their eyes met.
And she smiled.
Something snapped in his control. He lunged.
She tried to dodge—a quick spin that would have evaded a human pursuer—but he was faster. His arms closed around her, momentum carrying them forward until her back met the solid trunk of an ancient tree. He pinned her there with his body, claws digging into bark on either side of her head, breathing hard, eyes blazing with golden fire.
“Caught you.”
The words came out rough, barely human, shaped by a mouth that was no longer entirely his own.
Her chest heaved against his, her grey eyes bright with exhilaration and desire. She wasn’t afraid. She’d never been afraid of him, not even when she should have been.
“So you did.” Her voice was breathless, trembling with something that had nothing to do with fear. “What are you going to do about it?”
His control shattered.
He kissed her—fierce and consuming, claiming her mouth with the same intensity he’d used to claim her heart. She responded instantly, her arms wrapping around his neck, her body arching into his with desperate urgency.
The partial shift made everything more intense. His senses were heightened to an almost painful degree, every breath of her scent flooding his system like a drug. He could feel the pulse of her blood beneath her skin, could taste the salt of exertion on her lips, could hear the small sounds of pleasure she made against his mouth.
His claws retracted enough to grip the fabric of her simple dress without shredding it—though the temptation was almost overwhelming. Her hands were already working at his clothing, pushing the material aside to reach the skin beneath.
“Here?” he growled against her throat. “Like this?”
“Yes.” Her voice was fierce, certain. “Right here. Right now.”
He lifted her easily, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. The oak tree held steady against his weight as he pressed her back into the rough bark, using his body to shield her from the worst of it. She didn’t seem to care. Her nails raked down his back, leaving trails of fire in their wake.
“Rykan,” she demanded. “Please.”
He stopped holding back.
He slammed into her in a single, hard thrust, burying himself to the hilt, drawing a cry from her that echoed through the silent forest. He swallowed it with his mouth, drinking in every sound she made as he moved inside her. There was no finesse this time—no slow exploration or gentle discovery. This was raw and primal, the kind of joining that existed beyond words, beyond thought, beyond anything but the desperate need to be as close to each other as physically possible.
She matched him stroke for stroke, her body rising to meet his, her hands gripping his shoulders hard enough to bruise. The pleasure coiled tighter and tighter, winding towards something inevitable and devastating.
