And now she runs from me like she doesn’t already belong.
The bond between us is very much alive, but it’s thin, this small thread that has yet to grow into the chains that will bind us. That won’t happen until we complete all the steps in the mating ritual. When I’m inside her and she screams my name like a war cry instead of a threat.
I felt it the second I heard her voice.
The moment she saved my brother’s mate when she didn’t have to.
The moment she dared to look me in the eye like I was thelesserdanger.
Wrong, little pet.
Unlike my brother, who fought his bond until it damn nearkilled them both, I want my chains.
And I want them now.
I surge forward as the cliffs narrow, forcing her to vault over a jagged break in the rock. She lands low and rolls, dirt and ash staining her palms. Her shoulders tense like she feels me getting closer.
She’s not running for safety. She’s running for the thrill.
She thinks this is fun.
Haide doesn’t understand the kind of game she just walked into or that the rules changed the moment the gods cursed her name into my veins.
She doesn’t know I dream about her. That I smell her when there’s nothing but smoke and bone around me. That her voice lives inside my skull like a brand I can’t burn out.
Her head whips over her shoulder just long enough for me to catch the flicker of something feral in her grin.
“You’re smiling?” I growl, gaining ground now. “Oh, so you wanna play?”
She laughs—a sharp, sharp sound that cuts through the wind like she’s high on the madness of it. “Everything’s a game when you live here,Your Majesty.”
I nearly come undone at the way she spits the title like a challenge.
“Keep running then,” I mutter darkly. “I want you winded when I take you down.”
She veers left, a path that skirts the very edge of the cliffs, where volcanic glass juts up like spears and one wrong step means a plummet into nothing.
I follow without hesitation.
Let her try to lose me. Let her make it hard. Let her make it hurt.
The fire inside me grows with every step. Every foot of stolen distance between us. Every second she remains unclaimed.
The ground softens beneath her next step, thin and breakable, and she slips.
Just for a heartbeat, but it’s enough to send panic down my spine.
I move like a shadow, like fury, like a demon drunk on the scent of his mate. My hand closes around her waist, and she twists, elbow aiming for my jaw, but I catch it midair. Her body crashes into mine with a ragged curse, both of us landing hard on the black stone as I pin her under my weight.
She thrashes like a cornered animal, breathing fire and hate and something else neither of us knows how to name.
I release her wrists and drag her upright before she can blink. My hand fists in her hair, and I tip her head back until she meets my gaze, locked and breathless and furious.
And then I throw her over my shoulder.
She screams, claws, kicks, curses me like a hellion, but I’m already walking toward the isle’s edge.
My grip tightens when she wriggles, relishing the feel of her body, the scent of her sweat, salt, and blood.
