Page 98 of The Hunted

Her audible swallow had him taking three steps closer to her. He still had quite a way to go to reach her spot, but this gave him room to still breathe.

“And what?”

The sting in her tone had him grinning. A defense of hers, he’d noticed, just happened to be that she got a little nasty. It meant he was hitting a raw nerve and she wanted him to stop. Except he couldn’t—not on this.

“And what would happen after you went home?” he asked.

Arelle’s jaw worked with the words she tried to hold back, but she still spit them out at him, anyway. Like they were dirt she wanted out of her mouth. A truth she wished she could hide. He saw and heard it all.

“I would be forced into a mating with a man who isn’t mine, and who I cannot be mated to. And when the bond didn’t take like they all know it should—”

“They’ll know the truth,” he interrupted, his tone saying calm.

Although how, he didn’t know.

Her chin quivered. “They’ll know it’s already been done. I’ve already mated.”

“When?”

“Eryx—”

“When?”

Arelle glanced away, the anguish saturating her pretty features causing an ache to spread within his chest. Yet, the harsh noise he made that had her stare snapping back to his hid the truth of what he was really feeling.

“You’ll tell me when,” he said. “And you will tell me how.”

“The blood. It mixes. We have to be on the land—it’s always the same way. The struggle between the chosen pair; for some, it’s like a fight—”

“Was it much of a struggle?” he asked.

Her cheeks heated to the prettiest color pink. “Maybe that came after. It wasn’t natural, I think. We didn’t go into that knowing it would happen like others do.”

She had a point.

Eryx only said, “So, keep going. The struggle. And then …?”

“We mix the blood to be one, and then the heat comes.”

He remembered that.

Vividly.

The fire in his chest.

The heat in his cock.

All of it.

“The island,” he murmured.

“I only wanted to help.”

Oh, he certainly believed that.

“Humans can’t mate.”

“You’re not entirely like them,” she said simply.