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It happened several more times.

I ran for hours, running as hard as I could to run off the heat, and Damian caught up to me again and again. But Vincent always caught up to Damian and kept him from doing anything to me.

Eventually, it was dark outside, and I collapsed in the undergrowth, too tired to go any further. I felt myself shift back into human form.

Sometime later, I felt myself being lifted, and I recognized, barely awake, that I was tucked up against the broad, bare chest of Vincent, who was carrying me. I woke as he put me back in the car.

The movement of the car lulled me to sleep again.

I WOKE UP in my bed at the cabin, presenting, ass in the air, whining like crazy.

I was still in heat.

This had never happened before. I had never run the heat off and not actually run it off. I had never run until I was exhausted, slept, and awoken still in heat.

I let out a cry of frustration. “Dad?” I called.

My father’s voice from outside of the door. “Hey, sweetheart.”

“Can you make me shift again?”

“I actually can’t,” said my dad. “I tried when we could tell that you were still in heat. But the shaman says you can do it yourself and that you can try running it off again. He just doesn’t think it’ll work since you’ve suppressed your heats for so long.”

“No?” I said. “No, so then what does he think will work?”

“Well, don’t worry, we’re going to find something else,” said my dad.

“What?” I said. “What does he think?”

“He thinks Damian needs to bite you.”

I collapsed into the bed, groaning.

“I know. No one wants that, no one, not even Damian, who’s gone out of whatever rut you triggered him into out there. He says it’s way too soon, and he wants to wait.”

“I’ll run it out,” I said. “I’ll shift again.”

“Yeah, worth a try, sweetie,” said my dad.

I was actually starving, but I thought that might be a better thing to deal with shifted. I went outside the cabin and it took me a few minutes to find the way to merge with the wolf, but then I got it, and the shift tugged through me, and I was off.

I went looking for some small prey. I chased some squirrels, some chipmunks, but they ran up trees. Eventually, I settled in on a rabbit and I went after its small white tail as it bounded through the woods.

I caught it. I ripped and tore and ate, and I thought, There, that should work. That should appease the heat.

But it hadn’t, and I could feel it.

So, I kept hunting. I caught and ate more small animals, and then I began looking for bigger prey. I stalked a deer, playing a little game with it, luring it into false senses of security and then pouncing on it again, making it run.

I teased, in and out, in and out, edging myself like finding a climax, only this was the final climax, one that culminated in a bright splash of blood, in the taste of raw, red meat.

When I caught that deer, I thought for sure it would be the end of it.

And I was tired afterward. My wolf stomach distended, I lay on the blood-spattered leaves around what was left of the deer, which I had torn apart.

I slept, sated, happy.

But when I woke, back in human form again, lying in the darkness in the woods, the heat was still there.