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This better not be a mistake, or someone’s gonna have my head when I get home.
I race toward where I sense Tilda, faster than I’ve ever run in my life. My heart is in my throat, my lungs pumping air to the rest of my body. I feel stronger already, like she’s already having an effect on me.
I need her. I need my mate.
The edge of the Celestial Curtain looms ahead, painting the forest in red. My rut surges when I feel her cross it somewhere to the west. I follow her trail, honing in on her like a sixth sense.
I scent her, then—on the tall grasses at the edge of the forest, blackberries and leather dripping from the leaves of live oaks and willows. Her scent is heady and intoxicating, drowning me in delirious desire.
This is real.
It’s happening.
I should have knownmi reina guerrerawould save herself.
I finally see her, and my heart soars. She’s just on the other side of this clearing, running toward me, breathless. I can feel her body like we’re living in the same skin, the crunch of grass under her bare feet and the way the wind whips through her hair. The silver spines on my back go taut at the sight of her, my blood pounding.
I can smell her heat. The full moon is working its magic.
We won’t make it home tonight.
“Reyes!” she gasps, flinging herself toward me. I’m shifting before I even know what I’m doing, taking her into my arms, kissing her and kissing her. She rakes long, sharp nails over my shoulders, finding the hole just the left of my heart, where I was shot in the shoulder. Her bite is a few inches above it, my saving grace.
“I knew you weren’t dead,” she breathes, touching me all over like she’s making sure I’m not a figment of her imagination.
I duck my head against her neck and inhale her scent, frustrated with the barrier of clothing between us. I’m still subsumed in my lycan form, unable to use my words. When I do speak, her name pours out like wine on an altar.
“Tilda,” I sigh. “Tilda.”
I need to be with her in body and mind and heart. She seems to sense my desperation—to feed off it, give into it. Her fingers go to the hem of her shirt and she rolls it up and over her head, tossing it to the grass. Before she’s even discarded it, my lips are on my mark, my tongue running across her collarbone and making her whine with need.
“It isn’t…safe…” she gasps. Her actions don’t match her words. She shimmies out of her pants, clinging to me, her leg already hooking around my hips. “Need shelter.”
I pull back from her, gazing into her eyes. “I won’t be separated from you again,” I say, more like an affirmation than anything else.
She kisses me hard, sucking my tongue into her mouth, and against my lips she whispers, “Get us to safety.”
It’s an order I can’t refuse.
I growl and, in one fluid motion, I toss her over my shoulder. She shrieks in surprise, but then she’s positioned herself across my torso, wrapping her legs around my waist. She presses her lips to where she bit over my pulse, and it’s like she’s taken complete control of me. I navigate through the woods, searching for any sign of somewhere safe, somewhere to hide.
I need to be faster, to run harder, far away from that horrible town where she was taken from me.
I shift.
I fall into a sprint with Tilda on my back, racing back toward the den as fast as I can. She strokes the thick fur between my shoulder blades, moving carefully to avoid the sharp silver spines. Her voice is in my ear, whispering…
“Faster, love. I need you.”
It isn’t long before I know we’re in pack territory, the moon shining above. I toss her to the ground, where she lands with a thud, snatching at my hair as I shift back into my human form.
We’ve left most of our vestiges of pure humanity far behind—her clothes are torn and discarded somewhere in the woods, lost along with the pain we shared this past week. I lower my hand to press between her thighs and I find her dripping for me, her cunt clenching and begging for me.
I’ve never given into my rut before. I’ve always fought it off, keeping careful composure so I wouldn’t break my vows.
Not tonight.
Never again.
