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The sounds shifted from right behind me, moving past me. Relief flooded my veins, and I dared to hope that I might have shaken my pursuer.
But it turned out my optimism was short-lived.
As I rounded a bend, I was met with a sight that defied all reason. Blocking my path was a massive black wolf, its fur as dark as the night itself. Its eyes, however, were a vivid, unnatural shade of bright blue that seemed to pierce through the encroaching darkness.
I skidded to a halt, terror freezing me in my tracks. The wolf’s gaze locked onto mine, and my heart pounded in my chest.
I realized something else.
It was one of the wolves that had chased my sister and I back to our dorms. My mind struggled to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, and I bit the inside of my cheek, telling myself I needed to keep quiet.
Was it time to play dead?
I froze as he took slow, deliberate strides towards me. My heart pounded in my chest, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the frightening creature.
If I had thought I was crazy before, what happened next couldn’t even begin to hold a candle to it. Right before my eyes, the impossible happened.
The wolf began to transform, its fur melting away like a shadow dispersing in the light. In its place emerged Dr. Caelum Hawthorne, his presence undeniable and imposing and downright frightening.
I told myself that my mind was playing tricks on me. Had something inside me snapped this morning and now I was a full-blown, crazy psycho? Were there pills for this kind of thing? Because I had to be seeing things. This shit couldn’t be real.
Werewolves didn’t exist.
His intense, piercing blue eyes met mine, and a palpable sense of power radiated from him.
“Kaci,” he uttered, his voice resonating in the stillness of the bayou, tinged with a blend of both human and something infinitely more primal.
I noticed something else.
The restraint in his eyes that had been there when we’d first met was long gone.
CHAPTER 8
Kaci
I took a step back, hoping to put more distance in between me and Caelum, but he simply took several strides towards me and closed it. I looked over my shoulder, searching for any avenue of escape as he cleared his throat.
“There is nowhere to run, Kaci. Wherever you run, wherever you hide, I will find you and I will catch you,” he warned, his voice dripping with seductive malice.
My insides curdled with fear.
“We can talk about this, Dr. Hawthorne,” I tried. He was human in there somewhere, right? Maybe I could appeal to his humanity, and we could have a normal conversation together like fully grownhumanadults. Somehow, knowing that his socks were crazy did not soften him at all in this moment.
“Ry left you back at the mansion with explicit instructions to stay put,” he replied, completely ignoring my request as he took another step in my direction. There was scarcely six feetin between us now, and the closer he prowled towards me, the smaller I felt.
“I just wanted to get something back at my dorm,” I explained, omitting how that ‘something’ was mycar, and he growled, quite literally growled at me like the feral creature he’d just transformed from. The sound shook through me like a category five earthquake, and my breath caught in the back of my throat.
“Don’t lie to me,” he snarled.
That bad feeling turned from bad to worse.
He stalked towards me, and I barreled backwards straight into a tree. I grimaced in pain as my head knocked against it. Like a wolf on the prowl, he closed in on me and crowded over me, surrounding me with his massive form and caging me in.
“I’m going to bring you back to our mansion, but before I do, you and I are going to have a discussion about what happens to little human girls who defy very explicit orders,” he warned.
What the fuck did that mean?
“Dr. Hawthorne,” I tried again, wanting to beg, but I didn’t know what I was begging for, at least not yet. For some inexplicable reason, my nipples pebbled beneath my shirt, and I bit my lip, trying to hold back my cry of dismay. My eyes glanced up to his hard ones, and my heart fell straight to the tips of my toes.
