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The memory of her pressed against the wall of her cottage flashes through my mind. How she yielded beneath my hands even as she fought me with words. How perfectly she fit against me.
My pace quickens, wings tucked tight against my back for speed. The forest thins ahead, and I catch a glimpse of movement—a flash of auburn against the night. There. My prey. My Ronnie.
The hunt surges through me, hot and demanding. I close the distance with predatory focus, my blood singing with the promise of capture.
24
RONNIE
My lungs burn with each desperate breath as I crash through the underbrush, branches whipping against my face and arms. The darkness swallows everything but the immediate ground before me, and I stumble over roots and stones that seem to reach up from the earth specifically to trip me.
"Keep moving," I gasp to myself, pushing my tired legs forward. "Don't stop."
The forest is alive around me—chittering, rustling, watching. Each sound makes me flinch, imagining those six amber eyes blinking in that hideous pattern, that massive form lunging from the shadows. Nothing prepared me for facing one up close, for the stench of its breath or the strange clicking sounds it made deep in its throat.
I wouldn't have stood a chance if Araton hadn't appeared.
Araton.
His name pulses through my mind with each frantic heartbeat. The image of him throwing himself between me and the beast, wings spread wide and magnificent, plays on repeatbehind my eyes. The raw command in his voice when he'd ordered me to run. The promise.
"I will always find you."
A shiver that has nothing to do with fear races down my spine. I shouldn't be thinking about how those words affected me. I shouldn't be remembering the heat in his golden eyes, or how the muscles in his back flexed as he wrestled with the beast, or how something primal and feminine inside me responded to his protective display.
But I am.
I slow my pace slightly, straining to hear any sounds of combat behind me. The forest has gone eerily quiet—no snarls, no crashes, no cries of pain. Either Araton has killed the beast... or it has killed him.
My stomach drops at the second possibility, a cold dread washing through me. No. Not him. Not now, when Millie has just found her father, when I've just started to...
To what? Let him in? Trust him? Want him?
All of the above, whispers a traitorous voice in my head.
I shake the thought away, focusing instead on the path ahead. The trees are thinning, moonlight filtering through the canopy in silver patches. I should stop running. If the thassir is dead, I'm only exhausting myself needlessly. If Araton is searching for me, I should make it easier for him to find me.
But something keeps me moving, keeps my feet flying over the forest floor. Something that has nothing to do with the thassir and everything to do with the man pursuing me.
Because he is pursuing me. I know it with a certainty that settles deep in my bones.
The image of Araton tracking me through the forest sends a thrill of something dangerously close to excitement coursing through my veins. I remember how he looked that night he found me in the garden—wild with possession, golden eyesblazing, backing me against the wall with predatory focus. How thoroughly he claimed me, punishing and passionate all at once.
We haven't shared my bed since that night. Why is that all I can think about now, with danger barely behind me and my daughter waiting anxiously at home?
Because you're running from the wrong thing, that same inner voice whispers.Always have been.
I push harder, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The forest floor slopes gently upward, and I follow it, seeking higher ground. My legs tremble with exertion, but I ignore their protests.
A twig snaps somewhere behind me—too deliberate to be the wind, too subtle to be the thassir. My pulse quickens. He's found my trail. He's hunting me.
The thought should terrify me. Instead, heat pools low in my belly, a shameful excitement I can't quite suppress. I blame it on the adrenaline, on the fear, on anything but the truth—that part of me wants to be caught.
"Stupid," I mutter to myself, pushing a sweat-soaked strand of auburn hair from my face. "Focus, Ronnie."
I reach the top of the small rise and pause, gulping in air. The forest spreads out below, silver-touched in the moonlight. I should be able to spot him if he's following, should be able to?—
Another sound, closer now. The hair on my arms rises.