Page 19 of Destined Dawn

I slide my hand into his paw and he curls his fingers – or are they toes – around it and tugs me closer. Then he bends one leg, kneeling down.

“Climb onto my back then, little one, wrap your legs tightly around my waist and your arms tightly around my neck.”

I follow his instruction, feeling solid, packed muscle beneath his fur as I cling onto him.

He stands, lifting me high above the ground, and rests his paws on my thighs gripping them tightly.

Then he throws back his head, like he did before, howling up towards the winter sky, drops down onto his four paws and takes off across the prairie land.

He runs so quickly, the landscape around me blurs into one long flash of color and the wind whips through my hair and plasters it flat against my head.

I lower my head so my chin rests against his neck, and screw up my eyes. Beneath me his muscles ripple and lurch, working hard as he thunders across the land. It’s not as smooth, not as magical, as riding the dragon, but it’s damn exhilarating, like riding a fast motorbike, only the engine humming beneath my thighs is alive. He takes us right over the brow of the hill in the distance, through long grass that brushes against my legs, until, when I turn my head, I can no longer see the mansion behind us.

When we hit a stream, gurgling with water, he takes a hard left, his back paws scrabbling on the earth, and then he’s speeding along the bank. I watch as a flock of small birds shoot up into the sky, disturbed by our presence, and a small fish leaps from the water, its scales glistening like jewels.

The beast’s skin is hot beneath me and his fur begins to dampen with sweat. But he doesn’t stop. On and on he runs.Only finally coming to an abrupt halt at the outcrop of dense trees.

“There,” he whispers, motioning with his head and I peer through the gloom of the trees. A stag, grazing on the short grass beneath the branches, a magnificent pair of white antlers balancing on the crown of his head. The beast lowers his body until he’s lying flat in the tall grass and I slide off his back.

“You’re going to hunt him?” I ask and the beast growls quietly in response. “You can’t,” I insist. “He’s too beautiful.”

The beast’s chestnut eyes flick to mine and he looks at me with curiosity.

“You think only beautiful things deserve to live?”

My brow crinkles and I shake my head. “No, I think every creature deserves to live, beautiful or not.”

“And cruel creatures? Malicious creatures? Do they deserve to live?”

“Nature is cruel.” I saw it often enough, raising the chickens, tending our vegetable plot.

“Doesn’t the hunter deserve to eat?” the beast asks, his eyes focusing back on the oblivious stag.

“You’re not hunting him for food.”

“But it’s in my nature. Would you deny me my nature?”

I turn my head away. Life was easy before. All I had to worry about was whether the chickens had laid any eggs that day, whether I could spare a tin from the larder, whether I had enough to eat. I didn’t have to worry about wrong or right. My head didn’t ring continually with these complicated decisions.

This is his nature. To kill. Who am I to demand he changes? Should I not accept him as he is?

“I don’t know,” I admit in the end. The beast stalksforward. I close my eyes. I’ve seen so many people die now. You’d think I’d be used to it.

But then I hear the thundering of hooves and when I open my eyes, I see the stag cantering away.

“He caught a hint of our scents,” the beast says, watching him go.

I let out the breath I was holding and lie out in the grass beside the beast. The cold air nips at my nose but the beast radiates heat and I snuggle closer to him to keep warm. He rolls onto his side, bending his elbow and resting his head on his paw. He peers down at me and then lifts his other paw and drags a claw softly – barely hard enough for me to feel it – down my cheek.

“I hope we will have other moments like this, little mate.”

I open my mouth to reply, but he rolls away from me and his body jerks and jolts like Spencer’s did earlier. Only this time, the fur retracts, his frame shrinks and his muzzle contracts, until it’s Spencer lying on the cold earth beside me.

A very fucking naked Spencer.

8

Spencer