Page 11

Chapter 11

Liam

S he doesn’t need to tell me that I can never walk away from her again after I catch her tonight.

I made that decision the moment I knew I’d take no other wife except her, even if it meant dragging her into my dark world.

Even though her lips are still flushed red from my kiss, even though her scent is tangled with mine in the air—full of rising heat and surrender—Claire looks at me through lashes damp with tears and dares me to catch her like she’s finishing a vow she started ten years ago.

Then she turns and runs.

Not with fear, but with defiance.

I should shift instantly, should already be on the trail, muscle and claw carving a path through the dark like fury on four legs.

But I just stand there, moonlight drenching my skin, her scent still warm on my mouth.

My heartbeat fists behind my ribs and pounds so loud I swear I feel it in the dirt.

I’ll give her a head start, let her think that she might actually escape me.

Claire’s challenge isn’t about possession.

It’s not about primal instinct or dominance.

Not really.

It’s about trust, forgiveness, worth.

The kind of hunt she invites me on is more than tooth and tilt.

This isn’t me chasing a mate with rut in my belly and control in my spine.

This is a male earning his female.

She wants me to capture her, body and heart.

She wants me as I am, the man I’ve become after every brutal line I’ve crossed since the night I let her go.

I move slowly at first, fingers undoing the top button of my shirt, then the next.

I strip in silence, laying each piece of clothing across a low branch like I would battle armor before a duel.

The woods watch, quiet and patient, as I unbuckle my belt and step free of the last pieces that mark me as a man rather than beast.

The full moon grips at my spine, coaxing power up and through me.

It always reacts to emotion first, and I am fathoms-deep in feeling tonight.

Grief.

Guilt.

Desire.

Devotion.

The shift hits like it always does—fire stretching inside my skin, bones warping under pressure, muscles tearing and reknitting.

My jaw cracks sideways and lengthens, teeth sharpen as my eyes blow wide with the transformation.

My back bows, ribs pop, and then the long silence between my heartbeats breaks with the low, full rumble of breath escaping me in this new form.

I drop onto four paws, massive and snarling with restrained fury, my fur rippling over taut muscle with each breath.

The darkness of my coat gleams silver at the edges, but the black runs deeper—soaked in blood, memory, and hunger.

My claws dig into the forest floor, sinking past moss and rot like they were made to carve through flesh.

I tense, power vibrating through my limbs, already on the razor’s edge of instinct.

Then I lift my muzzle.

And I howl.

It tears from me like a war cry, a savage proclamation to the stars themselves.

A song of possession, of warning, of ruthless acknowledgment that after tonight she belongs to me.

My howl isn’t a plea.

It’s my dominance echoing into the bones of the world.

Mafia or wolf, I take what’s mine and protect it with tooth and claw.

No more hesitation.

No more mercy.

Her scent hits me like gasoline to flame: wind, sweat, heat, and fear—not terror, but the thrilling sharp adrenaline that comes when prey knows it’s being chased.

Except Claire isn’t prey.

She’s the blood in my mouth and the fire in my chest.

My obsession in lace and bare feet.

She isn’t running to escape me but to make me prove I’ll never lose her again.

Good.

Let her run.

I will tear down the fucking woods if I have to.

Each clawed step sinks deep into the earth.

With every inch, I track her like a storm hunts the shore.

I see it now: a heel print, deep and deliberate between twisted roots.

Adrenaline pushing her to run without caring about the obvious trail she’s leaving behind.

There.

Another print, shallower, near the rise of a slope.

I inhale, and something carnal cracks loose in my ribcage.

She’s close.

Her scent is thickened now—salt and lust and defiance all twisted into one heady thread.

My spine bows under the pressure of it, snarls coiling in my throat.

Then I find it.

A shard of torn lace, trembling on the end of a low branch.

As if she left a scrap of herself behind like a breadcrumb or bait.

She knows what she’s running from.

She wants this.

She wants me like this: wild, ruined, slavering with need.

But what she doesn’t know is what kind of wolf I truly am.

I press my snout against the lace and close my eyes, breathing her into my lungs like sacrament.

It’s still warm.

Threaded with her skin.

It makes me ache.

Makes me feral.

Every cell in my body floods with need, not the hollow itch of rut, but a deep, marrow-cleaving desire to catch her, mark her, and drag her back where no one but me will ever touch her again.

She’s not a fox, like my mother warned.

She’s not some clever girl slipping through underbrush.

She is my mate.

And I am not just her hunter.

I am her reckoning.

I move through the trees, muscles straining and hard with each powerful leap.

The deeper I plunge into the forest, the more my thoughts quiet.

Guilt strips away.

Hesitation dulls.

I remember who I am beneath the regrets and the blood: a man who’s never stopped loving her.

A wolf who’s waited ten long years to claim what’s his.

She’s out there in the wild now.

Waiting to be earned.

The scent sharpens.

She’s close.

I slow near a stream fed by one of the deeper ravines that cut through the estate.

A flash of moonlight reflects off of her between the branches.

She climbs up along crumbling banks and twists through brambles that grab and tear at the skirt of her dress before she disappears.

I see her in my mind like a flash—hair wild, mouth flushed, legs pumping with purpose.

She’s wind-stung and laughing through her teeth, completely untamed.

Utterly mine.

I burst through the underbrush with speed that makes the trees blur in my peripheral vision.

My pulse tunnels into the sound of footfalls ahead—soft but purposeful, the crackle of twigs and her breath just beyond the dip in the path.

She’s running, really running now.

I leap over a fallen log just as she reaches the edge of a slope above the stream.

She turns at the last second, her chest heaving, a feral smile ghosting across her lips the moment before I tackle her.

I leap, careful with my claws, my full weight braced to avoid real injury.

She falls through the air with a shriek of laughter that drowns in the crash of us hitting the ground in a tangle of limbs and breath and heat.

Claire lands beneath me, her back arching from the shock, mouth parted in a gasp, skin glowing against the dark earth.

And then she isn’t laughing anymore.

Her eyes search mine, wide and unguarded.

Her fingers rise slowly, curl into the thick fur at my ruff, and hold tight.

Not struggling.

Not pushing away.

Choosing me.

My heart stutters.

The wolf in me shivers.

I lower my muzzle slowly, touching my nose to the curve beneath her ear, scenting the salt of her sweat and the electric thrum of desire humming through her blood.

She arches again, a small gasp escaping her.

She smells of pure, unfiltered need.

She doesn’t speak.

She doesn’t need to.

Her thighs part as if pulled by invisible strings, welcoming me in as my claws dig into the dirt beside her hips.

Her hands stroke across my shoulders, down the ridge of my flank.

The gown I chose for her is ruined, torn and dirt-streaked, clinging to her in pieces.

I nudge a strip of fabric away with my muzzle and bare her inch by inch, worshiping every curve revealed.

My tongue drags along her ribs, my breath hot over her skin, each stroke deliberate.

Her cries are music, her whimpers a symphony only I was ever meant to hear.

Her hand fists in my fur, wordless and demanding.

I slip lower, inhaling the scent of her arousal, and when I find the heat waiting for me, slick and bold, a growl rumbles through my chest.

Fuck, I’ve dreamed of this.

Of her.

Head tilted back, lips bitten red and eyes glazed with need.

I taste her for the first time, slow and reverent, and every part of me howls.

My tongue drags through her slickness in a long, deliberate stroke from base to clit.

Her entire body jolts like she’s been struck by lightning; her thighs snap tight against my shoulders, her nails carving down my back in frantic, helpless lines.

I growl against her as I do it again, slower this time, savoring the heat soaking my mouth.

She’s sweet.

Fuck, she tastes like honey and salt and something only a mate should ever know—something sacred.

Something that belongs to me down to the last trembling drop.

She jerks violently when I lap at her again, slower now, until my tongue lingers just a hair longer over her clit.

The tremor that rips through her body makes my own tremble, primal ferocity barely caged beneath thick fur and the bone-molded beast I’ve become.

I press my snout deeper into her, my tongue lashing greedily against the swollen folds, polishing her with slow agony.

She whimpers, frantic with sensation, her scent blooming as her arousal soaks the air around us.

Every pulse of her slick against my tongue is a surrender she can’t take back.

She sobs my name as she breaks, her orgasm crashing through her like a wave slamming into rock.

And I devour it.

Her legs tremble as I pull my massive frame up from where I devoured her.

I stand over her now, chest heaving, fur bristling with a savage kind of reverence.

My shadow swallows her whole, cast by the moon spilling down through the trees.

I gaze down at the place where my tongue had tasted everything she’d given, her slick still coating my snout, her scent imprinted into my every cell.

She’s still catching her breath, legs parted, her ruined gown tangled around her hips.

Hair wild.

Sweat glowing on her skin.

No wolf has ever looked upon his mate and seen something more divine.

And no one will ever be permitted to look at her this way again.

She blinks up at me, heart open to me, and tilts her chin with aching slowness.

A silent invitation.

She’s not just baring her neck.

She’s baring everything.

I lower my massive head, my heavyweight body moving with deliberate, unshakable control.

Every ounce of primal instinct urges me to strike fast, to claim her as mine.

My jaws open, the heat of my breath rolling over her collarbones like a storm.

My fangs hover above the curve of her jaw where neck meets shoulder, but instead of marking her where tradition suggests, I move.

I position my bite higher, angling until a canine grazes where her pulse flutters dangerously close to skin.

Right around the delicate column of her throat.

Where it cannot be covered.

Where her beating heart will always be protected by my claim.

My bite will not be hidden.

Not with clothing.

Not with scarves.

Not with time.

I close my jaws.

The puncture is precise, terrible, deliberate.

She screams, pain turning into release and pleasure.

Her body bows up once more as the bond rips through our blood in a second, searing wave.

Lightning surges through our tether, linking us beneath the moon, underneath centuries of tradition.

My teeth settle deeper, etching my claim into the very structure of her flesh.

Her hands fist in my thick fur, her mouth parted in an endless soundless gasp, and as her heartbeat stutters beneath her ribcage, the mark seals.

When I release her, crimson blood streaks in twin lines, painting her throat like rubies against ivory.

A necklace only I can lay across her skin.

After admiring the sight she makes, I begin to clean her wound.

My tongue, hot and velvet, drags over the punctures in long, careful strokes.

Each motion helps the healing magic from the bond weave into place faster, closing the wounds until they’re nothing more than silver scars.

I don’t rush, even as my cock aches and drips with need to claim her body now that her soul is mine.

I want to memorize this moment as she sighs underneath me.

My tongue makes one final pass,right beneath the jawline.

And I rest my muzzle gently there, laying my head down over her pulse.

I can feel it.

Mine forever.