Page 3 of The Fated Hunter Wolf

If she sensed my wolf, she didn’t reply.

Instead, she wrapped her arm around the back of my head, the entirety of her naked body against me, and kissed me with a claiming rapture I didn’t know was possible on this earth.

Her mouth pressed into mine and I was helpless. The taste of her, like sweetened roses, was nothing like her acrid scent, and this clash of smell and taste froze me in place. I wanted her, I needed her, and I hated her all at once.

She tore herself off me, chest heaving with hot breaths that washed over me.

I was undone, a feral energy rising, and I was close—too close—to losing it all.

I grabbed her around the waist and tugged, our bodies crashing into each other. She pushed me away with a ferocity I’d never seen in a wolf, and my back slammed against a tree.

“You’re coming back with—” I started. In a flash, her arm shifted, claws at full length, and she swiped across my chest.

Her power unfurled, the air between us thickening. Blood seeped from the gashes she’d made and dripped down my torso. She looked up, and I did too. Her eyes commanded me into stillness without a single word.

I was transfixed.

Sable turned and ran, barely a blur as her figure vanished into the trees. My claws itched to break free, to tear through the distance between us. Despite my will, my wolf whined and stayed put.

Was it a submission spell? I didn’t know what Sable had done, but it smelled rotten as fuck.

Within moments, I’d lost her scent. No sign of her footsteps or her figure anywhere. I growled but had no choice. Tonight was a defeat, but the hunt wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.

2

SABLE

Faster, faster, faster.

I’d never felt so cold. Like ice was running through my veins, which was as far from a shifter experience as possible. We ran hot.

But I had more than shifter blood in me.

This cold sliced through every inch of me until I felt like I might shatter. I leaned against a tree, bark rough against my bare back, each ridge and groove biting into my skin.

I took a heaving breath. My body trembled with exhaustion and anger and a need that I had never,everexperienced. The night wrapped around me, pressing into the forest like a living thing. I sought any sign of him, inhaling the humid air until I was lightheaded, but there was nothing. He was gone.

I’d gotten away. The Shadow Moon Goddess had been on my side.

The trees stretched endlessly, tall and ancient, their limbs clawing at the starless sky. I closed my eyes, the cool night air stinging my skin. I was still unclothed, my shift back to human form leaving me vulnerable in every sense of the word.

I felt like I was going to die from the cold.

I’d spent my whole life focused on saving others, saving them from the clutches of enemies or dragging them back from the edge of their own destruction. I’d never had to save myself.

A single kiss had unleashed a side of me I had done everything to forget.

What kind of sick magic had been cast on me that every ounce of my soul was consumed by the need to have him, to hold him, to feel all of him against me? That my core was alight the instant he was near? That the woman and the wolf both lost their minds in a single, desperate call to leave everything else behind and claim him?

Me. Claimhim. The one wolf on this planet I would never allow into my life.

My fingers curled into the bark at my back. I opened my eyes and scanned the forest, searching for anything to distract me from him. The breeze still hissed his name like a chant, like acurse.

I knew the curse he was under. And I had to stay as far away from it as possible.

Ever since that first moment in the café, when I nearly lost my nerve about leading Logan into Heraclid land—despite knowing it was what fate demanded—my heart had been beating with a need to find Rhys. The pull had been unbearable then, but now it was worse. Stronger. And it was urging me back to pack lands that weren’t mine, risking everything I’d worked for. Thatwehad worked for. My pack, lying in wait all these years, was counting on me.