Page 83 of The Fated Hunter Wolf

She bit me. Not hard, not enough to break skin, just gentle pressure at the junction of my neck and shoulder that sent fire racing through my bloodstream.

“Sable,” I breathed, my hands tightening on her waist.

“I can taste what you’re feeling,” she said, her lips still pressed against my throat. “Through the bond, through your skin. It’s…”

“Erotic?”

“Perfect.”

This time when she bit me, it was with purpose. With fangs that pierced skin and found the vein that carried everything I was. Instead of the desperate hunger from before… this felt different. Intimate. Less about survival and more about choice.

Her feeding wasn’t consuming, and it didn’t feel like before, when I couldn’t breathe without it. I was being caressed from the inside and could sense her emotions while she tasted my blood.

She moved back, teeth back to normal as if nothing had happened, but the bond between us was alive with new fervor. A single drop of my blood was on her lower lip, dark as wine in the moonlight. Without thinking, I reached up and wiped it away with my thumb.

“That was…” I started, then stopped because there weren’t words for what had just passed between us.

“Different,” she finished, wonder in her voice.

“Yeah.” I studied her face. “Better.”

“Much better,” she agreed, reaching up to trace the small wounds she’d left on my throat. Her breath ghosted over me and my cock grew hard, and I knew waiting much longer wasn’t an option. This bond was going to bring us in, and I was ready for it. Ready to have all of her, to let my wolf take hers and to consummate the bond the way it was always intended to be.

I was about to suggest we find somewhere with more privacy when a voice spoke from the darkness behind us.

“Hello, little sister,” a male voice said, accent thick with old European sophistication. “I’ve been looking for you.”

28

SABLE

Iheard the voice like a snake hissing in the distance, but I couldn’t see him. My wolf had been so consumed by this closeness with Rhys that my other side missed his approach. Or he was just that good. Rhys growled. I put a hand on his chest to calm him.

I had to be the one to deal with this.

“Still playing house with the puppies, I see. How… domestic.”

And there he was. Tall, pale, moving through the trees with a casual grace that said he’d had centuries of practice. He was at the edge of the clearing, his head tilting as he scented the air. Then he cast a bubble of silence around us. No one at the celebration would be able to hear or sense a thing.

That was old-world magic.

The vampire offered a fang-filled smile.

“I don’t know you.” Power built beneath my skin, silver magic responding to the threat automatically. I kept it contained.

“Ah, but you do. A part of you always has. I’m your dear blood-brother, Ivan.” He took a step closer, and I caught the scent of old blood and older sins. Rhys tugged my arm to makeme step back, but I held myself in place. “You’ve been away from family too long, Sable. It’s time to come home.”

“This is my home.” It came out so naturally, I surprised myself.

“Is it?” Ivan nodded toward Rhys. “Does he know what you are? What you’re capable of?”

Rhys bristled. “I know enough.”

My vampire brother never took his eyes off me. “And does the alpha know about your feeding? About how you’ve been slowly turning their precious beta into something that’s no longer entirely wolf?” He was studying me with predatory interest. “Do they know that every time you drink from him, you’re changing him? Making him more like us?”

Ice flooded my veins. “You’re lying.”

“Am I? Haven’t you noticed how well he feels afterward? How he craves more?” His smile turned cruel. “You’re making him into a hybrid, little sister. Just like you.”