Page 29 of Wolf Fated

Only she’s not inside. She’s somewhere in the forest where she has no protection.

Anguished fury surges through me and I throw back my head, releasing a hair-raising howl into the darkness. My focus narrows to a single, blazing need–get to my mate.

Shred the feral who has deigned to take her.

I crash through the underbrush in a frenzy, ignoring the slashing bites of pine branches and stinging lines of blood they leave on my face. Every shred of my being strains toward the sounds of her cries splintering the silent forest. At last, I barrel into a small moonlit clearing and freeze, a choked whine catching in my throat.

There she is. My beautiful, delicate Sarah crouched against the slashed trunk of a gnarled old tree. Tears stream down her porcelain cheeks, green eyes stretched wide as the feral circles her in hungry, unpredictable loops. His jaws are distended in a permanent snarl, thick ropes of drool dripping from his lolling tongue to spatter on the ground. Ribs appear through his mangy, threadbare pelt with each heaving breath. Scabs mar his legs and along his flank and when his head swivels toward me, his eyes are bright with insanity. He has no idea what he’s doing. A part of me wonders how he was able to breach a witch’s ward, find my cabin through the town and my mate, but then his legs tense and he’s arching through the air toward my mate.

Her scream shreds my soul.

In two massive strides I’ve crossed the distance between us. My paws leave the ground, my jaws clamping around his throat with bone-crushing force before he has a chance to touch a hair on her head. I use every ounce of my weight to bear down, driving his body into the ground. His eyes widen with shock and terror as I tear out his jugular in one savage motion, spraying his lifeblood in an obscene crimson arc.

I release the ragged flesh from my jaws, watching impassively as his body gives one final jerking shudder before falling forever still. A pool of gore slowly spreads out around his matted fur, staining the pine needles beneath and filling the clearing with the thick, cloying scent of death.

Lifting my muzzle to the glimmering moon, I allow a single mournful howl to pour from the depths of my soul. A mourning song for the violence, for the loss of control and a feral’s senseless death.

When I turn to face Sarah, she’s trembling against the rough bark, staring at me with horror reflecting in her eyes. Her hair is a wild, tangled mess. Blood splatters her pale skin and deep tremors wrack her body.

My ears flatten against my skull and I release a broken whine, desperate to convey the roiling storm of shame and anguish tearing through my soul. At revealing the other half of myself in such a brutal way. At her witnessing the true depths of violence I’m capable of unleashing with fang and claw.

Even if I shift back to the human form she knows and loves, can she ever again look at me without a glimmer of fear and revulsion? Will she ever be able to separate the man from the beast whose unholy presence taints our bond?

Or have I just destroyed any chance of her loving all of me?

Chapter Fifteen

Sarah

A massive russet wolf stares at me, his tawny fur streaked with crimson. White socks accent his powerful legs and a blaze marks his broad forehead. He’s bigger than any wolf I’ve ever seen–even standing on his hind legs, he’d tower over my five-and-a-half-foot frame.

Thick ropes of muscle ripple beneath his pelt with every subtle movement. His jaws are easily large enough to crush bones to splinters. But it’s his eyes that transfix me most–molten pools of yellow fire that bore straight through to my soul.

I shrink back against the rough tree trunk. Sheer, visceral terror has me trembling from head to toe. This...this beast just brutally slaughtered the wolf that dragged me out here. I watched in mute horror as he ripped out the other’s throat with dagger-like fangs.

And now those same razor-edged jaws are stained crimson, the beast’s muzzle dripping gore. Will he turn those weapons on me next, now that I’m alone and utterly defenseless?

To my shock, the wolf does the complete opposite. He drops to his belly on the ground, laying his massive body out in an unmistakable posture of submission. A pitiful whine slips through his bloodied jaws as he regards me with those eerie yellow eyes.

Slowly, carefully, he stretches out his front legs and begins crawling toward me with his ears flattened against his skull. The move is so disarmingly domestic, so at odds with the brutality I’ve just witnessed, that it roots me to the spot in sheer incredulity.

When he’s no more than six feet away the wolf bounces his tail against the ground in a distinctly canine gesture. He’s...he’s wagging his tail at me, as if trying to make friends and convey he means no harm.

I gape at the bizarre scene, not knowing whether to scream or whimper in fear. Even as this act tugs at some primitive place in my soul that finds it endearing, alarm bells blare through my mind. This is no domesticated pet. This is a wild, bloodthirsty beast who just took a life without remorse or mercy.

And yet...there’s something almost painfully familiar about those soulful yellow eyes. Something I can’t be scared about no matter how hard I try.

My breath stutters in my lungs. I know those eyes. I’ve gotten hopelessly lost in their warm, molten depths while making love to...

I reach out. Brush my fingers over the white blaze of fur on his forehead. The wolf stays still, letting me pet him. His fur is…soft. So soft.

The wolf startles me by releasing a strange, churring sound, almost like a content chuff. Before I can process what’s happening, the massive beast shifts.

What was once a hulking animal rapidly distorts and elongates, rearranging into thick, sinewy human limbs. Fur melts away and bronze skin ripples, sculpting into dense cords of bulging muscle and stark plains.

It takes my addled brain long, agonizing seconds to understand what I’m witnessing. Where the wolf once crouched, now a powerfully-built man is rising in a deep crouch before me.

A very naked, incredibly masculine man with tousled chestnut hair and those same soulful, achingly-familiar eyes, once yellow and now brown. Streaks of gore paint stark lines across his sculpted torso and down one thick arm in a macabre abstract. My eyes stray helplessly to the thick jut of his engorged cock nestled in a bed of wiry curls before flicking back up to see his face twisted with remorse.

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