Page 25 of To Run with the Wild Hunt

You're going to break, I thought, my teeth aching from the strength of my clenched jaws and my power wrapped around me like thorned vines. How much longer can you hope to do this?

The Hunter, not setting foot outside of his palace, refusing to begin the chase. The Dullahan, turning his face away from fear. The brook horse, letting everything he desired slip through his fingers.

But to do otherwise – to leave marks on her vivid soul to rival those on her skin – could not be borne. I would rather be destroyed—undone. Unmade.

I couldn't even hate Sarcaryn for this. It was my own nature tearing me apart.

I didn't sleep. I couldn't. The risk of waking full of lust and hunger, as I so often did now, was too high, and the envy too raw. If I awoke like that, my cock hard and my soul ruled by the Hunt, I would never be able to stop myself from striding through my palace to my bedroom and my soulmate, and making her run.

So I didn't sleep. I sat on my throne, everything hurting, and waited for the sun to rise. Even when the morning light shone on me, I didn't move.

I didn't realize Lexi had come until she snapped a twig to get my attention.

My head whipped towards her, nostrils flaring and vision narrowing. I locked my muscles in place, refusing to read an invitation in the smirk she wore, in her tousled rose-gold hair, in the casual disarray of my robe belted loosely around her waist—

Key stood beside her, a hound unlike any that ran with me. His fur gleamed in the sunlight, silken and black as night, his tail plumed and longer than that of any natural-born dog. Silver horns arced up from his skull over violet eyes, and his silver claws clicked on the stone floor as he moved.

She smelled like him. His sweat. His seed.

I had to fight back red desire, my focus sharpening as Lexi sauntered over. Her bare breasts shifted beneath my robe as she walked, the pale skin of her full thighs showing with each step.

Her hound didn't stand guard. He licked his chops, staying near the door, watching me with heat in his eyes.

"You know," Lexi said when she neared me, "I was really starting to think you didn't give a shit about me."

"What… would make you… think that?" I said between heavy breaths, trying not to snarl the words. She fucking smelled like him. I needed her to smell like me.

This is where you break. You're fucked, Nuada.

"You're a hunter," she said. "The Hunter. And you haven't so much as come to look in on me, let alone pursued me."

I didn't trust myself to speak. I didn't know if I could keep myself from leaping on her like a slavering wolf.

She lowered her lashes, regarding me with the satisfaction of a well-fed cat eyeing a songbird. With the smallest of smirks on her lips, she walked up the stairs to my throne and put her hands on my knees.

I held myself very, very still, every muscle clenched. What the fuck was she doing? Didn't she know she was taunting a starving predator?

My eyes darted to Key. He licked his chops again, with the same hunger as a hound waiting for the alpha to cede the kill to his pack. What the fuck had he done—or said? He ought to know better than to do this to one such as me.

"A girl likes to feel wanted, Nuada," she said, sliding her hands up my taut thighs, pushing the furs of my clothing up as she did to bare my legs. "Like she's worth the chase. It was nice of you to give me a few days to get my bearings, but sitting here for weeks brooding instead of hunting… well." Lexi raked her nails down along my inner thighs, stepping back with a supercilious expression on her pretty face. "When has the prey ever walked into the jaws of her predator?"

My cock responded to her touch. All of me did, my predatory focus narrowing onto her mouth, her hands, the shadow between her breasts—but my stiffening cock I couldn't hope to hide from her, and she licked her ruddy lips as she traced the shape of it beneath my clothing with her eyes.

"I'm too dangerous for such games," I growled, gripping the arms of my throne so that I wouldn't grab her by the hair and shove my aching cock into her pert mouth, fuck her face until tears stained her skin, take all the things I wanted from her—

With challenge in her eyes and a smirk on her lips, Lexi undid the knot of her belt, then shrugged my robe off one shoulder, baring her pale skin and the bruise of a bite. "What makes you think I don't like dangerous?" she asked.

When I didn't answer, she lifted her chin, eyelashes lowering.

"This has been fun, and the palace is nice, but without you, it's not really worth staying." She dropped the belt to the ground, and then my robe atop it, standing naked in front of me, the nipples of her heavy breasts hard and the glint of wet at the apex of her thighs. "So I'm leaving, Hunter, and I'm not taking anything of yours with me. And if you want me to come back?" Lexi licked her red lips. "Fucking make me."

I could have taken her then and there. It would have been easy. All I had to do was stand and grab her by the throat, then throw her to her knees and show her exactly how vicious "make me" could be.

Yet I was the Master of the Wild Hunt. I had run out many does, and I always gave them a head start.

After all, it can hardly be called a hunt if the distance traveled is less than one step.

And so it wasn't difficult to let her go—to watch her pivot and stalk off, her spine straight and the hairs on the nape of her neck lifted in knowledge of the predator to her back. Whether she understood what she was asking for or not, I had nothing left to hold me back. There's only so much torture a man can endure.

---