Page 26 of To Run with the Wild Hunt

The seconds ticked past like millennia, Lexi's bare feet on the stone of my palace as she left my sight. I held myself there for longer than I thought possible, then stooped and picked up my still-warm robe from the floor.

I lifted the cloth to my face, inhaling deeply. Her scent assailed me, salt and desire and the perfection of her bare skin. My cock twitched, demanding attention, but with the Hunt before me, I could set aside base lust. The rumble of a growl started in my chest as I stood, reaching out with my power for my hounds.

Keilain stepped between me and the archway Lexi had left through.

My brows snapped together. I started walking towards him, one dangerous step after another. I dropped the robe to the ground, summoning my hounds and horse as I did. "Out of my way, Keilain."

He stretched, long and languorous, an elegant creature. "I'm not here to stop you," he said simply, lifting his head to regard me. "She wants you, Nuada. She came here knowing what you would do after, and she's eager for it. I'm here to run with you, so you cannot lose even a second of her time."

My chest wrenched with sudden terror, eyes widening as I realized what I'd forgotten in the need of the Hunt—that the moment she left me and my palace and entered the faery wilds, time would no longer flow the same for us. But Key stood there, compassion in his violet eyes, his pointed ears lifted and plumed tail slowly wafting through the air.

Key, her balanced soulmate, who time would always remember for her.

"There could never have been another way, could there?" I asked, the tension in my shoulders easing. I was the Hunter; I would never have been able to pursue her without running her down, and the distance between us could have stolen her from me. But Key could love her in a different way, and I knew how to accept the assistance of a hound. He was mine, after all—as much mine as Lexi was.

And the hound always reaches the prey before the hunter.

He didn't answer, his tail wagging.

A servitor passed me the reins of my horse. I set my foot in the stirrup of my saddle and swung up onto the stallion's back, then smirked down at Keilain. "Run with me, then, hound."

He laughed, shaking himself and trotting over to take a position at my right hand, the other hounds falling in around us. "As you like, Master."

"Good boy," I purred, and spurred my horse into a run.

Surrender

Alexis Sharpe

Part of me expected not to make it across the whole room once I turned my back on Nuada. The further away I got, the louder my doubts clamored, Orpheus walking in front of silent Eurydice. What if he doesn't follow? What if this was a bad idea? Maybe I'm just being stupid. Maybe he doesn't even want this, and I'm walking naked through a palace full of dog-people for no reason at all—

I didn't turn around, though. I had enough pride to keep my shoulders square and my face turned away as I stalked off, anticipation thrilling through me. He was the Hunter. There was no way he could resist a challenge like that, right? Short of grabbing him by the dick, I didn't think I could be any more obvious.

Between one step and the next, the ground in front of me changed from the patterned marble flooring of the Ruined Palace to the dank leaf-litter of the deep woods, the sunlight streaming through the windows turning green where it fell through the dense canopy instead. I whipped around, but the palace behind me was gone, too, leaving only a moss-covered stone arch, all that remained of the doorway I'd stepped through.

Far in the distance, I heard the throaty cry of a hunting-horn, and my skin prickled with the answering surge of adrenaline.

The challenge was accepted, and the chase had begun.

The Wild Hunt changes those who run with it and who flee before it. That magic wrapped around my bones, answering to my call as I leaned into the connection between me and Nuada with a sense of overwhelming relief. I was meant to be here, a killer at my back. I'd told him the truth that first night: I wasn't a deer or a dog, and I refused to run as one. But there was one other creature who ran with the Hunt, and it was one meant for the Hunt as much as the hounds.

Even the Master himself had once been a horse.

I'd changed Key to suit me, taking command of his body with the power Nuada's love gave me. It answered easily to my hand, and between one moment and the next my body went from a woman's to a mare's, obeying the image of the world I chose to dream into being.

A palomino mare, athletic and agile, her long mane unbound and hooves unshod, as free and wild as any other creature of the woods—and yet tameable, as the deer are not. Rideable. Winnable.

Behind her, the hounds she'd first seen in the fields of the mortal world, now running through the deep woods of the ancient faery forest, and with them…

Their Master.

Come and get me, I thought with feral joy, and leapt into a bounding run.

I could feel them behind me, the same thrilling terror scudding across me, like the winds heralding the approach of a thunderstorm. I ran for them, racing ahead of that terror, far faster than I'd ever been on two feet. Curvy girls may not be made for running, but racehorses certainly are. I felt like I could outrun death.

Trees flashed past me, ancient things grown to enormous size. I ran in their shadows, heedless of the destination, my hooves striking the ground with surety. Nothing mattered but the run, the race, the beautiful end. Even fallen trees and the cuts of streams gave me no pause, my new form leaping through the air with the same elegant ease with which it ran.

The horn sounded again, closer now. In the periphery of my vision I caught glimpses of movement, the fastest of the hounds drawing nearer. Fear clawed at me, animalistic panic from the deepest instinct of a prey animal, making my hooves just a little fleeter and stretching my pace just a little longer. But I knew who had loosed his hounds on me—and what he was.

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