Page 5 of To Run with the Wild Hunt

Time ceased to exist. Nothing but running mattered—nothing but the shape of the Stag's hindquarters as he fled. We ran and ran, our souls tied to the Hunt, and Sarcaryn fled before us.

The endlessness of the chase broke as the Master's will crashed against us, the force of his call so staggering that I tripped and fell, skidding across the ground. Reality asserted itself again, exhaustion slamming into me with the force of a spear. Every breath hurt, my tongue lolling out as my body went hot, paws throbbing and lungs aching.

"Walk," I heard, but for the first time I could shrug off the Master's command. It hurt too much to walk. I would lie here, resting, let everything wash away…

Sharp pain cracked against me, the Master's spear goading me to my feet with a yelping cry.

"Walk!" he said again, menacing me.

Whining, head hanging, I staggered forward, my feet hurting and muscles burning. But I walked, some distant part of me knowing I would perish if I didn't. Even that wasn't enough, though, not without the warmth of obedience to the Master.

I fixed my blurred vision on the bloodied clothing of my soulmate—my Lexi. Her name soothed some of the agony, the knowledge of her soul a memory I'd forgotten before I'd been born. Lexi. Alexis, I told myself, repeating her name with each painful step, reminding myself of a reason to go on.

So few fae had soulmates in the ever-shifting lands of the faery wilds. The Western Continent had been tamed, time flowing in a steady path through the aqueduct of civilization and Courts growing to cover nearly every ell of land. Gods still walked in the West, but only those who had the worship of Courts to feed them. A tame land, full of cities and Courts that had known tens of thousands of years. An easy land, eternity lying only a heartbeat away from mortality.

People could find soulmates there—lived long enough to cross each others' paths. But in the wilds…

The Master led us across the Veil, power flooding me as we stepped into the deep wilds again. This was Faery, ever-shifting power moving through the world like auroras. Those who could master it became Monarchs and mages, and those who fell into its embrace became monsters.

Uncomfortable thoughts scratched at my mind, an unfamiliar way of existence reasserting itself as we trotted towards home, our exhaustion easing as we settled back into the wild magic. I should be thinking of home—shouldn't even be thinking at all, the lure of home and food and soft places to sleep moving me with nothing but instinct and expectation. Yet I couldn't stop, memories and patterns I hadn't recalled for centuries flowing into me in a tangled mess, making me struggle to hold my shape and to keep my pace.

—kissing the hand of a visiting prince, my lashes lowered as I looked up into his elegant face with the promise of more—

"—Faster, Keilain! Are you a killer or a corpse? Strike me—!"

—lying sprawled on a bed with my shirt open, my fingers tangled in long hair as a green-skinned woman sucks my cock with the awkwardness of a virgin—

—leading the complicated figures of a dance, a hand on my shoulder and the blur of a face turned towards mine—

—my long, knife-tipped fingers splayed across a stone carved with rows and rows and rows of teeth—

I tried not to whine, panting from the stress as the Master dismounted, carrying Lexi away in his arms. I knew I was supposed to go to the kennels, could smell the food and hear the happy rumble of the other dogs, but he was taking Lexi away, I might never have the chance to meet her, to see her smile, to kiss her and mount her and hear her wail out her pleasure as my knot tied her—

I shook my head hard, my ears flopping as I drove the uncomfortable thoughts away, my sensitive cock half-hard and protruding from my sheath. As I did, I managed to identify the heady, dark scent on the air, something akin to the bright blood-hot scent of a bitch in heat. Lexi was in her fertile days—

"—You humans. Always so sure you're thinking with your heads and not your cunts. Yet every month sees you yearning for my seed again, just like any other bitch—"

My tail tucked between my legs, unfamiliar shame making me cringe. Had that been me? Someone else? I didn't remember.

The Master was a wild thing as much as I was, or more than I was. He was male like I was male, and he had Lexi on his bed, was taking her clothing off, smelled of the same animalistic desire that I did—

I'd kill him, I realized, the shock leaving me standing stock-still in the doorway, my ruff flattening as the snarl in my throat died unborn. If he hurt her, if he tried to take from that sleeping woman the things we both wanted from her, I would tear out the throat of my own Master to protect her.

But he left.

He left, and I crept into my Master's bedroom, where the hounds were never allowed. But Lexi was there, bare and unprotected, dressed only in a tight black breastband and a pair of teal underthings darkened by blood. I hesitated for a moment at the edge of the bed, dropping my head onto the mattress as I looked at her, but after a moment I jumped up and started licking the blood off of her bare skin.

The taste of her fertility lured me, but I was more than an animal, and the fear in her sweat and pain in her blood more than outweighed any desire for sex. Protective instincts settled into me, along with an affection for her that I had no business feeling for a woman I hadn't even met. I still was a hound, though, far more than the fae prince I'd once been, and I was her soulmate. That bond overrode even my obedience to the Master, and like any dog my affection and obedience went first to the most important person in my life, and only thereafter to others.

I was still washing the blood off of Lexi when the Master returned. My ears pinned back automatically, ruff lifting with dangerous warning as I growled deep in my chest.

"Get away from her," the Master growled back, his command striking me with all the power of his possessive rage.

A wolfhound only ever looks to one master. His commands no longer mattered to me.

I lifted my head only enough to look at him, standing over Lexi with all the protectiveness of a mastiff. At my desire to speak, my throat changed enough that my growl gentled, my original shape asserting itself.

The Master looked at me with barely-leashed fury, the bones of his silver hand clenched into a fist. "Move."

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