Page 13 of Bound By My Alpha Mate

I was so hungry that my beast was no longer under my control. My heart pounded in my ears, blinding me as I ripped flesh away from the still living deer, swallowing everything that found its way between my teeth. Knowing Kiara would experience these same sensations inebriated me. But for her, they wouldn’t be nourishing or filling. Maybe it would torture her, imagining the meat I was eating. Maybe it would frustrate her since she could never feed her beast. I hoped so. I wanted to taunt her.

My wolf devoured the doe’s flank in a frenzy.

The rest of her would become bait.

Chapter 9

Kiara

I expected Mythguard to try to track me once I was on my own again. That was why I left as quickly as possible, without looking back, assuming my beast form again and running into the trees. The darkness was a respite, shielding me from any prying eyes. Briefly, I had considered staying in the safety of Everett’s home overnight, but I couldn’t bear to show any kind of vulnerability by accepting their help.

Instead, I found a comfortable little burrow among the boulders on the mountainside, deep in Eastpeak territory, and fell asleep there. It was the first night in a long time I slept for a solid eight hours. My exhaustion had caught up to me.

In the morning, hunger plagued me. It always did. I spent some time foraging for berries, chickweed, violets, and the bright yellow frills of chicken of the woods growing low on oak trees. Mushrooms like these were perhaps the most substantial nourishment available to me in the wilderness. I ate all the non-poisonous varieties I could find that morning, but even then, I wasn’t satisfied. It never felt like enough, not when my body was perpetually screaming for protein I couldn’t have. I was hungry again by late afternoon. Most of my day had been spent deep in the heart of Eastpeak, and I should have stayed there if I wanted to keep foraging, but restlessness drew me back to the perimeter. I went northward, following my heart toward Dalesbloom.

The skies darkened, all the color sapped from them as clouds rolled in. The air felt heavy, wet, and cold for late September. Leaves were being strewn about by a frigid breeze that cut through my silky fur. My mind shifted back to the search for my mother as I combed the mountainside for evidence of the Inkscales. If I could catch their scent, I could follow them back to where they were hiding. This became my sole focus for hours.

Until hunger roared to life in me once again.

This time, it was worse than before, intense and gnawing. I paused between the trees as the overcast thinned enough to let some beams of the late sun fall through, but it was only a fleeting warmth before the grey skies would dominate again. It was as though the Sky Goddess couldn’t decide whether to bless me or curse me. When the chill returned, I closed my eyes and sought the source of the agitation in my muscles. My jaw clenched despite the urge to gnash my teeth. Suddenly, the phantom aroma of flesh rushed into my nose. Without thinking, I took off, searching for its source. Not dragons. Something else. Something alive.

A wolf’s instinct to hunt could never be subdued.

Grey clouds vanquished the sun for good, plunging the forest into a dull, damp darkness as evening approached night. I hunted until the ghostly scent of fresh blood became real. There was a doe a quarter mile away, already slain, stinging my nose with its poisonous gore. That defeated the purpose of my search, didn’t it? I wanted to hunt, chase, kill, but the fact that I couldn’t was perhaps soothed by the feat having already been performed for me. I was drawn toward the animal—whether by curiosity or primal greed, I couldn’t entirely tell. My beast had taken control of me, and I wasn’t thinking, just operating off of natural instinct.

I stalked through the trees until the body appeared among the ferns, bright red viscera the only color I could see in the dusk. I slowed down, my tongue dashing against my nose to drink in the smell. The moment I was close enough, I detected a secondary smell hovering around it, impressed into the footsteps in the dirt and woven into the teeth marks in the flesh. The smell made me freeze in my tracks.

Colt Hexen. This was his kill.

It was no wonder I’d felt so ravenous. Our newfound fated bond would have shared his hunter’s excitement with me. Snarling, I cursed that I could feel what he felt, then kept a wide berth around the kill as I circled it. The Hexen son hadn’t lingered, not that I could tell. There was no movement in these trees, no sign that he had stayed; it was dark, though, and I couldn’t see very deeply into the vegetation. Slowly, I crept closer, craning my neck to sniff at the carcass. It burned my nose and throat. I wanted so badly to eat.

With experimental curiosity, I perched my teeth on the doe’s shoulder, savoring how it felt to have prey in my jaws. I was taunting myself, I knew, but I couldn’t deny how pleasing it was to at least experience the sensation. When I bit down harder, the flesh gave, and I felt bone under my canines. I lost myself in it until I accidentally split the hide, and blood touched my gums.

Pain flared through my mouth. I reeled back, shaking my head and spitting. As much as I wanted to, my unicorn ancestry wouldn’t allow me even to taste it.

Recoiling from the carcass, I growled in frustration at myself. It would be better if I just left this alone. I was only going to hurt myself if I kept messing around. My tail lashed angrily as I backed away, but hunger thundered in my stomach again, and my beast took over. I couldn’t stop my feet from drawing closer to the carcass, and this time my maw opened wide. I took a mouthful of meat that I knew would poison me, but my beast didn’t care.

I was always at war with myself. My impulses would destroy me. I was so hungry; something beyond my control made me want to eat this meat.

After a brief moment of pleasure, my body reacted violently, agony searing my mouth, throat, and anywhere else blood made contact. My hybrid beast was blinded by bloodlust and gluttony. They overwhelmed me, and then, as if my inner unicorn were trying to stop me before it was too late, my vision darkened, and my limbs failed. I wrenched myself away from the carcass one last time before I crumpled to the earth, paralyzed, and fell unconscious.

The ground underneath me moved. My mouth was open, full. Lying there limp, I couldn’t understand how the forest around me was sliding along without energetic expense from my body. My eyes rolled as my head heavily tipped upward, searching for an explanation, only to draw into focus the thick string tied around my muzzle and preventing me from opening my mouth any further than it already was. Something was stuffed into my mouth—fabric, soaked through with saliva and blood, choking me with the piney scent of my fated mate. I inhaled sharply and felt like I couldn’t breathe enough. In sudden panic, I thrashed, only to find my front legs were tightly bound by another piece of cloth. A sweater with long arms was wrapped tightly around my ankles. Somebody had tied me up using what little resources they had.

My sudden movements caused my captor to drop me. The hands submerged in the thick fur behind my neck released, and I watched a man stand up straight, walk around my side, and look down at me.

“Sorry about the…” He gestured vaguely at his mouth, referring to the t-shirt he had stuffed into mine. “I didn’t want you to bite me when you woke up.”

A muffled growl tore from my throat. Pain scorched my gums and tingled across my body where I was stained with blood.

“And your feet…” he continued. “I didn’t want you to run off before I could get my shirt back.”

Grunting, I heaved my body to the side until I was propped up on my stomach, my elbows pinned in front of my chest while my paws stretched in front of me. I struggled to focus on the person standing before me.

Colt Hexen crouched and met my eyes, smiling. “You weren’t supposed to eat that doe. Guess we both know now what happens when a unicorn-wolf hybrid tries to consume fresh meat, huh?”

I was still groggy, but not too much to recognize the flicker of anger within me.

“I was just getting you away from the carcass. In case you woke back up and tried to eat it again. It’s okay. I don’t blame you. Lots of shifters can’t control their beast before they’re marked. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve seen that happen lately,” said Colt, standing up again. From what he’d just said, I expected him to start untying my feet and take the t-shirt out of my jaws, but instead, he circled around me. I laboriously raised my head and watched him through narrowed eyes.

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