Page 3 of Cowboy Bull's Promise

I had no choice.

That was ten years ago, but it still felt like yesterday.

And now—now I feel the past and the present circling each other like wolves closing in.

My blood pulses thickly in my veins and my teeth are on edge.

Why now when I finally found something worthwhile?

I want to roar at all the stupid luck or lack thereof.

The Rut.

A curse.

A force of nature.

An unstoppable, primal drive that could turn even the strongest of men into mindless beasts.

It isn’t just heat.

Not just lust.

It is a full-bodied, all-consuming hunger. One that drowns out reason, obliterates control, and leaves only the need.

The Rut is an intense hormonal surge that could wreak havoc, tear lives apart and leave devastation in its wake.

Take my birth, for example.

I wasn’t born from love.

I wasn’t even born from choice.

I am what happens when the Rut takes control.

My sire was a Bull Shifter who lost himself to the beast within.

Derek O’Malley was a weak-willed, pitiful excuse for a man.

He let the Rut claim him, body and mind, until nothing else existed beyond the demand to breed.

My mother didn’t stand a chance. She was human.

Mortal. Fragile. Unknowing of the world beyond normals.

She was no match for him. He was a creature of raw strength and reckless impulse, caught in the thrall of the Rut when he stumbled upon her one fateful night.

A haze of hormones, magic, instinct, and booze sealed my fate before I even drew breath.

He left her with nothing but a bad memory steeped in shadows, a body marked by something not quite human, and a child that was never meant to exist.

A child who was different.

A child with a bloodline she could not even begin to comprehend.

A child who should have never been born.

And yet, here I am.

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