Page 97 of A Soul to Guide

She jumped to grab a different low-hanging branch, then climbed on top of it. She crouched down onto it, waiting for Merikh to pass underneath her. She needed a few seconds to catch her breath, to ease the rapid heave of her lungs and the beat of her heart going into overdrive.

Her eyes nearly bulged out of her skull when he skidded to a halt between the trees, haloed by a glow of dancing red. She’d expected him to run off into the forest, allowing her to backtrack and then eventually lose him.

He’d been following her scent, and when it had cut off, he, too, had stopped. He may have even heard her quick huffs.

Him stopping wasn’t what had her eyes widening.

It was the fact that all his clothing was gone, and he had been running on all fours. Jutting through the black fur on his back were hundreds of grey quills with sharp, dark points. They appeared deadly, sticking up in obvious aggression, and were just as nasty looking as the ones protruding from the backs of his forearms and calves.

His grey tail curled before flicking to the side, as though the black tuft of fur at the end was weighty.

The noises that came from him were animalistic; a rabid and enraged predator sniffing and woofing like a bear.

“I know you’re there,”he growled.

Raewyn shivered, never having heard his voice drop so low and split between tones – like he was so close but also far away. There was almost an echo to it, which just made it that much more unnerving.

No wonder the humans were afraid of his kind if they were able to run like this, sound like this,huntlike this.

So why wasn’t she afraid?

No, she was the opposite of afraid.

Excited, exhilarated, focused. She was the prey hunting the beast.

His bony white skull turned one way as he huffed out snorts, sniffing the area. It turned the other way, then creepily lifted in her very direction.

“Found you.”

Raewyn squealed and leapt to another tree when he shot for the branch she’d been resting on.He reached it one leap!His claws had been millimetres from slicing her, had she not jumped. He didn’t even grab the branch; he merely sliced it in half with a distinctcrack. It’d been thick and strong enough to support her weight!

She continued to leap from tree to tree as Merikh followed on the ground.

“Even without my sight, I’m faster than you,”he snarled, just as he climbed the side of a tree she was clambering up to escape.

She was lighter, and she’d been hoping to evade him by going up. His weight bent it, and she dropped herself to the low branch of another tree when she had to hang from the bowing trunk.

Raewyn didn’t respond. What could she say in this situation?

The crunch of bark being pulverised under his claws twitched her ears, and she began having a strange reaction to it. They sounded sharp, like they had the ability to rip anything into shreds. Yet, the closer he got, the more her nipples hardened at each crack, each slice.

Either her flight or fight reaction was acting up, or she was turned on by being chased. The more excited she got, especially when she wasforcedto jump to the ground because the closest tree was too far away even for an Elysian, the more heat pooled in her stomach.

Her breaths were growing into pants, and a flush spreading across her entire body warmed her against the chill of her speed, cutting through the wind.

Raewyn ducked just as Merikh was at her back, and his claws stabbed into a tree trunk above her. She somersaulted to the side, got to her feet, and didn’t look back as she ran around the tree to go back the way they just came.

I shouldn’t have waited for him to run off.She realised that now.

At this rate, she’d tire out before he did.

She was also losing her enthusiasm for being chased. Suddenly, she wanted to be caught, her mind snagging on the random thought of him grabbing her by the ankle and dragging her beneath him.

Trapping her in, pinning her down, his orange and cinnamon scent washing over her as he let out those thrilling snarls and growls.

Raewyn licked at her lips before wiping them with the back of her wrist. Her lips were parched, but her mouth was damp.

Would he eat her? Would he rip her clothes off and take her against the ground hard and fast in a fury? The unknown was freakish, both frightening and frighteningly arousing.

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