Page 3 of Chased & Bred by the BRATVA
The estate has become a cage of its own. Our enemies know better than to come too close, and our allies are too afraid to bring trouble to our door. Every day blends into the next. Training, meetings, handling business, keeping the family in line. Maksim rules. Roman plots. And I take turns patrolling the edges of our world like a ghost.
Sometimes, I wish someone would be stupid enough to test our borders.
A crack of branches draws my attention. I freeze mid-step, letting my senses sharpen. There. Just beyond the gate. Something moving. Stumbling. Breathing ragged.
I drop low, hidden in shadow, and wait.
And then I smell her.
Not just the panic, though it’s thick in the air like fog, but something else. Cheap perfume, yes, but underneath it: alcohol, sweat, woman. Rich and heady. I catch notes of peach schnappsand some kind of syrupy candy-like body spray, the kind young women wear when they want to feel cute.
It shouldn’t be intoxicating.
But it is.
I hear her muttering to herself through short, gasping breaths. Then she staggers forward, into the light of one of our security posts. Her dress is short and ripped, revealing more of her left breast than it did at the start of the night, if the torn strap is anything to go by. Her knees and thighs are scraped and bloody. Her dark hair is tangled around her face like a halo of chaos. She looks like she’s walked straight out of a nightmare.
And yet, she doesn’t fall apart. She lifts her chin. Squares her shoulders. Gives a mirthless laugh and I catch a bitter swear word leaving her mouth.
That spark. That fight. I feel it hit me like a jolt to the spine.
She doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t know who I am.
But she’s just walked into my world.
And now she’s mine.
I step forward, slow and deliberate. I want her to hear me coming. I want to see what she has awoken.
She turns.
Big golden brown eyes. Dilated pupils. She’s still buzzing from whatever she drank, and from whatever scared her into these woods. She takes a step back, but she doesn’t bolt. Not yet.
“Who are you?” she asks, her voice shaking. But there’s defiance under the fear.
Good.
I take a deep breath, tasting the air again. I could devour her with just my stare. She doesn’t know it yet, but this, thismoment, this is the part she’ll remember every time she closes her eyes.
I speak low. Measured.
“Run.”
She blinks, not understanding.
“If I catch you,” I murmur, “you’re mine to keep.” The thought alone, the threat, is enough to get me hard. But the way she looks, the way she smells, it’s enough to drive a man insane.
She hesitates. I see the calculation flicker across her face. She’s not stupid. She knows I’m faster. Stronger. She knows this is a game she’s going to lose.
But something in her likes that.
That makes two of us.
“Last chance, little rabbit,” I add, baring my teeth in a smile that makes men piss themselves.
And then, she moves.
She takes off into the trees, scraps of her dress flaring behind her, her breath ragged.
