I take small comfort in her words when Thaddeus’s furious howls trail after us. His magic sits heavy in the air, making it taste like metal—charged and dangerous.
But Ryker’s answering howl isn’t defensive—it’s triumphant. A challenge and a promise that echoes through the darkness and reverberates in my very marrow. I listen, easily translating his answer.
Come for her—and I’ll tear your world apart.
Chapter
Four
RYKER
My paws eat up the dark miles, my pack flowing through the shadows around me. The weight of my claimed mate on my back drives me faster, urging me deeper into Shadowmist territory. Her bare skin burns against my fur, her thighs clenched tight around my ribs, her fingers buried in my coat. Each point of contact sends her scent deeper into me, binding us together in ways beyond the physical claiming mark.
I scented her before I even saw her.
Long before the ceremony began, her presence hit me like lightning splitting the sky—an intoxicating thread on the wind that wound through my blood and rooted deep. I didn’t understand it at first. But when I arrived at the grove and saw her standing there defiant and trembling and perfect, every part of me howledmine.
She should’ve been guarded like a treasure, courted like a queen. Instead, they threw a seer who can’t shift to the wolves.
Threw her to me.
Dane lopes beside me, his thoughts touching mine in thesilent language of wolves.The dens are secured. Hunting parties positioned along the borders.
Any movement from the other packs?My thoughts are sharp, focused.
Not yet. But they’ll come. The Grand Alpha won’t let this insult stand.
Let them come.My territory is shadow and stone, death and darkness. My pack knows how to fight in the black spaces between moonlight and madness. And now I have something worth protecting—something more valuable than territory or power.
My mate.
The words thunder through me, and I have to fight to keep from howling my triumph.
She ismine. Not just by the laws of the Claiming, but in every breath, every heartbeat, every fractured place inside me that’s never known peace. The bond pulls tight like a leash around my soul, dragging everything I am toward her.
There’s a thirst in me I’ve never known. To kiss her. Lick her. Sink my teeth into the soft place where her neck meets her shoulder and mark her again—not for show, but because my beast needs to. I want her taste on my tongue. Her scent in my lungs. Her nails in my skin and her moans in my mouth.
Now that I’ve found her, I will never—never—let her go.
The little seer’s grip loosens over the last hour of our journey, her body molding to my stride. I feel the moment exhaustion claims her, feel her cheek press against my neck as sleep drags her under. Still, her fingers remain tangled in my fur, holding on even in dreams. The trust in that unconscious gesture stirs a protective and primal need within me.
I slow as we approach the cliffs that house our dens, giving myself time to really scent my mate. Beneath the sharp tang of fear, she smells like the cusp of summer—warm, ripe,and reckless. I drag her scent deep into my lungs, memorizing it, letting it burn through me like wildfire.
Run double shifts along the borders. I don’t want any surprises.
As you wish, Alpha.Dane turns to leave.
And clear the main den, I command.Ready the pack for skirmishes. I don’t want us caught unaware.
As my pack melts away to follow my orders, I allow myself to focus fully on the female sleeping on my back. Gently, I lay down until I can shift without fear of losing her. The change ripples through me, bone and muscle reforming with practiced ease.
Upon returning to my human form, I catch her in my arms, watching her brunette hair spill over my arm like a waterfall. The moon paints her pale skin in shades of pearl and cream, making the marks of her run through the forest stand out—scratches from branches, bruises from her fall, the blood-edged claiming mark on her throat. My mark. My claim.
She’s small for a wolf and holds none of the lean muscle of the women of my pack. Her body is an abundance of curves, so unlike my people that it seems almost taboo to observe her nakedness. She’s to be savored in private, not exposed to others’ eyes.
Her high cheekbones and full lips give her face an ethereal quality that makes her look more fae than wolf. Dark lashes fan against her cheeks, and I can see rapid movement beneath her eyelids. Dreaming or seeing? I’m unsure but I can feel whatever vision has claimed her touching the edge of my mind, such is our connection already.
I lean down, inhaling her scent again, imprinting it so I might always find her. My wolf rises, chafing under my skin to claim her in all the ways I have yet to do. The urge to mark her, to take her, to make her irrevocably mine pulses through me with each heartbeat.
