The silence of the Carpathian forest was not empty; it was a hungry, predatory thing.
Beatrice huddled in the hollow of an ancient oak, the scent of damp moss and decaying leaves clogging her throat. Her fingers, raw and trembling, white-knuckled the cold steel of the hunting knife Luca had shoved into her hand. It felt like a betrayal—a heavy, biting weight that reminded her exactly who had put her in this position.
He was out there. Luca. The man who moved through the shadows like a ghost, a lethal force of nature that defied every biological law she had ever studied. He was the reason the woods felt wrong tonight—the reason the shadows seemed to pulse with a rhythm that matched the hammering of her own heart.
*He’s playing a game,* she told herself, though the thought felt brittle. *He’s not a savior. He’s a jailer.*
The snapping of a twig—sharp, deliberate—ripped through her concentration. Beatrice froze. Her breath hitched, trapped in her lungs, as she peered into the abyss of the pines. The hunters were nearby; she could hear the low, rhythmic crunch of boots on frost-hardened earth. They were looking for her, driven by the same instinct that had drawn Luca to her. But while the hunters wanted her blood to dissect her evolution, Luca wanted her for something far more absolute. He wanted her soul, her body, her very existence to orbit his own.
A sudden, jarring shift in the atmosphere brought her to her feet. The air turned heavy, charged with ozone and the metallic tang of impending violence.
Then, the woods erupted.
It wasn't a roar, but a sound of shifting bones and tearing fabric that made Beatrice’s skin crawl. A primal, guttural snarl tore through the stillness, followed by the wet thud of bodies colliding. She didn't stay to watch. Instinct—that new, terrifying instinct blooming within her like a wildfire—drove her backward, deeper into the thicket.
"Don't move, Beatrice."
The voice was right behind her ear, vibrating with a lethal, controlled intensity.
She spun, the knife swinging out in a reflexive, wild arc. Luca caught her wrist mid-air. His grip was iron, immovable, his skin radiating an unnatural, feverish heat. In the moonlight, his eyes were no longer the deep, soul-searching hazel she’d grown accustomed to; they were gilded, burning with a predatory luminescence that made her knees weak.
"I told you to stay," he growled, his gaze darting toward the chaos he had left behind. He looked feral, his shirt torn at the shoulder, a smear of dark, copper-scented liquid marring his collarbone.
"You left me," Beatrice spat, her voice trembling despite her best efforts. She shoved against his chest, but he didn't budge. He was a mountain, and she was merely the tide crashing against him. "You trapped me in this hollow like a wounded animal. What are they, Luca? Why do they want *me*?"
Luca stepped into her space, his body pressing her back against the rough bark of the tree. He was so close she could feel the heat radiating from him, the sheer, crushing mass of his presence. He wasn't just guarding her; he was consuming her space, erasing the boundary between them.
"They want the shift, Beatrice," he murmured, his hand coming up to cup the side of her neck. His thumb brushed over the sensitive pulse point, and a traitorous shiver raced down her spine. "They want the spark that I gave you twenty years ago. The one that’s finally starting to wake up."
"You... you gave this to me?" The revelation was a physical blow. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with a mixture of horror and dawning recognition. "You were the wolf in the woods. That night when I was seven—that wasn't an attack. It was..."
"A tether," he finished, his voice dropping to a low, seductive rasp. He leaned in, his forehead resting against hers. His scent—pine, rain, and something muskier, more dangerous—overwhelmed her senses, dulling her will to fight. "I’ve spent two decades waiting for the venom in your blood to bloom. Do you have any idea how hard it has been to stay away, to watch you become a woman who thinks she belongs to the world instead of me?"
His hand slid lower, his fingers tangling in the hair at the base of her skull, forcing her to tilt her head back. He was manipulating her, using his touch to cloud her judgment, and she hated him for it. She hated him for the way her body betrayed her, arching toward his warmth, desperate for the contact she knew would be her undoing.
"You’re a monster," she whispered, her breath hitching as his lips grazed the line of her jaw.
"And you’re mine," he countered, his voice a dark vow.
He didn't wait for her to agree. His mouth crashed onto hers—not with the anger of their last encounter, but with a terrifying, possessive hunger. It was a kiss that tasted of iron and desperation, a claim that seared into her consciousness. Beatrice’s hands, still clutching the knife, fell limp at her sides, the weapon clattering uselessly against the forest floor.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, echoing the frantic thrum of the woods around them. She wanted to shove him away, to run until her lungs burned, but his arm wrapped around her waist, pinning her to his hard, trembling length, effectively removing the choice. She was trapped in the epicenter of his obsession, and for a fleeting, terrifying second, she felt the wild thing inside her chest—the wolf she had denied for twenty years—rise up to meet him.
He pulled back just an inch, his lips swollen, his eyes dark with a hunger that bordered on madness. He was trembling. Luca, the untouchable Alpha, the force of nature, was vibrating with a restraint that felt like it might shatter at any moment.
"They’re closer than I anticipated," he breathed, his voice ragged. He pressed his forehead against hers again, a momentary lapse of vulnerability that took her breath away. "I can’t keep you hidden forever, Beatrice. The moment you cross the threshold of my territory, you cease to be a scientist. You become my mate."
He reached down, retrieving the knife from the dirt, but he didn't hand it back to her. Instead, he tucked it into his own belt, his gaze locking onto hers with terrifying intensity.
"I need you to listen to me," he whispered, his grip on her waist tightening until it bruised. "When we move, you don't look back. You don't speak. You don't breathe unless I tell you to. Because if they catch you, they won't just kill you. They’ll drain the life from you to see how I broke the laws of nature to keep you alive."
He pulled her closer, his hand coming up to cup her cheek, his thumb tracing her lip with a softness that felt like a mockery of the violence surrounding them.
"Tell me you understand," he demanded, his voice dropping to a growl. "Tell me you belong to me, and I will tear this forest apart to make sure you never see a cage again."
Beatrice opened her mouth to speak, but the sound of heavy, rhythmic thuds against the earth froze the words in her throat. The hunters weren't just close anymore. They were here. And they weren't alone.
Luca’s expression shifted, his jaw clenching as his eyes flickered toward the darkness behind her.
"Don't scream," he warned, his voice barely a breath against her skin. "They found us."