Home.
Ignoring his voice came easier with no sense of danger or threat hovering. I kept a tight rein on my human side as Killer had taught me to do when out for a joy run.
Sunlight trickled through the trees behind me, their branches swaying freely in the cooling breeze. A squirrel shrieked as I passed by—his instinct of danger alerting him to the predator in close proximity since my ability to blend into my surroundings cloaked me from all living eyesight.
Ignoring his chatter as well, I continued to stalk deeper into the woods, sniffing and identifying every scent intensified by my feline senses, enjoying the hell out of life for the first time in a long fucking time.
Wet mud.
Fresh rabbit shit.
Rotting wood.
The trickle of water over rocks ahead of me let me know I approached the creek, and rather than turn north along its pebbly shore, my paws turned southward as though something outside of cat or man swayed me.
A shiver rippled over my fur, raising the hairs along my spine, and I paused once more to raise my nose into the breeze.
Sniffing.
My heart thumped heavier, pumping hot blood through my body as something lay on the edge of my conscious.
Need?
Hunger?
I sneezed, shook my head, and sure it wasn’t anything dangerous, inhaled deeply again.
Images of a red-headed young girl flitted through my brain, but I knew I’d lost my chance on that day all those years ago.
Some of my shifter brothers had found their mates—same as I’d done years earlier—but they’d had the chance to claim them. I’d been a mere boy when I’d seen the youngster who owned my heart, my body, my soul.
But horror had drawn me away, and I’d ended up burying my hurt and disappointment in the forests of East Texas.
Her scent still lingered in my memory—
A cracking branch shifted my focus forward, toward the far-off rock shelf I’d stood upon all those years ago. My paws itched to run as awareness of danger tensed my muscles. I shot forward on instinct alone, briars snagging at my coat, dead, wet leaves kicking up beneath my strides and sticking to my underside in my haste to reach whatever drew me forward.
The putrid scent of carrion, two-day old critter, wafted past my nose, but a sweetness came behind it, stumbling my stride.
Her. Home.
I clung to my humanness, the truth of my brain playing tricks, but her sweetness came on the breeze again.
The creek loomed, and I leapt, my muscles bunched beneath me while sailing through the air. Small rocks turned beneath my paws as I landed, and I pulled up abruptly, breath held, ears twitching.
Awareness turned my head southward, and I crept forward, sure more existed ahead than what I dreamed.
The dead animal scent intensified—and I growled as wet dog smells joined in the noxious air.
Wolves. Our sworn enemies.
Two, to be exact, and I paused to once more to lift my nose. But beneath their stench, my mate’s, also lingered.
No sound reached my ears, and I moved on silent paws along the creek’s edge.
The scent of sour sweat and semen soon coated my nostrils, and I bit back another growl.
I came upon a flashlight half-buried in leaf litter. A granola bar. A sneaker.
All smelled like her.
Three more strides, and I rounded a tree, a slight depression in the ground drawing my focus.
She sprawled there—legs askew, long curls spread across the forest floor, snagged full of leaves and dirt, same as the first time I’d lain eyes upon her. Dirt and blood on her arms—between her naked thighs.
Rather than leap down to check her, I forced my cat to focus on the surroundings, breathe in the stench of the two wolves I could clearly make out. I’d scented one of them before, knew him by name—and knew the other’s scent would forever be ingrained in my head.
The need to rip throats, spill blood, stop hearts nearly owned my muscles, but the time for revenge would come. My mate needed me. Sure no beast or human lingered in the area, I crept down the slight decline, my nose reaching her socked foot first.
Sweetness emanated around her, but so, too, did the gut-wrenching evidence of what those wolves had done to her.
My mate.
A growl rumbled in my chest as I licked the scratch along her shin, noting the warmth of her skin.
Alive.
Yes, my human-self agreed in my head, sniffing over her knee, knowing the scratch I’d gifted with my saliva would heal in a matter of seconds. I hovered my nose along her thigh—and grimaced at the strong odor of wolf semen seeping from her core.
Raw and red, her pussy dripped their stench. Lacerations on her lower lips...
I growled and licked at the bruise on her outer hip. The scratch across her soft abdomen.
She stirred, a whisper of sound crossing her swollen, bitten lips, but I continued upward, licking wounds not covered by the shredded clothing clinging to her curvy upper body.
Teeth marks, the beginnings of bruising etched the skin along one of her exposed nipples, but I bypassed upward, licking across the bruises along the tops of her breasts in attempts to soothe what those fuckers had taken from her, the damage they’d inflicted upon her fragile body. She bled above her temple, and I swallowed the coppery tang of her, memorizing her flavor, the scent of her life’s blood while lapping her clean, healing.
Another sigh escaped her. “Pisoiaș.”
My body tensed above hers as the name whispered off her lips, and I froze as a hand shifted over my flank, fingers in my fur. No one had called me that in almost thirty years. The last time I’d heard that pet name, Mom had met her end, the same day I’d first set eyes upon my mate.
“Pisoiaș,” she sighed again, her sweet breath wafting across my face.
Trembling took up residency in my legs, and I licked her forehead, tasting her sweat. I laved at her cheeks, her
