Pain tore through my spine. I bent at the knees, trying to catch my breath. Trying to think.
I was out of time. The hunter was ready. Moonlight pressed through the curtains, calling to me.
I stumbled onto the porch and ripped my jeans away. Somehow, I made it down the steps, crouching in the gravel. Stones cut into my knees and I cried out.
A howl echoed distantly.
Another answered.
My throat burned with the urge to call out to them. To join my brothers in the hunt.
My body broke apart, melding back together into fangs and fury. Shaking off the pain, I rose on four feet. Power pulsed through me.
I was the hunter. The fiercest predator. Death in the shadows.
My vision shifted, the world becoming clearer and brighter as moonlight filtered through my eyes.
Discomfort, anger, fear…it all faded, transmuted into nothing but focus.
That was all the hunter knew.
He cared about what belonged to him.
What would belong to him.
What he would subdue if it refused him.
The transformation should have made me feel complete. Like stepping back into my own skin. Instead I was hollow. Hungry.
The hunter understood.
Ididn’t understand.
Saul howled again, calling for me. Demanding my presence.
Another pull tugged me sideways, sharper and more insistent. There was a chain around my throat, catching every time I took a step toward my brothers.
The anchor was somewhere out of sight, away from the bayou. Away from everything I knew.
It was brighter than moonlight. Softer than the whisper of Spanish moss against bark as the wind made a trail through the trees. Whatever it was, I needed it more than the thrill of the hunt.
My legs moved before I could stop them. I dove through underbrush and over fallen trees. Mud squelched beneath four paws, branches tangled around me.
Nothing could stop me.
Behind me, I could hear my brothers thundering across the bayou, their worry and anger sharp in every breath.
They didn’t understand.
A flash of distant headlights blurred my vision, and my body finally stilled. The bayou was at my back, wisps of grass tickling my sides where I crouched in a ditch.
There was no sound but the fading hum of a motor. Even the crickets had gone quiet, the whole bayou holding its breath as it waited to see what I would do.
Leave the safety of the bayou—my sanctuary?
Or drag myself back and bear my throat to my brother?
The answer was obvious to the hunter.