The night was a velvet shroud, thick enough to choke on.
An owl called once, mournful, then stopped as if warned on the first occasion . Wind slid through the ancient canopy like a lover's sigh turned cold. Moonlight was nothing more than a rusted blade, barely cutting the black.
Perfect hunting weather for creatures who never needed the moon's permission.
Yvonne Arne stood at her chamber window, nails digging crescents into centuries-old stone, and felt the wolf in her blood answer a call that had nothing to do with werewolves.
Freedom was singing.
And Matthew Garrett was the chain around her throat.
Three nights of trying to kill, maim, or simply lose him. Three nights of discovering that the castle had become a maze with only one exit: wherever he already was.
He never raised his voice. Never touched her unless she forced the issue. And every time she did, she ended up pinned, breathless, furious, and terrifyingly alive under hands that refused to hurt her.
She could not smell him. Could not hear his heart race. Could not outrun, outfight, or outwit him.
He was rewriting every rule she had lived by.
So tonight she would rewrite the game.
A slow, wicked smile curved her mouth as the plan formed, perfect, vicious, elegant.
She opened the window, tasted the wet night on her tongue, and simply stepped into the void.
The drop was almost five storeys of sheer stone and certain death for anything with a pulse.
She fell like a thrown dagger, hair streaming, arms spread, eyes wide open. At the last heartbeat she twisted, landed in absolute silence, toes barely kissing the gravel before she rose an inch into the air and glided, a wraith, toward the ivy-choked side gate.
The forest swallowed her whole.
For the first time in weeks, her lungs expanded fully. The castle shrank behind her, a mausoleum of rules and overprotective love. Here, among the oaks older than her father's crown, she was simply predator again.
She ran.
Not the pretty, controlled blur she allowed servants to witness; this was raw, reckless, a silver streak between black trunks, leaves exploding in her wake. The wind tore tears from the corners of her eyes and she laughed into it, wild and young and immortal.
Memories rose unbidden, the way they always did when she ran too fast.
Her mother's arms.
Valerie's laughter, bright as breaking crystal.
The first time she had flown, really flown, not fallen with style, but soared.
"Again, Mama! Again!"
And then the other memory, the one that tasted of ash and sunlight.
Valerie bound to the execution chair.
Skin cracking like old parchment.
Eyes locked on Yvonne's through the viewing slit, silently begging her daughter to look away.
Yvonne had not looked away.
She had watched every second of her mother's murder, and something inside her had burned to cinders and been reborn as winter.
Love had been murdered that day.
Only hate and hunger had walked out of that chamber.
She ran faster, as if speed could outrun grief.
The trees thinned. Civilisation bled in, sodium lights, diesel fumes, the delicious copper promise of human hearts. She slowed to a prowl, tasting the air for the perfect victim.
And then she saw him.
He stood just off the service road, half in shadow, half in the sickly glow of a streetlamp. Motionless. Waiting.
Six-foot-eight of scentless night.
Matthew Garrett.
The world tilted.
Every instinct that had kept her alive for decades screamed two opposite commands at once:
Run.
Kill.
Her body obeyed neither.
She was rooted, fangs aching, pulse hammering so hard she felt it in her gums.
He took one silent step forward.
No triumph in his face. No anger. Just that terrible, unshakable calm, and eyes the colour of café au lait held something new.
Disappointment.
Not in her escape.
In the fact that she had needed to escape at all.
He stopped three metres away, close enough that she could see the faint sheen of dew on the shoulders of his black jacket, far enough that she could still pretend she had a choice.
"How?" The word tore out of her, raw and ragged.
Matthew tilted his head. "You're fast," he said, voice low, almost gentle. "But I've been chasing things that don't want to be caught since I was six years old."
One footprint.
She wanted to scream. Wanted to launch herself at his throat and tear until something, anything, finally bled.
Instead her voice cracked like a child's. "Why won't you just leave me alone?"
Something shifted behind his eyes. The disappointment softened into something far more dangerous.
"Because the world is full of things that want you dead, Yvonne Arne," he said quietly. "And I was hired to make sure they fail."
He took another step. Close enough now that she could see the faint scar that cut through his left eyebrow. Close enough that the absence of his scent felt like a scream.
"But mostly," he added, voice dropping until it was only for her, "because the first time you looked at me like I was prey, something in me decided I'd rather be the one doing the hunting."
The night went electric.
Her fangs elongated without permission. A sound, half growl, half moan, escaped her throat.
He didn't move, but every inch of him suddenly felt like a challenge issued in a language older than words.
"You can't hunt me," she whispered. "I'm the predator here."
Matthew's gaze dropped to her mouth, lingered on the razor tips of her fangs, then returned to her eyes.
"Keep telling yourself that, princess."
The nickname should have infuriated her. Instead it licked down her spine like a tongue of fire.
She surged forward without thought, faster than she'd ever moved in her life, claws extended for his throat.
He caught her wrists mid-air, spun her, and slammed her back against the nearest oak with exactly enough force to stun, not hurt. The tree groaned. Bark rained down like black snow.
His body pinned hers, chest to chest, thigh between hers, hands manacled around her wrists above her head. The contact was a lightning strike. She felt his heartbeat for the first time, slow, steady, infuriatingly calm, and realised with a jolt that hers was racing to catch it.
They were both breathing hard.
Close enough for her to see the gold flecks in his irises. Close enough for her to feel the words against her lips when he spoke.
"You want to be free?" he asked, voice rough now, finally rough. "Then stop running from me and start running with me. Because I'm not the cage, Yvonne. I'm the key you're too proud to turn."
For one endless second the forest held its breath.
She wanted to kiss him, she could have. He looked into her eyes and his smile returned, she was almost subdued. She tore after him, this time he let her scratch his chin.
When they broke apart, he was smiling with his lips but his eyes said something else. Was it hunger, was it lust, she couldn't place it.
His blood finally on her fingers she licked it slowly, watching his pupils blow wide.
"Seven days are up tomorrow," she whispered leaning closer to him.
"After that, you're fair game.". She just might stand a chance against him. Again that was absurd, a human, and she was the hunted
Matthew's grip on her wrists loosened, but he didn't let go. His thumb traced the frantic pulse in her wrist like he was memorising it.
"Good," he said, voice gravel and velvet. "I've been waiting for you to stop playing with your food."
Somewhere far away, an owl called again.
Closer, much closer, Yvonne felt something inside her chest crack open and howl.
She shoved him off her with enough force to send a lesser man through the tree. He let her, stepping back with that same infuriating calm, wiping the blood from his lip with the pad of his thumb and sucking it clean while never breaking eye contact.
"Run all you want, princess," he said softly. "I'll still be exactly where you need me when you least expect it."
This time when she fled, she didn't look back.
But she felt him watching every step.
And for the first time in her immortal life, the hunt didn't feel like freedom anymore.
It felt like foreplay.