Chapter Thirty-Eight
Twilight crept in. Its indigo fingers traced the sky and deepened the shadows the trees cast, inky branches long and gnarled and stretching. There was a time not so long ago when Astrid would’ve quivered in fear to have Altes Geweih pacing and prowling outside her cottage, wound tighter than a ten-day clock and ready to spring.
But that was the past, and she had an inkling she knew what Gudarīks needed now.
He hadn’t stopped moving once in the last two days, his heat signature leaving blinding red zigzags in the snow. Closing der Schwarzwald off to the public made the forest quiet in a way it hadn’t been in centuries. And while he seemed relieved about it at first, a creature of habit needed its routine.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” he growled, ears pricked. “Their taunting or this maddening quiet.”
Sitting on the tree stump outside her gate, Astrid folded her hands in her lap. “You need to hunt.”
That kind of unspent energy might be useful during a confrontation with their foes, but it wasn’t doing him any good now. And it wouldn’t be good energy to bring to tomorrow’s ritual when she needed him to give, rather than take. He needed a distraction. Something to take the edge off.
“You know I would, but there’s nothing to hunt since Johanna closed the park.” A tremor rolled down his spine, fur spiking along his back. He shook his head. “At least, nothing that deserves it.”
“Hunt me.”
He stopped, still for the first time in days, save for the restless twitch of muscle. Long moments of silence ticked by. “What do you mean?”
“Chase me down like prey. Claim me in the snow.”
And if their enemies watched, let them see.
A growl was Astrid’s only warning before, in a flash of movement, Gudarīks pinned her against the nearest tree. Hands to either side of her head, claws clenching, but careful not to scrape the bark.
As crimson eyes locked on hers, searing every bit meant for the cold, his body heaved with barely contained energy, his restraint already treading thin ice. “You’ll have to tie me up, if you want any kind of head start.” With every growled clause, his breath fell hot on her cheeks. It would be cruel to promise and not deliver.
“But what is strong enough to hold you?” She smiled, skating her hands down his long, graceful arms, playing fire with glacial touch. Delicately she enclosed her fingers around his wrists, and ice flowed from her hands, shackling them in thick cuffs. “My vicious lover.”
As she drew away, chains of ice formed and fused to the tree, snaking up the trunk, winding around the thickest boughs. Thin ice was weak, easily broken, but ice that had built and built and built over time—that had to be chipped away, bit by tedious bit, and her magic gave it that strength.
Ducking under his arm, Astrid patted his dappled rear before dashing away, a little skip to her step as she went to don her skis.
Gudarīks roared behind her, pulling and yanking on the chains, shaking snow from the branches above. But not too hard. The branches would break before the chains, and he’d never hurt the tree.
Just as she’d counted on.
Astrid bent to strap her feet in when he stilled. She knew better than to trust that calm.
Turning his bloodred gaze on her, he warned, “Best not wear anything you like.” Those eyes pierced her with promise as he curled his claws around the chains, squeezing. She heard cracking before micro fissures spiderwebbed along her handiwork.
Her magic held him, but not for long.
Astrid fled.
Adrenaline, thrill, fear, and lust were an invigorating cocktail of feelings.
Racing cross-country, gliding down the slopes at breakneck speeds, Astrid moved as if the god-monster hunted to kill. Even though she wanted him to catch her, the pleasure of the chase was lost if she didn’t try her hardest to escape. They both had to earn it.
So, she sped for the border, to the boundary he could not cross.
His roar echoed in the mountains, startling a flock of winter birds from the trees around her, cawing as they took flight in a rush of wings. He was coming.
Danke Mutter Holle, this was all just fun and games.
Years sequestered inside her cottage, hiding behind her offerings and useless wards, Astrid never learned the true extent of Gudarīks’s speed. She had no frame of reference, no way to calculate how quickly he might catch up. A fatal mistake if she were true prey.
But as his pounding footsteps and ragged, heavy breathing grew louder, edging closer and closer...doubt, then dread, crept in.
No teasing, no lusty promises, nor even a taunting “run faster, Liebling.” Nothing playful. Just cold, silent pursuit. If this was truly just fun and games, it would feel more like it, wouldn’t it?
What she got instead was his deadly focus and a hungry stare burning holes in her back.
Astrid dared not look over her shoulder. Not to see how close he was nor to determine whether murder truly ignited his gaze. If that moment wasn’t the one he took advantage of to pounce, it was the moment she crashed into a tree, which could kill her, even with her growing hag’s strength.
She counted on him to hunt her, but what happened after, his desire , wasn’t a guarantee. What if, in her foolish attempt to spur him into fulfilling one of her fantasies, they’d overlooked his instincts? What if he felt more compelled to kill, to eat ? To sink in his teeth rather than his cock?
The tree line, the boundary, was just up ahead.
At these speeds, she needed only seconds, not minutes, to reach it.
He breathed hard behind her. Rasping, panting, struggling for breath.
And then...nothing.
From the corner of her eye, she spied a dark shadow flash by, darting through the trees to her left, at a speed her eyes almost couldn’t track. But she didn’t need to be able to make out the finer details to know who it was.
Then, he disappeared.
Heart pounding, she darted cursory glances around the forest, trying catch his silhouette. But she’d lost sight of him, not even the sound of breathing or crunch of snow to give her a hint of his whereabouts. Panic spiked through her, but she swallowed her rising fear and crouched low, both to increase her speed and to make herself a smaller target, poles tucked under her arms, letting the steep slope of the mountainside and gravity carry her onward.
Something big launched at her from the right, and she swerved hard, feeling furred skin brush her arm as she skirted out of the way. Schei?e! Schei?e! Schei?e! How had he gotten to her other side so quickly? And without being seen or heard?
Leaning left, then right, cutting around a rock here, a tree there, her thighs and glutes burned with the effort.
Altes Geweih ran ahead, his heaving form whirling around, long arms outstretched, ready to snatch her up in his claws, hot steam billowing from nasal sockets.
Dropping her poles, Astrid summoned her element, and icicles shot from the ground, ringing the forest god and barring him in. The sound that rumbled from within the makeshift prison was part laugh, part growl as he swiped it to pieces. It hadn’t lasted nearly as long as she wanted, but it created enough of a hindrance for her to shoot past him unscathed.
Another danger loomed ahead.
All too soon, she was closing in on the tree line.
She’d been so focused on one threat she forgot the other. All it had taken was a few seconds of distraction.
Cutting her skis to the side, Astrid tried to brake, but she was moving much too fast. Hurtling toward the tree line, she raised her hands and snow rose from the ground with them, piling up and up to build a wall that could soften the blow of collision.
It would work. It had to.
Crashing into a tree was not how she met her end.