Chapter 18 – KILLIAN
KILLIAN
I'm running.
The forest stretches endlessly around me, ancient trees looming, watching. The wind rushes past my ears like a song I've known my whole life.
This is my favorite thing.
The freedom of the shift, the perfect unity of man and wolf, nothing but instinct and speed and the wild joy of movement. I've been running these woods since I was a pup, since my first shift cracked my bones apart and remade me into something more.
The forest is mine.
The night is mine.
But something's wrong.
I notice it first in the way my muscles burn.
The shift isn't supposed to hurt. We're born to this, we shifters, the change written into our DNA as naturally as the color of our eyes.
But tonight my bones ache like they've been shattered and fused back together wrong.
My joints grind with every stride. My skin feels too tight, stretched thin over something that doesn't quite fit inside it.
And there's a sound.
A wet, clicking sound, coming from my own throat.
I try to slow down, to stop and figure out what's happening, but my legs won't obey. They keep pumping, keep carrying me deeper into the trees, and I realize with a lurch of terror that I'm not in control anymore.
Something else is driving my body.
My wolf rises up inside me, and he's wrong.
He's always been the part of me that runs on instinct and loyalty and the fierce protective love of pack.
The more reliable half. But the thing I feel now isn't him.
It's wearing his shape, using his senses, but underneath there's something hungry and cold and utterly alien.
It looks out through my eyes at the dark forest.
It smells the air.
It finds what it's looking for.
Regina.
The hunger slams into me. My stomach cramps with it, my jaws flooding with saliva, and suddenly I can think of nothing else. I'm starving. I'm so fucking hungry it feels like I haven't eaten in years, like my body is consuming itself from the inside out, like I'll die if I don't—
If I don't feed.
No. No, no, no—
My wolf howls, and the sound that tears from my throat makes my own blood run cold. It's the howl of a beast that hasn't been a wolf for a very, very long time.
And then I'm running again, faster now, muscles screaming in protest as the thing inside me pushes harder.
The trees blur into streaks of black and silver.
The ground disappears beneath my paws. I'm moving faster than I've ever moved, faster than should be possible, and every stride brings me closer to that scent.
Prey.
The word surfaces in my mind, and it's wrong, it's so fucking wrong, but I can't shake it loose.
She's not prey.
She's my mate.
She's everything.
But gods, she smells so fucking good.
I can hear her now, the crash of her footsteps through the undergrowth, the ragged gasps of her breathing, the thundering of her heart.
She knows I'm coming for her.
She's trying to escape.
STOP. FUCKING STOP!
I'm screaming inside my own skull, throwing everything I have against the walls of my mind, but it's like trying to stop a river with my bare fucking hands.
The forest opens into a clearing, moonlight pooling on the grass like liquid silver.
And there she is.
She's standing in the center of the open space, chest heaving, eyes wild.
Her dark hair is tangled with leaves and twigs.
Her clothes are torn from running. Her beautiful face, with its constellation of scars I've kissed countless times, is filled with pure terror at the sight of me bearing down on her in this form.
My true form.
I've been hoping and praying she won't look at me like this when the time comes for her to see me as anything but a man, and now, she's looking at me like this because—
Because I'm not just a fucking wolf.
I'm the same kind of monster that mauled her.
"Please." Tears are streaming down her cheeks, catching the moonlight like her silvery scars. "Killian, please, you're still in there. I know you are. Fight it. Please."
I am fighting.
I'm fighting harder than I've ever fought anything in my fucking life.
But the hunger is everything. It's all I am now. The man I used to be is drowning in it, and the thing that's replacing him looks down at the woman beneath it and sees nothing but my next meal.
"I love you," Regina whispers. "Whatever happens. I love you."
She loves me.
The words hit me like a blade between the ribs.
And the thing inside me lunges for her throat.
Time slows. I feel every detail with horrible fucking clarity. The coarse fur of my muzzle brushing her jaw, the salt-sweet taste of her skin, the thundering of her pulse just beneath the surface. My jaws open wide.
Too wide.
Her hands crackle with magical energy. Not the usual energy. This is green. Green and ancient and lethal.
But she hesitates.
KILL ME, I think desperately. PLEASE JUST FUCKING KILL ME—
Blood fills my mouth and I jolt awake with a snarl.
Regina is in my arms.
She's warm and soft and breathing, her head tucked under my chin, her fingers curled into my shirt.
She's alive.
She's whole.
My canines are fully dropped. There's blood in my mouth, but not hers. Mine. My tongue is throbbing and stings where I bit it. My claws are out, pricking against her back where my hand is pressed.
And she's so close—her throat is right there, her pulse fluttering against my collarbone, and some part of my brain is still spiraling with the aftershocks of the nightmare.
What the fuck.
What the fuck was that?
I force myself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth, the way my father taught me when I was a pup learning to control the shift. The ragged edge of panic slowly dulls, replaced by something cold and heavy settling in my chest.
Just a dream.
It was just a dream.
I'm stressed about Regina seeing me up close as a wolf one day and freaking out. Anxious she'll see me as a monster like the one that attacked her.
That has to be all that was. A bad dream brought on by stress and anxiety, not some kind of horrible fucking omen.
I pull her closer, press my face into her hair, and don't sleep again that night.