Page 25

I've been hot since I woke up, but I blamed Ivan, the blankets, the fact that I haven't had a decent night's sleep since leaving home. Even now, standing in the infirmary, my pulse won't settle. My cougar keeps pacing beneath my skin, restless in a way she hasn't been since my first heat. I press a hand against my stomach, suddenly uneasy.

"Oh, devochka," she says. "You are in heat."

And the second she says it, the exhaustion I've been blaming, since I woke up, becomes a long throbbing nerve linking skull to tailbone, a throbbing pulse between my legs that won't quit. My skin is too tight. My clothes are sandpaper. There's a low keening in my belly that's coiling hotter and hotter, and it's just now that it's named; it roars. I'm burning alive from the inside out. My slick is already soaking through my scrubs, and my cougar is pacing, panting, demanding.

"Where is my son?"

"In a meeting," I manage. "With the others. He said it was important. I can't bother him." Not a good time. It's really, really not a good time.

"I need to get outside," I tell Anya. "It's so hot in here. Hot everywhere."

Her eyes soften. "Cienna—"

I race out the door.

My cougar insists the building is too small and my clothes are too tight. Everything constricts around me. I need my mate but I can't have him. I know this. My cougar does not.

I forget about modesty and strip my shirt off on the porch because there's nothing else to do with it, and then I let go of my skin and let my cat take me.

The cold hits like a slap, and it's glorious. My cougar stretches, and the too-tight feeling releases into muscle and fur and four paws on frozen ground, and then I'm running, into the trees, into the snow, into the dark green endless pine forest, my blood singing, the burn in my belly becomes fierce, alive and wild. Run. Run run run. Behind me, a door slams, and a roar rolls across the compound like thunder; every cell in my body lights up with wicked joy.

He's coming, my cat trills. Run faster.

I fly between the trees, over a fallen log, across a stream black with meltwater. The burn is everything now, the heat, the need, and underneath it the pulsing drumbeat of chase me, catch me, claim me. I don't even know this forest, and my cat doesn't care. She was made for this. We both were.

I hear him behind me, close, then closer. I look back over my shoulder and see orange and black moving through the trees, huge, silent between one stride and the next, gaining on me with every breath. My heart slams harder. I go faster, paws digging into snow, lungs burning.

He could have caught me already. I realize it as he veers, not straight at me but wide, cutting off the path toward the rocks, steering me without touching me. Herding me. Playing with me. He lets out another roar, softer this time, almost coaxing, and my cougar answers with a wild, needy sound I have never made in my life.

I look back again. He is so much closer. His eyes are locked on me, his body low and fluid, and still he holds back that last impossible leap, letting me run, letting me feel him coming for me until I am shaking with heat and anticipation.

Then the tiger hits my side like a velvet freight train.

We roll through the snow, a tangle of orange and spotted gold, his paws wrapped around me, taking the brunt of every impact so the ground never gets its hands on me, and he pins me, four hundred pounds of him covering me, his breath hot on the back of my neck, his teeth resting, resting, right over my spine.

My cougar curls back into him instead of fighting. She arches, presses her smaller body up into his chest, rubbing her head under his jaw. His tiger folds over her, all heat, weight, and fur, scenting her in long, thorough passes of his face along her neck and shoulders. He takes long licks up her neck to the top of her head, broad strokes that flatten her ears and soak her in him. She shakes it off, water, snow, his tongue, and he does it again. Her whole body shudders. She loves it. She rolls into the caress, purring so hard her ribs vibrate against his, while his fur brushes over her, a full-body drag of warmth, scent, and possession.

Then the weight shifts, and it's hands on me, human hands sliding out of fur; when he transforms, she transforms, my skin coming back under his palms as his does under mine. A voice wrecked with want and triumph sounds right against my ear.

"Caught you."

Chapter 6: Ivan

My weight pins her in the snow. Ours, my tiger purrs, drinking in her aroma until I'm drunk on it. No field of crushed catnip could touch the heat of her scent under my nose. Ours.

She writhes, undulating under me. Every twist of her body drives more blood south, until even the frozen ground feels soft beside my cock. She got her chase. I got my catch. Now she will learn what happens to pretty kitties who run from tigers.

"Your cougar is beautiful," I say, fangs grazing her fur. "She ran to be caught. Now I'll have my mate. Change."

Cienna is naked, panting, heat-flushed, snow melting on the tips of her lashes. The scalding tang of her slick floods the air. Her scent strips years of discipline down to the bone.

"Ivan—" Her hands press against my chest, her eyes huge and fever-bright, pupils blown wide. "I don't— it's too much, I feel like I'm—" Her whole body shudders under me, and an involuntary whimper rattles up from her throat. "I'm burning alive."

"I know, little one. I know. I will make it better." I cup her cheek. "Let me make everything better."

"I'm scared," she stammers out.

"Is that why you were running from me?" I ask.