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He lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles, keeping his fangs clear.

I catch his cheek when he lowers it. “You haven’t answered me.”

“I asked you.”

“You can answer anyway.”

He leans into my palm, and his jaw fur tickles my wrist. “Yes, Kestria. I want this.”

There. That wasn’t so hard. I kiss him once, then get my feet under me. My back aches when I straighten, so I stand close until it eases off. Ugh. And I’m about to run. He gets up beside me with his weight on the right leg.

The fish can stay on the preparation stone, and the bow can stay by my pallet. I turn toward the passage and hitch his shirt up through my belt so it won’t catch at my knees.

I look back up at him.

Rauk lets go of my hand. “Run.”

Chapter 30

Her eyes drop to my leg, then come back up.

She grins.

I make a grab for her, and she twists away from it. I could’ve had her wrist. But then there’d be no chase. Her foot wraps scuff the stone as she runs into the passage, keeping her bad arm close. She’s got my shirt hitched up through her belt, and I watch her bare legs until she’s round the turn.

I stay beside the hearth.

She slows at the first turn, then she picks up again. I can hear her all the way to the slab. There’s a scrape as she gets through the opening, a pause, then her feet on the slope outside.

I’d catch her there if I went now.

I put my hand on the hearthstone and wait. Her mouth’s still warm on mine, and I want it back.

She gets to the trees and picks her way down the first of it, and then she’s running again. Both my ears turn toward the passage, and I lean on my hand until the claws scrape stone.

Not yet.

She’s getting well down the slope now. I lose a few steps under the wind in the pines. Farther on there’s water running, and a bird that keeps calling. The wind drops and I listen again, but her feet are gone.

That’s more of a start than she needs. She’ll still complain when I catch her.

I take my hand off the stone and follow.

The first turn pulls the scratches down my side, and I take the second one slower to keep my bitten arm off the wall. It’s bled through the wrap at the wrist again. She’ll want that redone, and she can do it after I’ve caught her. The binding on my thigh stays where she tied it.

Outside, her scent’s fresh on the hanging growth. I duck through it and start down the rock.

She’s gone left at the first trees. She’s stepped on a fern and scuffed the needles off a root farther down, and I don’t have to slow for any of it.

She’s running on human legs, and they tire fast. She won’t hear me or smell me coming until I’m close enough to grab her. I can take my time getting down the steep part.

My left thigh objects to the first long step anyway. You’re going to chase me on that leg? Yes. I shorten the next one and keep going. Two nights past the new moon, and my legs still aren’t what they should be. But she’ll be stopping for breath on this slope too.

There’s a fallen pine across her way, with its roots pulled up out of the ground and a white stone still caught between two of them. She’s squeezed around the root end and left a scrape in the dirt beside the trunk. Her back won’t have liked that.

I follow her around it. She’s snapped a twig getting past, and her scent’s on the broken end.

I smile and go past. She’ll have an opinion when she sees how little ground she’s gained.