Chapter 6 Chapter Six
Shifting back to his human form hurt more than he’d expected but when he was finally back on two feet, staring down at the small woman who’d dared to run from him, the anger pushed the pain to the recesses of his mind where he locked his wolf back again. Her eyes were wide enough to split her lids as she took him in. They were just as startling as they were the first moment he glimpsed them: aquamarine with hints of green like that of the sea she smelled so much like. They traveled from his bare feet, up his aching legs, jerked over his pulsing dick and slowed again at his torso before they finished their ascent at his own eyes, which he knew were still black with his heightened emotions. Her supple lips parted in a way that made him want to pull her forward and force his hardened dick between them. Then he saw the severed head of one of his most trusted gammas lying beside her and the thoughts disappeared as quickly as the pain.
“You fucking ran,” Sylvan growled at the audacity of the act.
Her mouth snapped shut and the color of embarrassment coating her cheeks turned to the red of anger. “I’m not your whore or your prisoner!” she yelled up at him.
He laughed, the sound short and cold. “You may be both or neither, but that is for me to decide, not you.”
He caught her by the arm and hauled her upward. She gasped in pain but he didn’t allow the sound to weaken him. She was covered head-to-toe in mud though it did nothing to hide the scent of the ocean from her skin. Her tactics had been enough to confuse most of his army and even Cole’s dragon, Bessimor, wasn’t able to spot her as she scurried along the forest floor, but he’d been able to track her with the ease of a blood hound hunting a fox. He yanked her closer, pulling her flush against his naked body and setting his nerve endings alight with a tension he’d never felt in his thirty-four years of existence.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve shifted? Now one of my most trusted men is dead because of your recklessness," he spat.
“I thought the great Mate Killer didn’t need to shift to win his battles,” the little fiend taunted, a smirk of challenge pulling at her lips that she wore when trying to seem brave while her heart beat against her ribcage like a caught bird trying to escape its cage.
She wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t shifted in years, refused to. His wolf was dangerous, primal, uncontrollable under the best circumstances, so he locked it away. But when the alarm had gone up and he realized she’d escaped, he had been helpless to keep the prison erected.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t provoke that side of me again,” he warned her, his grip tightening to drive the point home. “You’re lucky I was able to contain it before you met the same fate as Jacob over there,” he said with a bob of his head to the dismembered body still twitching a few feet away.
Though she didn’t follow the direction of his gesture, she did visibly swallow and shrink slightly. He didn’t need to tell her that his wolf had absolutely no desire for bloodshed when it came to her body but something far more primal, far more dangerous.
“Let’s go,” he growled, pulling on her arm to follow.
The woman resisted, pulling her arm away. The mud along her skin aided in breaking his hold and she fell backward. “No!” she yelled up at him as she scurried away.
Sylvan sighed as she backpedaled. He kept up with her retreat with easy steps until she backed into Jacob’s body. She shrieked and balked as one arm spasmed and tried to grab her.
Sylvan grabbed her arm again and pulled her up. He started walking back in the direction of camp, ignoring her feeble attempts to get away. “Would you stop?” he grumbled.
“No! I won’t stop fighting you!” she yelled. “I am not a prisoner. I am not going to let you take me back there. I won’t stop trying to run! I will not submit, nor will I ever let you have me!”
Sylvan groaned and opened his fist. Her eyes widened as his sudden release coupled with the force she was using to break free caused her to tumble to the ground. He stalked toward her and she got to her feet and retreated backward.
“I don’t expect you to stop fighting me,” Sylvan growled. “Not yet, anyway. But I’m certain you will with time.” The notion that he pictured her being around for any length of time made her retreat faster. “You will go back to the camp with me. You will submit to me.” She backed up into a tree and pressed herself flat, as he’d seen her do before Jacob had clamped his hand around her throat. He didn’t do that. Instead, he planted his palm beside her head and leaned over her, inhaling the salty, sweet scent of the sea from her sweat. “And lastly, you will be mine.”
“No,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “And to make sure I can keep better track of you, give me your hand.”
“What?” she asked, burying her hands behind her back.
“Give me your damn hand,” he ordered.
“No!”
He sighed long and hard. Sylvan shot forward and she shrieked, hurting his eardrums. He grappled for her arm, much harder to do when he didn’t want to hurt her. They fell to the ground. One moment he was straddling her, the next she was squirming out from under him. They tumbled over each other until he managed to get one wrist locked in his fist. He was behind her. He locked his ankles around her calves, tightened his free arm around her chest and extended his torso so she was caught in an odd angle she could not escape from.
“Give me the dagger in your skirt,” he demanded.
She jerked in his hold and he tightened his grip until she stopped struggling. “Are you fucking crazy?!”
“Give me the dagger,” he repeated.
“I don’t have a…”
“For Goddess sake, I’ll get it then.”
Sylvan released her wrist, which allowed her to claw at his face and maneuver her body so it was harder to keep his hold. He grunted as her elbow landed in his side but kept at his original task, searching the folds of her skirt for the third dagger he’d felt there the night before. When he didn’t find it on the outside, he raked her skirt up over her bare legs and ran his hand up her milky-soft skin. It took him a moment to realize she’d stopped fighting him. Her breathing was still erratic, her heart continued to beat in a rhythm that he worried would cause some kind of cardiac failure if it continued, but her body no longer contorted to get away. His hand slowed in its ascent up her thigh, relishing the brief submission. Her breathing shallowed.
Sylvan tried to remember what the fuck he was even doing in the first place, as his mind was suddenly on something completely at odds with their position. He found his fingers flexing into the soft meat of her thigh and had to bite his lip when she let out a gasp that bordered on a moan. He shut his eyes hard. Focus, Sylvan, fucking focus. Then he remembered and moved his hand to the skirt around her naked skin. He felt it, the sharp edge of a dagger and pulled it through the fabric until it was free. Though his hand had stopped its exploration, her attempt to break his hold didn’t resume until he’d taken her wrist again.
“Wait, wait, wh-what are you doing?” she asked, her voice wavering between fear and desperation.
“Binding us.”
“What?! Ah!”
Sylvan swiped the blade across her palm. Blood sprouted from the wound and he quickly repeated the maneuver with his own hand before clasping their two palms together. Her body went rigid as his blood flowed into her veins. Her spine curved in a delectable way that pressed her ass against him. He groaned and felt his dick hardening again at the pleasurable feeling of her warmth spreading into him. His eyes shut as the binding wove them together.
“I… I won’t submit,” she said, though the soft way she spoke it betrayed the words of defiance. “Blood bindings only work if both parties…”
“I know,” he breathed into her hair, trying to regain his composure so he could get them back to camp without coercing her into letting him fuck her against a tree. He took her hand, still caught in his grasp and brought the wound that had yet to heal up to his mouth. He worked his tongue over the cut until it stopped bleeding and only a thin pink scar remained. “It’s temporary when one fights it. That just means we’ll have to repeat it when the binding starts to wear off, once a week or so.”
Her body stiffened on top of him and he couldn’t help but smile as the ramifications of what he said settled into her bones.