Chapter 329 329
Maurice POV
My wolf hunted through the pitch-dark woods, nose low to the forest floor, tracking her scent where it tangled with others. Wherever Bee was heading, she wasn’t alone. She hadn’t broken away had chosen to stay with them.
That knowledge both soothed and infuriated my beast.
He relished the chase. Six months deprived of our mate had sharpened him into something restless and savage, desperate to find her, to mark her the instant we did. But Bee had been poisoned suppressed by her own father, stripped of her wolf before it could fully emerge. All to keep her hidden. All to control her.
Not just from the supernatural world but from the human one too.
Her fortune had been the real prize. A tool her father intended to use to reclaim the Bloodnight pack alliance from Damien. He’d even planned to take Aurélie for himself, to claim the twins as his blood, to build a dynasty on stolen lives.
I clenched my control around my wolf.
I would not be another tyrant in Bee’s story.
Still, impatience gnawed at him. We’d been running for miles in fur, pushing hard, closing the distance but whoever was guiding them knew the land well. Fast. Skilled. Smart.
My wolf followed her scent trail when voices reached us ahead raised, sharp with tension.
We slowed instantly, melting into the dense foliage, the woods becoming our shield as we watched.
I heard her before I saw her.
Her voice soft, familiar, devastating.
A siren call straight to my soul.
Bee.
My wolf’s gaze locked onto her from the shadows.
Her hair gone was the light brown. In its place, a natural blonde that framed her face like something divine. It suited her far too well. Goddess help me, she was even more beautiful than before.
Slimmer, too.
A growl rumbled through my head, my wolf bristling with concern. Our mate hadn’t been caring for herself. Hunger clung to her scent. Exhaustion weighed her shoulders.
I forced myself to focus as the conversation shifted. My breath stilled when the two males suddenly stood and scanned the woods.
I didn’t move.
Years of surveillance had trained me to remain invisible for hours. The only reason they’d sense anything was if they weren’t human.
Werewolves.
I wondered how Bee had crossed paths with them.
The dark-blond nearly brown-haired male kept his eyes trained on the tree line even as he moved, careful not to sit with his back exposed.
Definitely a wolf.
The other
Black hair.
I stiffened.
I hadn’t noticed him at first. Seeing Bee had stolen all my awareness.
Gilles.
The bastard.
As if that weren’t enough, he had the audacity to slide his arm around Bee’s shoulders, pulling her closer than I liked. Too close.
And then it hit me.
I’d waited six months for her.
But what if she hadn’t waited for me?
What if she belonged to him now or one of the others?
The thought burned.
I stayed hidden as night deepened and exhaustion claimed them. One by one, they fell asleep, the forest settling into silence broken only by crackling firewood and slow, even breathing.
When Bee was fully asleep, my wolf and I withdrew.
I needed clothes. I needed control. I wouldn’t meet her again as I had the first time naked, feral, unprepared.
I returned before dawn, positioning myself close enough to guard her, unseen. Protecting her sleep felt instinctive. Necessary.
But Gilles tested every shred of my restraint.
He reached for her in his sleep if he was even sleeping at all dragging her back against him. Her body fit too easily there. Too intimately. Her backside pressed to his groin.
He knew.
The prick knew I was nearby.
My wolf became a caged lion, pacing inside me, muscles coiled and ready to tear the male apart for daring to touch what was ours.
Morning crept in on birdsong.
That was when she woke.
Slowly, thoughtfully, she sat up. Watched. Thought. Then reached for her bag.
If she stepped into the woods, she’d smell me. My scent was too close, too fresh.
Excitement surged, my wolf pushing forward, desperate for her to feel us.
But she didn’t.
I watched her forage, scanning the ground, frustration rolling off her. She muttered under her breath food. She was hungry.
She should have shifted. Let her wolf hunt.
Then she moved farther out.
Spotted the road.
Hope flickered through her and that was when I had to move.
The instant I shifted my weight, she felt it.
She froze.
Her heart thundered loud enough I could hear it. Slowly, she turned, eyes cutting straight through the trees toward me. For a heartbeat, it felt like our gazes locked but then she shook it off, scanning, searching.
She slipped behind a tree.
Waited.
Gathered courage.
And when she stepped forward again, I stepped out too.
The hunt was over.
I had found my mate.
“Hello, Bee.”