Page 20 of Mated to the Kingpin

Liam

She doesn’t need to tell me that I can never walk away from her again after I catch her tonight. I made that decision the moment I knew I’d take no other wife except her, even if it meant dragging her into my dark world.

Even though her lips are still flushed red from my kiss, even though her scent is tangled with mine in the air—full of rising heat and surrender—Claire looks at me through lashes damp with tears and dares me to catch her like she’s finishing a vow she started ten years ago.

Then she turns and runs. Not with fear, but with defiance.

I should shift instantly, should already be on the trail, muscle and claw carving a path through the dark like fury on four legs. But I just stand there, moonlight drenching my skin, her scent still warm on my mouth. My heartbeat fists behind my ribs and pounds so loud I swear I feel it in the dirt. I’ll give her a head start, let her think that she might actually escape me.

Claire’s challenge isn’t about possession. It’s not about primal instinct or dominance. Not really. It’s about trust, forgiveness, worth.

The kind of hunt she invites me on is more than tooth and tilt. This isn’t me chasing a mate with rut in my belly and controlin my spine. This is a male earning his female. She wants me to capture her, body and heart.

She wants me as I am, the man I’ve become after every brutal line I’ve crossed since the night I let her go.

I move slowly at first, fingers undoing the top button of my shirt, then the next. I strip in silence, laying each piece of clothing across a low branch like I would battle armor before a duel. The woods watch, quiet and patient, as I unbuckle my belt and step free of the last pieces that mark me as a man rather than beast.

The full moon grips at my spine, coaxing power up and through me. It always reacts to emotion first, and I am fathoms-deep in feeling tonight.

Grief. Guilt. Desire. Devotion.

The shift hits like it always does—fire stretching inside my skin, bones warping under pressure, muscles tearing and reknitting. My jaw cracks sideways and lengthens, teeth sharpen as my eyes blow wide with the transformation. My back bows, ribs pop, and then the long silence between my heartbeats breaks with the low, full rumble of breath escaping me in this new form.

I drop onto four paws, massive and snarling with restrained fury, my fur rippling over taut muscle with each breath. The darkness of my coat gleams silver at the edges, but the black runs deeper—soaked in blood, memory, and hunger. My claws dig into the forest floor, sinking past moss and rot like they were made to carve through flesh. I tense, power vibrating through my limbs, already on the razor’s edge of instinct.

Then I lift my muzzle.

And I howl.

It tears from me like a war cry, a savage proclamation to the stars themselves. A song of possession, of warning, of ruthless acknowledgment that after tonight she belongs to me. My howlisn’t a plea. It’s my dominance echoing into the bones of the world. Mafia or wolf, I take what’s mine and protect it with tooth and claw.

No more hesitation. No more mercy.

Her scent hits me like gasoline to flame: wind, sweat, heat, and fear—not terror, but the thrilling sharp adrenaline that comes when prey knows it’s being chased. Except Claire isn’t prey. She’s the blood in my mouth and the fire in my chest. My obsession in lace and bare feet.

She isn’t running to escape me but to make me prove I’ll never lose her again.

Good.

Let her run.

I will tear down the fucking woods if I have to.

Each clawed step sinks deep into the earth. With every inch, I track her like a storm hunts the shore. I see it now: a heel print, deep and deliberate between twisted roots. Adrenaline pushing her to run without caring about the obvious trail she’s leaving behind.

There. Another print, shallower, near the rise of a slope. I inhale, and something carnal cracks loose in my ribcage. She’s close. Her scent is thickened now—salt and lust and defiance all twisted into one heady thread. My spine bows under the pressure of it, snarls coiling in my throat.

Then I find it.

A shard of torn lace, trembling on the end of a low branch. As if she left a scrap of herself behind like a breadcrumb or bait. She knows what she’s running from. She wants this. She wants me like this: wild, ruined, slavering with need.

But what she doesn’t know is what kind of wolf I truly am.

I press my snout against the lace and close my eyes, breathing her into my lungs like sacrament. It’s still warm. Threaded with her skin. It makes me ache. Makes me feral.Every cell in my body floods with need, not the hollow itch of rut, but a deep, marrow-cleaving desire to catch her, mark her, and drag her back where no one but me will ever touch her again.

She’s not a fox, like my mother warned. She’s not some clever girl slipping through underbrush.

She is my mate.

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