Page 30 of His to Hunt

He leans closer. So close I can feel his breath on my cheek, close enough that swallowing becomes impossible.

"No one sees what's mine," he murmurs.

And then I realize… he doesn't even know my name.

I should feel used. Violated. Instead, I feel something terrifyingly close to safe.

The moonlight bleeds through the trees, casting shadowsacross his inked skin. My body aches—thighs trembling, knees stinging, every inch of me marked by dirt and desire. His shirt hangs off me like a promise, like armor.

His collar sits heavy at my throat.

A reminder.

I'm not just his.

I'm ruined.

Fourteen

BECKETT

She walksbeside me in silence, wearing my shirt, still bare underneath. Still aching. Still full from what we shared in the darkness.

Her hair is tangled with twigs and leaves, thighs streaked with dirt and sweat and cum. She doesn't look at the others as we move through the trees, doesn't speak, doesn't stumble, but I feel it—the weight of what we just did clinging to her skin like smoke.

When we reach the edge of the forest, I nod once at the man stationed at the threshold. His eyes flicker between us before he steps aside without a word. They all do. No one stops me when I lead her across the stone path. No one asks because no one wants to know what I'll do if they try.

They know what it means when a woman walks out in a man's shirt, when she's marked and protected and no longer up for fucking debate.

She's not a question anymore. She's aPossession. Mine.

But I haven't forgotten what she is—the girl who didn't belong, the girl who looked back at me like she knew the stories and came anyway, the girl whose eyes found mine in the forest before she ran. The girl who lied to get through the gates.

And now she's in my world, which means I get to ask.

I don't speak until we're inside, past the gate, past the corridor, past the eyes and the rules and the others who'd kill to know how she got in and who she belongs to now. It's just us in a private room with walls thick enough to keep secrets.

She stands in the center, clutching the hem of my shirt like it's armor. She's quiet, wide-eyed, still trying to catch her breath.

"Are you going to turn me in?" she asks, voice barely above a whisper.

I cross my arms, studying her. Somehow her mind is in the same place as mine. On our dilemma. "That depends."

"On what?"

"On whether you tell me the truth."

She lifts her chin slightly. "And if I don't?"

"Then we have a problem," I say, my voice low. "And I don't think you want any more problems tonight."

I step forward, close enough to catch her scent – forest and sweat and something uniquely her. Close enough to taste the lie I know she's still choking on. Then I speak, soft and lethal.

"You weren't invited. You didn't belong. And you knew it." Another step. "You slipped through a gate meant to keep things like you out."

She flinches, a barely perceptible movement, but I catch it.

I catch everything about her.

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