Page 72 of Alpha Hunt
The beast turns, fixing me with a pair of piercing blue eyes. I freeze, my breath hitching sharply as recognition slams into me with a force that almost makes me reel back.
I’ve seen those eyes before. In my dreams. In heated moments of intimacy.
It’s Edirn.
But as I stare into those inky depths, I see no flicker of recognition, no hint of the man I know. There’s only a feral, savage bloodlust.
The wolf – Edirn – snarls, his lips peeling back to reveal gleaming fangs. He lunges at the bars of the cage, his jaws snapping mere inches from my face. I stumble back, my heart racing as I try to process what I’m seeing. More importantly, what just happened.
“Edirn,” I whisper, my voice shaking. I reach out a hand, and I’m rewarded with teeth hitting the bars that my fingertips are almost touching. I snatch them back in alarm but don’t stop trying. “Edirn, it’s me. Casey.”
A guttural rumble reverberates through the air in response. I maintain eye contact with his mad blue eyes, unable to look away.
It’s impossible. This has to be some twisted nightmare.
Yet I know, with a sinking certainty, the awful truth.
He doesn’t recognize me.
Chapter 27
Edirn
I want to kill something. I don’t care who, or why, or what. All I know is that something has to die.
And this creature standing in front of me looks like as good a candidate as any. I’d prefer it if it was one of the others. One of them that smells like grease and metal and sweat. Those are the ones I really want to kill.
But this one will do.
Fingers come close, and I gnash my fangs at them, eager for the taste of blood. When she doesn’t retreat, my hackles rise, and I spin to prowl around the tiny cage.
Need to get out!
The compulsion is all-consuming. More consuming than the need for the rush of blood in my mouth.
“Edirn, please!” her voice comes again, a desperate edge to it. It’ll be even more desperate when I’m tearing at her flesh. I spin around again, teeth bared. I stop when I see that she’s pushed her hand through the bars. She flinches as she touches them. I burned when I touched them, too. The metal is bad. Tainted.
I cock my head. When her arm brushes the cool steel, a line of blisters forms. She gnaws on her bottom lip but continues to push her arm into the cage.
“Please…come to me.” She’s clearly lost her mind.
The others could touch it, the males who stank. She can’t. Like me.
She’s not one of them.
I pad closer, my hackles still raised. I extend my snout slightly, taking in the scent of her. There’s something…familiar about it.
“That’s it…closer…please.” Her voice is low and soothing.
I shake my head to clear it. It’s a trap. Another one. It has to be.
But that scent. When I stretch forward to sniff again, she pushes her wrist further through the bars. I smell burning flesh as they touch her…and then her fingertips brush against my pelt. And it hits me in a rush.
I’m running…hunting…hunting her. She’s my prey.
Not prey. She’s something else. Something…
“Look at me, Edirn,” she coaxes. “Look into my mind.”