Previously:

When my breath slows to a normal rhythm, I start to sit up so I’m in a kneeling position and rise again but my world is suddenly turned upside down with a loud thud! My back hits harshly against the grass covered earth that offers barely any give and a quick flash of light fills my vision as though I am literally seeing stars before my eyes from the impact. When I try to get up, a slight growl comes from a source above me and I freeze completely as I am push down once again and a weight settles to keep me in place. The white wolf from that flash or dream in the cave! I feel the blood drain from my body when suddenly he morphs into a person. It’s him!

“I couldn’t resist waiting to see how you would react once you thought you were all alone.”

My anger once again supersedes the fear that is lurking beneath the brave front I’m putting on as I shove and wiggle to try and get some leeway in my benefit.

“Don’t waste all your energy or it’ll be no fun at all later.”

“Bastard! Let me go!” I grit through my teeth as I thrash wildly, but no matter what I do, his strong grip never relents and I do just tire myself out.

He leans in between my neck and shoulder, still holding my arms firmly at my side, and take a long whiff. It’s only then I realize that once he shifted back to his human form, he was completely naked as he pins me with his weight.

He growls against the crook of my neck and starts kissing it gently despite his harsh grip on my arms and legs. Nuzzles and kisses turned to light nips and looks up at me with his smoldering silver eyes. I find myself entranced for a moment before I remember that I’m in trouble and start to thrash and shout again. All my antics just seem to amuse him as he sits up to straddle my waist, holding my wrist in one hand and leaning in to my ear to say huskily, “I’ve been waiting for this.” His words send shivers down my back and I can’t help but feel heat warm up my face and in my stomach as to react to what he is saying. I suddenly remember the images from my dream and in the cave of him seducing that woman and this viciously killing her whilst she was in the throes of passion. 

I'm next.

“What are you waiting for?!” I scream at him putting on a brave face, which he only raises an eyebrow.

“If you insist.” And he dives in for the kill.

I glare at him defiantly and swore not to show any fear during my last moments but he captures my lips in a searing kiss, so unlike the ones that he has given me each night before; it leaves me breathless. I snap out of my daze realizing that I may well still be in danger and I start to struggle and push at him once again. I forget that he still has me firmly pinned in place as he gathers both my hands above my head and continues his onslaught on my lips. A low moan escapes from me and he starts trailing his kisses towards my ear, entangling a hand into my hair and pulling it back slightly to give him more access to my neck.

I finally catch my breath and when I was about renew my efforts, I feel a tug on my earlobe with his teeth before his moves to speak in a deep almost growl into it, “Deny me if you like…” He earns a squeak of surprise from me, “but you are only lying to yourself.” He purrs into my jawline and continues his trail down my neck while his hands work their magic on me. I am reduced to squirming and trying not to give him the satisfaction of knowing his ministrations are indeed affecting me. Seeming to know my internal struggle, he leans in for another heated kiss.

“Tell me,” and kiss, “do you want,” he kisses and squeezes me, “me to stop?” This kiss is deep and practically sinful as he whole heartedly pours himself into the gesture as one arm winds around my waist. When I feel like my head is all muddled from the sensory overload and I am about to lose myself to the pleasure, he breaks the kiss and all physical contact from me, holding himself wholly on his arms alone above me.

Blinking a few times at the sudden loss of contact, I fully open my eyes and his handsome features are arranged in an expression of question, hovering a mere inch from my face and his warm breath elevated from the past few minutes’ activity. It takes me a moment to realize he is waiting for something from me and I have to actively rack my brain for what it is he is expecting. What is he asking...? I am breathing hard but all I know is that he suddenly stopped his onslaught on me…and I want it back.

“Don’t stop.” I reply.

I did not realize he releases my hands until I find that I am reaching up for his face and bring it crashing back down to my own to finish what he started. I can tell that this is exactly the answer he is looking for when he is stilled by my sudden kiss and a triumphant grin spreads upon his lips once he regains his senses. I just want to wipe that uppity smirk off his face and I nip at his lower lip but that only earns me a low growl as he renews his efforts, quickly reaching for my shirt hem.

We are spent and sated. The sun has set now with the remains of twilight also fading in favor of Venus and the first stars joining in the night sky. I felt him shift and grab my shirt to drape around us as he pulls me closer. I snuggle into his side, something I’ve come to find comfort in these past few days and watch as more stars materialize before my eyes.

“Why all the secrecy?” I ask before I realize I said it aloud. Thinking back on when I first arrived at his cabin and the subsequent nights, I left myself completely bare to him and still feel safe in his arms despite not knowing much about him.

He was silent for a few moments and I thought he had fallen asleep. I begin to shift over to my side when I felt his arm wrap tighten around my middle stopping my movement.

“I can’t tell you right now. It’s not the right time.”

“Not the right…? We just –“

“I know.” He interrupts me, sounding resigned to what happened and started to draw little patterns on my stomach with his finger. This may be the first sign of nerves I’ve seen in him ever. “I just…there are a lot of things you should know first.”

“Like?” I ask, urging him to fill in everything I don’t know.

“For one, the dead woman in the cave was actually my first mate.”

“You mean, like your wife?”

“Yes and no. It’s…complicated.”

“I’ve got time for you to uncomplicated this for me. Tell me about her.” I say in all earnest.

He comes up with something on the tip of his tongue and stops short, his brow in a deep scowl as he thinks about something. At this point, I am not sure that he would tell me what has been plaguing his mind about this ‘mate’ that he killed. Though we are laying side by side watching the specks appear in the darkness, I wait patiently as though I contemplate the day’s end. My gaze was so intent on the shift and changes in the clouds as the sky transforms from deeper shades of reds and purples to a dark slate with glowing that slowly emerges; so much so that I startle when I feel a gentle brush of his finger on the healing bite mark he left me on my neck.

“She marked me on my shoulder the night she took everything I loved away from me.”

I waited for him to continue and after a moment, I shifted over to look at him, yet his eyes were staring at the stars, looking off distantly into the past.

“This is truly my family’s ancestral lands – for generations, really – and we lived simply, yet happily until I was deemed a man. I was scarcely 19 when I had built this cabin with the help of my father and younger brothers – I had two – each two years apart. The day we finished my cabin was the day that my fate changed forever and when Lyssandra entered my life.”

He pauses his narrative lightly stroking my neck and I watch as night’s sky shrouds him in a shade, deepening his expression as he is lost in the past. I stare off at the horizon where the sun disappeared below the horizon. He slowly trails a finger at the back of my neck and his other hand finds its way under my waist as my world is flipped when he pulls me up and over his body, keeping me close. He stares deeply into my eyes before baring his neck to me and I can see the mark clearly now, broadly displaying what I should have noticed to be a statement or declaration of possession. 

My fingers reach slowly to the scar and lightly traces its outline causing him to flinch as though it is still a fresh wound. His warm hand tenderly cups my cheek and I lean into it until he brings it to his mouth, bites the side of his hand hard until a wound is open and holds it out before me. I look down at the proffered hand almost in a trance and then as though I knew all along what he needs me to do, I bend my head down accepting his silent offer. Once his blood mingles on my tongue, I instantly feel like my body is being pulled in one direction until I abruptly stop.

When I look around me, I am all alone in the field. It’s in the dead of the night, a lot later than I expect it to be. I suddenly remember that I was not originally alone so I look around frantically for any signs of him. While I scan the area, I notice movement in the shadows that instantly has me scrambling to the blind side of a boulder for cover. Peering around its edge carefully trying to see if the something is still lurking around the shadows, my blood curdles when I hear a howl in the distance.

I recognized that howl the instant I heard it as the very one I heard in the cabin bathroom. No sooner had I thought that did I see the form of a large canine coming around the other side of my hiding place. I stifle a gasp and hope that I am not found when I spot in the distance, a quartet of lights coming in a straight line towards this direction. It slowly became brighter by the second until I notice that the glows were actually people holding torches making their way to the forest.

Fear and dread coursed through my body as I watch in trepidation to see what the werewolf and its pack will do to these new comers. With that thought, I suddenly remembered that I’m in the very same situation as well. Now, uncomfortable at my sudden realization of being utterly alone, I make a split decision to warn the on-comers thinking I would be safer in that group than a few feet away from the pack of wolves.

As quietly as I could, I glance around the boulder one last time and upon seeing that no wolf was nearby, I made a run for it and headed to the group. I ran as fast as my legs could take me but when I head off the leader of these travelers, I stopped abruptly in front of them. With my hands up, palms out towards them as if to tell them to ‘stop,’ yet the men – everyone in line is male, I notice – do not even acknowledge my existence in the slightest.

Right when I thought I am about to collide with the leader and get shoved aside, I gasp when the man suddenly walked right through me as though I was not even there. I looked down at my hands in disbelief to see if I was suddenly invisible but when I looked up again, a youth in his mid-teens and another just on the brink of his teenage years walk right through me. To shocked to recover and collect my thoughts on what is happening to me, I look up once again to find a familiar, yet younger version of the man I’ve been having an intimate relationship with flank the line and walked towards me.

I froze on the spot when I realized it was him as a young man, and I felt him walk right through me as his family before him did – I don’t know how I didn’t see the resemblance before now – I feel a tingling sensation where his body came in contact with mine. Instantly, I turned to watch him continue down the trail his family walked on but there was a slight falter in his step before he turned and looked back at me. His expression was that of shock as he looked in my direction and then when his gaze moved towards my face, I swear his eyes met mine! I felt as though there was an instant connection; he saw me unlike the other members of his family and we recognized one another in that moment.

Someone calls his attention away and broke that connection between the two of us. The moment he turned away, a soft glow surrounded my body and bled into my surroundings. When it ebbed away, I now stood mid-day by the waterfall close to his cabin. At the waterhole and I saw that he and his brothers were playing in the basin, splashing around and having fun while their father sat casually on a rock and carved a stick with his knife. When he was done carving a wolf, he whistled loudly to get his boys’ attention. As they heeded their father’s call and waded out of the water, the family made their way to the rocks that sunned their clothes, dressed themselves and headed back to work in the forest. They pick up their axes and hacked at the trees, sorting them into piles based on size and type.

I watched them work as a unit and in sync for a bit before I felt a prickling sensation on the back of my neck. When I looked towards the waterfall, I noticed what made my hackles rise up. There, at the mouth of the cave I had explored earlier today, stood the large black wolf, whose shadow I saw in the last memory as the family ventured into this territory. Lyssandra was surrounded by a few of her pack members and they watched the family below as though patiently waiting for the best opportunity to strike.

The memory changed again with another flash and glow; I am transported to the cabin in its final stages. The men were finishing up the details of the cabin, added wooden doors for each window and put together furniture. An older woman, whom I assumed to be his mother as well as a little girl came out of the cabin with cooked vegetables and drinks for the men, sat at the swinging chairs leisurely. When everyone gathered to share the drinks and food set out for them at a wooden table, a howl – that same terrifying call to arm – echoed through the area and stilled everyone’s movements. The adults quickly tell the children to head inside without haste and seal themselves in rooms.

Their mother grabbed a hold of her young daughter hand and hefted her in her arms as she dashed to the cabin. Then, out of nowhere, a large brown wolf pounces on the two, attacking them just before they could reach the door! Panic ensued and the men rushed towards the screaming pair as more and more wolves join the foray. All I could do was watch in horror as the scene unraveled before me, each member of his family getting separated, surrounded, then picked off like chess pieces masterfully captured until finally, checkmate.