Huntbound (Moonfate Serial Book 2) by Sylvia Frost

of the car to save him. I didn’t even get out of the car just to save Lawrence, really. I did it to atone for my past mistakes, but in the process I only made more.
     
    I brush my hand against the bark. “I’m so sorry.” The words scratch at my throat on the way out. “But I didn’t know that Lawrence wasn’t there. What if he had been hurt and wasn’t able to get out of the car? There was smoke in there. He could’ve suffocated. I had to find him.”
 
    Orion emerges from the other side of the tree and my heart falls when I note the tension in his naked muscles. “And you think I wouldn’t have rescued your friend?”
     
    “No, but you were busy with the werecoyote and maybe you wouldn’t have been as quick as—”
     
    With what looks like only a few steps, he’s suddenly behind me, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear with a perilous gentleness. “You would’ve been faster than me?”
     
    I turn around, but he’s already gone. “No, I—”
     
    “You wouldn’t have.” He’s leaning against a nearby ash, his posture relaxed, but his chin almost to his chest and his eyes still unrepentantly piercing.
     
    “I was trying to be strong. You said you wanted a strong mate!” I slam my fist against the trunk so hard a single green leaf spirals down from above.
     
    He explodes, his gaze darting from tree to tree, jaw opening, and lets out what can only be described as a howl. “You almost died! Do you have any idea what that would’ve done to me?”
     
    Each of his words is like a physical assault, and the same tree I was abusing a minute before I grab onto for support. “D-done to you ? You barely know me.”
     
    His eyes narrow until they’re nothing but twin slits of pure arctic fire. “Barely know you,” he whispers. “I’ve made you scream my name, Artemis. I’ve tasted your body and walked through your dreams. And you’ve walked through mine.”
     
    “That wasn’t real. And even if it was, we only met forty-eight hours ago. Less than that! I don’t know how you can just expect me to trust you so quickly. When—” I bite my lip. “Matemark or no. It’s crazy! I don’t know if you saw back there, but a werecoyote’s mate just held a blade to my throat and told me I smelled like old blood. What does that even mean, Orion? Old blood? Not to mention the fact that you neglected to tell me you’re a member of the FBSI. Or, I don’t know, that your best friend’s a bitchy weretigress who hates humans. Me in particular. I have no idea how I’m supposed to trust you. And I didn’t have a choice. Lawrence has been with me through everything. I…”
     
    As he watches me rant and rave, I keep half-expecting him to interrupt me, but he never does. Somehow that’s worse. Even after I trail off, he lets silence fall over the space between us until it’s suffocatingly quiet and all I can hear is the whispering of the breeze through the leaves.
     
    I look over my shoulder; half expecting yet another monster to come striding out of the soon-to-come darkness, but in the legions of disorderly trees behind me I can’t see anything.
     
    “I’m sorry, Artemis.”
     
    “For what?”
     
    “For what I’m about to do next.”
     
    My gaze whips back to him. I see him as he truly is now, a wild, naked thing. Blood and dirt streak his pale skin like war paint and a feral snarl curls his lip. He is uncontrollable. I was a fool looking for the monster over my shoulder.
     
    It was standing in front of me all along.
 
     
     

Chapter Sixteen
     
    He prowls toward me, and I can see the wolf so clearly in his every movement. Shadows dance over his skin, and I almost wonder if he’s going to shift. His gaze brims with resolve.
 
    I can’t help but flinch when he gets close enough to touch me. But I ball my fists and manage to stay calm. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
     
    “We’re beyond what I want, Artemis.” Instead of stopping he makes a lazy arc around me