Chapter Five

Aric wanted to break everything after that meeting with his coven. Such vitriol had spewed forth from his people, he wanted to throttle every last one of them.

His truck nearly went up on two wheels as he turned into Sadey's driveway, but when he slammed on his brakes and rocked to a stop, he couldn't understand the scene before him.

Her rental car had all its doors wide open, and the trunk was packed with boxes. The ding, ding of the keys in the ignition sounded, and the front door to her house was wide open. One of the boxes had tipped over, and the porch was scattered with papers and books. Long claw marks ran down the side of the box.

What in the hell?

Slowly, Aric slid out from his ride and froze, listening for Sadey. He took the keys from the ignition to stop the annoying sound. They jingled in his hand as he made his way across the yard to the porch stairs. The floorboards creaked under his shoes as he peeked inside her house. Boxes were everywhere, but that made no damn sense—she'd only left his house two hours ago. That wasn't enough time to do this amount of packing.

He locked his arms against the doorframe, his frown so deep his forehead ached. "Sadey?" he called out carefully.

Nothing. No scuffle of her shoes, no clatter of rushed packing, no greeting. He listened harder, but there was nobody here. There was no pulse in the house. "Shhhit," he murmured, pushing off the door. He couldn't go in without her invite, but he didn't need to. Sadey was in the wind.

Aric rested his hands on his hips and glared down at the shredded box thoughtfully. He inhaled deeply. Fur and Sadey. And that's when he felt it—the hair raising on the back of his neck that said he was being watched. That he was being hunted.

He scanned the woods around the house, but even with his heightened night vision, he couldn't see the reflective eyes that would tell him his hunch was right. Clever little predator.

Inhaling deeply, he hopped over the last couple of stairs on the porch and made his way slowly to the tree line. His scorched arm tingled, as if reminding him what had happened the last time he'd messed with a pissed-off shifter, but that was different. Sadey was different, and he couldn't even imagine what she was going through right now. Anger, maybe, but definitely fear over what they'd done. She had grabbed her purse and left his house, him trailing after her, begging her to stay and talk about the claiming mark. And that's when he'd seen a name in her mind—Brock. She'd thought that name with such hatred he'd almost missed the fear she kept bundled in the middle of all that anger.

She'd been hurt, and now look what Aric had done. He'd linked her to him—a complete stranger. He'd given himself power over her. The thought of it made him want to double over with the ache in his chest. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. He was supposed to choose a human woman who could make him forget his maker. The law said registered vampires could Turn one human, one mate, one forever-love. And what had he done? He'd chosen a shifter, who couldn't be Turned and who didn't want the bond.

He deserved her claws.

Maple and birch trees towered over him, and as the blue moonlight filtered through the sparse branches, it created a spiderweb of shadows on the forest floor. It would be spring soon, but right now, the wind was bitterly cold. When he'd been human, he'd loved nights like this. Big moon, chilly-wind nights where he would sit near a fire pit in his old backyard, drink beer and shoot the shit with his friends from his old life. Now his friends were all vampires, and beer tasted like soggy ashes. Sadey had been a beautiful distraction from his anger over his new life, and now he'd hurt her.

When he stepped on a twig, it snapped loudly. Freezing into place, one leg locked against the soft ground, one leg bent and resting on the toe of his boot, he listened for a heartbeat. That was one advantage to his job. He could hear the pulse tripping, fading, or holding strong. He could listen to the thud, thud of a victim's heart and know how much time he had to work on them. But here in Sadey's dark woods, he couldn't hear a thin—

Bam!

Aric fell forward under a great weight, as if he'd been shot in the back by a cannon. He hit the ground hard and resisted the urge to shift and give the bats his body to escape the pain. Sadey snarled as he rolled over and covered his face from her raking claws. Desperate to see her, he opened his eyes, and his breath clogged his throat.

She was beautiful and not at all what he'd expected. Why? Because shifters like Sadey didn't exist.

Pain slashed across his neck, and then she was at him, teeth on his throat, dragging him backward.

"Sadey, I'm sorry!" he gasped out.

The massive snow leopard stopped, every muscle still. She loosened her powerful jaws and dropped him. Aric was bleeding and clawed up, but it was nothing his swift healing wouldn't fix. Right now, the important thing was that she had taken a few steps back and was looking at him uncertainly. The snarl was softer in her throat, and when he moved to sit up, she lowered to her belly and hissed out a warning.

Aric held out his hands in surrender. "I'm so sorry. I didn't even think about my bite bonding us. It's never bonded me to anyone before."

Sadey pulled her lips back over her long, curved canines and hissed louder.

Right, don't mention the other girls. He was definitely going to screw this up. He'd sucked at relationships when he was human, and his maker had broken him the rest of the way. "Look, I should've thought it through. I forgot about shifters and claiming marks, but I should've remembered. I should've stopped us. I tried to stop us!"

Sadey eased up on all fours, her ears flattened back, her muzzle wrinkled up in a snarl. She was stunning. Her thick silver coat was speckled with dark spots. Curved, razor-sharp claws extended from her massive paws and dug into the soil. Her swishing tail was long and thicker than any of the other big cat shifters. It was so strange to see the same light gold eyes he hadn't been able to get out of his mind on a snow leopard.

Aric had a million questions. How had she come to be? This animal didn't exist in shifters, yet here she was staring uncertainly at him. He wanted to know every single thing about the mysterious woman who was wrecking the cement walls he'd built around his heart.

Aric sat on his folded legs, hands out, palms up. He was no threat to her. Even though he was stronger, more powerful, even though he had more weapons than she did, he couldn't defend himself if it meant hurting her. "I tried to stay away from you," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

Sadey blinked hard, then shook her head. She stared off into the woods. Such a heartbroken sound rattled from her chest. She bunched her muscles as if she would bolt, but instead she sauntered over to him and ran her giant head under his arm, curved her body around his back, and rubbed up his other side. Her snarl changed. It softened. And as Aric carefully ran his hand over her head, it began to sound more like a purr than a growl. She lay across his lap and rolled, swatting him lightly with her paw. One of her claws hooked into the fabric of his T-shirt, but she didn't move to rip it. She just lay there, looking up at him with those blazing eyes of hers, one side of her mouth curled up in a playful expression as her purr rattled on.

He chuckled and lifted her giant paw to his face, pressed the pink pads against his jaw. With a sigh, he murmured, "Can you Change back yet?"

Now both sides of her mouth curled back, and she let off another unhappy hiss. But after a few seconds, she pushed off him and sauntered back the way he'd come. And when she was past the branch he'd stepped on, she paused and looked at him over her shoulder, her thick tail twitching. The fury had faded from her eyes, and now she seemed to be asking him, "What are you waiting for?"

Aric couldn't help the smile that stretched his face as he rocked upward. He probably looked like shit—bleeding, tattered clothes, neck clawed to hell, but he didn't care about any of that now. All he cared about was Sadey, waiting up ahead for him. When he stepped into line with her, he brushed his fingertips down her back, and she moved off again, content to walk beside him back to her house.

And this was the moment. This was the instant that an old, almost-forgotten feeling unfurled in his chest. Everything had been so heavy since he'd been Turned, but out here in Sadey's woods, a familiar sensation came over him. For a few seconds, he couldn't put a name to it, but when she looked up at him, filling the night woods with the thick rattle of her content purr, it struck him.

For the first time in a really long time, he felt hope.