of her life. She could do any one of those things, but she didn’t.
Instead she looked into his eyes and felt her heart race, and she didn’t move a muscle as he bent to kiss her.
She wanted him. More than anything else, she wanted Josef. Even after what Darien had shown her—the strength, and the freedom, and the joyful savagery—what she had always wanted was someone who loved her. And for all Darien was, she doubted he could ever give her that. All Darien knew, all he truly cared about was the beast that lived inside her. Josef knew the person she was—or at least the person she wanted to be …
Yet as she kissed him, and as his touch warmed depths of her body she was unaware had gone cold, she wept. Because, whatever he had said, if Josef knew the truth, he wouldn’t be able to give her that, either.
Still, as wrong and as deceitful as it was, she let him embrace her. She needed him right now. Not the animal that sated its lusts in the woods. Maria, the woman—the human being—she needed him. That part of her needed someone to hold her, to comfort her, and not to ask why.
XXIV
Darien woke and stretched, feeling a sense of contentment he hadn’t felt since he was a child. The universe had reorganized itself again, and he had a proper place within it. After years of being a single creature on the outside of man’s castle, tearing at the monuments of their hubris—after so long defining himself solely in opposition to his enemy—he had something of his own: a life, a family, a mate, all outside the world defined by the desires of men or their God.
The earth where he had slept was still strong with her scent, and he breathed it in, growling in pleasure. He felt honestly happy for the first time since the Order had slaughtered his family.
He let out a small yip to let Maria know he was awake, to come back to him. There were still so many things to show her, so many stories to tell. The evening was crisp and cool, and the night promised to be excellent.
Where was she?
As he came fully awake, he remembered her stroking him. He remembered her naked human form cradling his head. She had told him to go back to sleep.
He padded over to where they had cast off their human clothes. She had taken hers …
Where had she gone that she needed to dress like them?
Darien felt his mood go cold, still, and dark. Like the sky before a great storm, his mind was suddenly very quiet. She wouldn’t go back to them, not after what he had shown her.
He had mated with her. No one else. Her. He had waited for twenty years to find his own kind. She couldn’t give that to him and then leave. She couldn’t.
He nosed the leaves where her clothes had rested, trying to think of some other explanation, some excuse. A flash of silver glinted from the leaves, and he saw her cross.
Yes, he thought. She’s not returning to bondage.
Then he licked his muzzle as a host of new possibilities filled his mind. She had gone back to punish them. They had been the ones to trap her, chain her in silver without any knowledge of the strength within her. What they had done to her, in some sense, was worse than what the Order had done to him. The Order had destroyed his family, but these wretched humans had spent years destroying her. Forcing her to deny what she was until she didn’t even know what she was denying.
He ran, drinking in her scent. He would catch up with her, and he would help her wreak vengeance on these fools who would have her chained. They would both taste of their traitorous flesh, and he would take her again on a bed made of their bones.
Darien knew that something was very wrong when he heard her crying. He stopped in the woods, just out of sight of the house where they had imprisoned her. He heard the sobs and tried to convince himself that they were the sounds of remorse or pain from the ones who had wronged her.
But he knew her voice.
He crept forward, keeping to the shadows between the trees, stopping only when the cottage came into sight. When she came into sight.
This is not possible …
A murderous growl formed in his chest, and his