Perfumes and voices were bombarding him everywhere, a tormented onslaught that caused Kael to itch to get at his own skin. Instantly, he recollected--suddenly, he had no skin.
The full moon had set a few hours earlier, and the Heir of the Silver crescent Clan was dragged into the form of a beast. He was split up and made whole, every tendon straining and bone remodelling in the cold indifference of that first full moon.
The daylight was now faint, and it had penetrated through the thick pine canopy that enclosed the land. Kael was lying on a soft couch of wet moss and pine needles, and he was feeling the pain grow deep and on the verge of drifting into bone-profound fatigue. He was back in his human shape, naked, and with muscles screaming implacably.
His eyes were raised, and he saw jagged tear-lines on an oak that was nearby--where he had been. The clan Elders had preached discipline and control, yet such control appeared an imaginary thing; he was a machine of pure instinct and hunger.
You survived. You are Alpha stock. Magnus had heard the voice of his sense of sternness and command, and it brought back to him the memory of the Oath.
The Oath, which was the supreme law of an Alpha Heir, stated that the first woman to be seen upon the return of the beast should be his chosen mate. She would be the carrier of the future of the clan, the Luna that would give birth to the next generation of pure-blood leadership.
Kael worked his heavy body up to the flowing creek at the border, thirsty, in need of water and the stinging coolness of the cold. Fatigue filled his eyes, and he could only move by instinct of forest tracks. His hands shook not with remnant wolfish power, but with the dreadful emotional after-effect of the transformation. He was supposed to feel empowered, but he felt vulnerable.
He reached the creek bank. The water was clear and fast. He crouched upon his knees and closed his hands round and drank until his dried throat scalded. With the clarity of thought, which was gradually descending into his mind, came his heightened senses, still buzzing in his ears with the change of shift, and a scent that was not native.
It was not the old smell of pack men, or the metallic savorness of game. It was acute, foreign, and absolutely incorrect. A quaint, flowering aroma was mixed with an undoubted, disturbing aroma of human.
Panic seized him. He had come too near the unspecified border. And the odour was leaking across the barrier, out of the prohibited human world.
He woke up, all his senses alert, and forgot his weariness. As a shadow, he went crouching through the ferns. The smell of humans increased, now mingled with something coppery, blood. Not much, but enough to arouse the predator which resides in his skin.
Around a boulder of granite topped with lichens, he turned.
She was cowering ten feet at the foot of the rock face.
She was young, and wearing in gay colours of torn canvas and fleece--a human hiking outfit. Her wavy hair was inextricably mixed with leaves, and she held a backpack to her heart as armour. Her cheek was marked with a shallow cut, and her right ankle was bent at an angle which must have caused pain and been unnatural. She was unaware of him. She had her eyes on a map with her finger, and the dirt smudge rolled on the map, and she sobbed quietly. She was confused, injured, and fully naked.
A trespasser. A threat to the secrecy of the entire clan. Kael's Alpha training screamed at him to neutralise the problem—to scare her away, or worse, ensure she never spoke of this forest.
But as he watched her lift her face toward the filtered light, her eyes wide and a startling, transparent green reflecting the dawn, the wolf's instinct—the one that had just been unleashed and broken—overrode the Alpha's command.
The Oath.
He was no longer just the Heir. He was the transformed Heir, his first shift complete, and she was the first woman his eyes had truly focused on in the light of the new day.
Kael's breath hitched, the sound of a small, involuntary gasp.
Elara looked up, her gaze instantly locking onto the tall, naked man emerging from the shadows. Terror bleached the colour from her face. She saw the raw power in his frame, the untamed intensity in his gold-flecked eyes, and the desperation that clung to him like the cold forest air.
"Who—who are you?" she whispered, trying to shift away, biting back a cry of pain from her ankle.
Kael took a single, slow step toward her, the traditional imperative overriding every fibre of his conscious fear and training. He hadn't chosen this path, yet his new, primal core had sealed his fate. He was duty-bound, compelled by the ancient magic he now embodied.
"I am Kael," he said, his voice rough and unfamiliar, still ringing with the low growl of the beast. He took another step, dropping to one knee, the exhaustion returning in a sudden wave as he accepted the immense, terrifying weight of the Oath.
"And you," he finished, his eyes burning into hers, "are the reason I have an heir."