Page 30 of Slaying the Shifter Prince
With a soft sound, I darted right. He didn’t move, just watched.
My muscles burned as I pushed them harder, faster. Step after step after step.
There was no sound behind. Maybe he just wanted to scare me into running again and wasn’t even chasing.
When I glanced back, though, he was very much chasing.
A gasp sawed through me. Fear exploded, lending my muscles more speed.
But his long legs ate up the ground, and his wicked teeth came closer with every step.
My lungs were a pair of bellows now, each breath consuming. Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes.
Whoever catches our quarry may do with it as they wish.
What did he plan to do with me?
He gave a low growl that raised every hair on my body.
Fuck compliance. This wasn’t just play anymore. He was half animal and on my heels.
I zigged and zagged between a dense clump of trees. It stopped him gaining on me, but it didn’t open up the distance between us.
They didn’t offer me any escape, either. A different species might’ve given me low branches to climb, but these pines were tall and straight, their lowest limbs far overhead. I had no chance.
Zero.
Just like Zinnia.
Then something slammed into me. Huge and hard. Hot and grasping. It bowled me over, setting the world spinning. The ground smacked my knees and elbows hard enough to bruise.
We came to a stop, the ground at my back, and the prince grinned down at me. My head was still whirling as I twisted.
Then I was free.
It took me a second to register the fact, but my feet didn’t delay. I was running across a clearing, dappled sun bright, flecking warmth across my shoulders.
But my blood pumped cold.
Because that grin he’d given me.
That grin.
It was every wicked beast and every cruel villain in every fairy tale I’d ever heard. It was a promise of brutality. A promise of destruction. A promise to consume and crush.
And I suddenly understood the princesses in the stories hesitating before they ran. Because for a second… the briefest, brightest spark of an instant, part of me had been engulfed by that promise. It had swooned in the face of such overwhelming force of feeling all directed at me.
Fucking idiot.
That promise would be my end.
I whimpered with each breath, heart seized by horrible certainty.
This was no game.
14
An instant later, something crashed between my shoulder blades. The air whooshed from my lungs, then the ground rushed up to greet me. It slammed into flesh and bone.
