4. The Claiming Rite
522 Words
I don’t remember walking back.
Lucas carried me most of the way barely breathing hard, as if I weighed nothing. The forest was quieter than before, almost reverent, like it had watched and approved of what we’d done.
I didn’t ask questions.
Not yet.
My legs still trembled. My pulse thudded behind my ears. Every inch of me buzzed with a strange electricity, like I’d been struck by something ancient. Something I’d asked for without understanding the cost.
At the cabin, he laid me gently on the bed—his eyes lingering on me like he was memorizing every breath I took.
And then he turned to leave.
“Wait.” My voice cracked.
He paused at the door.
“You’re just going to… go?”
His jaw clenched. He didn’t look at me when he said, “I shouldn’t have touched you.”
I pulled the blanket around me and sat up. “Too late for that.”
He turned back, eyes flashing silver, wild and tortured. “You don’t get it, Selena. That wasn’t just sex.”
“No,” I whispered. “It wasn’t.”
We stared at each other in the firelight. Outside, the wind picked up again, stirring the trees into whispers.
“What are you?” I finally asked.
Lucas came back to the bed, slow and tense like a wolf stalking prey. He crouched in front of me, hands on my knees.
“I’m not human. Not fully.”
“I figured.”
He smirked, barely. “What gave me away? The growling or the part where you screamed my name in the forest?”
I swatted his arm. “Don’t do that. Don’t make it a joke.”
His face sobered. “I’m a Shifter. Alpha blood. My family… We protect this land. Guard it. And we’re cursed to roam it under every full moon.”
“And me?”
He looked up at me so intense it made my stomach flip.
“You’re not like them either, Selena. You’ve got moonblood. Your grandmother did too.”
I blinked. “Moonblood?”
“Rare. Potent. It calls to us… to me. That’s why I couldn’t stay away. Why are you dreaming of me? Why does your scent drive me mad?”
His hand slid up my thigh, slow and deliberate, caressing my p***y, heat rising between us again.
“When a Shifter finds his match,” he murmured, “he doesn’t just mate. He claims. Binds. Protects.”
I shivered, breath catching. “So what now?”
He leaned in, lips barely touching mine. “Now I will make sure you survive the next full moon. Because the others will come for you.”
My heart thudded.
“Others?”
“Not all wolves want peace. Some want power. And the only thing more powerful than an Alpha…”
“...is a mated one,” I whispered.
Lucas nodded once, then kissed me again softer this time. With something that almost felt like devotion.
I didn’t know what scared me more:
The danger outside…
Or how much I already wanted to be his.
- Writer
