The Broken Wolf

Her eyes were wide saucers as she stared up at me mouth parted over the sweet tart still dangling from her lips, pupils blown. I was in no way a sweets man even still I ached to pull the pastry from her with my teeth. The grand hall had come to a screeching halt the orchestral music ceasing on a single note that echoed through the room as all eyes seemed to focus. If I was a better man I might have been affected by the innocent vulnerability shining through her honey-colored eyes. A better man wouldn’t have grabbed her wrist with a low snarl flipped her around so her front was plastered to mine. A stranger for all intents and purposes. Didn’t matter that I knew her intimately from the reports my scouts had provided. Mattered less that the primal part of me hungrily wanted a taste. This moment was fabricated. A lie designed to trap the man I’d spent the last twenty years hunting. Her father. The truth was a bloody taste in the back of my throat. One that replaced that primal urge with something else. Disgust. I saw the moment her eyes seemed to register the change in mine, her honey eyes reflecting the golden light of the grand hall as the tart finally fell. I wasted no seconds, gave her no time to react. Gripping her wrist in one hand I tilted her chin with the other and on the curve of her nape where her delicate skin trailed a dangerous path below her atrocious dress I sunk my fangs. My wolf howled once with the moon as I left my mark on her. I offered no platitudes. Merely stood to my full height dragging her face to my chest and pinning her there as she struggled to breathe normally. And I addressed the room eyes pinned to the man on the podium gripping the stand with enough force to crack it as he glared down at me. With a bloody smile I spoke the word that would finally set everything in motion. “Mate.”