Page 3 of Beast’s Temptation

He didn't understand what was happening. He had experienced arousal before, of course, in the early years of his training when his body was still young and unruly. He had learned to breathe through it, to redirect the energy into meditation, to acknowledge the sensation without engaging with it until it faded into nothing. That was what Priests did. That was how they maintained their vows.

This was nothing like that.

This was a fire in his blood that no breathing could extinguish. This was her face swimming behind his closed eyes every time he tried to center himself, her voice replaying in his memory with a clarity that bordered on hallucination. This was the phantom sensation of her hair against his skin, that single accidental touch, burning like a brand that would never heal.

And underneath all of it, drowning out every rational thought, was her scent.

Rain. Growing things. Life itself, concentrated into a single small human female who had no business smelling like the most precious substance on his entire sun-scorched world. He had spent his whole existence in the desert, where water was sacred precisely because it was so rare, and now he couldn't get the smell of it out of his nostrils. Every breath he took was saturated with her, as if she'd somehow seeped into the very air of his chamber even though she'd never set foot inside it.

He wanted to taste her. The thought arrived fully formed and utterly shameful, and he couldn't push it away no matter how hard he tried. He wanted to put his mouth on her skin and find out if she tasted the way she smelled. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and breathe until his lungs couldn't hold any more. He wanted to lay her down and cover her body with his and claim her in ways that made his face burn with horrified arousal just to imagine.

Sorek pressed his forehead against the wall and tried to pray. The words wouldn't come. Every time he reached for the familiar phrases, the sacred invocations he'd spoken ten thousand times, her face appeared instead. Her eyes, that odd human color that was neither amber nor gold but something cooler, more variable. The way she'd looked at him when she'd admitted she didn't fit with her own people, vulnerable and defiant at the same time. The sound of her laugh when he'd made an observation about human inconsistency that she'd found amusing.

He hadn't known he could be funny. He hadn't known he wanted to be, until making her laugh felt like an achievement greater than any meditation he'd ever completed.

The bells chimed for the dawn prayers, and Sorek didn't move. He couldn't face the other Priests like this. They would see immediately that something was wrong, would smell the arousal pouring off him like heat from sun-baked stone. He had never missed a dawn prayer in thirty years of service, but he couldn't make himself open the door and step into the corridor where she might be, where she might look at him and know that he was weak, that he was broken, that he was not the serene guide she deserved.

He stayed in his chamber until the bells faded and the silence returned, and then he dressed himself in clean robes and made his way to the Elder's quarters through the back passages that only the senior Priests knew.

Elder Vethros was waiting for him. Of course he was. The old male had served the twin suns for nearly a century, and very little escaped his notice. He looked up from his prayer beads as Sorek entered, and his amber eyes sharpened with concern.

"You missed the dawn prayers." It wasn't an accusation. It was an observation, the same way one might note an unusual cloud formation or a crack in a sacred vessel.

"I am... unwell." Sorek forced himself to sit across from the Elder, though every instinct screamed at him to pace, to move, to burn off the energy coiling tighter and tighter in his muscles. "I need counsel."

Vethros set aside his beads and folded his hands in his lap. His markings had faded with age, the gold dimmed to bronze, but they still pulsed faintly with the rhythm of his breath. He had been Sorek's teacher once, had guided him through the early years of training when his vows had felt like a burden rather than a gift. If anyone could help him understand what was happening, it would be Vethros.

"Tell me," the Elder said simply.

Sorek tried to find the words. How did one describe a cataclysm? How did one explain that the entire foundation of one's existence had crumbled in the space of a single heartbeat? He thought of the human scholar with her cool eyes and her inappropriate questions and her scent that wouldn't leave him alone, and the words stuck in his throat like shards of glass.

"There is a person," he began carefully, not naming her, not revealing what she was. "When I am near this person, I experience... symptoms. Heat in my blood. Inability to focus. Intrusive thoughts of a physical nature."

Vethros's expression didn't change, but something in his posture went very still.

"My body responds without my permission," Sorek continued, forcing the words out through the shame that wanted to choke them back. "My cock grows hard. My claws want to extend. My chest produces sounds I do not intend." He closed his eyes because he couldn't bear to see judgment in his teacher's face. "I cannot meditate. I cannot pray. All I can think about is this person's scent, and it is driving me mad."

The silence stretched so long that Sorek opened his eyes again, certain he would find Vethros looking at him with disgust or disappointment. Instead, the Elder's face had drained of color, and his hands were trembling as he reached for his prayer beads and then let them fall.

"This person," Vethros said carefully. "This person smells like rain."

It wasn't a question. Sorek's blood went cold even as his body flooded with fresh heat at the mere mention of her scent.

"How did you know?"

"Because what you are describing is the scent-match." The Elder's voice was heavy with something that sounded almost like grief. "Your body has chosen a mate. The drive will only intensify from here. Eventually, it will become physically painful to be near her without touching, without claiming."

Sorek shook his head, denial rising thick and desperate in his throat. "That is a warrior affliction. A biological trap for males who have not dedicated themselves to higher purpose. It cannot happen to a Priest."

"It has never happened to a Priest." Vethros met his eyes, and there was no serenity there now, only the weight of terrible knowledge. "In three thousand years of recorded history. Never. We thought ourselves immune. We believed that our training, our discipline, our service to the suns protected us from such base instincts."

"Then perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps this is something else, something that can be treated or suppressed⁠—"

"There is no treatment." The words fell like stones into still water. "There is no suppression. The scent-match is biological, Sorek. It is written into our very cells. Once it occurs, it cannot be undone."

Sorek stood abruptly, unable to sit still any longer. He paced the length of the Elder's chamber, his robes swirling around his legs, his claws clicking against the stone floor because he couldn't fully retract them.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" The question came out raw, desperate, nothing like the measured tones of a Priest who had spent thirty years mastering himself. "I have given my life to the suns. I have honored my vows in every possible way. And now you're telling me that my body has betrayed me, that some accident of biology has chosen a mate for me, and I am simply supposed to accept this?"