Page 43 of The Huntmaster

The stone of the cave was supposed to be cold. It was supposed to be a tomb for the fire in my blood, a sanctuary of ice where the Huntmaster could remain a Master. But as the three moons reached their zenith, bleeding a blinding silver into the mouth of the cavern, the cold vanished.

I drifted into a state that was neither sleep nor wakefulness—a shimmering, hallucinogenic haze born of the Alignment. And in that haze, the cave walls dissolved.

I was back in the hut. The air was thick with the scent of crushed ferns and the salt-sweet musk of the star-woman. The bioluminescent moss wasn't dim; it was burning a fierce, hungry gold that matched the frantic thrumming of my Pulse.

Lyra was there.

She was standing in the centre of the room, her pale skin glowing like polished ivory against the shadows. She was naked, her body a map of curves and heat that made my vision blur. Her hair fell over her shoulders in a tangled, silken mess, and her blue eyes—usually so sharp with defiance—were dark, clouded with the same restless fever tearing me apart.

"Where have you been, Kaelen?" she whispered. Her voice didn't sound like a prisoner's. It was a low, melodic vibration that seemed to hook into my very marrow. "I’ve been waiting. I’ve been burning."

The last thread of my discipline snapped.

I pounced. I was a predator who had finally cornered the only prey that mattered. I slammed into her, my weight driving her back against the wall of the hut. My hands braced on either side of her head, the wood creaking under the force of my grip.

My markings were no longer pulsing; they were a solid, blinding radiance of gold, illuminating the hunger in my face. I buried my face in the crook of her neck, inhaling her until my lungs burned. She didn't flinch. She didn't fight.

"Do it," she breathed, her hands coming up to clutch at my shoulders, her nails digging into my skin. "I want it. I want all of you, Kaelen. Don't go back to the dark. Stay here. Claim me."

The invitation was a death sentence for my restraint.

I let out a low, guttural growl and sank my teeth into the sensitive slope of her neck. I didn't break the skin, but I bruised it, marking her with the pressure of my jaw. She let out a sharp gasp that turned into a moan as my mouth moved lower, dragging across the heat of her collarbone to the heavy, aching swell of her breasts. I bit at the soft flesh there, my tongue flickering out to taste the salt of her skin, my hunger so absolute I felt I could swallow her whole.

My hand slid down the length of her body, my palm scorching her skin, until I reached the junction of her thighs. She was already slick, a honeyed heat that made my length throb with a violent, agonising pressure against my leather wrap.

As my fingers found the sensitive swell between her thighs, a surge of realisation hit me. For all her alien fragility, this tiny, secret locus of her desire was no different from the females of my own kind. The structure, the swell, the frantic pulse beneath the thin skin—the Alu’un had crafted her body for the same primal release. I knew this landscape. I knew exactly how to break her.

I drove my thick finger into her, finding the core of her fire, and she cried out—a wild, beautiful sound that echoed through the dream-hut.

I worked her with a primal intensity, my thumb grinding against her nub while I continued to devour her skin with my mouth. She was arching into me, her legs wrapping around my waist, her body vibrating with the same lunar frequency that was screaming in my blood.

"Kaelen, please," she whimpered, her head tossing back, her pulse leaping against my lips.

I moved to enter her, the heat between us so intense it felt as though the hut was melting into liquid gold. I was a heartbeat away from finally burying myself in that human fire, from shattering the last of my restraint to make her mine in every way the Alu’un allowed.

Then, her head snapped to the side. Her eyes widened, focusing on something behind me—a noise, a presence, a shift in the air that didn't belong. She pulled away, her expression fracturing, her touch turning to mist as she looked toward the door.

The world went black.

I sat up with a violent start, my heart hammering a war drum against my ribs, my breath coming in ragged, white plumes that hissed in the cave’s freezing air. My markings were still glowing a fierce, frantic gold, illuminating the obsidian walls with a light that felt like a fever.

“Fuck”, I huffed out.

I looked down at myself, my chest heaving. My length was stone-hard, a throbbing, miserable weight against my thighs. I could feel the slick, hot dampness of pre-cum already leaking from me, soaking into the loin-wrap with a warmth that felt like a mockery. Frustration was a dead weight in my gut.

"Curse you," I snarled, my voice a guttural rasp that echoed off the damp stone. I looked up at the three silver moons hanging mockingly in the sky, their light piercing the cave mouth like needles. "Why this? Why now?"

I was a male who had lived by the blade and the silent track, a Hunter who prided himself on being the master of his own pulse. Yet here I was, reduced to a panting wreck on a cave floor, unravelled by the ghost of a star-woman who didn't even possess the markings to understand what she was doing to me. The phantom taste of her skin still lingered on my tongue, and the ache in my groin was a relentless, driving force that refused to be ignored.

I stood up, my legs unsteady as the lunar energy surged through my blood. There was no point in staying in the frost. The Barrens couldn't kill this heat, and the silence only made her voice louder in my head.

I grabbed my gear, my movements jagged and sharp. The "audit" was a lie I could no longer sustain. If the moons wanted me to hunt, I would hunt—but I would not find my quarry in the borderlands.

I stepped out of the cave and began the long, light-footed sprint back toward the Nest.

Chapter 30

Lyra