Page 53 of The Huntmaster

The eyes vanished instantly, the shadow melting back into the trunk as the witness realised the gravity of what they had seen.

"Gah-shak!" I hissed, the curse tearing from my throat like a physical wound.

The spell broke. The heat in the air turned to ice in a single breath. Lyra pulled back; her mouth was gone in an instant. Her face flushed a deep crimson, and her lips glistened, her eyes wide and dazed with shock and confusion. She looked up at me, her hands still resting on my thighs, her breathing ragged and broken.

I scrambled to pull my furs back into place, my hands trembling with a mixture of unspent lust and a cold, murderous frustration. I felt as though I were being torn in two—the leader demanding the silence of his people, and the male demanding the completion of a mate.

"Go," I rasped, my voice sounding like gravel being ground underfoot. "Back to the hut. Now, Lyra."

She blinked, her chest heaving as she tried to find her footing on the uneven bark. "What? Kaelen, what happened? Was it the creature in the cage?"

"Go!" I snapped, the command coming out with a harsh edge that made her flinch. I stood up, towering over her, my markings still pulsing a dangerous, erratic gold that didn't match the sudden coldness in my eyes. I looked back toward where the witness had been, my claws sliding out again, catching the moonlight.

"Why?" she asked, her voice small, a flicker of raw hurt crossing her features that hit me harder than any Vakra blade ever could. "I was... I was trying to help you. I thought⁠—"

I looked down at her, and the sight of her flustered, beautiful face—her hair was a mess, her lips swollen from me—almost made me pull her back into my arms and forget the rest of the world.

"You have sated the worst of the fire for now," I said, my voice dropping to a low, pained vibration. "But if I do not stop now, I will not be able to stop at all. It is hard enough to keep my hands from you as it is... and if anyone saw us..."

Her face dropped, her expression cooling into something guarded and distant. She thought I was ashamed. She thought I was hiding her like a sin, protecting my own reputation at the cost of her dignity.

The urge to reach out and cup her face, to tell her that I was protecting her from the judgment of a tribe that didn't understand her light, was an ache in my chest. I wanted to explain that an Alu’un female would be protected by custom, but a star-woman found on her knees for the Huntmaster would be torn apart by the Elders' whispers.

Instead, I held my ground, my posture rigid and unforgiving.

"Please," I said, the word barely more than a broken breath. "Ly-ra. Just go. Before I forget how to let you.”

She stared at me for a long, silent moment, her eyes searching mine for a truth I was too proud and too broken to give her yet. Finally, she gave a stiff, jerky nod, her jaw set in that stubborn line I had come to know so well. She turned and began the long walk back down the platforms toward the lower canopy, her silhouette small and solitary against the vast, silver forest.

I watched her until the last flicker of her golden hair disappeared into the dark.

My body was no longer my own; it was a humming wire of unspent friction and electricity. The sudden severance of her touch had left me reeling, the blood in my veins feeling thick and sluggish. I stood on the edge of the high branch, the wind whipping through my hair, but I couldn't feel the chill. All I could feel was the ghost of her hands on my thighs and the lingering, sweet heat of her mouth.

I shook my head, trying to clear the fog of lust, and forced my senses back into the hunt.

I vaulted upward, caught a thick, mossy vine and swung myself toward the higher canopy where I had seen those yellow eyes. My claws bit deep into the bark as I landed, my nostrils flaring as i searched for a trace of the witness. I cast my gaze across the silvered leaves, scanning for a heat signature or the telltale shimmer of disturbed bioluminescence.

Nothing. Not even a trace.

The scent was already gone, washed away by a sudden, sharp gust of wind through the upper Roosts. I let out a low, frustrated snarl that vibrated through my chest. The frustration wasn't just about the witness; it was the realisation that I was losing my edge. A true Huntmaster would have sensed a spectator before they had the chance to see anything. I had been so lost in the velvet depths of her throat that the entire world could have burned around us and I wouldn't have noticed until the flames licked my skin.

I paced the high branch, my tail twitching with a restless, violent energy. My thoughts, treacherous and unrelenting, drifted straight back to Lyra.

I could still smell it in the air—the sharp, intoxicating scent of her own arousal. She had been reacting to me. I had felt the way her pulse skipped against my skin, the way her own scent had deepened into something muskier, more desperate. She had enjoyed the power she held over me, and the thought made my markings pulse a low, dangerous red.

The stoic Huntmaster—the one the Elders leaned on, the one the warriors feared—would go to the barracks. He would meditate until the moons set and the Alignment faded. He would push the star-woman from his mind and focus on the Vakra threat.

But that Kaelen felt like a stranger now.

I wanted to leap back down through the canopy. I wanted to storm into my hut, pin her to the furs, and finally return the favour. I wanted to taste her, to feel her shatter beneath my touch, to reassure her that the way I had looked at her wasn't shame—it was a hunger so vast I was terrified it would consume her whole.

I gripped the bark of the Home Tree until it groaned under my strength. How? How had a creature so small, so biologically mismatched, gained such a total hold over me? She was a human. She was supposed to be a temporary curiosity, a puzzle to be solved and eventually discarded or sent back to the stars.

Instead, she had become the only thing that could settle the fever, and the only thing that could drive me to madness. I couldn't understand it, and I couldn't reassure her when I couldn't even find a steady footing within my own mind.

I was a king who had forgotten his crown the moment he felt the touch of a commoner's hand. And as the moons climbed higher, the weight of what I had to do—and what I desperately wanted to do—began to tear me apart.

Chapter 36