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  So she just had to keep as still as her body would allow, fearing every tremble and every slick slide of that one little drop…until Connor turned his head—slowly, so slowly—and licked the blood from her face. One long swipe, almost sensuous in spite of the situation, so tender and full of a strange sort of caring.

  It made her think weird things—things that had started in the room of screaming and tearing and blood. Things like you are my mate. You are my wolf, always.

  And then she opened her eyes and took in the suddenly empty corridor below. Everything so still and silent, as though nothing had even happened. No wolves had come and left a bloody mosaic of paw prints on the dusty walls and floors. Connor hadn’t held her safe like this, while the beasts made their way down to the living quarters.

  Though she couldn’t deny that she heard screaming after a moment, somewhere off in the distance.

  Her stomach dropped as he slid them back down to the ground, though mainly because of the speed at which he did everything. He didn’t even stop long enough for her to catch her breath or check to see if anything was coming. He simply set her down, grabbed her hand, and went for the door at the end of the south corridor.

  Of course she saw wolves waiting for them in her mind’s eye, before they’d gotten close. Nothing could be this easy, and even when it turned out that way she couldn’t quite believe in it. Any moment, and something was going to spring out to stop them. It didn’t even have to be a wolf—she’d have settled for a desperate survivor, with a gun.

  But no one came. No survivors. No humans running for the door. Just an eerie silence, and the great metal door before them.

  “Jesus, they planned this well,” she said, but he didn’t answer. He looked high on something other than adrenaline and twice as anxious, resorting to actions rather than words. He shoved her behind him before he turned the two big wheels, metal grinding and creaking as though no one had been outside for days. Weeks, maybe.

  It made her wonder what on earth had been going on. Had things gotten so bad out there that scavenging runs and gunning runs and movement between the undergrounds and the fortresses had stopped? She didn’t know and by God it was too late to ask now.

  All she could do was hang on to his hand and plunge out into the black beyond, so full of everything she’d experienced in the last few hours that asking questions and finding answers seemed secondary.

  She was going outside, for the first time in her life. Actually outside, where the air felt like a knife in her throat and everything seemed dark and yet not, at the same time.

  Of course she’d seen pictures of the moon, and the stars, but in reality they were so much more than she’d ever imagined. They glowed. They made fingers of light come down on everything, and everything wasn’t what she’d expected at all.

  Was the world all forest now? She knew trees when she saw them, and they covered the landscape as far as the eye could see. They looked like a maze, like a great living beast, and when he pulled her down some gentle slope of soft stuff to the beginnings of this…thing, she tried to pull back for a second.

  But he kept hold of her hand. And he stopped long enough to look at her with eyes that seemed like his again—gray and stormy and full of a suddenly sparking life.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s this way—we’re safe if we go this way.”

  And she believed him. She did. She believed him so much that she let him lead her into this living, breathing place, not looking back for a single second because God, she could hear people screaming now. She could hear snarling and that tearing and even though she didn’t love a single one of them, it was still terrible in its own way.

  Though there remained one thing good about it. One thing right. They were running together, hand in hand, nothing furtive or hidden about it. They’d evaded death and here they were, flying through an actual and real forest toward…toward…

  Anything, she thought, and oh how words like those filled her up. Anything was possible now, even when he stopped quite suddenly, panting and looking about them. And then he said, “They haven’t breached the fortress on the hill. Another couple of miles and we’ll be there.”

  As though…what? As though she was going to go up and knock on the door? Ask them to let her in with her werewolf boyfriend?

  She let her hand drop from his.

  “What? What’s wrong?” he asked, but she knew why. He didn’t get it. He just didn’t get it.

  “I’m not going to a fortress, Conn.”

  She could see his breath coming out into the air—so beautiful. In fact, all of him looked beautiful in this strange new light, with the shadows painted across his face and the red showing dark and bleak around his perfect mouth.

  “We’ll make it easily. Every wolf in the area is—”

  “No. No more humans. No more rules. You want to go there and…then what? Never see each other again? Or maybe I can take up with a scavenger crew and come out into the open every month, meet you on the edge of the forest. Something like that?”

  “Serena…”

  He glanced away at nothing.

  “Don’t you love me? Don’t you want to be with me?”

  When he snapped his gaze back to her it was dull, suddenly. And she could see even through the shadows that he’d set his jaw.

  “After a certain amount of time I’d just let them capture me, and then—”

  Oh good Lord, he couldn’t be serious. She wouldn’t let herself believe that he was serious.

  “Are you insane? What if they didn’t actually capture you? What if they killed you?”

  “What if the wolves kill you? Huh? What if I keep you out here with me and one day I wake up to find you gone?”

  It was the first time she’d ever heard him raise his voice, and it made her insides jump. But he looked so sick with it, so helpless in the face of this sudden death trap of decisions…she couldn’t hold it against him.

  “This is the best we can do,” he said, though she knew he didn’t believe that. He seemed uncomfortable inside his new clothes for a second, and when she finally responded he shook his head, tightly. As though he knew exactly what she meant.

  “You know it’s not.”

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  He sounded firm, but he was already losing the battle.

  “You know that I’ll never go to a fortress, or another underground. You’d be signing my death warrant anyway if you took me to one of those places, because the human race is done. This is it. It’s over.”

  He kept shaking his head, but now he just looked irrationally stubborn. It should have been her clinging on, but somehow it was him. He had hold with both hands, and he wasn’t letting go easy.

  “And even if it wasn’t…I don’t want to be human anymore.”

  He put his hands over his face. “Please don’t say that. Don’t say that.”

  “I can’t be human anymore. I’m not…inside. They mean nothing to me and I mean nothing to them.”

  When he dropped his hands, she understood why he’d covered his face. The anguish there twisted something inside her.

  “You’ve no idea what you’re asking. The pain alone is…”

  He glanced off at some unimaginable point, but this time he came back faster. She could see the idea taking root in him, like some terrible poison he just couldn’t help wanting to drink.

  “As bad as the pain you’ve just gone through? As bad as nails in your shoulder and broken bones and chopped-off fingers?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “No, it’s not. I choose this. Everybody screaming back there—none of them get to choose. When they wanted to shove me in the incinerator, I didn’t get any say in the matter. But I get to choose this. I get to be with you, if I want to.”

  She knew she had him then. She could see it in his expression, as it slid from tight and tense to that faint disbelief she saw in him all the time. It had happened when she’d first kissed him. It had happened when she’d
first said she loved him.

  And it happened now, right here, amidst the trees. Warmth seemed to flood through his every feature, so sweet and good she wanted to just go to him, then—though she held back. He had to make the move, if this was going to work.

  He had to let her know that it was okay.

  “You’d really do that to be with me?”

  Close, she thought. Almost close enough.

  “I’d do anything to be with you. Even something as dumb as letting myself be captured by humans, you massive idiot.”

  When he smiled, it was like the sun breaking through a cloud. Or so she’d heard.

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  “And you know I’d do the same for you?”

  She thought of the nail, twisting in his flesh.

  “I do.”

  “I love you, Serena,” he said, but he put his hands in her hair as he did so. And she could feel his mouth suddenly hot against her temple, her cheek, working ever downward toward the place that took a bite best.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, as she stared up at the glorious, light-streaked sky. “I’ll keep the scar small.”

  Epilogue

  She looked on everything with her wolf’s eyes now, the memory of her human ones like a gray blot in the mist. Like nothing at all, like a dream of things she once knew, now gone forever.

  Her wolf’s eyes saw everything. A flicker of animal through the darkness that wasn’t really darkness, the curve of her best one’s face as he turned to her and said things in his good good voice.

  I can smell the hunt, he’d say, and then they’d run and run in their almost animal bodies, leaping over things in a way she’d never been able to leap as a human, watching as the forest blurred by in streamers of green and black and beautiful.

  The world was a forest now, and it was all theirs. All theirs. Every day they ran to the edge of the rocks that overlooked the newly growing trees, on the graves of something old. And the wind would blow in her face and toss her ever-growing hair back, and the scent of her brothers and sisters would roll up at her in a wave.

  They foraged and hunted and played in the valley below, and the moon came up full and bright, and everything was good. Everything was good when she looked out over the end of the human world, and the beginning of theirs.

  Oh yes, this was the beginning of theirs.

  About the Author

  Charlotte Stein has been writing for over ten years, and perving on hot dudes for even longer than that. However, it’s only recently that she’s had the courage to pair the two together and pen some critically acclaimed, steamy-hot erotic romances. She lives in Brit-land with her very own hunk of manbeef, and their imaginary dog.

  You can find her at www.themightycharlottestein.blogspot.com, usually in the middle of rambling about nonsense, squee-ing over her totally unexpected life as a writer, and generally lusting after seriously sexy men.

  Charlotte welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

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  Also by Charlotte Stein

  All Other Things

  Closer

  Doubled

  Giving

  The Horizon

  Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer ebooks or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.

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