I faced lots of deadly predators out in the forest, but it was always the natural order of things. They were after me because they were hungry. Trying to protect their young.
The reporters came at me because I’m different. Bad. Wrong. Savage. It was personal.
I still remember holding the wall by the side door of the hospital where that man led me. Holding myself up, swaying, still sedated from the operation, trapped between the mob of them and the locked door.
I was in a lot of pain, but it was the despair that twisted my heart. Somehow, after being accepted by the wolves in every way, I’d come to think I wasn’t an abomination.
The pack of reporters showed me I still was. Their shouts and pictures and questions. Calling me Savage Adonis.
I only ever wanted to belong.
I thought Ann was different. I would’ve done anything for her.
Then I heard Ann talking to the man called Murray, talking so casually about photos and stories about me.
When I buy a story on Savage Adonis, I want Savage Adonis.
I trusted Ann. Dreamed about her. We were a pack of two, there in the hospital. We helped each other. We fought for each other.
She’s one of them.
The betrayal cuts hard.
At least the other people at the Fancher Institute didn’t pretend to care, to be pack with me.
She wants to come home with me and take pictures—I understand that now. That’s why she’s here.
I stare at the sun’s glow coming from the edges of the curtain. She tried to cover up the window just like she tried to cover her true nature, but it’s there all the same.
I close my eyes, hating that she’s one of them.
I should knock her out. I should tie her up and leave. But I can’t let her go. I pull her to me. I stroke her soft brown curls. Waves like the edges of a peanut.
Mine.
I imagined her with me out there. It made me so happy to think of it.
And I realize that I don’t have to let her go.
The place we’re going is so remote, so deep in the woods, she’ll never find her way out. Not without me.
I could take her for my mate. Out in the wilderness, I don’t need to trust her. She would be mine to keep. To care for.
Fully and completely mine.
My heart begins to pound as images of taking her crowd my mind. The fierceness with which I want her makes it hard to think.
She would struggle, and I would chase her, and then I would catch her—and I wouldn’t let her go.
Something amazing happens out in the woods when a predator catches its prey. When a wolf has a squirrel in its jaws—not just the tail, but when the wolf fully has a squirrel’s warm body trapped in its jaws—teeth, pressing into warm flesh. No way out.
The squirrel will stop struggling and go limp. Just relax into it.
Heart beating furiously, it submits to the superior force of the wolf.
It always fascinated and compelled me, ever since I witnessed it as a boy, cold and hungry and alone. The flop of the body, like a dance of death and life.
It felt ancient and cruel and beautiful.