The Beast sniffed the air, long whiskers twitching, as he slowly approached. His gigantic paws were entirely silent upon the forest floor, his muscles shifting like silk.
Zai unsheathed both of his hidden daggers, gripped one in each hand, and tensed for attack on the balls of his feet.
His blades made him even with the Beast’s long fangs. Though he didn’t have claws, he was more agile and faster. The liger was far stronger, at least ten times as strong, but Zai knew how to use that strength against him.
They both suffered unhealed wounds. Though the liger had filled his belly, drawing strength from his last meal, he’d suffered starvation far longer than Zai. His wounds were far more severe, and Zai had just given him a couple fresh ones.
They were evenly matched. It would be a fair fight.
The very air seemed to still now, and time slowed to a sluggish crawl.
The liger shouldn’t be able to pick up on Zai’s scent, and he made no sounds, not even breaths, to alert the Beast.
Yet, somehow, the liger’s paws slowed, then stopped entirely, right beneath Zai’s tree. His muscles tensed to stone as his hackles visibly raised.
Just as the Beast tipped his head to look up, Zai launched his attack.
He leaped off the branch with daggers braced downward, ready to nail the liger into the ground where he stood.
The Beast didn’t simply wait to be skewered, of course, rolling smoothly on the forest floor to avoid the blades.
But Zai anticipated the move, somersaulted at the last second to change his momentum, slashed the blades across the liger’s shoulder and chest as he landed, before tucking into a forward roll and bouncing right back up into a sprint.
The liger merely let out a pained grunt before leaping after him.
Instead of running away—for he could never outrun the Beast when they were this close—Zai suddenly stopped and turned just as the Beast bounded up.
He knelt down and arched his back almost parallel to the ground as the liger flew above him, the tips of his blades catching just slightly on the feline’s underbelly.
The liger landed solidly on his paws a few feet away, but Zai could tell that his many open wounds were draining his strength. His entire torso was covered in blood, his fur matted dark red.
Zai stood up and faced him, daggers ready in each fist, blades tilted back.
They circled each other slowly, always facing one another, stares unblinkingly held.
Zai knew the moment the liger moved before the Beast even knew it himself. He launched a direct attack on Zai, leading with his hard skull and sharp claws.
Zai was ready for it. He held his ground and slammed his daggers into the Beast’s shoulders a moment before the liger’s fangs sank into Zai’s own.
Fuck!
He made a mistake.
Zai realized it the moment the liger pressed his full weight on top of him, both of them locked by the sharp implements in their flesh, digging against their bones.
The liger had wanted him to drive those daggers into him. So that he could get close enough to sink his own teeth into Zai.
Slowly, he increased the pressure of his jaws until his long fangs shredded through nerves and muscle, making Zai’s arms lose strength, slacking his grip on the daggers.
And then, just when his arms went numb, the liger shifted into man and grabbed both his wrists into one large hand, slamming them above his head and keeping them securely there with his Beast strength and weight. At the same time, his heavy thighs pinned Zai’s own down, his hard knees digging in.
Instead of a liger’s gigantic fangs the size of Zai’s daggers serrating through his shoulders, the male’s human fangs now sank into Zai’s throat, into his throbbing jugular vein.
Zai knew in that moment that he’d lost.
By any measure, whether the liger was Beast or man, the fangs in his throat was a killing move. He was pinned beneath a weight that was ten times his own, held immobile flat on his back, throat and belly exposed, the most vulnerable position any prey could be in.
The liger could very well drink his blood dry or tear out his throat now. He couldn’t fight back. He couldn’t move.