KAEL POV
Raze's claws missed my throat by an inch.
I twisted midair, landed in a crouch, and launched myself back at the tiger bastard before he could recover. My jaws clamped around his shoulder and I tasted blood. His blood. Exactly where I wanted it.
"You're getting slow, wolf!" Raze roared, throwing me off with pure muscle. He was bigger than me in beast form—all tigers were—but I was faster.
"And you're getting dead!" I snarled back.
We'd been fighting for twenty minutes over the same stupid border dispute we'd been fighting about for two years. His Burning Stripe Clan wanted the western hunting grounds. My Shadowpaw Pack had held them for three generations. Neither of us would back down.
That's how it always went with Raze. All pride, no brains, too much fire.
Around us, our packs clashed—wolves versus tigers, fangs and claws and blood on the dirt. My Beta, Finn, had two tigers pinned. Good. Raze's second-in-command was limping. Better.
We were winning.
Then the wind shifted, and everything stopped.
A scent hit my nose that made my blood freeze solid. Sweet, strange, impossible. Like nothing I'd smelled in my entire twenty-eight years. Like something from the old stories my grandmother told before she died.
Like human.
"Do you smell that?" Raze's eyes went wide, his fight with me forgotten.
"Impossible," I growled. But I smelled it too. My wolf instincts screamed that something was wrong, that prey had wandered into our battle, that we needed to hunt—
No. Humans were extinct. Had been for three centuries. Everyone knew that.
"It's a trick," I announced loudly. "Some kind of poison or illusion. Raze's clan is trying to confuse us!"
"We're not doing anything, you paranoid furball!" Raze shifted to his half-form—still tiger-striped but standing on two legs like a man. "That smell is real!"
A scream cut through the forest. High-pitched, terrified, definitely female.
Every wolf and tiger in the clearing turned toward the sound.
"Find it," I ordered my pack. "Whatever's making that noise, I want it found NOW."
"My clan will find it first," Raze shot back, already running.
"Like hell they will!"
The border dispute was forgotten. Now it was a race—wolves versus tigers, hunting the impossible scent through the blood-soaked forest. My pack spread out in formation, noses to the ground, tracking.
The scent got stronger. Sweeter. Mixed with fear-stink and blood.
Something was dying.
My wolf pushed harder, demanding I run faster, protect the source of that scent. I didn't understand why my instincts were going crazy. Humans were myths. Stories. They'd vanished during the Great Fading when the Tamers disappeared and the Feral curse began.
But this smelled real.
I burst through the trees into a small clearing and stopped dead.
A Feral elk—massive, rotting, definitely Stage Three corruption—was stalking something small and bleeding on the ground. The creature's too-many eyes reflected in the red sunlight, and drool dripped from its diseased jaws.
And its prey was impossible.
A girl. An actual human girl with dark hair and golden light flickering around her hands. She was trying to fight the Feral with magic that sputtered and died like a candle in the wind. Blood ran down her side from a deep gash.
She was going to die.
My wolf roared inside me: PROTECT. SAVE. MINE.
I didn't question it. Didn't think. Just shifted to full beast form and launched myself at the Feral elk.
I hit it like a missile. We crashed through three trees before it could even scream. My claws ripped through corrupted flesh. My jaws found its throat. The thing thrashed and fought, but Ferals were mindless—all rage, no strategy.
I tore its throat out and let the body drop.
Dead.
I shifted back to half-form, breathing hard, covered in Feral blood. Behind me, I heard the girl whimpering. She was hurt, scared, definitely real.
I walked toward her slowly, trying not to frighten her more. She stared up at me with eyes the color of honey—warm and terrified and completely human.
"You," I said, my voice coming out harsher than I meant. "What are you?"
She tried to speak but couldn't. Her eyes rolled back. She was passing out from blood loss.
I caught her before she hit the ground, and that's when everything went wrong.
Her blood—still wet from the wound in her side—smeared across my chest where I held her. The second it touched my skin, pain exploded through my entire body.
Burning. Branding. Breaking.
Symbols appeared across my chest and arms, glowing the same gold as her tattoos. They burned themselves into my skin like someone was carving me with fire. I tried to drop her but I couldn't—my arms locked around her body, holding her against me while the magic did its work.
A soul-mark. She was marking me. Creating a bond without permission, without consent, without any of the sacred rituals.
"No!" I roared. "Stop! You can't—"
Too late.
The bond snapped into place like a chain wrapping around my heart. Suddenly I could feel her—her pain, her fear, her confusion, her fading consciousness. She was inside my mind, inside my soul, and I was inside hers.
Mates. The mark made us mates.
"What have you done?" I whispered, staring down at her unconscious face.
Her lips moved slightly, words so soft I almost missed them: "Help me."
My wolf howled in triumph: MATE. OURS. PROTECT.
My human mind screamed in horror: This girl just forced a bond. Without asking. Without knowing what it means. She's trapped us both.
Footsteps crashed through the forest—my pack arriving, probably Raze's clan too. They'd smell the human, see the marks, know what happened.
A forced bond was forbidden. Bonds were sacred, chosen freely by both parties. What she'd done—even accidentally—could be seen as dark magic. Soul-theft. An act of war.
The Council would demand her execution.
And I'd have to watch them kill my mate because the bond wouldn't let me hurt her, wouldn't let me stand aside while she died. I'd fight my own pack to protect this stranger who'd just ruined both our lives.
"Kael!" Finn burst into the clearing, then stopped. His eyes went to the marks on my chest, to the unconscious girl in my arms, and his face went pale. "Tell me that's not what I think it is."
"It is," I said quietly.
"The Council will—"
"I know."
Raze appeared next, took one look, and started laughing. "Well, well. The mighty Kael Nightfang, forcibly bonded by a human. Your pack will love this."
I growled at him. "One more word and I'll rip your tongue out."
But he was right. This was a disaster. The girl had marked me, bonded me, claimed me as her mate without knowing anything about me or this world. And now I had to protect her from every beast who'd want her dead.
Starting with my own pack.
I looked down at her peaceful face and felt rage, confusion, and something else I didn't want to name.
"What are you?" I asked again, even though she couldn't hear me. "And why do you smell like the Tamers?"
Her tattoos pulsed once with golden light, and a word appeared in my mind—not my thought, coming from the bond:
BOND-MAKER.
My blood went cold.
If she was what I thought she was, what the legends said Tamers could do, then she wasn't just dangerous.
She was the most powerful creature to walk the Beastworld in three hundred years.
And I'd just become her first claim.
What Kael doesn't know: Zara can bond multiple beastmen, and each bond makes her stronger. He thinks he's her only mate. He's not even close. And when his enemy Raze figures out what she is, the race to claim the Tamer will tear the entire Beastworld apart.