Obsession

Chapter 38

Thirty-Eight

R en's taste of freedom and peace was short-lived. Her heart pounded with renewed fear as she heard something approach.

She did not want to be recaptured. She fought too hard to finally escape. All the planning, the effort, ending in a harrowing chase through the dark woods surrounding the mansion.

“No.” She whispered into the darkness. Or hissed as it were.

She knew that the men were experts in hunting. They enjoyed the chase as much as the catch. Some part of her enjoyed them chasing her too. On a primal level she wanted them to catch her. Logically, she knew that she had to keep trying to get out, this would be her one last chance.

The sweet scent of freedom was hers, this moment of peace and warmth belonged to her. But she replaced it with the cold blooded power that she could use to overcome the oppressive air of her captors.

“You won’t take me back there.” She tried to say but it came out as a series of growly hissing noises.

Her senses were assaulted by the scent of her attacker. She knew that whoever it was that had found her needed to die or she would never be free.

She shot down from the tree with a vicious strike, baring her fangs and sinking them into the shoulder of the man she heard coming up the tree for her.

The man wordlessly submitted to her attack.

She engulfed him and crushed the air from his lungs. When he was firmly caught in her grasp and turning blue, she released her deathly grip and swallowed his head, ready to consume the man trying to capture her.

She suddenly froze, the taste of him was familiar…too familiar. Slowly she pushed with every muscle in her throat, spitting out the man…the man she loved.

“No…please God no!” Ren cried. She was shifting back into a woman.

As his head was freed from her jaws, she saw that it was Callum’s head as it lolled and drooped sideways.

His once piercing beautiful eyes were bloodshot and filled with a blank gray stare. His skin was mottled with shades of black, blue, and purple. A single bloody tear rolled down the side of his face.

She panicked and unclenched the muscles that were pinning him against the tree. He fell like a wet rag doll to the dirt below with a subtle thud.

She fully returned to human form herself and hung by her hands from the nearest branch.

She dropped and knelt beside him, shakily running her fingers over the flesh heavily dimpled with the imprints of tree bark.

“What have I done? Please don’t leave me.”

She opened her mouth to scream, but the sorrow locked in her throat as she fought to suck in air. Tears and strings of drool dripped from her face just before a heavy fist smashed into it and claws sunk into her shoulders.

The harsh reality of her failed escape, the bitter sharp tang of defeat settling heavily in her mouth like ash and dust.

“I’ve got her.”

Grayson was there with a sinister look upon his face.

“You didn’t think you could be rid of us that easily did you?” Bastian asked as he stopped a foot from her face that lied in the dirt next to Callum’s motionless body.