Chapter 296: A dirty secret

How was he getting hard so fast? It was as if he had not just spilt across her chest barely a minute ago.

Stumbling backwards, Yuki managed to push herself up from the damp earth. Her legs shook hard enough that she almost lost her footing. Between her thighs, her skin still thrummed with a heavy, silky coat of her own arousal, and the phantom friction of his body made every step sting. Her chest burned. Her muscles ached deeply even though he had never taken her there.

A few paces away, Kaden dragged a rough hand down his face and cursed under his breath at his own body. "You got to be kidding me..." he groaned.

His cock was getting harder by the second, completely misbehaving, throbbing with a relentless pulse that refused to fade. The heavy, sweet scent of her arousal hung thick in the night air and mocked him with every breath.

It felt as though her body was still calling out to him, daring him to break. Intrusive images flashed through his mind before he could stop them—what her tight, wet interior would feel like wrapped around him—and the thought only made the ache worse. His cock twitched violently. He closed his eyes and tried to draw a deep, steadying breath, but every current of wind carried her scent straight back into his lungs.

"Kaden," she called softly.

The sound of his name cut through the tension like a blade. He snapped his eyes open. His jaw locked into a hard line.

"Don’t call my name like that unless you’re having serious doubts about tomorrow’s engagement," he bit out, voice stripped raw with the effort of holding himself back.

"I’m sure you don’t want to be fucked so hard you can’t even walk down the aisle tomorrow," Kaden hissed, taking another deliberate step away from her. "Run back to the manor before you end up becoming someone’s dirty little secret."

Her heart skipped hard against her ribs. The words landed like cold water because she understood exactly what he meant. He would use her to satisfy whatever this was, but he would never acknowledge it. Never claim it.

A bitter laugh nearly slipped past her lips before she caught it. She had almost forgotten why she was agreeing to get engaged to Xavier in the first place—to escape this exact kind of self-destructive pull toward the Ravencourt brothers. And because of her own traitorous body, she had almost thrown all of it away.

Yuki straightened her spine and forced a bright, untouchable smirk onto her lips. Her fingers, still trembling at her sides, curled once into her palms before she hid them.

"Don’t worry, Kaden. I know exactly what I want," she sneered, her gaze flickering deliberately down to the flushed tip of his hard cock before rising back to meet his eyes. "You should probably be more concerned about your own situation, though. It looks like you might actually burst."

With that sharp little taunt, she spun around and cast a final mischievous wink over her shoulder. His jaw clenched until his teeth ached.

"Goodnight, Kaden. I have a very long day ahead of me tomorrow, and I desperately need my beauty sleep," she purred.

In a fluid blur of motion, she dropped down and shifted. Within seconds the white wolf vanished into the dark, tangled shadows of the woods.

Left alone in the clearing, Kaden finally released his tightly clenched fists. Sharp arcs of crimson welled from his palms where his nails had dug deep during the standoff and dripped slowly onto the dirt. He raked his trembling fingers through his dark hair and let out a low, ragged sound that was almost a groan. A harsh, humourless laugh followed it into the empty night.

What the hell was wrong with him?

How was it possible that she felt infinitely more dangerous now that the mating bond had been supposedly broken?

If not for the last thin thread of sanity holding him together, he probably would have dragged her deeper into the wilderness—not only to release the frustration clawing at his chest, but because some possessive part of him wanted to keep her where no one else could reach her.

Those thoughts had no right of existence. He forced the reminders through his mind like a rigid, punishing chant. She was off-limits. She was Aevia’s sister. The pack council was watching them. And there was still Eloise.

He genuinely loved Eloise... didn’t he?

But Eloise had never made him unravel like this. She had never driven him to the edge of losing himself with a single glance.

"You’re a real scumbag, Kaden," he muttered to the empty forest, a dry chuckle echoing into the dark.

Meanwhile, miles away across the dense timberland, the freezing night wind whipped through Yuki’s white fur as she raced away from the riverbank at full speed. A chaotic storm of questions chased her through the trees.

Why did she have to push him? Why did she have to provoke him like that? She forced herself forward and refused to look back even once. A small, rational voice in the back of her head warned her that if she turned around now, she would walk straight back into his hands.

She still had her dignity. She refused to be anyone’s hidden secret, no matter how much her body still ached for him.

’Think with your head, not your cunt,’ she hissed at herself, shutting her eyes tightly for a split second as she tried to block out the memory of his heat.

She snapped her eyes open just in time—and realised with a jolt of pure horror that it was already too late.

Running at full speed through a blind turn, she was hurtling directly toward another massive figure cutting through the trees. There was no way to evade the collision.

Her white wolf crashed head-on into a solid, towering mass. Before the impact could fling her backwards into the dirt, the dark figure’s reflexes flared. Strong arms wrapped around her waist. The wolf shifted rapidly back into human form, catching her mid-air and reversing the momentum of the crash until her trembling frame was pulled tightly against a chest that felt sickeningly familiar.

A wave of sharp herbs and crushed wildflowers hit her senses at once.

Kieran.

Her eyes snapped wide. Panic froze the blood in her veins as she stared straight up into his face.

Kieran’s sapphire eyes were dark and unreadable, swirling like storm clouds.

"What the hell were you doing out here in the woods?" he hissed, his voice dangerously low.

Of course he recognised it. Even beneath the scent of the forest, his heightened senses caught the thick, unmistakable aroma of her post-arousal clinging to her skin. Kieran’s grip tightened around her bare arms, fingers digging in with a sudden, possessive urgency.

Panic overrode everything else. Yuki used every ounce of adrenaline left in her body and shoved hard against his chest.

"It has nothing to do with you!" she barked, ripping herself free from his grasp.

Before he could reach for her again, she dropped down, shifted back into her wolf form in a single fluid motion, and sprinted into the underbrush, vanishing into the dark.

Kieran stood rooted to the spot, struck still by the sudden encounter. The scent of her hit him fully then and his body reacted before his mind could catch up. A sharp pulse of heat settled low in his abdomen. His cock hardened against the denim of his slacks, straining painfully as the last traces of her arousal washed over his senses.

"Who the hell was she with?" he hissed under his breath, jaw clenching hard.

Even as her footsteps faded into the distance, he could still trace the lingering trail of her scent cutting deep into the forest path from where she ran away. Instead of following her, he spun around and turned his boots back toward the Alpha’s residence. He didn’t want to find out who it was because he didn’t trust himself to claim at the discovery.

"Damn it..." he muttered, arousal twitching with every step. He needed to get away from this clearing immediately. The air still smelled entirely like her, and he knew he had no business reacting with this kind of hunger.