Chris pressed his hard, black nose to the ground. His nostrils flared, and he picked up on the trail of a scent. Faint, but very much present. He knew his prey had been here, and that it hadn't been long since they'd moved on.

The smell was getting stronger, the further on he followed it. He ran his long pink tongue through a set of sharp yellow teeth, rolling it along his black lips as his stomach growled with desire. It was time to end this chase.

He stepped cautiously along through the undergrowth, stepping as lightly as his massive form would allow as he moved across the forest floor. He knew that every crackling leaf, every snapping twig, could be the one to sabotage his entire effort. It wouldn't take anything at all for the creature to be alerted to his presence. He could already envision the thin, tan body shooting past him, the white fluff of the tail vanishing into the distance, seeming to mock him as it bobbed through the air.

He moved across the ground like a phantom, puffing in the scent. He twisted and turned, moving back and forth, sometimes losing the trail for a few feet, but picking it back up again, never deceived for long. The smell was stronger in some places, like the animal had stopped to explore its surroundings, and these short bursts of scent caused his hunger to swell to unbearable degrees.

He could almost taste the tender meat on his lips, the hot salt of its blood on his tongue, and the slender muscle giving way beneath his teeth.

At last he rose up through a clearing and set eyes on the thing. Right there. Exposed and vulnerable, out in the open. Its head dipped down into a stream, totally oblivious to all that was happening around it. It was too perfect. Entirely too perfect, and absolutely irresistible.

He lowered his body and came very close to leaping out, ambushing the girl where she drank—but then he froze. He noticed something.

Two small fawns, creeping up to their mother on thin, tenuous legs. The doe didn't look up until the babies were right up on it, then it nudged them with its muzzle, encouraging them to drink. They lowered their heads to the stream alongside their mother, and something instantly solidified in Chris' chest.

He let out a deep, hot sigh, and knew right then and there he didn't have it in him to do what he'd set out to do. He couldn't bring himself to kill these beautiful, innocent creatures. He was so damn tired of killing.

He stood for a while, watching the family as they drank. Without meaning to, he shifted his weight, and knew what would happen as soon as the small branch snapped in two beneath his massive paw.

Three heads shot up. Six wide black eyes gleamed at him in alarm and were a blur of movement before he'd even had time to register them.

The deer were gone.

He stood watching after them, then sighed. He rose onto his haunches, and his body shrank. He stood there, a man again, naked and vulnerable in the dappled sunlight of the woods.

He turned without giving it another thought, headed back to the spot where he'd parked his truck at the opposite end of the forest. As he walked, trudging grumpily along on bare feet, he reached up and yanked down branches from bushes and trees. He pulled off whatever berries he could find without ever really stopping and fingered them unhappily into his mouth. The red juice seeped out through his lips and down along his increasingly unkempt beard, making his chin appear stained with blood.

He could have done it before, he knew. In his past life, he could have done what he needed to do to survive without considering the moral consequences. Right about now he would be filling up his belly with the flesh of that doe and possibly her young ones, because he knew it was essential to his livelihood. It was just the way of things in the wild, and he'd always considered himself a part of that process.

He really didn't feel that way anymore, though.

Following the ecstasy and the humiliation of his one-night stand at the hotel with Alexander, Chris continued on the road, making his path across the country as he'd been doing up until then. His original plan before all that had been just to keep on going east until he ended up somewhere he wanted to be, taking on odd jobs and catching the sights along the way. If nowhere on that path seemed like anywhere he felt like settling, he would simply boomerang back around in the other direction, going back from east to west, but by way of the southern states. Sooner or later, he reasoned, he was bound to end up somewhere that held some kind of appeal for him.

Everything had changed on that night with Alexander, however. The problem was, he'd figured out exactly where he wanted to be. He had known it beyond a doubt as he lay with that thin, solid body in his arms, running kisses along the back of Alexander's hot, moist neck.

He had literally held his destiny in his grasp, and he'd let it slip through his fingers just like that. Since then he hadn't really believed he could ever settle down again.

After another couple of weeks on the road, the towns he passed through quickly all beginning to blur together in his mind, and he decided it was time for him to head back into the forest. To merge back with the element that had for so long been his home, in hopes that he might manage to pacify his desperate, bleeding heart. He was far enough away from wolf shifter territory now, after all, there was no real risk to it. One patch of forest seemed like it should be pretty much identical to another, and he thought under the circumstances that a return to normalcy might be the best he could hope for.

But of course, it hadn't worked out that way, as evidenced by his total failure to take down the prey he'd been out hunting all afternoon. The wildness was gone from him. The longing for solitude, the need to conquer the natural element had been tamed by the fleeting love of his omega. He found, now, that he could no longer reclaim the wildness that was his only birthright. He couldn't erase the memory of the happiness he'd almost found, and he couldn't simply substitute it for the illusion of freedom that the forest provided him.

He wondered, as the sun set through the trees, casting him in a sad red light, whether he would be alone forever. Would he be left wandering for the rest of his life, never able to settle down no matter where he went, or what he did?

He felt certain, deep down, he knew the answer to that question.

He continued on through the forest until at last he made it back to the clearing where he'd parked his truck. He reached into the passenger's seat and pulled out his clothes, sliding them on over his damp, naked body, the heat feeling a little bit oppressive against his skin as he did so.

He'd gotten so used to being naked and unashamed again over the past several days, but he thought he might be willing to die for a drink right about now. If having to put on clothes like a normal human being was the price he had to pay for a decent shot of whiskey, then so be it.

Once he was dressed, he slid into the driver's seat and started up the engine. He drove off down along the forest's dirt road and kept going until he pulled onto the highway. Then he instantly jammed his foot onto the gas pedal, accelerating from twenty miles per hour to almost eighty in a matter of seconds. He was in no particular hurry, but he found himself craving the speed, the furious movement of his progress. These days, the momentum of fast driving was one of the only things that made him feel alive.

About a minute along as he sped down the road, he was surprised by the sudden buzzing of his cell phone on the seat beside him. He'd learned not to expect much at this point. It was probably just one of his past employers, asking him whether he was up for more work. That happened sometimes, though rarely did he remain in an area long enough to take them up on such offers.

He plugged the phone into his cigarette lighter, noting how low the battery had gotten. Then he swiped the screen to unlock it and opened a message from a number he didn't recognize.

His eyes widened.

The message staring back at him nearly caused him to drive off the road with surprise.

“Chris, it's Alexander. I need to talk to you. Let me know when you can meet me.”

He sped on in silence down the road, astonished as he stared down at his phone. The car twisted and lurched dangerously from shoulder to shoulder as he attempted to stay focused on the path ahead. But he found he couldn't look away from the screen, as though he feared by doing so the message might disappear right there before his very bewildered eyes.