A startled screech assaults my ears as I stare at the woman, aggravating the already excruciating pain in my head, but that fades into the background when my gaze meets hers.

She’s stunning.

I can hear her heart race from here, even above the sound of the water rushing over my legs. Around my waist. She shifts her grip on a homemade spear, readying herself to attack, and her bold, unflinching gaze stirs something inside me.

Challenge. Courage. Strength.

She’s perfect. The beast is practically purring.

Perfect for what? I mean, she’s beautiful. Smooth, pale skin. Long dark hair. Big blue eyes. But beauty is as common as it is transitory, and millions of women all over the universe share that general combination of physical characteristics.

Her features aren’t what draw me.

There’s something about the way she’s standing, jaw clenched. Stance wide. Yes, I startled her when I sat up in the stream, but she’s recovered, and she’s standing her ground. And as I watch, she subtly begins to shift to the side, placing herself between me and the other woman. Shielding her friend with her own body, even though I could attack both of them any second.

Something about her protective stance appeals to me. It makes my chest ache, deep inside. A soft sound crawls up from my throat—a gentle whirring sound—and though I’ve never made or heard that sound before, the beast seems sure that it will comfort her. That it will let her know that I mean no harm.

Maybe that worked on women of his species—although the fact that they went extinct makes me doubt the effectiveness of his method of attracting female attention. Either way, this human woman won’t understand his comfort-sound. So I swallow it before she can hear it.

And suddenly I realize that the fog has lifted from my thoughts. Though it still hovers around the edges of my mind, a constant threat waiting to descend again, for the moment, as I stare back at her, lucidity is mine, in spite of the agony in my head.

Maybe it’s the cold water still running down my overheated body. But I think it’s her. She’s like a candle lit in a dark room. And like an insect, I am drawn toward her flame.

“We’re gonna run right?” the other woman whispers, peering over her friend’s shoulder at me. “He doesn’t look…normal.”

She has no idea. They should run from me. But I’m afraid that if they do, I’ll have to chase them. Well, chase her, anyway. The brunette with the kind, intelligent eyes.

“I think he’s sick,” the brunette whispers back. She’s right, of course. But I feel better right now than I have in ages.

I sniff the air in her direction, trying to catch a whiff of her scent, and the wind obliges me with a slight shift in direction. Beneath the more pervasive aromas of stream water and mud, her own scent is clean, and sweet, and healthy.

I leap to my feet in the stream, my shoes squishing in the rocky mud at the bottom, and water pours down my legs.

Startled again, the women backpedal, but the brunette’s foot catches on a root arching from the ground and she goes down on her rump in the mud. She gasps, but her gaze stays glued to my face.

Go get her.

The order doesn’t come in those words, exactly. Or in any words. But that’s what the imperative feels like, sent up from my subconscious. From the beast. It’s an urge I’m not sure I can control, originating from a place I still can’t quite understand, even two years after Brennan spliced alien DNA with mine.

The beast often wants things I don’t understand, for reasons I can’t comprehend. But we’re in agreement about this.

She’s perfect. I mean, I can’t just take her, as the beast seems to be suggesting, but I understand why he wants that. Something about her feels…right.

“Hi,” she says, and her voice seems to resonant inside me, like a harmonic note played in my own soul. Deepening a connection I don’t fully understand. “We…um…didn’t see you there. Because of how you were completely submerged in the water. Fully clothed. I mean, it’s none of my business how you do your laundry, but the more common technique involves taking your clothes off before you wash them.”

It takes me a second to process her words, because I’m so captivated by her voice itself. Musical and not too high-pitched, with an almost convivial cadence. This woman is obviously charismatic. The kind of person people follow not just because she’s smart, but because they genuinely like her.

I like her already.

Then I realize what she’s said, and I grab the bottom of my drenched shirt and start to pull it over my head.

“Whoa, no, wait a minute. That was advice, not an invitation. We’re gonna go and let you have nature’s laundry room all to yourself. Since you’ve probably scared off all the fish, anyway.” She presses her palm into the mud, to pick herself up, and briefly, the scent of blood blossoms.

Then I realize what’s happening. She’s about to leave.

Unacceptable.

I blink at her, then suddenly I’m on top of her, her scream echoing in my ears, though I hardly remember moving. She grasps for her spear, but it’s several feet away now, closer to the blond than to the beauty trapped beneath me.

The heat from her body radiates through my wet clothing, though I hold myself off of her, to keep from scaring her. Well, scaring her any more than I already have. She tries to push me off, and that soft whirring begins deep in my throat again, like air passing over a humming bird’s wings. This time I let it resonate between us as I breathe her scent more deeply, and though her hands are still wedged between us, she relaxes beneath me. Yet her heartbeat has not slowed.

That should surprise me, but instead, it feels…expected. Proper. The beast was right about that odd sound.

This woman smells delicious. I need to taste her. And not just the sweet, soft place between her thighs, where her heat already beckons me through our clothing. I need to taste all of her.

Her friend shrieks, frightened, but the woman beneath me is silent as she stares up at me. Breathing deeply to slow her racing heart.

I lower myself until I can inhale her scent where it’s strong, just beneath her ear. Her scent carries conflicting notes of fear and acceptance, and the way she holds herself still beneath me makes the beast puff up with a simple, crude sort of pride—an intoxicating sensation.

She surrenders to your strength. The beast’s certainty seeps into my thoughts, beneath the vicious ache in my head. She is yours. Claim her.

Her cheek is soft and warm, and I can’t resist the impulse to rub my face against it. That whirring sound intensifies as I run my skin against hers, mixing my scent with the sweet aroma from her pores.

Mine.

“Um…” she says at last, as I move to the other side of her face and keep rubbing. “As normal as this total invasion of my personal space might seem to someone who bathes in his clothes…this is pretty weird, and I really have to go. So if you could maybe—”

I swallow a groan. I don’t want to get up. I want to press her into the ground, tear her clothes off, and lick her all over. I want to tug her into the stream and wash the mud from her body, then lay her down on the shore and take her in the sunlight. I want to—

I make myself get up, before the beast gets his way. He may have excellent taste, but he knows nothing about winning over human women, and I can’t afford to fuck this up.

Mine, he growls. And on that, it seems we agree.

I wipe my muddy hands on my pants, then I take her right one—the source of that whiff of blood—and wipe it clean on the tail of my shirt. A fresh drop of blood wells from a tiny hole in her palm, and before I can stop myself, I lick it.

Her blood is a tangy version of her scent. Clean, and sweet, and healthy. She’s a perfect candidate for a DNA duplication, and now that I’ve sampled her blood, I think I could easily take her form. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to be her.

I want to be with her.

She gasps and pulls her hand away, and the beast snarls at her through my throat. Then I watch myself snatch her hand back, like a spoiled child demanding the return of a toy.

Mine.

The woman’s eyes widen, but she goes still again, the sharp zest of fear swelling through her sweet scent, like a drop of blood clouding clear water. And—high on that tantalizing aroma—I’m unable to resist the compulsion to taste her again.

I lower my face into her cupped palm and give it a long, slow lick, indulging in the fresh drop of blood welling from her tiny wound. She shivers at the feel of my tongue on her skin, and my cock stirs in my pants, demanding its own taste of her.

Mine.

I want to talk to her. I want to kiss her, and sample other parts of her. But there are footsteps and voices coming toward us from the woods. Men. At least two of them. The women haven’t heard them yet, but the men are moving quickly. Coming to their aid. They must have heard the women scream.

The men are expecting an enemy, and people have a way of seeing what they expect to see. If they find me with the women, blood will be shed, and it won’t be mine.

I am eager to fight for this woman. The beast wants me to. But she will not be receptive to me if I hurt her friends.

The blond ventures closer, curiosity blossoming in her scent like a delicate flower. “Um…we should go,” she says and my woman nods.

She pulls her hand free, and I reluctantly let her go. She steps back once, then twice. “It was super weird to not-quite meet you,” she says as she bends to retrieve her spear from the mud, without taking her gaze from mine. I can’t tell whether she’s as captivated by me as I am by her, or she’s afraid that looking away will break the spell that’s keeping me from pouncing.

Either could be true.

“Thanks for…not eating us.”

Finally, she turns and grabs her friend’s arm, and they head off into the woods on a trajectory that should intersect with the men who’re coming to meet them. And as they disappear from sight, I realize I have no idea what her name is. Because she’s right; we didn’t quite meet.

I intend to follow them from a distance. To find out where they live, so I can make contact with this woman again, under more traditional circumstances. So I can learn her name. But less than a minute after I lose sight of her—after I lose her scent—that fog descends upon my thoughts again. Fracturing them. Blurring the edges, so that it’s hard to focus on them. Impossible to connect them.

I can no longer clearly remember what I’d planned to do before I met her, yet I remember her face. Her eyes. Her scent. The rest, however, is gone.

I wander some more, until I remember to eat again. With fuel comes a little more clarity, and I realize that I’ve wandered the wrong way. Away from the direction my woman and her friend headed off in. So I turn around and start walking again.

Sometime later, I hear footsteps. In the woods. They’re too heavy to belong to a woman. The sound functions like an anchor with which to moor my thoughts. It pulls me, and the closer I get to the footsteps, the clearer my intent becomes.

Exhausted, I struggle to keep my own movements quiet, but I remember what I’m doing now. I need a new form. A healthy form.

Then I hear a voice, but it’s not a man’s.

It’s a woman. It’s my woman. The brunette with kind eyes and a ready smile.

I see movement between the trees up ahead. The sun is so bright, and I’m squinting, but I think I see her. She’s…naked.

My temper spikes and my forearms itch, though in this form, there are no seams in my skin. The beast wants to come out to play. To defend our woman from this man and claim her for myself.

There’s the man, crouching on the ground, staring at something near my woman’s feet. He is thick and bulky with muscle, and his movements suggest a lithe, quick fighting style.

The woman turns, and I see her face.

The planet stops turning. The whole fucking thing grinds to a halt beneath me, throwing me off balance. I can’t see anything but her face. I can’t hear anything but her voice. She is mine. I know it. Yet she’s standing nude in front of another man.

I will kill him. I will slice him up and leave his corpse to rot and nourish the forest flora.

I inhale, preparing to charge, as a burning begins beneath my skin—the beast preparing for battle. Then the woman speaks again, and I freeze. Listening.

“Lilliana Marie Malone,” she recites. “Prisoner number 4084786.” Her words have been branded into my brain. I know her name.

The man growls at the woman. He taps something on the ground—a disk—and she…disappears. She just fucking disappears!

She’s gone, and there’s a new woman in her place. A lesser woman. One I don’t want to see. The disk is a holo-vid, playing clips of different women, and the man has skipped forward to the next one. As if he’s shopping.

My woman was never really here. It was all an illusion. My foggy mind understands that now, yet the planet won’t start turning again. Gravity won’t work right. Nothing will be right again, until I find Lilliana Marie Malone.

I should never have let her leave my sight.

The man touches the disk again, and the wrong woman disappears, just like Lilliana did.

“Play it again,” I demand, and the man looks up. He frowns as he stares at me, as if he recognizes me. And though he hasn’t said a word, I realize he knows the man whose form I’m wearing. Nothing else could account for the look of disgust and anger he’s aiming at me.

He reaches for the disk again, but I can tell from the tension in his arm and the dismissal in his gaze that he’s not going to give me what I asked for. He’s going to take the holo-vid away. So I lurch forward and fall to my knees to press my thumb to the disk.

That other woman appears again. The wrong woman. The man stands and frowns at her nude form, as if he’d like to cover her. To shield her. If only she were real. Then he lunges at me, and the woman’s image scatters into fractured beams of light.

I dodge him and press my thumb to the disk again. A new woman appears, standing nude in the air above the disk. Another lesser woman. I scowl up at her from my knees, then I press on the disk again. And again. But all I get is a series of other—lesser—women. And finally I understand the problem.

This time I press on the other edge of the disk, and the previous image appears. Another tap, and we’re moving backward through this catalogue of women now, headed toward Lilliana Marie Malone.

The large man’s woman appears—the pain in his gaze when he sees her speaks volumes—then we’re back to my woman. I stand, staring at her. Trying to memorize every feature. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. She’s tall for a woman, with a slim build that has already developed more curves, since this video was shot. Which means she’s receiving proper nutrition. This digital Lilliana’s cheeks are hollow, her eyes haunted. Yet she stands straight and proud, despite her nudity and her status as a prisoner. And her inclusion in a catalogue, as if she were a shirt someone could simply pick out and try on.

My blood boils at the knowledge that she’s been mistreated. I will find her and put an end to that. I will find her and protect her. I will find her, and everything will be—

Her image disappears again, and the man plucks the disk from the ground.

“Mine,” I growl, but he shoves the disk into his pocket. He points off into the woods, silently telling me to get lost, and when I only hold my hand out, wordlessly demanding the disk, he shoves me. Hard.

I go down in the dirt, shocked by how easily this weak, sick body just folds. And he takes off into the woods.

I can’t follow him in this form; I’d never be able to keep up. Beyond that, I can’t fight for Lilliana Marie Malone in this form. I have to be strong if I’m going to find her. If I’m going to rescue her from this man who keeps an entire stable of nude women in a catalogue.

No, wait, I don’t think he has any interest in my woman. His gaze was focused on one of the others. So who put them in this catalogue? Universal Authority?

Is UA trying to breed them, like Brennan is trying to breed Dreyer?

Lieutenant Tirzah Dreyer. My team. That’s what I’m doing here—trying to get back to them. To get us all off this planet. Lilliana Marie Morgan doesn’t fit into that plan.

Yet I will not leave her here.

I lean forward in the dirt, trying to draw my thoughts into some order that makes sense, but my alertness is already fading, energy leaking from my body like water swirling down the drain in a bathtub.

Still starving and now light-headed, I push myself to my feet and take off through the woods, following the large man from a distance. Letting my enhanced ears and nose track him with no input from my conscious mind. Sometime later, I reach the edge of the woods and see him heading for a building.

People pour out of the building and assume aggressive, unwelcoming stances. I can’t hear what they’re saying from here—not even with the beast’s hearing—but they obviously don’t want him to come in. He plays the disk for them, but only shows off his own woman.

Then I see her. My Lilliana. Even over the distance, I recognize her as she steps out of the building into bright daylight. She falls to her knees, concerned about what appears to be an injured friend, and it takes every bit of self-control I still possess to keep from racing toward her, as the beast is demanding with adrenaline and violent impulses. To keep from throwing her over my shoulder and racing off into the woods with her.

It’s not that I don’t want that. I do. But the human half of me knows what the beast won’t admit—that in my current condition, I’d collapse before I got anywhere near Lilliana. And she won’t come willingly with a stranger who’s already scared her, and there are enough men with her to put me in my grave, in my weakened state.

So I hunker down, shielded from sight by a clump of underbrush, and eat my last protein bar while I wait for Lilliana Marie Morgan to come out of that building alone.