Knot of the Moon - Chapter 7: Caught

Chapter 7: Caught

Logan

The storm finally broke sometime before dawn, leaving behind a silence so absolute it made my ears ring.

I woke up entirely alone in the center of the cold, ruined mattress, my body aching in deep, terrifying ways I had never imagined possible.

My pelvis felt bruised, my core entirely raw, and my puckered hole throbbed in slow, heavy pulses—swollen, tender, and still leaking a slow, steady trickle of Vance’s thick alpha cum down the backs of my thighs. The heavy flannel sheets beneath me were completely ruined, stiff and dark with the dried, pale remnants of our midnight coupling.

For one agonizing moment, the protective fog of sleep dissolved, and everything came rushing back in a violent, suffocating wave: the primal way he had eaten me open on the bed, the brutal, unyielding stretch of his barbed cock, and the endless hours I had spent helplessly locked onto his massive knot while he whispered filthy, hyper-possessive things directly against the shell of my ear.

I couldn’t stay here. If I stayed another day in this cabin, the alpha aura would dissolve whatever remained of my human sanity.

My hands shook violently as I dragged myself out of bed, my feet hitting the freezing floorboards. I pulled on fresh, thick clothes—heavy denim jeans, a fleece-lined hoodie, and my sturdiest winter boots.

I didn’t care about the cold. I didn’t care about the lacrosse scandal waiting for me back in the human world, or the media vultures who had ruined my name. Anything was better than staying on this mountain and becoming my stepbrother’s permanent, locked-in breeding toy.

I stuffed whatever clothes I could grab into my canvas duffel bag, my movements frantic, my chest heaving with a rising panic. The cabin was quiet. Horribly, deeply quiet.

I crept down the creaking staircase, wincing with every single step I took. The internal muscles of my hole clenched painfully around nothing, sending sudden, unearned aftershocks of residual pleasure straight up my spine. I hated it. I hated the profound, hollow ache in my gut, the sickening realization of how empty and cold I felt the moment his mass was no longer filling me.

The heavy front door creaked loudly against the swollen frame as I pushed it open. The biting mountain air slapped me across the face like a physical blow, shocking the feverish heat out of my skin.

The snow had finally stopped falling, leaving the world buried under four feet of unpassable drifts, the morning sky cast in a pale, sickly gray. I stepped outside, my heavy boots sinking deep into the fresh powder, and started down the narrow, snow-choked path toward the main road.

Freedom. Or at least the desperate, freezing illusion of it.

I didn’t make it far.

I’d only gone maybe two hundred yards from the porch when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The air behind me grew instantly dense, carrying the heavy, unmistakable signature of an apex predator watching his prey. The raw power of the scent hit my nose—smoked cedar, leather, and fresh, territorial alpha command.

I turned around slowly, my breath hitching in my throat.

Vance stood between the snow-laden pines like a living nightmare carved from shadow and muscle. He was entirely bare-chested despite the freezing sub-zero temperature, the silver battle scars and dark ink of his tattoos stark against his pale, hard skin.

His eyes were glowing with a terrifying, post-rut intensity, the irises a cold, metallic steel that locked onto me with absolute precision. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He looked like he belonged to the mountain itself.

“Going somewhere, little brother?” His low, gravelly voice carried easily through the quiet clearing.