The Hunter's Wolf

The Figurine

The Figurine

Something in me just snaps within a heartbeat.

The urge to punch him in the face now overflowing, and the anger spikes up to my head, the rage taking control over my body. My palms curl to fists, and I clench my jaws as I use my remaining bit of strength to raise my hips and encircle my legs around his waist. My hands immediately twist his large palm wrapped around my slender neck, not a care for the slightest bit when I hear the satisfying crack of his wrist.

He gnarls in pain and jerks backwards in reflex, giving me an opportunity to strike him on his chest that sends him ten feet away. His feet skids to stop the force, his feet prowling into the soil, creating a two-inch deep trail during the process. Once he manages to deal with the motion, he glances up to my eyes, and I jump onto my feet and glare back.

"You're bluffing," I accuse, not entirely cordial about the falsehood whose origin is unknown. "This is just a sick joke to you, messing with my head," I close my eyes, in attempt to drift away from this demented reality.

"Look at me !" he bellows, and I flinch involuntarily from the abrupt change of tone, "Look me in the eye, and tell me that I'm lying."

He remains as stagnant and stale as ever, and seeing how somber he is towards the fact, I blow out a spiteful belittle. "I can't believe this," I mutter under my breath, running my fingers through my hair in distress. 

Being told that I am someone's mate, and that someone just happens to be the creature that I hunt for a living, has wreaked havoc in my head, and now to find out that I have been marked— claimed, by another man who is not my mate, my life has gone from hellish, to ravaged.

The way he sniffs around my neck then and the way he keeps staring at that exact same spot now, it only concludes that the mark lies there, and my heart plunges into the hollow.

All my life, I thought that it is a mere scar, a flaw of mine that I carry as a warrior's worth at a young age, but no. It is far from it. My fingers tremble as I raise them up to my neck. I feel the brash outlines, the jagged texture, and the shape of a canine's jaw, the memory fresh in my mind of the day when the wolf that I rescued clamped his jaws on me, rewarding me with a scar, only now to be discovered as his mark.

"At least now it is certain that you weren't willing when that son of a bitch marked you," he says softly, his shoulder slagging as his body relaxes, "Your neck is supposedly for me alone to embed my mark on. Yet another man has claimed you, taken you as his," he elaborates and struggles to find what he truly wants to say, "I'm sorry that I wasn't there to stop him. I couldn't imagine the pain that I put you through."

I shake my head repeatedly, "This is not happening."

I gulp and avert my eyes away. I can't seem to recall the cause, or how my life begins to fall into this hole of catastrophe. One moment I barely hold on to the solicitation of the society, and the next; another dire calamity has befallen upon my wretched of a life. Things just don't go the way I want it to.

"I'm not going back," I say, and take a few steps back in which he has gone cognizance to. The vibe around him putrefies into an ominous aura, and his steps turn to prowls toward me. 

"You are not escaping for a second time," he upholds, "Not anymore you're not." 

I can hear him well; not the words but the gluttony he has for me.

He intends to keep me here for himself. The mark is just a reason valid enough to make me stay by his side, and he does not have to put up with me fighting him.

Sick by the thought, I brace myself when he tries to hunch over and throw me over his shoulder like a sack. I jab my elbow to the side of his neck, where it should slow him down. A grunt soon echoes throughout the woods, and a terrifying growl of that from a beast cuts through the air.