Hunt Me! I Crave the Chase (Spooky Boys #3)

“Do you think we need to run blood tests or anything?” I asked, cheeks still hot. “Google said that might be a good idea.” Had to keep up pretenses.

“I’ll do whatever tests you want me to do,” Theo said good-naturedly, taking on a more serious air as his eyes crinkled. “You just say the word.”

“Do you think neutering is an option?” I asked, because even though I’d decided to play this by ear, I figured I deserved a little fun along the way.

Theo laughed his ass off. “You wanna snip his balls?” he asked, more than a little amused. I had a feeling he’d said it that way because Mutt wouldn’t know what the hell “neutering” was.

The dog’s eyes widened, and he barked in alarm.

“Neutering strays is always the best option,” Theo hummed, messing with his brother. Mutt barked again, tail between his legs.

“I’ll think about it.”

I decided I liked Theo.

A lot.

But not as much as I liked Mutt.

In my defense, I’ve never been the best at forward thinking. Hell, if we’re being really honest, I’d never been the best at thinking in general—despite the fact that my thoughts were all I had most days, and that’s how I liked it. Which was why…I’d now been parading as a dog for almost an entire month.

My first moon had passed, and while it had been difficult—it always was—it’d been easier than usual. Like the calm before the storm. Jeffrey hadn’t batted an eye when I’d disappeared for several days, just simply let me back inside his home and offered me more of the awful round brown pebbles humans thought were food.

Fall had come with a vengeance.

And with it, came the cold chill of reality.

Because I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. And every day that passed dug me deeper in that hole. But I couldn’t seem to stop.

I just…couldn’t.

Dad warned me about hunger once.

He told me it would eat me alive if I let it. I listened, yeah—I had always listened. But I’d be the first to admit that I didn’t understand. I didn’t know there were two kinds of hunger. The kind that’s easy to sate with a warm meal, or a warm bed—and the kind that tears you apart from the inside out.

One was predictable.

One was ravenous, and all-encompassing.

Dad had warned me but I didn’t understand.

Not till the day I’d met Jeffrey.

Till the day I saw him standing there, looking prettier than sunshine, and I knew as surely as I knew the moon had forsaken me that I couldn’t have him.

He’d been dappled with rain water, dressed in a hoodie pulled low over his face. Shadows hid his eyes from view, but it only took a single sniff to know he was human. The only feature on his face that I could see clearly were his lips. Soft. Pink. Relaxed into a gentle frown. There were spots that dotted his creamy, lovely skin. Freckles. That’s what humans called them. A few of them crept onto his lips from where they splattered his jaw, and I was…lost.

I knew hunger then.

Unquenchable.

A thirst that burned me from the inside out.

As I stood on the edge of the parking lot, hidden inside shadows of my own, I ached. I ached because I couldn’t do what I wanted. Couldn’t cross the asphalt and push him to the ground like I wanted. Couldn’t take him, then and there, like he needed to be taken.

Because if he was my fated—and he was, it only took one sniff to confirm that—he needed me as much as I needed him.

It’d seemed only logical to follow him then.