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“Are you seriously threatening to take a lover, Sayre?” he demanded, his deep voice causing chills to race across the surface of her skin.
“To let another man touch you?”
Lifting her chin, she kept her own narrowed gaze locked in tight on his burning one. “I’m not threatening. I’m stating a fact. You either stop this archaic bullshit you’ve been pulling, protecting my virginity like it’s something you expect me to keep for-freaking-ever, or I’ll end it for you.”
Cian drew in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, his shoulders seeming even broader as he came another step. “You really think I’ll allow that to happen?” he rasped in a low, almost silent slide of words.
“Just try to stop me,” she finally whispered, unable to shout when everything inside her was aching and raw. Incapable of enduring another moment in his presence, she turned and walked away from him. Though she was dying a little more with each step that she took, she kept her chin high, refusing to look back, even when he growled her name in that deep, delicious voice.
RHYANNON BYRD is an avid, longtime fan of romance and author of more than twenty paranormal and erotic titles. She has been nominated for three RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards, including Best Shapeshifter Romance. Rhyannon lives in the beautiful county of Warwickshire, with her husband and family. For information on Rhyannon’s books, visit her website at rhyannonbyrd.com, or find her on Facebook.
Blood Wolf
Dawning
Rhyannon Byrd
To my amazing editor, Ann Leslie Tuttle.
Mountains and oceans of appreciation for all that you’ve done for this series.
It wouldn’t have been the same without you!
Contents
If this was what falling for someone did to a person—what craving them felt like—then Sayre Murphy wanted no part of it. Ever. She might be young, as well as inexperienced, but she was a woman, damn it, and she knew when she was done.
When she had finally had enough!
With her back straight and her hands fisted at her sides, she stood in a moonlit Maryland forest, high on the mountain that the Silvercrest Lycans, her brethren, had owned for centuries. And she wasn’t alone. Standing a few yards in front of her was the most magnificent, infuriating, arrogant male she had ever known. One who treated her as if she were nothing more than a child and interfered in her life time and again, making it painfully clear that he never had any intention of seeing her as an adult female capable of making her own choices. It was an antiquated attitude—completely fitting with his dominant, alpha personality—and one she was entirely sick of.
Honestly, who cared that she was only eighteen? Did that make her a child? Hell no. A handful of weeks ago, she had fought beside her loved ones in a bloodthirsty war to protect their homeland. Had used the unique powers she possessed as a rare Lycan witch and sent grown male werewolves to their deaths. If that didn’t make her an adult in his eyes, then she wondered with frustration if anything ever would.
“I’ve had enough of this insanity,” she told him, determined to keep her voice from shaking. “It ends. Now.”
The tall Bloodrunner approached her, his dark-as-sin hair gleaming in the moonlight, narrowed silver eyes burning with fury. “You do not dictate to me,” he snarled, his lilting Irish brogue thicker than she’d ever heard it before. “Not now, not tomorrow and not the day after that. You will never control this. You understand me, lass?”
“I’m not interested in controlling you,” she shot back, fisting her hands even tighter, while deep within she felt the fiery heat of her power swirling with energy, desperate to break free. A rising power that she only managed to hang on to by a thread. “I’m simply making my position clear. You’re the one who’s been acting like a jealous ass. Not me!”
“I’m protecting you!” he roared in a voice that held dark, dangerous things that were so much more than human. As a male who was half werewolf, he was as deadly as he was beautiful. But she knew he would never cause her physical harm, even when he was glaring at her with such raw, seething fury.
The safety of her heart, however, was a different matter.
“I