“I’d rather have you human anyway,” he muttered against her throat, his lips warm, surprisingly soft. The beast within her stirred and she knew in that instant she could let him have her, take her physically, and not hate it.

But he wasn’t Gideon. Her heart would not be involved. Her heart beat solely for Gideon and it always would.

The clipped velvet tones of Darius’s voice rolled over her. “Shifted, we don’t always remember things clearly—I want to remember you.”

Her hands stung from pounding him. He was a brick wall. Impenetrable muscle. She ceased struggling, allowing her hands to fall limply at her sides. Shutting her eyes, she forced herself to lie motionless, for the beast not to respond.

He stilled over her. Slowly, she opened one eye, then the other. He climbed off her to stand at the side of the bed. Looming over her, his chest lifting with deep, angry breaths, he stared at her in the strangest way. As if he didn’t see her at all. As if he saw someone else when he looked at her lying there.

“Go.” His voice was so low she wasn’t sure she heard him correctly.

Claire lifted her head off the mattress. “W-what?”

“I don’t want a corpse beneath me.” He pointed to the door. “Go,” he said more loudly, his voice a crack of thunder on the air.

She scrambled off the bed, distancing herself warily. “Really?”

“Get out of here before I change my mind!”

She flew to the door, looking over her shoulder when he reminded her, his voice as forbidding as a rumble of thunder on the air, “In three days you’ll shift.”

The anger had dissipated from his face. Looking tired, he said, “Try to break your curse. I’ll come for you when you realize you can’t.”

She started to shake her head, to tell him not to bother, to forget her, but he was on her so fast she never saw him move. His hands clamped down on her arms and shook her. “Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t kill yourself. Don’t give up when you realize your lycan hunter can’t save you.”

Her eyes met his steely gaze and she wondered if her own eyes could possibly be that penetrating, that frightening. Or was it just him?

His hands fell from her arms. “Now go.” He stepped back from her, arms falling to his sides. “I’ll come for you before you shift, and I expect you to join me when I do.”

For the first time, Claire considered what he offered—while avoiding the thought of what would occur alone with him in that room once they had shifted. Her mind and heart couldn’t contemplate such a thing. Not after Gideon.