The crisp mountain air was a knife against Damien Voss's skin; it felt good to cleanse him of that sour odor of recycled ambition and stale perfume which had clung to his life in the city. Here, in the vast and wild Carpathian Mountains, he was not the CEO of Voss Enterprises, a ruthless corporate titan whose name was a whisper of fear and envy on Wall Street. He was just a man, a hunter, a predator in his own right, tracking prey for the simple pleasure of the chase, not out of need for food. Control was Damien's religion; the wilds were his cathedral. He had ruled boardrooms with an icy glare, brought rivals to their knees with a single phone call, and with the assuredness of someone who has never known failure, walked through the world. And yet, behind that bespoke suit and the attentively polished charm, something gnawed at him: an emptiness that could never be filled by an acquisition, a victory. This trip, this hunt, was a desperate attempt to muffle it. Under the rifle's weight, cold from the bounce of the dusk breeze and dressed to the nines, Damien set in for the evening. The sun bled out behind the jagged peaks, splattering the sky with angry orange and purple. Ill-omened rays strewn through the aged trunks of towering pines: the light of a blood moon. The local guides had expressed concerns, muttering old tales and superstitions. Damien had dismissed these with a condescending smile. He had faith in balance sheets and market trends; he did not entertain the world of folklore. Eyes sharp and focused with discipline honed through countless seasons, he followed the tracks of a gigantic stag for which he had yearned. As the moon climbed, an orb of blood-red hue, a wound congealing in the somber orb of the sky, change began to grip the forest. The familiar vibrations of the night—the cracklings of little creatures, the hoot of an owl—suddenly ceased, replaced by a silence so deep it startled him. An unnatural hush immersed the land, heavy with expectancy. An uneasy prick, most foreign to Damien and thus peculiar, passed up his spine; he was being eyed. Absolute doubt was felt: predator instinct previously unknown to him. He scanned the deep fabric of trees where silence had emanated... Nothing. He shook his head in disgust with his blunder. It had been the strange lights, the solitude that had conspired against him. And then it came. Two gleaming eyes, filled with malice, a sort of amber from the deepest shadows, glared back at him. Too large, too high for anything a reasonable wolf should be. A low growl, one seemingly vibrating through his very bones, rolled across the clearing. A nightmare in corporeal form stepped forth from darkness; a wolf, but terrifically oversized, with charred midnight skin and muscle toning and shifting beneath its hide like coiled steel cables. Its lips were silently snarled over dagger-like teeth. But it was those eyes that seized him engulfingly with an ancient, menacing wisdom.
Fear made no sense to Damien, yet what he felt then was raw terror, contemporary enough to shatter down the pillars of iron-will he had built for himself. He raised his rifle, aligning the crosshairs on the space between the creature's glaring eyes. He was Damien Voss. He neither turned nor flinched; he conquered. He let the shot crack, which scintillated in the once-in-a-lifetime continuation of silence; the beast so much as breathed. Then it exploded forward with a speed beyond reason--dark fury was the only description worthy of its color. The metallic taste of his own blood barely registered before the world became a relinquishing torrent of agony. The rifle was wrenched from his grip, sent flying into the undergrowth. Claws like razors were rending his jacket and flesh, and the teeth, hot and sharp, buried themselves deep into his shoulder. A scream was wrenched from his throat, a rough, animal-like sound he could not recognize as his. He was being lifted, shaken like a doll, the sheer power of the creature overwhelming him. Damien fought back, as a cornered animal would, and struck thick, coarse fur with little effect. Above, the world began to spin: a blood moon throbbing in time with the fire burning in his shoulder. There was something strange in the heat emanating from the wound: not just the searing heat of muscle and sinew tearing but something else, something alive yet so insatiably foreign. This was the transmission; an injection of untamed, savage power poisonous above all else. This was a curse; a very ancient legacy sealed in his blood under the morbid sanguine beam of the moon. The wolf's amber eyes were the last thing he saw before his fading consciousness; within that gaze, there appeared to be judgment, not just savagery. When he awakened, dawn kissed him tenderly, and the pine needles were his bed. Disbelief was the first clear thought. The second was, unmistakably, I am alive. He sat up, groaning, expecting his body to be a twisted, warped ruin. But looking at his shoulder, where the wolf had clamped down, nothing. No wound, no shredded flesh, not even a scar. All that remained was a slight, dull, tingling heat beneath the surface of his skin and a shredded hunting jacket he'd bought at a ridiculous price. Suddenly, he was up, confusion warring in his mind. Had he dreamt it? Some stress-induced nightmare? Surely, the memory was too vivid, and the phantom pain too real. Another change came to his attention. Somehow, the world appeared clear and sharp and vibrant. The green moss on a rock nearby radiated in emerald brightness; the smell of wet earth and pine filled his lungs with an intensity he had never experienced. He could hear the fretful heartbeat of a rabbit hiding in a bush fifty yards away. He felt... powerful. A flood of raw and untarnished energy pulsated through his veins, humming in his muscles. The rifle was found, its barrel a bit bent, and he slowly made his way toward the rendezvous point, bewildered yet invigorated with a strange rush. Back in the sterile luxury of his Manhattan penthouse, the city was an assault. The shrill sirens, mingling scents of exhaust fumes, street food, and a million human bodies all assaulted his senses, leaving him dizzy and irritable. His reflection in the floor-to-ceiling windows looked the same-impeccably dressed, sculpted cheekbones, and cold blue eyes-but it felt like the worst of lies. Something feral now lurked beneath the surface. There was an insatiable appetite: rare steaks cooked almost blue, an addiction to vintage scotch, an all-consuming hunger for women that reduced his usual partners to a state of ecstasy and terror. The beast was assimilating, twisting and darkening his outward personality. His sanctuary of complete control had turned into a cage. An underling laid a worthless financial projection at his feet, and for once, instead of the usual surgical dismissal, Damien could feel a growl building deep in his chest. His vision was swimming now, tinted red along the edges. He grasped the polished mahogany of the table so tightly his knuckles turned white, the wood creaking under the strain. He could see the flicker of fear in the man's eyes, and that fed a primal desire in him. Control over the situation was slipping away, the one possession he valued most. Then came the dreams. Night after night, he ran on four legs through a moonlit forest, the red-hot ecstasy of the hunt flowing through his veins. He would dream of the bloody moon, the taste of blood, and a woman. He never did see her face clearly, yet he knew her. He knew her skin sizzled with the scent of lilac and rain and something that was sardonically her own, an invitation to the very core of his newly savage soul. It was the scent of promise for calm and bedlam in equal measure. The scent his inner beast recognized bluntly as Mate.