Nobody was watching the small woman with a dislocated thumb and a plan.

The one holding the leash was two paces in front of her, walking like he was on a Sunday stroll.

Guinevere let her wrists fall open and slid the rope off in one silent motion. Then she yanked the leash with her entire bodyweight in a single brutal pull.

Hard. Both hands minus a thumb.

The line snapped taut and whipped him off his feet like a sled dog hitting the end of a tether. He went flat on his back in the pine needles with a sound that was half grunt and half outrage.

The two guards flanking her turned towards the sound.

Mistake.

Guinevere pivoted and drove her boot up into the groin of the one on her left with enough force that his knees buckled before his brain had processed what had happened to him.

The one on her right was already lunging. She did not wait. She spun on the balls of her feet, using the turn for momentum, and kicked him in exactly the same place, at exactly the same angle, with exactly the same result.

Two armored men folded at the waist like matching bookends.

"Sorry."

She was not sorry.

She ran in the opposite direction at the speed of a woman who knew this was her one and only chance.

The iron-eyed stranger made a sound behind her that was half shock and half delight.

The leash was still wrapped around her waist, trailing behind her like a tail, but she did not have the time to untangle it yet. She needed cover and she had about three seconds before the men behind her remembered how to breathe.

She hit the tree line at a dead sprint and vanished into it.

"Well." The iron-eyed stranger’s voice carried through the trees unhurried and entertained. "That was unexpected. Did anyone see which direction, or were we all too busy being humiliated?"

He already knew the answer, watching her go. Not running yet. Just watching. The way a man watches a very expensive horse he has just paid for and is curious to see how fast it actually is.

Guinevere pulled the rope trailing behind her and unknotted it as she ran. The rope belt was still on her, but the leash at least was separated.

She wove between two pines so close together that her shoulder clipped the bark on the right side.

Behind her she heard a dense, satisfying crack as the first soldier to recover came charging after her at full speed and met the second one doing the exact same thing from a slightly different angle.

Armor hit armor. Helmet hit helmet. Two men who should have communicated with each other collapsed in a tangle of limbs and profanity at the base of the pine she had just squeezed through.

She did not stop to appreciate it, already twenty feet away.

The dragon’s voice rang out behind her. "Gentlemen. She weighs less than your armor combined. There are two of you."

A shadow moved fast through the canopy above her.

The iron-eyed stranger had stopped being entertained.

She had not factored in that dragon speed in human form was not merely above wolf speed. It was meaningfully, catastrophically above it. Her mental calculation of how much time she had just updated itself downward in a violent way.

Whoops.

She cut hard to the left, using a fallen log as a pivot, and sprinted down a slope thick with ferns.

The air next to her went cold.

One second there was forest. The next second there was the mage, materialized out of nothing two feet from her elbow like smoke taking the shape of a man, hand already reaching for her throat.

Guinevere did not have time to think. She threw the leash at his masked face. His gloved hands came up on instinct, catching the rope. His entire body froze for three full seconds, and his mask tilted down looking at the rope in pure confusion, like she’d just handed him a baby without warning.

She did not question it. She ran.

She put a massive oak between herself and the slope and dropped into a crouch, fingers flying at the knot around her waist. The rope belt came loose after three tries. She coiled it fast into one hand, because she had seen what throwing a rope at a wizard’s face could accomplish and she was not about to discard a tool that had just saved her life.

Above her, a shadow passed over the canopy. Big. Winged. Moving slow and deliberate, circling the pines.

She glanced up through a gap in the branches and saw a red dragon.

Guinevere had no idea if red was good news or very bad news. For all she knew, red was the color worn by men who kidnapped princesses for sport.

Assume the worst. Add it to the list. Keep moving.

She flattened against the oak and held her breath.

Through the trees, unhurried, conversational, came the voice of the iron-eyed stranger.

"Come out, come out, little girl. Three of my men cannot have children today because of you. The least you owe me is a name."

Guinevere did not move.

"Outrunning me will have a zero percent success rate. Outsmarting me is theoretically possible but statistically unlikely. What I’d suggest is a conversation. I’m very good at those. Ask my mage. He hates talking to me. I will even let you keep the rope as a trophy."

He was close. Maybe thirty feet. Maybe less.

She pushed off the oak and ran.

His footsteps broke into motion behind her the instant hers did. She heard him laugh. An actual, delighted laugh, like a man who had been bored for a decade and had just remembered what fun felt like.

Guinevere tore through the underbrush. Her boots skidded on pine needles.

She risked one glance back and saw him thirty paces behind her, closing fast.

She whipped the coiled rope off her shoulder and spun around to throw it at his face.

The rope hit him square across the mouth.

For the second time in under a minute, a man who should have been the most dangerous thing in the forest stalled for a full heartbeat with both hands up, catching a rope he had not expected. Guinevere watched his expression flicker through the exact same wife-handed-me-her-purse confusion the mage had worn.

She did not ask why it had worked twice. It worked and she ran.

Behind her, Kael lowered the rope from his face slowly. "Alright. I deserved that one."

Thirty seconds.

That was how long it lasted.

The iron-eyed stranger closed the last ten feet in two strides, slammed into her from behind like a battering ram, and took her to the ground with the full weight of a dragon shifter moving at dragon speed.

Her broken hand caught the fall, and her ribs did not forgive her for it. Her face drove into the pine needles and her vision went briefly, spectacularly white.

He flipped her onto her back in one motion, pinning both of her wrists above her head. Then he shoved her thighs apart with his knee, and settled between her legs like he’d done it a thousand times.

"Feel that?" He pressed himself harder against her. "That’s what running from me does to me. I will chase you again just so I can pin you down, just like this."

"Go to hell," she said, glaring at him. "I’ll hold the door."

He tilted his head, hand tightening around her neck so her air was cut off.

"I could burn you," he added lightly, while he rolled his hips slowly against her, letting her feel every inch of him. "I could open you up right here and see exactly what makes you tick. Fuck the answers out of you until you’re screaming my name."

Guinevere could not breathe well enough to answer. That was probably for the best.

"But you." He let go of her neck to trace her jaw, while she coughed under him. "You have made yourself far too interesting for that. I want to know your name and who you are."

He brushed her bottom lip, pulling it down. "Bite me and I will snap your neck." He pushed his thumb in her mouth slowly, parting her lips. "Suck. Let me feel what I am going to own."

Guinevere’s stomach dropped. Tears hit before she could lock them down, spilling down her temples into the pine needles. She stared up at him through them, refusing to blink, refusing to look away. If he was going to see her cry, he was going to see the hatred underneath it.

She would bite his thumb off and choke on it before she gave him anything. If her neck was snapped, so be it. Her best chance here was shifting, and her wolf was ready.

The second she made that decision, his eyes surged gold and he retracted his finger from her mouth, like he’d been burned.

His fangs started to elongate again. She watched in absolute horror.

Fucking hell. Twice. This man had a medical condition.

He shook his head once, and closed his eyes, blinking back the gold. Then his hand went back around her neck.

"Clear enough for you? You are my property now and I will do with you whatever I please."

A voice cut across the clearing from thirty feet away. Warm. Dry. Familiar.

"Kael. Get your hand off the woman before I make you famous for a very embarrassing reason."