The pressure on his neck relaxes and the arms disappear behind his seat as quickly as they had appeared.

Pierce rushes out of the car, coughing, trying to catch his breath. Moving his hand mechanically through his hair, taking off the locks glued to his sweaty forehead, he sees her through the window, curled up on the seat, her face buried in her arms, and hesitates to drag her out to make her regret her ingratitude. But when he suddenly opens the door, she does not react, she does not turn around like a fury to defend herself, and that brings him back to that morning in the woods, when he thought she was dead. The same oppressive sensation he felt then grips his chest, and he forgets for a moment that she was on the brink of suffocating him, caught in a sudden urge to hold her in his arms.

"Fuck ..." he swears in a sigh, slamming the door sharply and going back behind the wheel without looking back.

The beast will not move from the trip. Pierce will not know that she cried to exhaustion until she fell asleep. She will refuse to admit it when she straighten up, her eyes swollen, because she does not do that, animals do not cry, why would she?

"What the hell are you crying about?" He asks with a mocking pout, turning to face her after stopping the vehicle.

Frowning, the beast gives him an angry look before putting her wrists to her mouth and biting the plastic link until it breaks, spitting it in the direction of Pierce with an air of defiance.

He looks down at the tie between the seats and raises an eyebrow.
"What took you so long, baby?" he sneers disdainfully before getting out of the car.

When he opens the rear door to tell her to come down, he suddenly seems exhausted, the orange rays of the setting sun furrow under his red eyes and his footsteps are heavy, and his feet drag and stir the dust that strews the ground.

"What's the problem?" He asks the beast, leaning on the door jamb, trying to sound and look compassionate over his glasses.

She does not know what to answer. At once surprised and distrustful of this sudden kindness, no matter how forced it is on Pierce's part, but also because she does not know herself what caused such a relaxation in her, as if she could not help it. She was not even sure what had triggered it, the fact that she had almost killed the only person she had ever cared for, or to realize that, despite their strange compulsive attraction, they could never be together, for their own good.

So she says nothing and gets out of the car without a look at Pierce who shakes his head with a sigh of exasperation as she passes.

He takes a travel bag from the trunk of the SUV and then goes ahead to a blue door, similar to all the other blue doors that line up from side to side. A motel.

She enters a room that smells stale and dusty and where there is a bed, huge in his eyes, on which Pierce throws the bag and his glasses. On the side there is a table under the window and a brown armchair with a tattered fabric. At he back of the room, a door leads to what must be a bathroom. It does not seem more welcoming than the room where she was forcibly washed in Transingen, not so long ago, a month or two but it seems to her to be part of another life now.

"You see, this is a room, a bed, a table ..." he begins to enumerate sarcastically, pointing at the objects.

"What ?!" he exclaims to the furious gaze of the beast, raising his arms with a theatrical gesture, "I only make sure that you still know what a civilized life looks like, darling, because your little trips to the woods it's over if you want to stay alive. "

His expression had become very serious at that moment, but she could feel the anger in his voice, and his eyes, usually jokers, looked at her implacably.

It was unbearably hot in this room, bathed in the setting sun, which seemed to make the air red and unbreathable. Pierce did not seem to realize the nervousness he caused in her, raising his voice on her in such a confined and unusual space. This is an unknown territory for the beast. She does not know how to behave, she wants to snuggle into a deep black hole but there is nothing here that looks like this, and Pierce is there and he continues to talk to her, to lecture her with a voice strong and angry but she does not listen anymore and starts prowling around the room with clenched fists, spinning around like a caged tiger.

"Sara, stay fucking focused!" Pierce suddenly shouts.

She stops dead and faces him: "How did you call me?"

"How am I supposed to call you, sweetie, you never told me! You know that humans have names, do you?"

With a sudden gesture Pierce opens the bag he had placed on the bed and takes out a file that he throws on the table. He opens it and pulls out a card with a picture of her.

"Sara, it's your name and you'd better stick to it and not forget it, because that's what your IDs say from now on..." he continues with a smile which expresses no sympathy.

"It's not me ..." she starts shaking her head.

"I don't give a damn, sweetheart, it's the price to pay to stay alive. Forests, jungles, shrubs, Rice will rake everything to find you. You will have to live like a normal person, starting now : wear goggles and gloves, not smiling, not feeding on the fucking squirrels, all the mess! "

She is now trampling, she suffocates. She cannot believe what he tells her, it must be a new form of torture that Rice has found.

"There, you'll call this number," he says, showing a piece of paper that he puts on the table without softness "tomorrow, as soon as I get you off at the bus station, this person is helping people like you. Take tickets for the destination that you will be told, that you will pay in cash" he noisily slams an envelope on the pile of other documents, filled with banknotes.

She jumps, "Stop, Stop that shit!"
Her voice is torn as she screams, holding her head in her hands. She rushes into the bathroom and slams the door before banging it, putting the hinges to the test.

"Perfect, you learn fast, baby! Very human like reaction!" he shouts, screaming through the door, before kicking the bed that slips on the carpet in a crack, before leaving the room, slamming the door too.

An unappreciated cigarette later, Pierce is back in the room. She did not leave the bathroom. He slumps into the chair and massages his temples with an upset mine. After hours on the road and attempted murder by the mutant he was trying to save in spite of herself, he might as well abandon everything and let it go. But it does not even cross his mind. He is just exhausted and tries to release the tension that has built up in his shoulders. Being in this room with her makes him nervous too, her unpredictability, her state and the ruthless creature she can become are not made to reassure him. But what worries him most is the appeal of her body. Like a magnet that attracts him, he could only think of that earlier, her flesh and softness, when she had wrapped her arms around him in a hug that was far from sensual in the car, and yet.

"Damn fool ..." he sighs, rubbing his eyes.

He had been back in the room for a while now and had not moved since, from what she could hear. She had taken a shower, a strange feeling far from being unpleasant when she is a volunteer. She had thought, she had made a decision.

She goes out, the skin still wet and surrounded in a towel that had to know better days. Pierce is slumped on the armchair, his head leaning back on the backrest, his hands resting on the armrests, asleep.

She barely advances in silence on the carpet that he suddenly raises his head, his soldier's senses still sharpened. She freezes and scrutinizes his face, indecipherable in the darkness that now reigns in the room. He does not seem disoriented and looks at her as she moves slowly towards him, letting the towel slip on the floor.

He holds out an arm towards the wall near him and activates a switch that lights the bulb of the bedside table, dimly illuminating the room with a yellow glow. Then rest his hand on the armrest, as if nothing had happened. His eyes roam the body of the beast without letting any emotion emerge. These weeks spent undergoing tests have made her a little emaciated but firm muscles still roll under her matte skin. Her slow, assured step and her eyes gleaming in the semi-darkness give her a feline look that he did not know. He only notices that her hair has grown. She still has this black and shapeless hair but, so wet, it almost touches her shoulders now.

She reaches him, holding her breath as he stares at her belly, and finally he moves, carrying his metal fingers on the new scar there, left by the wolves. Under the tips of his fingers, the soft sensors perceive the roughness of the skin and he remembers how she saved his life that night. That makes them certainly even.

Eyes down on Pierce, standing between his legs apart, the beast breathes only when he gently lays his lips on her belly. There is no more anger in him. He puts his hands on her waist, squeezing her hips and pulling her to the chair, forcing her to rest her knees on his thighs and stick her sex against his chest. Running through her bruised skin with kisses, his hands caress her back, down to her buttocks, and massage her thighs up to her crotch where he lets his fingers linger, gently first, then by pressure more and more supported, tightening his embrace around her eagerly, burying his face in her abdomen as if he wanted to take refuge there.

Curled on his face, hands lost in his hair, she feels his breath hot and panting against her skin, reviving the fire that consumes her from the inside every time he touches her, the tingling of his beard that claws her when he rubs his face against her. Deep breaths lift his trembling back, in a mixture of relief and excitement. It is so hot in this room but her flesh shivers from the blood that boils in her veins. She would like to see his eyes, to know what they are expressing now. Grabbing his hair, the beast pulls his face back against the chair. Above his flushed cheeks, his blue eyes devour her as if she was a vital substance to his existence. His parted lips beg her without a word to feed on him in return.

"You're the worst thing that ever happened to me," she murmurs in a feverish breath on his face, planting her eyes in his.

His lips stretch in a slight, knowing smile; the feeling is reciprocal, before he draws to him the face of the beast and kisses her mouth greedily, invading it with his tongue, mixing his breath with hers while she moans under the pressure he exerts against her pelvis.

Pierce lifts her up suddenly, carries her hanging around his waist onto the bed where he drops on her. Pushing the bag unceremoniously down the floor with a thud, he kisses her and kneads her in his strong hands. His heavy body on hers, she restrains from tearing his clothes apart in that frantic haste so familiar to them now. The urge to touch his skin is almost unbearable.

She needs him stronger than ever before. She's been craving for him for so long. As time passed by, in her rare moments of awareness at that awful place where Rice had kept her, she had felt more and more eager to feel whole again, in the arms of the only being that releases the human in her. It all comes back to her now. Almost feeding on his scent, on all the skin she can touch and taste, she grabs his body wishing she had hundreds of hands. She curls up her body against his, marrying the shape of it, its posture, sucking his sighs and moans like so many things she will keep deep inside her to never forget.

It is so hot in this room but never this heat will be as intense as that created by the friction of their bodies, insatiably hungry of each other.

It is not the noise that has awakened him, but his absence. The glow that he distinguishes by opening his eyes tells him that the day has risen, but it is the absence of warmth at his side that makes him suspicious, sweeping the room with a glance still clouded by sleep.
He is alone.

Putting the thoughts flowing in his mind on pause, he gets up in a hurry and fails to stumble on the rolled-up blanket on the floor as he rushes into the bathroom. Empty.

With a mechanical gesture, he puts on the trousers that had landed on the armchair and rushes open the door of the room. The sun is still chilly, its pale rays shave the lunar landscape that surrounds the small motel erected in the middle of the dust. But nothing moves.

Still refusing to hear the evidence hammering his brain, he returns to the room. The travel bag and the documents folder are gone. All he had brought for her, carried away. There is nothing left on the table but a piece of paper, with worn edges, almost crumpled by the so many times he has contemplated it since he stole it from one of the files on Rice's desk, two weeks ago. The two small clusters of whitish cells, so close and yet distinct, that spring on this murky black background, had been the ultimate trigger, the weight that had crushed all his doubts. He had to get her out of there, he had to save her, save them. She and the children she was carrying. Their children.

And they were gone now. He would never know where or when she would leave. He only knew that she knew. She had left that image as a goodbye letter saying that she understood and that everything would be fine.

Concentration is all he will need to lock up and forget the pain and regret in the hollow that forms in his chest. Not to think of the bitter taste in his mouth every time he wakes up realizing that he will not look at her again that day, that he will not touch her, that he will not know that piece of him that she carried away. Perhaps he will need a good dose of self-denial to pretend to look for her, constantly surveying the places where they have possessed each other, looking for traces that he will know not to find.

But it is the relief that prevails for the moment. She would probably only think of herself in the next few days but she would eventually follow the plan he had worked out for her, he is convinced. She had already taken matters into her own hands, avoiding them an annoying goodbye that would be so unlike them. Hunters like them do not languish; they do what they have to do.

So he does not linger in the room. He does not realize the absence of the tank top he was wearing the day before when picking his things, before taking the wheel, the course of his life he knows will not be quite the same anymore, but it does not matter. Pierce returns his glasses and his insolent smile on his face and resumes his mission, that of catching her kind.