Of Wolves and Wardens by Sylvia Mercedes

I’m a monster.

Lost in a tangle of flashing teeth, slashing claws, fur and sweat and always—always—blood.

The pulse of blood rushing in my veins.

The delicious stink of blood staining my opponent’s fur.

The need for blood, thick and sweet on my tongue.

I pound the snarling red face in front of me, the force of my huge paw knocking the red werebeast off balance. Dreg. Her name is Dreg. I’ve known her for years. We aren’t friends but have been fellow prisoners. Up until this morning.

This morning, when she was set free.

She staggers, regains her footing, and lunges at me. Though she’s smaller than me by nearly a head, her desperation propels her with tremendous force, slamming into my body. Her long arms wrap around me, claws tearing into the fur on my back. She tries to get her head under my chin, tries to get her jaws locked on my throat.

I throw her off. Her tail lashes wildly as she tries to catch her balance, but I’m too quick. I leap, catch her by the shoulders, and drive her into the dirt. She’s pinned beneath me, her eyes hopeless and pulsing with red curse-glow.

Dire!

She doesn’t speak with human words. She doesn’t have to. She speaks in the language of beasts, a growling, guttural language spoken as much with the flick of an ear as with any sound.

Dire, please!

I stare down at her. At this creature who is like me. Cursed. Forsaken by the gods. A fellow monster. My breath comes in hot, panting gusts. Foam drips from my lips, my teeth, spattering in her fur.

Then, for an instant, her face seems to transform. As though peering through a hazy veil of reality, I see the truth of what she is beneath the curse. Not Dreg anymore. Just a young woman. A frightened young woman. Who never deserved any of this.

Please, Dire! she begs. Let me kill her!

Snarling, I back up, lifting my weight from Dreg’s body. She scrambles into a crouch, and I flash my teeth in warning. Her gaze is so wild, so vicious, I can no longer discern any trace of her former humanity.

Get out of here, I growl. You’re free now. You no longer serve the witch. Get out of here while you can.

She shakes her head, spraying droplets of blood and foam. Her eyes spark with madness, and . . . and are those tears? I hope not. Gods on high, how I hope not!

You know it’s a lie, she says. There is no freedom for us. She will send that one. Dreg swings her head toward the young huntress lying beneath the hickory tree. It’s all the same for us in the end.

She’s right, of course. I know it as well as she does.

But I also know that killing this huntress will do no good. If she’s dead, the witch will simply send another in her place. She always will.

Go, I repeat. You don’t have much time. Find a way to live away from here. Away from all this.

She holds my gaze for a long, terrible moment. In her eyes, I see myself reflected—the great, gray bulk of me. Massive and hideous and terrible.

A whimper vibrating in her throat, Dreg rises and flees into the forest, hunched over on all fours. I watch her go until the red gleam of her coat disappears into the shadows.Someday, sooner rather than later, I will be fleeing too. And who will be sent to hunt me down then?

I swing my head around, focusing my gaze on the girl beneath the tree. She’s propped on her elbows, staring at me, her mouth hanging open. There’s a small cut on her cheek, a line of fresh red blood. My nostrils flare, breathing in the smell. Urgent instinct churns in my gut.

But I’m under orders. Orders I cannot help but obey.

“Are you all right?” I ask. The words are strange coming through my muzzle and teeth. But the day has progressed far enough that I can make myself understood with only some difficulty. A few hours earlier, only a series of growls would have emerged.

The girl blinks. Her teeth flash in a grimace. “You let it get away!”

I don’t answer. Why should I? I sit heavily on my haunches and watch her pick herself up. She tosses a snarl of hair out of her flushed face, her fingers brushing the line of blood into an ugly smear across her cheek. She’s a slender, angular thing, too thin for her frame. But every move she makes hints at hidden strength. A graceful strength not unlike that of a caged wildcat. And the glare she fixes on me is downright ferocious.

Not ferocious enough, however, to disguise her fear. That, she cannot hide. Fear rolls off her in a stink that my sensitive nose cannot mistake. She may posture all she likes, but her scent betrays her every time.

“You let it get away!” she snarls again, squaring off in front of me. Her fists clench as though ready to do battle. Foolish creature. Doesn’t she know I could break her in half with a single swipe of my arm? “What were you thinking? You had it right there.”

My lip curls. “Dreg’s murder is your task, little huntress, not mine. I’m merely charged with seeing that you don’t die in the process.”

Another burst of strong scent erupts from her, a stench of anger almost strong enough to overwhelm her fear. There are no words in human tongue to clearly describe the way that scent affects me. Humans simply don’t deal in scented emotion, so they’ve never developed the language with which to express it. To me, it’s almost as though the girl is suddenly surrounded in a raw, red aura.

“My dying or not is my business,” she says. Though her smell is hot, her voice has gone cold, dark. “And I’ll thank you to stay out of it next time.”

I huff a stream of air through my nostrils. “Sorry to contradict you, Miss Dorrel, but your life isn’t your business anymore. You swore your service to Granny Dorrel. Thus, your life is her business.”

I watch the angry flush drain from her face, leaving behind a sickly pallor. Her eyes seem suddenly lost in dark hollows.

“Miss Normas,” she says.

I flick an ear at her. “Pardon?”

“Miss Normas. Not Dorrel.”

“You are Granny’s granddaughter.”

“Yeah, well, I might share her blood. Doesn’t mean I have to share her name.”

With that, the girl turns from me and stomps over to the old hickory tree under which she fell while fleeing Dreg. She viciously kicks the base of the trunk and, hands still clenched in fists, stares into the branches overhead. “How’d you like that?” she shouts. “Tripping a person midflight. Nasty trick to play, and what did I ever do to you? Now give me back my bow!”

I watch her, wondering. I’ve never known a human to be so strangely comfortable within the bounds of Whispering Wood. I’ve lived in the shadows of the Wood for nearly twenty years now. But even I, beast that I am, infused with enough rotten magic to make even the fae wary of me, wouldn’t dare speak to any of the forest trees with such audacity.

But the girl goes on bullying and haranguing that poor hickory until finally its branches rustle, and something drops at her feet. It’s her bow. A sturdy recurve bow with a red grip.

When she picks it up, it falls into two pieces in her hands. The string hangs in limp strands.

“Thanks for nothing,” the girl snaps and kicks the tree once more for good measure. Though her booted foot couldn’t have done any real damage, the tree shudders, the roots just beneath the soil rippling uncomfortably. It seems to utter a faint sigh of relief when she turns and stomps away from it. I even see it draw one branch back as though to hit her . . . but decides better and settles down into stillness.

The girl inspects her broken weapon, pretending to ignore my presence. A foolish pretense. I can clearly smell her every sense prickling with awareness of me.

“You’ll have to give up this hunt,” I say. “You cannot bring down a werebeast without a weapon.”

“You think?” She shoots me another one of those vicious glares. Then she heaves a frustrated sigh and bundles the broken ends of the bow together, leaning them across her shoulder. “Looks like it’s back to Granny’s for me. You can make yourself scarce. I’m not likely to need any more of your protection.” She spits the last word out bitterly.

I shrug. It’s an odd movement in this bestial body of mine. But as the day progresses toward dusk, more and more of my human shape is returning, and with it, those unconscious human gestures. “My assignment is to watch over you.”

Her lip curls. Many times in the past few weeks since she came to stay at the ward witch’s house, I’ve thought she would make a fine wolf. A better wolf than me, in fact. Though, after nearly twenty years, I scarcely remember a time when I wasn’t the beast I am now. Perhaps those long-ago hazy days were nothing more than a dream.

“Do as you please then,” the girl says and, with a firm set to her jaw, stalks off into the forest.

“My pleasure has nothing to do with it,” I mutter, falling into step behind her. I’m not entirely certain where she’s going. The ward witch’s house lies in the opposite direction of her current route. Then again, the girl never seems to move through Whispering Wood in the most straightforward manner but somehow always manages to arrive at her destination. It’s strange how naturally she fits into this world, human though she is.

But then, she is Elorata Dorrel’s granddaughter. A creature of magic and malice by nature.

Bile rises in my throat as I pad through the underbrush after the girl. Despite my best efforts, base animal instincts churn in my blood—instincts that tell me prey walks before me, her back to me. She ought to flee . . . and I ought to chase. It’s the way things are, the way things will always be. I can almost feel the delight of my own massive feet tearing into the soil when I break into swift pursuit. I can feel the joy of the moment I knock her to the ground, pinning her beneath me, the warm sweetness of her blood on my tongue as I sink my teeth into the soft flesh of her neck. The crack of bone, the tear of muscle beneath my jaws.

It’s what I’m meant for. It’s what I was created to be. A beast of bloodlust.

But it wasn’t always this way. And deep down—down where a man’s heart still beats—I find the will to resist.

I shake my heavy head, forcing my wolf’s gaze into submission and my human gaze to take dominance. Swimming into clarity before me comes a fresh image—the same girl, but as seen by a man, not a beast. A tall, slender, strong girl, undeniably womanly despite the aggression seething through every pore of her body. Her hair has fallen loose from the tight knot in which she habitually keeps it and tumbles in tangled waves down her back. Ribbons of bright red, like an autumnal forest.

My heart gives a strange thud in my breast.

But I know what this feeling is: hatred. Pure hatred. Hatred of this girl, this huntress. This witch’s spawn.

My enemy.