1
Kess
I wakeup covered in blood that isn't mine, my mouth tasting of copper and flesh.
Ferns and moss press to my cheek, damp with early morning dew. The forest is quiet all around me, the soft sigh of the wind the only sound. It's just before dawn, when nocturnal hunters rest and the creatures of the day have barely begun to stir.
I'm naked, of course, save for the shredded remains of what used to be a shirt. The fabric hangs in tatters around my waist like I tried to claw my way out of my own skin, which for all I know I did.
There are leaves stuck to my shoulders. Twigs tangled in my hair. And my hands?—
My hands are sticky with blood both dried and drying, turning tacky and dark in the creases of my palms. It flakes off as I stretch my fingertips, checking my nails to find that they've turned back to the round, blunted version they are when I'm not... whatever it is I become when I'm in heat.
As I push myself upright, the world tilts for a moment. I gag on the rush of saliva that pools in the back of my mouth. Something is caught between my teeth—fur, I realize withdistant horror as I work it loose with my tongue and spit it into my palm.
Wolf fur. Gray-brown, coarse.
I look for its source. Three feet to my left, there's what's left of the wolf.
I don't remember killing it. Don't remember the hunt, catching it, bringing it down, tearing into it with my bare hands and teeth. The last thing I remember is running into the forest as the sun set yesterday, rage building like a wildfire in my chest, vision going red at the edges.
Then nothing.
Then this.
I never remember. That's the worst part—the complete blank space where my memory should be during the heat. Like someone else takes over my body and I'm just... gone. And when I come back, there's always blood. Sometimes mine, always something else's, as my nails grow sharp during heat and my canines turn to animal fangs, making it easier for my otherwise human body to tear through even an apex predator's body.
The wolf's throat has been torn open, viscera and sinew hanging, flaps of flesh exposing pink and red meat. Like someone or something—and the thing is me—grabbed the flesh and just ripped. Its ribcage is cracked and spread, bones splintered outward, and there's blood everywhere, soaking into the ground and the moss, splattered against nearby tree trunks and pooling in piles of dried leaves.
And, of course, on me.
I've seen plenty of death, becoming intimately familiar with it. I've gutted deer, skinned rabbits, carved up boar. I know what violence looks like when humans do it with purpose and tools.
This is different. It's feral and unhinged, the kind of violence that isn't appeased by death—plenty of those wounds happened post-mortem—and serves no purpose save violence itself.
This is what I become when the heat takes over and the human parts of me go somewhere else.
My grandmother used to tell me stories about omegas like me. Wild ones, she called them. Fierce. But she died when I was young, before she could explain what that meant, or why our family hid in the wilderness for generations before settling here.
The first time I went into heat, I began to understand why. So did Old Gertrude a few houses down—it was her chicken coop I got into and her hens I ate.
I stand on sore, aching legs and take inventory. Scratches on my arms and shoulders, no doubt from running through thistle and brush. Bruises blooming on my knees and shins. A bite mark on my shoulder that can only be from the wolf—an attempt at self-defense that it failed at, because from what little I can remember of my blackout heats, being in pain only makes me stronger.
Nothing serious. Nothing that won't heal.
The wolf got the worst of it.
"I'm sorry," I tell its corpse, because apparently I've reached the point in my life where I apologize to things I've killed. "You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Like me, I suppose.
The sun is starting to rise now, pale light filtering through the forest canopy. I need to get back to the village before anyone sees me like this. Before they remember what I am, what I do when the heat comes.
I find my pants twenty yards away, hanging from a low branch like I threw them there in my frenzy to get free, covered in blood splatter. My boots are nowhere in sight—new leather boots I can't afford to replace. Fantastic. I pull on the pants and start picking my way through the forest barefoot, heading for the stream where I can wash the evidence off my skin.
The Black Forest doesn't scare me the way it scares most people. Whenever I've woken up here after one of my heats, the creatures of the forest give me a wide berth. It's as if they spread the message that I'm back, on the hunt again, and decide I'm not the kind of prey they're looking for.
The wolf must've been sick, old or injured. Otherwise it never would've let me near it. Perhaps in the end its death was a kind of mercy killing.
