Eyes wide, I stumble, then manage to right myself. I turn my head, desperate to continue my frantic dash but have to backpedal frantically when I find there is a raider right in my path.
As I come to a stop, another wolf leaps from the shadows. This one is huge, black, with flashes of silver—bared teeth already dripping blood and, it seems, an ungodly hunger for more. A vicious snarl erupts as he transitions to a werebeast and tears into the man before me, shaking the life from him and spraying the frosty street with blood.
I am transfixed by the scene playing out before me, unable to move, even to speak. The beast lifts his bloody snout from his kill and straightens to his full, towering height. Brilliant blue eyes meet mine, and an awareness blooms within me that cuts through the terror.
It is like I can hear his steady heart beating in my chest; it calms me, slows the pounding in mine until it matches his…
Frantic shouts go up from the garrison side of the square. His head swings toward the sound; his lip curls, and he growls. It snaps me out of my daze. Instantly the feeling of safety deserts me; once more my heart is racing double time. Driven by an imperative to escape the violence and the fearsome beasts, I run on.
Before I can reach its sanctuary, there is a whoosh, and one of its workshops goes up in flames. Sparks leap into the air and are carried in the wind. Someone screams.
Flinching, I veer away from this new danger. Ahead is the forest: quiet, dark—no sounds of fighting there. In my chaotic state of mind, it represents safety. Branches catch at my nightdress and dressing gown, but I keep running until my lungs and thighs burn, and I can run no more.
Panting, I drop to my knees at the base of an ancient oak.
Only now, as my panic recedes, do I take in where I am.
In the forest.
After dark.
Fresh dread settles as I realize that the charm Mistress Nina gave me—and beseeched me to wear—is back at home, tucked deep into the pocket of my dress.
I huddle, shivering, beneath a fallen bough of the old oak tree. The bark is rough against my back. The chill air nips at my skin, laced with frost and smoke. But it isn’t the cold that makes me tremble. It’s the sound of screams still echoing in my mind. When I close my eyes, I see flashes of what passed: the wild facesof raiders, their blades slick with blood; I hear again the cruel laughter of men who kill for sport.
And then came the wolves.
A sob escapes me. Poor Mistress Nina. I can only pray she reached safety, that the fires and chaos have not devoured her.
I huddle alone in the forest, shivering, not daring to venture back. My arms and legs are bloody in a few places where the branches scraped my skin as I ran, guided here by instinct and not a whit of common sense.
I cannot know whether those who have fallen in the square were raiders or innocent people from the town. The thought strikes me that, if not for the wolves, I might already be dead, or worse.
They came, just as Mistress Nina said, for Merrywood is under their ward.
I press myself deeper into the roots of the oak, too terrified to move. The night consumes me, every sound magnified, from the wind whistling through the tops of the bare trees to the faint rustle of something unseen watching from the shadows.
Should I go back?
I tell myself it must be over by now. And besides, some raiders may have fled in this direction. Even without Mistress Nina’s warnings, I know the woods are assuredly not safe.
And yet my body will not obey. All I do is shiver harder until my teeth begin to chatter. Cold seeps into my bones, and my joints grow stiff.
Something stirs beyond the trees, a presence unknown. I don’t have a sense of danger exactly, more an awareness that I am no longer alone
A flicker at the edge of my vision startles me. My eyes search the shadows. Is someone there? One of the raiders? Maybe one of the townsfolk or a soldier saw me running and has come looking for me.
Only, a good person would call out…
The forest is quiet except for the rasp of my breathing and the creak of ancient trees in the wind.
A rustle—soft and deliberate—accompanies a shape emerging between the trees.
A wolf. Black with silver flashes and a dark stain around its muzzle. Enormous. The wolf who saved me. My trembling worsens, teeth clacking furiously together.
He is not a true wolf, for no ordinary wolf would be so huge. Inside him is a man… along with a dread-inspiring werebeast.
“For all they have a human side,”Mistress Nina told me,“The wolves in these parts are wilder than most, more in tune with their animal. Although they can shift forms, they rarely do.”
