"It’s nonsense," someone else says, louder now, as if volume can steady the room. "She fell. Her face struck the ground. The soil went in. That is all."
"She could have gasped when the wolf tore her," another agrees quickly. "There was blood. It—"
"Blood does not pack soil into a throat," the first woman whispers, her voice shaking.
"Enough!" Mama’s voice cuts through, strained. "Do not invite evil by naming it. The men will find the wolf," she adds. "They will kill it. Do not make foolish tales out of grief."
"Yes," someone echoes. "It is a beast. Nothing more."
The candles gutter in the draft from the open windows. Wax spills over fingers. Rosaries click against bone.
I stand frozen, staring at the dark soil lodged between Irina’s teeth. My mind slips. I see trees instead of walls. Moonlight instead of flame. A face bending close. White teeth on the throat of a deer. Red eyes catching the light.
Witch. Enchan—
A dull thud cuts through the noise. A body hitting the floor.
Elena lies crumpled beside the bench, skirts tangled beneath her, hair spilling across the packed earth. Her face is drained of colour, lips parted, eyes closed.
"Elena," I am at her side before I feel my feet move. "Elena, wake."
Her head lolls against my arm, her lashes rest pale against her cheeks. Around us, the women fall silent again, their fear shifting shape. Someone moves to fetch water. Someone else begins to pray louder.
And the earth still clings to Irina’s mouth.
Chapter Six
The woods breathe around us.
Cold air slides along my bare arms, yet my skin burns where his hands rest. Pale fingers slide along my waist, my ribs, my throat. They know the paths of me. They move with a certainty that unravels whatever holds me together.
His hair spills over my shoulder, drag across my throat, soft as smoke. A mouth finds my ear, words pouring into me in a low murmur I cannot untangle and yet understand in my bones. The sound alone slides travels through my body, slipping beneath skin and breath. My spine arches toward it.
His lips follow the curve of my throat. A slow press. A lingering taste. My pulse leaps beneath his mouth, rises to meet the rhythm of it. A shiver spreads through me and does not fade. It deepens. It opens me. I lean back into him without thought.
Teeth press to my skin, and for a heartbeat, I understand.
The shape before me is wrong for a man. The breath, rougher, the scent stronger. I feel it then—the wolf at my throat—and the knowledge settles into me without fear. The pleasure does not break. It deepens. Its jaws close gently and the pull begins.
There is no pain. Only a slow sweetness that spreads from the bite and floods my limbs. The trees blur as the sensation unfurls slowly, lifts me out of myself. I tilt my face to the sky and the moon hangs above me, white and endless.
A smile spreads across my lips without effort. The pull at my neck deepens. Each beat of my pulse sends another wave through me. I sway inside it, suspended, held fast between the cold night air and the burning point of his mouth. My breath spills from my mouth in quiet bursts that turn to laughter before I understand the sound.
Leaves whisper. Branches sway. My blood answers in kind.
And the world shifts.
The ground slides beneath my feet. The trees lean. The moon stretches wide and thin across the sky. My hands are no longer empty. Something warm coats them.
I am crouched in the leaves. The taste of iron floods my mouth.
My teeth sink into flesh and the warmth floods in—rich, overwhelming. It fills my throat, my chest, my belly. The hunger inside me opens and opens again, and I drink until the world spins.
Fullness swells through me, and I lift my head.
Across from me, another body kneels in the moonlight.
Her throat is torn open. Blood runs down her neck and gathers along her collarbone. Her hair clings to the wound in dark strands. Her hands tremble faintly where they press against the earth.
