by Loki Renard
The wolf approached Lorcan, pressed its nose to his hand, and made a grunting sound that was clear in the night air. A soft murmur was all she could hear of Lorcan’s response. It seemed to mean something.
Before Hannah’s astounded eyes, the wolf began to change shape and size. It grew smaller, the fur faded from its limbs and the long snout retracted toward a face that was quickly becoming human. Halfway between man and animal it looked like a tortured thing, grunting with what seemed to be pain. As the change continued the utterances started sounding more human and finally the creature rose on two feet and stood erect, a man in every respect and portion of his anatomy.
She could not believe it. It was literally unbelievable. A beast had turned into a man. There were legends, of course there were legends about such things, but Hannah had never believed them. Nobody believed them, because such tales were not possible. And yet her wide eyes were looking at a naked man standing proudly in front of Lorcan, a man who had not been there before the wolf’s arrival. A werewolf. A real, live werewolf.
As she watched, several of the other people started to disrobe. Lorcan was still dressed, but next to him his sister Sacha was one of the ones taking her clothes off. Hannah watched thoroughly entranced as the woman’s lithe naked body came into view, along with the equally toned bodies of the others. They were all in excellent shape.
And then they too began to change, reversing the process she had just borne witness to. They crouched down and their bodies grew longer and thicker. Their faces transformed from human to carnivore, teeth elongating, mouths becoming snouts. It was no less shocking the second time than it had been the first. If anything, it was more horrifying, for the first time Hannah might have been able to tell herself that she had merely imagined it, that her brain was in some fevered state from extended travel, some deep form of homesickness that made her fancy that a big dog had become a man. But now at least six wolves stood on Lorcan’s front lawn, crowding about the naked newcomer, licking his bare body, sniffing him with great interest.
It was obviously their form of greeting, and now that they were wolves, Hannah felt her shock subsiding again. It was as if her mind simply could not understand what it was seeing, and as soon as the creatures before her became either one thing or the other it immediately asserted that the transition had not happened at all. And yet she knew it had.
As Hannah tried to come to terms with what she had seen, one of the wolves broke away from the pack and began to circle more widely around the group. It was a very dark wolf that seemed to almost disappear when Hannah moved the binoculars from her face. She was fairly certain that it was Sacha. There was something about its demeanor that reminded her of the woman.
Hannah hunkered down in her hiding place and though the wolf was still a long way off, tried not to breathe too loud or make anything in the way of noise. The wolf seemed to be looking for something, and Hannah didn’t know if it was merely making a security minded pass, searching for a succulent bunny, or if perhaps Sacha had sensed her in some intangible way.
With every step Sacha the wolf took, Hannah became more convinced that it was the latter option. As the moon came out from behind dark clouds, she no longer needed the binoculars to see the creature drawing nearer to her, golden eyes lit by the silver light. The wolf’s mouth was open, nostrils lifted high as it tasted the air.
Fear shot through Hannah’s belly, a primal fear that only a human who has been hunted by a much more powerful beast can ever know. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest she was almost certain that it was audible outside her body.
Sacha the wolf lowered her head and for the briefest of moments, their eyes met. Even at a distance of at least fifty feet, Hannah knew she had been seen. The time for sitting very still and hoping not to be noticed was over. She had been scented, and the only way to escape was to run. She pushed up from the ground, tossed the binoculars at the fence, and hurtled into the embrace of Darkwood Heath.
She ran for all she was worth, her survival hinging on flight. Behind her she could hear the four-footed landings of a beast gaining with every second that passed. As fast as Hannah was, the thing behind her was faster still.
With an animal cry of what sounded like blood lust and triumph, a baying glee that made Hannah’s stomach churn, the wolf launched itself through the air, heavy paws landing with the force of a truck against her shoulders. Hannah screamed at the top of her lungs as she was knocked to the ground and then she was silent, the wind driven from her body as slavering fangs snapped at the back of her neck. Unable to so much as whimper, let alone cry out, Hannah felt moss and dirt between her teeth, bloodied lips ground against the dirt as the heavy body on her back pinned her in place even as it shifted from wolf to woman.
“You little bitch.” Sacha’s cold tones hissed in Hannah’s ear. “I knew I’d get the chance to finish you if I only waited long enough. You are a fool. You should have left when you had the chance.”
She stood and turned Hannah over with a rough kick to her ribs, leaving Hannah wheezing for breath on her back. Pain was arcing through her body, her ribs likely cracked from the fall if not from the kick, her mouth bloodied, every breath painful.
Sacha reached down and clamped her hand around Hannah’s neck, squeezing at her windpipe.
“No mortal can see what we are,” Sacha hissed. “So will you die and be whelped, or will you simply die?”
Hannah did not understand the question. Her mind was flailing for escape and finding none. She could not form a word, let alone work out what Sacha meant.
“Leave her be!”
Lorcan’s order shook the earth. His rage was a terrible, tangible thing that gave Sacha momentary pause as he strode toward them, still dressed in his impeccable suit. He looked severe and strong and relief flowed through Hannah in a great wave as a sense of safety returned. Lorcan obviously controlled these wolves. He was not a beast like them, but he could rule over them. If he could not, he would surely already be dead.
“Get off her, Sacha,” he ordered in clipped angry tones when he was still several strides away. Sacha obeyed in part, rising from Hannah’s battered form to face the angry alpha with pure defiance.
“Step away from her,” Lorcan repeated.
“No,” Sacha flared. “Your time is over, Lorcan. Mine is just beginning. And it will start with this little bitch living or dying according to my will.”
He shook his head curtly. “I told you, there will be no conversions. Our pack will be born, not made.”
“I don’t care what you told me, Lorcan,” Sacha growled. “Do you not understand? The time has come for you to leave. Take your little bitch and go, or watch me slash her throat with my fangs.”
“Lorcan,” Hannah wheezed. “Help me…”
Sacha crouched down and backhanded her, a hard slap that rang out through the cold air. Hannah’s cry of pain was a thin wail that carried through the night and was ultimately punctuated by a fierce growl as Lorcan reached the end of his tether.
He did not shift painfully and gradually as the others had. He flowed from man into beast. There was the sound of ripping cloth and then the snarl of a wolf twice the size of the one Sacha had been. Sacha frantically tried to shift too, stumbling and tumbling over feet and then paws as Lorcan bounded atop her.
He had the advantage in weight, power, and sheer fury, his anger expressed in animal form. Sacha was smaller, but more vicious. Her jaws were aimed at his jugular, her baying cries full of fury and blood. Hannah covered her eyes, shocked out of her senses. The battle going on before her was brutal, snarling and growling filling her ears and making her muscles weak with fear. She was nothing but prey, her life hanging in the balance between two predators.
The two wolves rolled over and over, teeth flashing, lips pulled back in furious snarls. Though she acquitted herself well, it soon became obvious that Sacha had no chance at all. She was no match for her brother, but she could not admit that. Fur flew,
blood began to flow, and still she would not submit, not until Lorcan’s jaws fastened upon her throat and he pinned her there on the earth, his canines poised atop her jugular.
For a moment it seemed as though he would kill her, but he stilled his jaws and instead held her there until it was obvious to all that she had been utterly bested. Sacha let out a whine of defeat and it was over.
Lorcan flowed back to human form and looked down at his fallen sister with a furious glare. “I am stripping you of your rank,” he said. “You are the lowest of our number now. You have shamed our father’s legacy and you have disobeyed me for the last time. You will be punished severely for this. Richard! Derrick! Take her away and give her aid! She will need it.”
While the rest of the pack helped Sacha at Lorcan’s bidding, he focused his attention on Hannah. He lifted her gently from the ground, his face twisted with sorrow and anger. “I told you to stay where you were,” he murmured. “Why could you not obey me?”
As he took her in his arms, she began to quake from head to toe, recoiling from Lorcan’s gentle touch with a squeal of panic, which only caused her broken body to send arcs of pain shooting through her nervous system.
“You’re not… you’re not a…”
“Shhh,” Lorcan murmured. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“It’s a lot to worry about!” She would have hurled herself from his arms, but the pain in her chest and side made movement an impossibility. She was wounded, vulnerable, and absolutely petrified.
“I’m still the man you knew,” he soothed her. “Just a little more. And I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”
He repeated the words in a deep baritone, looking her dead in the eye until she felt some part of her mind accept what he was telling her.
“You’re a werewolf,” she rasped through bloodied lips. “You’re a monster.”
“A misunderstood monster, I assure you,” he said with a soft smile that was clearly supposed to put her at ease. She was in far too much pain and still far too terrified to find his comment in any way comforting. She was weak, she was wounded, and all her instincts told her that she was in grave danger.
“I suppose we both have some explaining to do,” he said wryly as he carried her toward the relative safety of the manor.
Trembling with fear and pain, Hannah could feel herself going into a deep shock. Surely what she had seen was not possible. Men were not wolves. Wolves were not men. But maybe these men were wolves. Were-wolves.
An inane giggle rose to her lips at the inner word play, which seemed so out of place as she was carried in limbs that felt human, but that she had seen be something else entirely.
Lorcan took her into the manor and carried her up the stairs, past the portrait of Honoraria. The image of her ancestor there on the wall momentarily anchored her back in the reality she’d thought she’d known.
“That’s her…” she said in shaky tones. “Honoraria. It is her, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Lorcan admitted. “I will explain everything soon. Right now, I need to ensure your safety.” He carried her into a bedroom and laid her down with tender care on a large bed. “Lie still,” he said when she tried to sit up. “You’ve been wounded, possibly you have broken bones. The doctor will be here soon. I’m going to clean the minor cuts, hopefully we can ward off any infection. Sacha didn’t bite you, did she?”
“No,” Hannah said, moving her head ever so little. She lay still, suddenly not feeling much in the way of pain, or of anything really. She felt as though her limbs were heavy, her body one big lump of meat with little in the way of sensation. Lorcan shrugged off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, powerful dark furred forearms coming into view.
“So,” she said dully. “Are you going to beat me for coming back?”
“You are so far past beating,” he said morosely as he left the room momentarily to gather a bowl of warm water, a cloth, and some strong-smelling antiseptic solution.
Hannah didn’t know what he meant and she wasn’t sure she cared. Freed of the shackles of sense, she was simply in the moment, being tended to by a man who she had seen turn into a massive and entirely fearsome wolf. Why not. If people could be people, why couldn’t they be something else?
“I could be a bowl of petunias,” she mused to herself.
“How hard did you hit your head when Sacha took you down?” Lorcan asked the question with concern.
“I don’t know,” Hannah shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters,” he said gently, running his fingers through her hair to check for lumps and possible cuts. “You don’t seem to have any bruising here. Does your head hurt?”
Her head definitely hurt, but not in the physical sense. Her brain was twisted up on itself, flooded with pain signals and lingering fear from having seen that which no sane human ever should be able to see.
As shock faded, she started to feel the pain shooting down the side of her body where Sacha had kicked her. With the pain came anger, and more fear and the beginnings of tears.
“Why was she so mean to me?”
“Sacha is a little beast,” Lorcan scowled. “I am sorry she did what she did. Her senses were heightened and she found you before I could stop her. I should have known you would come back. I should have done more to prevent this.”
He took so much blame upon himself. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said through short breaths. “You told me to stay away.”
“I should have made sure you did. I should have put you on the first plane out of the country,” he said grimly.
“I would have come back no matter how far you sent me.”
He looked down at her and nodded with a sort of sad regret. “Unfortunately, I think you’re right. You were drawn here and you were never going to leave without answers. I’m sorry that they’re not going to be to your liking.”
“You mean the fact that you’re a werewolf? You think I don’t like that?”
“We’re monsters, Hannah. All of us.”
“Some of you,” she corrected him. “Sacha is definitely a monster. You’re not though. You saved me.”
“I saved you from death,” he said. “I can’t save you from the consequences of your decision.”
“Which are?”
“We will speak of that when I am certain you are well. You are wounded.” As he made the last pronouncement the muscles in his jaw were tense. Hannah could sense the anger rolling off him like a physical thing.
She was hurt, there was no denying that. Being hunted by Sacha had left her battered and bruised with an ache that ran the length of her torso whenever she took a breath. But Hannah’s curiosity persisted beyond pain.
“Is that what my great-aunt found out about this place? Is this why she never came back? Did someone like Sacha kill her?”
“We will speak of all of this later,” Lorcan said, stepping away to run a cloth under warm water. He began to gently sponge away the dirt that had been mushed into her face under Sacha’s onslaught. Hannah was glad for the thick clothing she wore; it had no doubt protected her from worse scrapes and bruises. She had not suspected for one moment while buying the thick pants and sweater that they would actually play any role in the evening’s events. As it was, her palms and her face were grazed and dirty. Lorcan cleaned her as best he could, being gentle over the spots that made her hiss with pain.
“Where did Honoraria sleep?”
“You are truly not going to let this go, are you?” he said with a briefly smiling look. “I will give you that, Hannah, you are admirably persistent. Even through the sort of pain that would make most people forget their high ideals.”
“Hopefully the doctor can bring me something to make my ideals higher,” Hannah quipped. “Breathing hurts.”
“You’ve probably broken ribs,” Lorcan said. “Sacha kicked you hard enough to puncture a lung.”
Again his face darkened and
Hannah saw another side of him, a furious anger that was contained by a veneer of civilization, which she knew could fade in an instant. It was strange, but she almost felt sorry for Sacha. Hannah wasn’t sure whether it was the fact that Sacha had attacked her, or that she had challenged Lorcan in doing it that made him angrier. Neither one probably pleased him. He was definitely the sort of man who was accustomed to control.
Hannah coughed weakly, spitting up a blade of grass out of her mouth. She let out a little whine of pain as the motion made her ribcage move and grind in a way that it was not really supposed to.
“Enough of this,” Lorcan muttered. “This will not do.” He strode to the door, opened it, and roared into the darkness. “Get me the doctor! Now!”
The doctor was there within minutes. Hannah did not know if that was coincidence or if he had been somehow summoned by Lorcan’s rage, but she was glad to see him.
He was a kindly looking older man with white hair and a refined accent and gentle hands that slid beneath her sweater and palpated the painful spot on her ribcage. She found herself clinging to Lorcan’s hand tightly and gritting her teeth.
“Well, without an x-ray, the best I can say is that you’ve got cracked ribs,” the doctor pronounced. “There’s no floating motion, so I don’t think they’re broken, but you’ll need to keep her very quiet to give them time to heal. No running about, young lady,” he said, winking down at Hannah.
“Running didn’t do me any good this time,” she said grimly.
“I’ll prescribe something for the pain, and give you a shot now. That should make you more comfortable,” the doctor continued.
“She’s going to be alright?” Lorcan hovered over the bed, casting an imposing shadow over both Hannah and the doctor. His concern was clear on his features, and Hannah felt safer for it. He wasn’t just feeling guilty that Sacha had hurt her, he was genuinely worried about her. In that moment, she could almost forget about what he really was.
