by Selena Kitt
The wolf howled and Darrow went straight to her side.
“Tiugainn!” the midwife muttered to herself, doing something Sibyl couldn’t see, but there was blood, plenty of it, on both women’s hands. The wolf actually snapped at the old woman, but she didn’t actually bite her.
“Tha e cunnartach!” The midwife shook her head, removing a hand covered in blood from the behind of the wolf. Sibyl had seen enough calves and horses born to know what was happening, but she leaned in to ask Raife for sure.
“What is it?”
“The pup is facin’ wrong ways,” he murmured, his eyes on the scene before them. “She’s tryin’ ta turn the bairn.”
“The pup…” Sibyl frowned. “But… shouldn’t there be… more?”
Horses and cows usually carried only one offspring to term, but wolves were like dogs—they had litters. She had played with lots of puppies in the warmth of her father’s castle kitchen where the bitch would give birth in a large crate, and then the puppies would crawl all over each other in it until they were big enough to let roam.
“Wulvers birth one.”
Wulvers. Not wolves, wulvers. Raife had corrected her again and again, but Sibyl had dismissed his insistence as a language barrier. In Scotland, wolves and wulvers seemed interchangeable. At least, that’s what she had initially believed. Now, watching the white wolf, Laina, give birth, she wasn’t so sure.
“Bidh curramach!” Darrow growled at the midwife as she did something that made Laina howl in pain.
“Wulvers birth as wolves,” Raife explained as Sibyl watched, feeling weak-kneed and weak-stomached. “She can’na change while she’s laborin’. Tis why she could’na free herself.”
“From the cage?” Sibyl watched as Raife’s brother bent to press his head against Laina’s furry one. She licked his cheek, whimpering softly, and the man whispered something in Gaelic that she couldn’t quite hear and wouldn’t have understood regardless.
“It’s their first bairn.” Raife put an arm around Sibyl’s waist, perhaps sensing her uneasy footing. “Nature knows its own way. Wolves birth young far easier than humans.”
Raife had caught her just in time, too, because Sibyl felt her knees buckle as the wolf pup was born. The midwife exclaimed in triumph as the slick, dark-furred creature emerged covered in a bloody sac, head-first, as it should be. And then for the second time that day, Sibyl felt the world begin to go dark as, right before her very eyes, the white wolf Laina changed.
Sibyl told herself she was dreaming. That the naked, blonde woman and the crying babe between her open thighs had always been there. Or perhaps, the wolf was still there, and Sibyl was in the grip of a horrible fever, imagining the wolf taking human form. Her vision went dark around the edges, but she saw it all anyway.
The wolf’s body arched and moved, its snout shrinking, mouth open in what appeared to be a wide yawn that swallowed up its whole face. The animal’s limbs stiffened, muscles moving underneath, as if something were alive beneath its flesh. Then its fur slowly vanished, as if it was being pulled into its skin from the inside. The skin was as pale as a baby’s beneath, pale as any human. Everything changed, everything about her, except for the color of her bright blue eyes. Those were the same, from beginning to end. Sibyl focused her attention there, her own eyes wide with disbelief and fear.
Her eyes were telling her truths her mind didn’t want to see.
Maybe the arrow that had grazed her scalp had taken her sanity with it?
“Balach!” the old midwife announced. The younger woman cleaned the child up with a cloth and handed it to the mother.
“Balach.” The young mother’s voice was soft, her blue eyes full of tears as she met Darrow’s in the light of the lamp. “Garaith.”
“Tis a boy.” Raife smiled, his arm tightening around Sibyl’s waist as he explained this to her in hushed tones. “The next in our line. They’ll name him Garaith, after me father.”
The woman—she was a woman now, full figured and lovely with the longest blonde hair Sibyl had ever seen—brought the baby up to her breast, and Sibyl saw the slash there beneath the woman’s collarbone as the midwife covered her with a sheet, a little late to protect her modesty. The wound had been tended, but she would have a scar there for the rest of her life.
A bloody souvenir from Alistair’s dirk.
Sibyl remembered the way he’d slashed at the white wolf, the one she had freed from the cage. The one who couldn’t free herself, because she was carrying young and couldn’t transform from wolf to human in order to undo the latch. The one who had run through the forest beside the black wolf, the wolf that had carried Sibyl to safety, down here into its den.
The black wolf who had changed in the darkness from animal to human right under Sibyl’s very own hands—that was the man, Raife, who stood beside her. And now this animal, Laina, had turned from she-wolf to human woman before Sibyl’s very own eyes. The young she had birthed had transformed from a whining pup to a wailing human child with thick, black hair like his father.
Like his uncle.
Raife hadn’t been mistaken when he corrected her use of the word “wolf” to “wulver.”
“What magic is this?” Sibyl’s voice barely escaped her throat in a whisper. “What devilment? Who are you?”
She looked up to meet Raife’s impossibly blue eyes, saw the man, Darrow, glance back at her and frown, the woman, Laina, looking between them, concerned.
“What are you?”
For the second time that day—only the second time in her entire life—Sibyl fainted.
Chapter Four
Darrow and Raife argued in Gaelic and she couldn’t understand a word of it—until her name was mentioned. Sibyl opened her eyes to find herself in an entirely different room than she’d been in before as she listened to the men fight. Sitting up on the mattress, she saw this room was much larger than the last, with a huge fireplace carved out of one wall, a warm, inviting fire lit there. A table sat near it, set with actual dishes, silverware and napkins, something she hadn’t expected in this strange place.
Just the sight of the set table made her stomach growl. She tried to remember the last time she’d eaten and then she recalled the food she had hidden under her dress. Listening to the two men yell at each other in Gaelic and glancing occasionally toward the door to make sure no one was coming, she lifted up her skirt and unpinned her satchel. It had come partially open and she frowned, digging through, hoping she hadn’t lost anything.
The bread she’d stolen was hard but she ate it anyway. The dried fruit and jerky was tough, but tasty. Sibyl’s stomach thanked her and asked for more, but she only ate a handful of her rations, not knowing when she might need them. She knew she would have to slip out of this place the first chance she got and head south, back to the village where they had left her ladies’ maid, Rose. It had been her original plan, and while she had been waylaid by these…
Wulvers.
Sibyl shuddered, instinctively shrinking back against the stone wall as she repacked her satchel. Glancing at the table, she suddenly had a horrible thought. What if she was the one on the menu? These half-men, half-wolves certainly had to eat, didn’t they? Why wouldn’t they eat her? The one called Raife had brought her here, but it was clear his brother, Darrow, didn’t think that had been such a good idea, if the sound of them yelling and throwing things at each other was any indication.
She knew they were somewhere deep underground. Maybe inside a cave. Somewhere hidden in the mountains she had seen from her window perch at Alistair’s castle, the mountains that lay beyond the forest where they’d been hunting. They wouldn’t want anyone to know where they were hiding, would they? No, of course not. They certainly couldn’t let Sibyl go, after she’d been in their den. Could they?
Her blood turned to ice water in her veins as she glanced from the set table to the doorway. There was a door, thick and heavy, but sound drifted in. The sound of the two brothers, arguing over her fate. She was su
re of it. Not only had she heard the one called Raife say her name—the other one kept saying the word “shasennach.” She’d picked that up quickly, because many of Alistair’s men called her that. It meant Englishwoman, although the way the Scots said it, she might as well have heard them calling her “pig.”
Darrow said the word with the same scorn she’d heard from many of Alistair’s men.
She had been a stranger in a strange land at the MacFalon castle, but now she was in a whole other world. These creatures might look like men, but they were not. Whatever witchcraft or devilry they possessed to make them look human, they were still animals, and animals, even tame ones, could be dangerous when provoked. Even her father’s hounds would bite you if you disturbed them during a feeding. And she’d heard the animal trainer, the one who had come through with his “tame” bear, had later been mauled and killed by that same animal after he’d spent years with it.
Was Raife fighting in her favor, she wondered hopefully, ears tuned, listening for him to say her name again. She had freed the white she-wolf, after all. Maybe that would work in her favor? Or maybe… Sibyl looked again at the set table, shivering in spite of the warmth of the room.
Maybe she was going to be their dinner.
She dug into her satchel, finding the kitchen knife she had stolen wrapped in a cloth napkin. She unwrapped it and looked around for a place to hide it. Surely these creatures, even if they were something wicked and unnatural, could be killed? She would have to be ready, in any case. She stowed the satchel under the bed and had just climbed back onto the bed, looking for a place to hide the knife, when Raife opened the door and stalked into the room.
She sat and blinked at him, not saying a word, as he looked at her with her skirts hiked up past her knees, something that once would have made her blush with modesty, but the past day’s events had changed her. The only flush that crept into her cheeks came because she realized she’d been caught with the knife she’d been planning to hide sitting right next to her on the bed.
“Ye plannin’ t’knife me in me sleep, lass?” Raife glanced from Sibyl to the knife, his gaze lingering curiously on her slim calves in their short stockings and garters before she flipped the torn, muddy fabric of her gown back over them.
“Of course not.” But her hand moved to touch the knife at her side, her eyes never leaving his.
“It mus’ all seem verra strange to ye,” he said softly, taking a step closer to crouch down to eye-level next to the bed.
“A bit.” She swallowed, her hand involuntarily clenching the knife, wondering if she could stab him before he changed into a wolf and snapped her neck in his big jaws. Not that the man had to change into any fantastical creature to kill her. He could easily snap her neck in his big hands, too.
“I will’na hurt ye.” He held his hand out for the knife, his eyes soft, kind, as light as a blue summer sky. Sibyl hesitated, glancing down at the weapon in her hand, knowing it was useless against him if he was lying, but still unable to let it go.
“A’right, lass, ‘ave it yer way. Keep the knife.” He sighed and stood, looking down at her in the firelight. “Are ye hungry? Stale bread and jerky isn’t much, even for a skinny lass like yerself.”
“I’m not skinny!” she protested, moving to stand too, knife in hand. She barely came to his shoulder and had to look way up to meet those startling blue eyes of his. How had he known what she’d eaten? She wondered, frowning up at the raised eyebrows on his smirking face.
“Ye can keep yer pack, too,” he told her. “The one under the bed.”
“How—?”
“Wulvers have a keen sense a smell.” He tapped his decidedly human nose, but Sibyl was remembering the wolf’s snout, the way he’d licked the tears from her face in the woods. Was it really possible, to transform from human to wolf and back again? She had seen it with her own eyes when the she-wolf changed and still, her mind didn’t want to accept.
“I had ‘em set a table for ye in ‘ere,” he explained, nodding at the dishes. “Thought ye might like some stew.”
“No, thank you.” Her stomach growled audibly and he arched his eyebrows again, a gesture that Sibyl found infuriating. Almost as infuriating as being called “skinny.” And “lass.”
“Tis jus’ rabbit.” He smiled like he could read her mind, going over to the fire and using a long, thick pole with a hooked end to lift a black iron pot. “We don’t eat humans, Sibyl.”
“Ever?” She licked her lips when he plucked the lid from the pot and the smell of stew wafted through the room. Her body clamored for real food, making her knees feel weak.
“Nuh, not fer twenty years,” he assured her, picking up a ladle from the table and dishing out a bowl of the heavenly-scented stuff. “I’ve never tasted a human.”
“That’s comforting,” she said wryly, watching him dish up a second bowl before he put them both on the table and hung the pot back over the fire. She couldn’t help staring at the fireplace, wondering at its sheer size, the way it was literally carved right out of the mountain’s surface.
“Where does the smoke go?” she wondered aloud, edging closer to the fireplace, unable to help her curiosity.
“Yer a keen one, ain’t ye?” He grinned, sitting at the table and leaning back to look at her, that amused smile still on his face. “Have ye ever gone swimmin’ in a hot spring?”
“No.” She shook her head. She’d heard of them—warm pools that heated all by themselves. They had them in Bath. “But I’ve heard tell of them. I didn’t know there were any in Scotland?”
“Aye, jus’ but a few, up’ere in the mountains,” he explained, sticking a spoon into his bowl of stew and stirring it around. The scent of rabbit meat and gravy and vegetables drew Sibyl even nearer. Raife nodded toward his steaming bowl. “They give off steam, ya ken? So we made our chimneys so the smoke, it looks jus’ like steam risin’ up from the pools. No one’s the wiser.”
“Ingenious.” She slid into the seat across from him, glancing down at the bowl of stew he’d ladled for her. The dishes were made of metal, pewter perhaps, she thought. The spoons were wooden. She put her knife on the table.
“Rabbit?” she asked, putting her nose closer to the delicious smelling concoction.
“Aye, jus’rabbit.” He lifted the spoon to his lips. “Ye’ve tasted rabbit afore?”
“Of course,” she scoffed, putting a spoon into the bowl and stirring it around. It certainly smelled like rabbit. She took a taste and moaned softly, closing her eyes in bliss. Food! Her stomach clenched, asking for more.
“G’head, lass,” he said, taking another spoonful himself. “Twill’na bite ye.”
“What about you?”
“I will’na bite ye either.” He smiled softly, cocking his head at her in the soft, orange glow of the fire. “If we were goin’ t’kill ye, don’tcha think we would’ve done it a’ready?”
“Mayhaps.” She continued to spoon stew in, warming her clamoring belly, hoping that logic was sound. In truth, this man had been far better to her in the space of just a day than her betrothed had been to her in the entire month she’d known him. Raife had saved her from Alistair’s wrath—and his pursuing men. This man had carried her to safety, had bandaged her wounds, had taken her in, knowing his brother, and likely his whole pack, would object. He had given her food and shelter and had asked for naught in return.
The only problem was, this man could change into an animal at any moment.
Of course, apparently, so could her betrothed. They were just different sorts of animals, she mused. And she was beginning to think that these creatures—wolves, wulvers, whatever they were called—might be preferable.
“Thank you for the food.” She glanced up at the man eating across from her. His chest was bare and strangely hairless in the firelight, his plaid secured around his waist with a thick leather belt. She would have expected far more fur on a man who was a wolf half of the time, but all his hair appeared to be on his dark head. “It is fa
r better than jerky and dried fruit.”
“How much did ye have packed in that bag under ye skirts?” he asked, looking pointedly at her torn, tattered clothing. She’d been grateful for the fabric when she’d had to hide her satchel underneath.
“A few days, maybe a weeks’ worth,” she replied, scraping her bowl with her spoon, sad the stew had disappeared so quickly. “But I’m skinny, I don’t need much.”
“A’course.” He chuckled, taking her bowl back over to the fire and spooning more stew into it. “And where were ye runnin’ off ta?”
“Back…” She almost said ‘home,’ but she didn’t have one of those anymore. And she couldn’t for the life of her remember the name of the village where they’d left Rose. “Toward York.”
“York is home then?” He placed another full bowl of stew in front of her and she grabbed her spoon, digging in greedily.
