Once Upon A Time

by Jo Pilsworth

  I stood, shaking snow from my coat, giving a chuffing 'wolf laugh' as Merida danced backwards.

  "We are soul harvesters, my little human. It is not the least stressful 'profession' in the world, and we need to play. This is our time to play."

  Nipping at her heels, I chuffed a laugh again. "So run, little human, my sweet Mate, and let's see if I can catch you."

  Merida Davinier-Cadwaladr

  I laughed and nudged him before I sprinted off running, I liked his laugh, and I will keep it buried in my mind. It wasn’t often you heard him laugh, maybe due to his position. Yet it was satisfying know that it was I who could make him laugh at times.

  Always looking behind me, to see where he was, how far he was. I know he would be giving me advantage. But still it was fun.

  Owain Cadwalader

  My little human was so busy looking behind her, that she forgot that I might not be behind her anymore. So, my breath left me in a 'woof' as she barrelled into me, and we both went tumbling in the snow, but I don't think I had had so much pleasure in a Full Moon run in a long time.

  "Lesson #1, my lovely little human. Our world is a lot more complex than you might think. Learn to use all your senses, and not just your eyes." I gave her another nuzzle around her ruff to take the sting from my words.

  "Now, do you want to continue playing, or do you want to go back to the Hall?"

  Merida Davinier-Cadwaladr

  He wasn't behind me, and that's when I crashed on to him. We both fell and I shook the snow off. His words made me be embarrassed a bit. But he was right, I had to start using them all.

  "I want to go back and have you for myself." I smiled and nuzzled him, before moving back with him and changing back if he did as well.

  Adhémar Gosselin

  The Moon is full and she calls to all present except the humans. I am glad when they finally take them to their rooms for the night. I ask my sister if she is alright and how she is feeling. I still cannot believe I am going to be an uncle within a few weeks.

  Everyone walks outside shifting as soon as the air hits them. I waste no time and shift to my large grey wolf. I see all others and I am small compared to the two betas and I don’t even hold a candle to the huge black wolf that is Gavril Negrescu, His mate nuzzles his neck and he licks her in return. I have been on full moon runs with my pack and I can tell you it is nothing like what this pack does. The frolic and play in the snow like they are a bunch of pups the mated ones teasing and chasing each other.

  I stand there in my wolf form watching them. The last time I was on a run it was to hunt and train. There were pack fights that those who were weaker were destroyed. I have been in many of these damn pack fights and had to learn to fight to the death making sure it wasn’t my death that came. I am watching wondering when these fights were start. I am shocked to learn that all this pack did was as a pack and they were a strong pack even those who my father would of claimed too weak to be in our pack were included.

  Sitting down on my haunches when I see the healer watching everyone before she takes off and runs through the night herself. Yipping as she jumps over fallen logs, I give up watching and let myself go as it seems this is what is expected. I am finally free to enjoy the run. The cold wind in my fur is exhilarating and exciting. I head away from the others as I do not want to intrude. Running up a hill I can see the others below and if I look across I can see Angharad chasing the moon I chuckle wanting her to catch it. I am feeling a little comfortable with this pack but alas I know I will have to go back to my own.

  I am not looking forward to the beating I am going to get but I know I will survive, for I am a lot stronger than any others give me credit for. I am sure I will have to beat my brothers off of me as well as the old man. I cannot help but wish my father was more like this Gavril who genuinely cares for each and every member of his pack.

  I laughed to myself. As the saying goes, if wishes were fishes … My sire won’t change, not when he holds the Pack in an iron fist, with instant obedience from the majority of the Pack. Not out of loyalty, but out of fear. I shook my head. I was but one wolf, and I was the youngest of my siblings. What hope did I have for changing the status quo? As I looked up at the moon, I wished it were otherwise, but it wasn’t. Maybe one day …

  THE MEANING AND IMPORTANCE OF CŴN ANNWN MATES

  Gavril Negrescu

  I was born sometime in what the humans would refer to as the sixteenth century, the male whelp of the Alpha and Beta pair of a Cŵn Annwn Pack. As servants of the Goddess, whom we knew as Mallt-y-Nos, we had a sacred duty: we were the harvesters of evil souls. Spectral hounds, they call us in this modern age, which, at least, differentiates us from all the other creatures of legend. But, when I was born, all creatures similar to us were considered to be the same. We were spawn of the Devil, a Christian Devil, and nothing to do with our pagan Goddess, who had existed long before a young man walked the soils of the Middle East. But, that was how humans would view us, because this was an age of superstition, and an age when those less educated would follow those whom they trusted without question, without wondering whether they were being led astray.

  Even then, we had realised that, in order to fit in with the humans around us, we had to resemble them. Therein lay the problem. Wales, the land of our birth, was under an English yoke, and it was a slow process that we might be seen as a people in our own right. Over time, there would be attempts to eradicate our way of life, our native language, but at the time of my birth, that was one small thing still open to us. Admittedly, the situation started to change when a Welshman killed the Plantagenet usurper, and took the English throne, but to benefit, one had to be of use to the new King. So, that was what we became. If he was nothing else, Henry Tudor was a canny and politically aware monarch. More importantly, he knew that he could not just use as his personal squad of assassins, since that would only result in us turning on him. What it also meant was that a Welsh group, living in the mountains of North Wales were often seen at the side of the King of England, and yet, not seen. It also meant that we became more secure in where and how we were able to live. When our Alpha and Beta produced a male whelp, whom they named Gabriel, it seemed that our Pack would be able to relax.

  Our world changed when the Scottish King, James VI, took the throne. The paranoia that he felt, of things not of this world, meant that it was not in our interests to let him know what his predecessors had done. Had we told him of our abilities, I have no doubt to this day that he would have seen us hunted down as devil spawn.

  That may not have happened, not to us as a Pack, but what did happen was that a cursed human, at least as far as I am concerned, arrived in our area. A witch-finder, he called himself. A murdering, misogynistic bastard, I would call him. Considering that we were not as influential at court as we had been, he was still surprised to find that the local, major landowners were native Welshmen. It just showed his ignorance, in that it did not occur to him that our connections were based on a shared homeland with the grandfather of the present king.

  My sire was slain as a result of this human witch finder. He frightened the local peasants, making them believe and fear for their souls should they not ‘do their duty’ and hunt down the witches and the spawn of the Devil. For my sire, it meant danger. He was a black wolf, in the form that he permitted humans to see. Naturally they would not see his form as a Cŵn Annwn until it was too late. Even though I was but a juvenile myself at the time, I can still remember what happened. He had taken me out for a run. It was one of the few times that his duties at Beta had permitted him to spend time with his cub. I had been so excited, so determined to prove to my sire that I was worthy of my lineage. This was before a time when I realised that we came might be seen to have come from Hell, that we might be seen as ‘bad’. At the time, I was a juvenile, with a sire and a dam, both of whom showed as much affection to their pup as was possible, whilst at the same time enforcing discipline. In my human form I was the only son of the local lan
d-owner, and lived in one of the wealthiest homes in the area. All my sire had planned was to take me for a run in the mountains. Generally, we avoided the humans, because they were a crude, suspicious species. They would be more likely to kill that which they didn’t understand, rather than to seek to understand us. And, if those humans in robes, the priests, told them that a black wolf was a sign of their Devil, then they would feel duty-bound, for the sake of their immortal souls, to slaughter that spawn of Satan. To those humans, that black wolf was just an animal, and one whose pelt would look good on a wall, or better yet, be made into warm clothing to last the winter and beyond. They did not see the sire of a cub. They did not see the Mate of a Alpha she-wolf, who needed him to maintain her sanity. They did not see the Beta of the Pack. They saw a spawn of Satan and for that interpretation, he had to die.

  That day, I lost my sire.

  That day, my dam lost her mate, and although I did not realise it at the time, she lost her source of light and balance.

  That day, our Pack lost its male Beta, and I wonder now whether that was the day when the spiral of self-destruction set it, which ultimately would lead to my becoming Alpha of the Cŵn Annwn pack.

  For me, personally, that day, I lost not just my sire, but my innocence. I realised that we lived in an alien world for us. We lived in a world where we were feared, and because of that fear, we were hunted. If those pond-scum humans could have done so, they would have eradicated us as a species, and not just us. They would have slaughtered anything that resembled us: wild dogs, wolves, and other species of canine. It would not matter to them. They would not see the destruction of a mated pair. They would not see pups left without a sire, a dam or, in some cases, both sire and dam. They would not see that they were committing genocide in their drive to kill the ‘spawn of Satan’ that they saw ‘hiding’ in the woods and mountains. I suppose I should be glad that the meat from our species is not as palatable to humans as some others, so we were not slaughtered for our meat.

  The thing is that none of that mattered on the day I lost my sire.

  My sire, the male Beta of the Cŵn Annwn Pack, used his strength as a Beta to keep me concealed for the baying humans who hunted him. This meant that he was fighting them with on part of the strength that he could have used, because he felt that it was better that I survived. He was my sire, I howled to myself. He was my role model, not just because we shared the same dark colouring. He did not deserve to be hacked to pieces by a group of baying, pond-scum, superstitious and illiterate peasants. He had been part of the balance that kept our Pack healthy, by supporting our sometimes erratic Alpha. But that day he was murdered.

  So, if you ever wonder why I have such a scorn for humans, this is where it started: with the murder of a Pack Beta, who was doing nothing to harm his killers. When we heard the dogs, and realised that we were their prey, my sire also realised that we were too far from the Pack house for us to escape. On his own, he could have done it, but with a juvenile, who was only realising how to run in his wolf form, he had no chance. His only option was to hide me, and to hope that he could lead them away from me, giving me the chance to find my way back to the Pack. I whimpered as I felt, for the first time, the power of the Pack Beta on me, rather than the strength of my sire. As a young pup, I had no chance of fighting it. I had no option but to stay where he told me to stay, even though I knew that, in order for me to move from that place, he would have to be dead.

  I saw him die. I saw my sire suffer the slashes of a variety of farm implements, causing him to lose blood and thus, lose strength. If that was not enough, the pack of domestic dogs used by the pond-scum peasants tore the remains of my sire to shreds, even as the humans encouraged them. They didn’t even try to save his pelt, as I known has happened in the past.

  By the time I made my way back to the caves in which we had made our home, at least when the Pack was in wolf form, I was scratched and bleeding, from having fled the baying humans. Even a pup was a creature to be slaughtered, not least because I still resembled the black wolf they had just seen torn to shreds. Aelwen, our Pack Alpha, had screamed when, hesitantly, I had told her what had happened. I had abased myself before her, in my form of a juvenile, praying to the Goddess that she would not take out her temper on me.

  So, that is why I do not enjoy having humans in proximity to my Pack. I have never told anyone how I saw the Cŵn Annwn Pack Beta slaughtered by a species more deserving of the title of animal than our other selves, our wolf selves. For without my sire to control her excesses, it fell the Aelwen to harvest the evil, without the balance of her Mate and to take the full weight of those evil souls upon herself. In the times in which we lived, there was evil and intolerance aplenty, and the resulting effect on our Alpha was almost a foregone conclusion.

  The day came when, I had no choice. The she-wolf I had known as a pup was no more. The dam I had known as a pup was long gone. The Alpha I had known as a pup was long gone. Even our human neighbours saw only a woman driven insane through the accidental death of her husband in the mountains. When I reached maturity, I did what I had been trained all my life to do. I fought and killed my own dam, to take the position of Alpha of our Pack. I think she welcomed the blow that ended her life. She knew what had happened, but she had also known that there was no one else who could have taken her place, not until I had reached maturity. Had my sire survived, then both he and my dam would have survived for so much longer. Instead, it fell to me to lead my Pack into the changes that became known as the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian Age.

  The fact remains that, for the Alpha, the Mate is vital. There is no other way to explain it. Without my Mate, , the fate of my dam would have been my fate also. The only difference was that I had ordered my friends, now serving as joint Pack Betas, to kill me if that happened. In return, I swore that, should any male or female in our Pack, deprived of their Mates, succumb to the darkness of the evil souls harvested, I would kill them myself, before it became too late. I would not let any of them suffer in the way that my dam and former Alpha had suffered. That was my oath as Alpha.

  Telling the Pack this small part of our history would have made no difference. My sire was still dead. My dam was left on her own to run a Pack, to harvest evil, and to raise her cub to maturity. It would have made no difference to how we perceived humans, and given that we must operate in this world of humans, it was better than most did not know. Let them believe that it is their Alpha’s paranoia that was behind the hatred of humans. Some sacrifices are worth it.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

  Jo Pilsworth, the Lead Author of The Hunter’s Arrow Ltd, found that too many nights away from home resulted in needing to find a hobby, and joining an online role-play group based on Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunters universe, was the answer. As a result, I became friends with some of my fellow writers, Tracy Andrews and Donna DeBoard, who joined me when I started what was known in the role-playing world as an ‘own character’ group. Thus The Hunter’s Arrow and the worlds of the Anghelescu Hellhounds and the Negrescu Cŵn Annwn were born. Currently, The Hunter’s Arrow team includes authors from around the world, most of whom have contributed to the subsequent volumes in the series. All of us met through the ‘role play’ worlds of Facebook, and despite the best attempts of Facebook and Internet trolls, have managed to produce several novels between us. Currently, we are planning the eighth volume of The Diaries of the Cŵn Annwn.

  When not dreaming of hunky shifters with attitude and how to tie their stories in with real-world events, Jo works in medical equipment sales, covering a substantial part of the United Kingdom as her territory. She is supported in her writing endeavours by her wonderful husband of more than 25 years, David, and her son, David Junior, who has been an invaluable advisor when motorbikes or archery were involved in the stories.

  “Chains of Perception” was the first story Jo wrote, starting when she was still in school. Were it not for her friends’ encouragement, she might not have considered that
others might like to read it. “Bound” is the first in the “Diaries of the Cŵn Annwn”.

  We hope you have enjoyed it, and that you will feel encouraged to check out some of the books we have planned for publication under the name of our co-operative, The Hunter’s Arrow.

  ABOUT THE HUNTER’S ARROW LTD

  Currently, the authors involved in The Hunter’s Arrow Ltd are as follows:

  Jo Pilsworth (UK), Lead Author

  Tracy Andrews (USA) Senior Author

  Bethan Thomas (UK), Author

  Gabriela Collazo (Puerto Rico), Author

  Friendship has no borders … Not when the Internet is involved.

  DISCOVER OTHER TITLES BY JO PILSWORTH AND THE AUTHORS OF THE HUNTER’S ARROW LTD

  The Diaries of the CŵnAnnwn

  Alpha (planned publication May 2016)

  Beta (planned publication October 2016)

  Delta (planned publication May 2017)

  Caduceus (planned publication October 2017)

  Ddraig (planned publication May 2018)

  Daimonas (planned publication October 2018)

  “Alpha”

  Book 2 of The Diaries of the CŴn Annwn

  Will be published in April 2016.

  In the meantime, keep up with the worlds of the Negrescu Cŵn Annwn and the Anghelescu Hellhounds on