The Wyvern's Defender Dire Wolf

by Alice Summerfield

  The others on the bridge might have cried out, they might have been screaming at the top of their lungs for all Helena knew, but for her there was only the lightning storm and Dolf and the ragged bag of bones, the latter of which seemed to have forgotten about Dolf entirely.

  In fact as Helena watched, horrified but too far to try to stop it, the creature leaned down and, stabbing its long, sharp claws into an unfortunate hellhound, it brought the man to its face. They both had their mouths open then, then hellhound’s in a scream and the creature’s to bite him.

  Dolf slammed into the monster’s side, knocking it off balance and forcing it to drop the hellhound. He staggered on the landing, still hurt from where the creature had slashed at him, and the creature leaped at Dolf, its mouth open in a triumphant shriek. Helena was closer now, so close that she ought to have heard it, but she couldn’t, not over the force of her Grandfather’s rage.

  At nearly the same time, her grandfather dipped lower, the beat of his wings sending Helena’s hair whipping across her face. A careless whip of Grandfather’s tail sent Dolf tumbling over the edge of the bridge.

  And with a shriek of her own, Helena leaped after him.

  Shift! Shift! Shift! Shift! Helena ordered herself, wanting it, needing it, more than she ever had before in her entire life.

  If she could shift, if she could fly, then Helena could save both of their lives.

  If she didn’t, they’d both die. The bridge had been too high for anything else. Hitting the water would be like splattering herself against a concrete floor.

  She no longer cared what she turned into – a bat or a bird or even a pterodactyl – so long as it had wings.

  She needed her wings!

  Shift!

  One last, desperate push with all her will and might and love, she loved Dolf so much, and Helena felt something rip inside of herself, something deep but not painful.

  And around her, the world twisted.

  Colors shifted, some bleeding into each other while others became more clear, and even the whistle of the wind in her ears sounded different. Suddenly, she was a lot closer to Dolf, her body lengthening even as they fell.

  Reaching out, Helena snaked herself around Dolf’s now human form, coiling her lengths around him as she spread her new wings, untested, untried, and, as they caught the wind, un-fucking-believable!

  Her heart lurched, and all the rest of her along with it, Dolf’s weight threatening to pull her down into the water, but instinctively, Helena flapped her wings, her body knowing how to pull itself – and Dolf – into the safety of the skies.

  Her blood singing in her veins, Helena let out a triumphant, trumpeting cry, circling the bridge once then again before setting down on it with an ungraceful thump, skidding forward until her head slammed into the vicious, dried out monster.

  The part where she lifted her head and then brought her long neck down again, this time directly on top of the nasty thing, was entirely on purpose though.

  Crushed beneath her now much more substantial weight, the creature made an ugly, enraged noise. Its long, vicious claws scraped uselessly over her hard scales and, on general principle, Helena gave the awful thing a light jolt.

  It shrieked, its long rattling cry less terrifying now that she was so much bigger and better armored than she had been, then went still and quiet beneath her.

  Helena gave a little wriggle, smushing the creature down on purpose this time. It did nothing. It made no noise. Helena dared to hope that it was unconscious, at least for the time being. She had a feeling that a creature as awful as that couldn’t even be killed by having a house fall on it, never mind a mere… whatever she was.

  From the feel of it, she definitely wasn’t a dragon.

  The bridge, already straining beneath her grandfather’s immense weight, now shuddered sickeningly under her added mass, and Helena hastily reverted to her more human form.

  One dragon on that bridge was one too many, apparently. Two would have been a disaster.

  “Dolf!” cried Helena, rushing to her werewolf’s side.

  She tugged at him with clumsy hands, gasping when he reached up to grab her wrist, using it to yank her in against himself. Falling to her knees, Helena was immediately enveloped in a hug, Dolf hot and huge and very much alive against her. Relief stung at her heart – Dolf had nearly died! – and Helena’s eyes abruptly began to ache. Hot tears dripped down her cheeks, and, her hand trembling, Helena roughly tried to swipe them away.

  Not that it did any good. As soon as she wiped one away, three more took its place.

  Giving it up as a bad job, Helena went to wrap her own arms around Dolf, to hold him just as tightly as he was holding onto her, only to have him hiss and flinch away from her when her palm skated across the gory mess that was his side.

  “Sorry,” said Helena, embarrassed, as she pulled away.

  I should have remembered that! I should have been more careful! Helena thought, disappointed by her own thoughtlessness, and then squeaked, all thoughts flying out of her head as Dolf yanked her forward again, back into the circle of his arms.

  A shift of her grandfather’s immense wings sent Helena’s hair whipping around her head, and just like that, Dolf was no longer holding her tight against himself. He shoved Helena behind him yet again, the better to interpose himself between her and her grandfather.

  The sight of her love naked, wounded, and bloody as he glared defiantly up and up and up the length of the impossible, immovable mass of an aged dragon, the head of her dragon’s clan no less, was enough to make Helena’s foolish heart flutter.

  It was a tableau lifted directly from legend.

  The ancient Britons were right, thought Helena. It is unspeakably romantic.

  Then, to Helena’s surprise, her grandfather’s immense form shimmered, his flesh melting away like snow in spring to reveal a wizened old man with a hard, unpleasant mouth. Except, where she and Dolf and all the other shifters were as naked as the day they were born, her grandfather was clad in lightning.

  Seeing his brilliant raiment, Helena immediately resolved to master it herself. No longer would she labor under the tyranny of clothing – or even its lack!

  Ignoring Dolf and all the other shifters, her grandfather immediately spit three times in her direction, an ancient sign against evil. Bemused, Helena nevertheless returned the gesture then did it for Dolf too.

  Her heart would break if evil found him in her stead.

  “That!” snapped her grandfather. “Do you know what it is?”

  Looking in the direction that he gestured, Helena expected to see the rattling bag of bones that she had squashed. Instead, where the desiccated, nearly undead creature had been, there was now a handsome, dark-haired man lying unconscious on the broken pavement.

  “A man?” Helena hazarded to guess.

  “A wendigo!” spat her grandfather, and Helena shuddered. From the darkness, came the sound of people spitting at each other, all of them trying to ward off that evil. “This is what you consort with after leaving my house?”

  “Me?” cried Helena, indignant. “He came here with your hellhounds!”

  Living on her own had made her braver.

  “He came here at the same time as our pack,” corrected a man – a hellhound. “Not with us.” He jerked a thumb at Helena’s grandfather. “He came here with us.”

  Helena was just close enough to Dolf to hear him mutter “Well, that explains why you were stalling.”

  The hellhound must have heard him too, because he glared at Dolf, but he didn’t attack Dolf or even try to hit him. That would have meant getting near Grandfather and the… wendigo.

  Even thinking the word – knowing that there lay a wendigo – was enough to make Helena shudder. Even knowing that she could make herself big enough to stomp that guy flat didn’t make it any more palatable to be near him.

  Ripping her gaze from the wendigo, Helena looked around herself, as much for an excuse to look away from the wendi
go as from any genuine curiosity.

  All along the bridge, the fighting had petered out. Apparently, a concentrated lightning storm delivered by a very old, extremely cantankerous, and unreasonably huge dragon had that effect on people. Well, people who didn’t find getting hit by a bolt of lightning to be invigorating.

  Declan and the other Defender were ambling towards her small group. They looked okay overall, although the coworker was holding his arm oddly and there was blood all down Declan’s chest. As for the hellhounds… there were so many injured hellhounds.

  And the bridge was practically a tear down. Most of its lights had been knocked over or out, the pavement was shattered where it wasn’t melted, and the bridge’s tensile strength had likely been shot by the combined weight of she and her grandfather.

  They’d be lucky if the Dragons’ Council didn’t sanction them. As it was, the fines were likely to be… punitive.

  Sighing, Helena looked back towards her grandfather.

  “We’ve made something of a mess here.”

  “That was your fault! If you had just done as I wanted, no one would have had to know that you’re a wyvern!”

  Is that what I am? Helena wondered. She hadn’t seen herself. She hadn’t known.

  She was delighted.

  “Do this mean that whatever husband you had in mind for me won’t want me, Grandfather?”

  “I could have maybe – maybe, mind you – have unloaded you onto a respectable family. You could have secured the future of our clan! You could have born dragons! But this!” Helena’s grandfather glared at her. “No one decent will want wyvern in their gene pool. It breeds too true to itself. You could bear a dozen children, and you’d be lucky if one or two of them were dragons.”

  As a Tarleton should be.

  “I guess that means that you’ll have to give up on me then,” said Helena lightly.

  In truth, her heart was pounding so hard that she thought that she was lightheaded. She thought that she might faint.

  Everything would be so much easier if her grandfather would have the decency to just give up on her.

  And if she someday, somehow, despite all the odds against it, bore a dragonlet…well, it was possible that her grandfather would be dead by then. He was an old dragon. It could happen.

  Her grandfather made an angry gesture.

  “Did you know?” he demanded harshly, his voice nearly obscuring the distant sound of sirens.

  “No,” admitted Helena. “I’d never transformed before now.”

  But her grandmother, at least, might have suspected. Perhaps that was why a true lady didn’t eat strawberry ice cream.

  “At least you’ve given me that,” said her grandfather bitterly. “Your intended may even understand it.”

  Helena nearly smiled, hope making her careless.

  “So you’re giving me up, after all?”

  “Bah!” Her grandfather swiped a hand through the air, his gnarled fingers hooked into claws. It was not a friendly gesture. “I wipe my hands of you, Helena. Give up your mother’s gold and change your name. At least you’ll finally be good for something.”

  “No, I will not. Mother left it to me.”

  “It’s not yours, wyvern! You’re no Tarleton!”

  “If I were to give up my mother’s gold, it would go to strangers, not to you,” Helena reminded him. “It isn’t Tarleton gold anymore.”

  “Then keep it!” spate her grandfather hatefully. “Stubborn and ungrateful! Just like your mother!”

  It was the nicest thing that he had ever said to her.

  In a rage, her grandfather flung himself into the air again, the powerful beat of his wings nearly knocking down the already ailing bridge. Under her feet, the bridge swayed alarmingly, and around her, frightened people cried out.

  As she watched her forbearer wing his way across the moon, Helena hoped that someday she would be half as good at making exits.

  Chapter 24 – Dolf

  No one died, mostly because when he finally showed up, Gil brought Cherry with him. There was very little that Cherry couldn’t heal. Although, judging by the screams coming from the hastily emptied out ambulance in which she was working, Dolf wasn’t entirely certain that her patients were in a position to entirely appreciate that.

  Whatever. They’d probably thank her for it later.

  While Cherry did her magic, the police sorted through the events on the bridge. In the end, the hellhounds were arrested, as were the unconscious wendigo and his accomplice, the man that was caught trying to sneak away from Theresa’s car.

  Apparently, while he had been busy with the wendigo and Chet and Declan had been busy with the hellhounds that hadn’t been mowed over in the wendigo’s initial rampage, the wendigo’s accomplice had somehow gotten his hands on Helena. She’d electrocuted for his trouble.

  Just looking at him, Dolf wanted to bare his teeth and snarl. The fact that the man in question was openly crying didn’t make Dolf feel any more charitable either.

  “It’s not my fault!” the man blubbered. “I didn’t even know that Spence was a wendigo! I just thought that he had gone crazy!”

  And yet, you still went along with him, Dolf thought angrily. You still tried to get at Helena when the opportunity presented itself.

  But given the surrounding circumstance, if the wendigo was someone called Spence, then that meant that he was most likely Spencer Rothschild, which would most likely make that Patrick Rothschild blubbering on the policewoman’s shoulder.

  Dolf hoped that she didn’t fall for it. Patrick Rothschild wasn’t sorry for anything that had happened. He had probably been in it up to his neck. He was probably just sorry that he had gotten caught.

  Just then, Helena leaned into his side, the fabric of her EMS-issued sheet rustling noisily against his, which neatly distracted Dolf from his contemplation of Patrick Rothschild.

  Helena.

  Even as bruised, bloodied, and disheveled as she currently was, the sight of her, the feel and touch and proximity of her, was a pleasure. And her scent!

  Just remembering that moment when he had first inhaled it – clean but slightly brackish, without the obscuring adornment of scented soaps or lotions – made Dolf’s heart clench with a joy so sweet that it verged on pain.

  Because when he had smelled her, really scented Helena for the first time, he had known: she was meant for him, and he was meant for her.

  This was the one that he had been looking for, that he had never expected to find: his soul’s mate.

  In a way, it hadn’t mattered. He had decided awhile ago that he was for Helena, and he had hoped that she might be for him. But in another way, it was everything because it confirmed that he was right: they really were meant to be.

  In that moment, after he had pulled Helena back to him, Dolf might never have let her go again, if her grandfather hadn’t chosen that exact same moment to menace her.

  Now, the knowledge had settled into the cockles of his heart, a happy secret knowledge that brought him joy every time that he breathed deeply, pulling Helena’s unvarnished scent into his lungs.

  I wonder if I could persuade her to give up perfume and scented soaps, mused Dolf, his mind already spinning out the possibilities.

  She was very attached to the blasted things.

  But, on the other hand, it might be fun to try…

  A stray breeze ruffled their cheap sheets around them, reminding Dolf not to think too hard about the possibilities. Not before he was safely back home, at any rate.

  “All right,” said Gil, when everything was as sorted as it was going to get, at least for the time being. “Let’s get everyone home. And this time, I’ll take you.”

  There weren’t any more problems getting back to the apartment complex.

  Back at his place, the splintered remnants of his original front door still littered the floor, but a new door had already been hung in its place, a note folded in half and taped to it.

  Looking at the minor mi
racle that was his new door, hung before he even had a chance to complain about it, Dolf thanked anyone and everyone listening for his good fortune, and he promised to be generous with this year’s gift to the front office.

  Declan, who had straggled up the stairs after them, plucked the note off of the sheet.

  “Huh,” he said. “My apartment’s fixed. Also, they took one of the pizzas as payment for being so quick with the door. The other two are on the kitchen counter. Mind if I get my bag before I go?”

  “Of course not,” Dolf generously lied.

  He’d rather Delcan just left. For what he intended to do with Helena, Dolf neither wanted nor needed any witnesses.

  Fortunately for his self-control, Declan was quick about it. In under a minute, he had grabbed his suitcase from where it stood next to the shoe rack, accepted a cold pizza from Helena, and been on his way.

  The sound of the new front door shutting behind him was still reverberating through the apartment when Dolf’s self-control broke, and with a growl, he snatched Helena off of her feet.

  At his surprise attack, his girl squeaked, briefly tensing in his arms before she relaxed again. Throwing her head back, Helena laughed.

  An answering happiness curled through his heart, and Dolf peppered kisses up the length of her neck, smiling against the vibrations in her throat. He kissed the soft underside of her jaw and then her open mouth, taking advantage of the opportunity to slip his tongue between her lips.

  He kissed her gently, and he kissed her thoroughly, using his lips and tongue and the tilt of his head to turn her laughter to soft, half muffled moans.

  Her arms came up around his shoulders, her hand against the back of his neck holding his mouth to hers as she wrapped her long legs around his waist and gave him a little squeeze.

  He broke their kiss them, moaning helplessly against her shoulder, and giggling, Helena did it again.

  She sucked kisses into his throat and plucked at his nipple, now pinching it, now rolling it between her soft fingertips, the pleasure of her attentions spearing straight through Dolf. He couldn’t help the noise that he made when she did that or the way that he missed a step, staggered, and righted them only to have her do it all again.