Once Bitten_Wolves of Hemlock Hollow

by Heather McCorkle

  “Better already, am I right?” I asked.

  “Much.”

  I made a sweeping gesture. “Nature helps. Varúlfur feel the tie to it more than most humans, but it is more than that. Manipulating our atoms to shift draws energy from the Earth and the moon.”

  Her delicate dark brows rose. “Why wolves? Or are there other kinds of shifters? Or vampires? Or, hell, zombies for that matter.”

  Her refreshing honesty and curiosity charmed me. I threw my head back and laughed long and hard. “I love how well you are taking this. Zombies are an impossibility, as far as I know. Other types of shifters, yes. I have never met a vampire, but I have heard stories.”

  She did not even miss a beat. “How did Raul know I’d end up being a wolf shifter? Does everyone who is bitten change?”

  And direct as hell, damn if that did not send a thrill to places that had been hibernating for some time. Or rather, I may be damned that it did. “We can sense our own. When someone has the ability to be a shifter, we know, and we know what kind. And no, those who are bitten who do not have the ability do not change, they die.”

  Her eyes widened but that was it. “So, I was born with this ability?”

  “With the potential. It took the bite awakening it in your DNA to make you a varúlfur, though.”

  Her heart sped up and the scent of anxiety—dark and thick—rolled off her. The expression on that lovely face was too guarded to make out. She was holding something back, or hiding something. But I did not want to push her too hard or too fast. Trust had to be earned. The scent of anxiety blew away as her focus shifted. I felt the weight of her gaze making its way across my body, though I pretended not to. It felt very, very good.

  “How old are you?”

  Was that the only reason she stared?

  “How old do you think?”

  She slapped my bicep. “Don’t mess with me. Seriously, how old?”

  My gaze dropped as I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth. Would she think me too old? Twenty-somethings had a way of seeing my age as a point of no return. But the way her eyes shot from my lips to the trees on the other side of the path made me think maybe she would not. And could that be the hint of a hard nipple poking at her tank top? Even if it was, it could be due to the breeze. She was not through the verða yet, which meant she felt the cold far more than I did. It was not right to think of such things. More than not right, it was forbidden. It might not be such a bad thing if the truth made me sound old and boring.

  “I am thirty.”

  Her attention shot back to me. “Seriously? Just thirty? Not two hundred and thirty or something?”

  Well that was a relief. It should not have been, but it was, nonetheless. Eyes widening, I put a hand against my chest as if appalled. “Do I look that old?”

  Rolling her eyes, she smacked my arm again. I did not mind at all.

  “Of course not. You don’t look a day over your prime. I half expected a kennari to be a few hundred years old.”

  “Let me guess, you were thinking that because in all the books and movies the werewolf or vampire is always older than the girl—like pedophile older,” I said.

  She laughed so hard I knew I had hit the mark dead on. “Yes. Though, you don’t strike me as the type to watch a lot of movies.”

  Did that mean she thought of me as the romantic hero who would sweep her off her feet? Did she want me to? Feigning ignorance to the reference, I raised a brow at her. “That is where you are wrong about me. I am a huge fan of movies, especially horror movies,” I admitted. Not many people knew that, but telling her felt so natural that it slipped out. And I had to say something.

  “A werewolf who likes horror movies. I kind of love that. So how did you draw the short straw and get the new clueless girl? Surely there are tons of other kennari that could have gotten saddled with me,” she asked, something hidden in her tone.

  My back went rigid before I could stop it. “Not many. Our numbers have greatly depleted due to both our strict laws about changing others, and because of our nature.”

  “Our nature?” she asked gently.

  I could not keep the sadness completely from my expression—nor would it be fair to her, or honest, to do so. “Our instincts often rule us, and our strongest instinct is to fight. It is based off a need to protect our packs, but we are not just wolves, we are human too, so that instinct becomes skewed. Our kind flock to war like crows, especially when it gets close to our homeland.”

  “Why don’t you change more people? I imagine there are plenty that would be willing.”

  A meadow of brilliant green grass dotted with groups of bell-like blue columbine flowers opened up to our left. The grouping of trees beyond it drew Sonya’s attention. Her gaze went distant, almost trancelike, and her feet started in that direction. Was it a coincidence, or was she drawn to the place? She glanced back at me. Head cocking to the side, lips pursed, I watched her a moment before following.

  I answered as we walked through the tall grass. “Changing others is very dangerous. Not everyone can handle being so in touch with their instincts, even if they are born with the potential to be a shifter. It makes murderers out of some, rapists out of others. Over the centuries we have discovered the risk is too high. Too many had to be put to the reaper.”

  Her face scrunched up in concentration and damn if it was not cute enough to make me ache. Gods, I hoped she made it through the verða. If she did not, I feared it would crush me. “Why wolves? I mean, what determines what type of shifter we are?” she asked.

  Some of the tension eased from me when she did not ask about the reaper. That was a story she was not ready to hear. Mentioning it had been a mistake. I almost managed a smile as I shrugged. “That is debatable. All we really know is that if your ancestors were wolves, you will be a wolf. If they were cats, you will be a cat. Some think we are touched by Fenrir, yet loyal to Odin, others think we are children of Loki.”

  She swallowed hard and the scent of anxiety drifted up from her skin once again. Her brows scrunched together. “Fenrir and Loki?”

  “Loki is a Norse god who battles against Odin and his sons, bringing about Ragnarok—the end of the world. Fenrir is a wolf who is the son of Loki.”

  She let out a long breath. “I know the legends. My dad… He told them to me when I was a kid. What do you believe?”

  We began to work our way up a hill. Her pace put her slightly uphill from me, allowing me to catch a really nice view of her backside. No harm in looking, except for the physical ache the sight of her caused deep inside me. The urge to run my hands up those long legs, over the curve of that ass… Damn, I was failing at keeping this professional. Distance and focus were paramount. Giving in to my desire was not an option. I was one of the first kennari in hundreds of years. To foul this up would not only put an even darker mark on my honor, it would mean her death.

  I forced my mind back to her words. Clearly she was leaving something about her father out, but it could wait. Did I dare tell her my beliefs? Most people had very strict views on gods.

  What the hell. I was not going to hide who I was, or how I felt. I had promised her no secrets and I would not go back on that. If I wanted her to be open—and I very much did—then I needed to offer the same. “I believe we are touched by Fenrir, but should be loyal to Odin.”

  “Really? You believe in all that old gods stuff? In Odinism?” She sounded surprised, but not judgmental.

  We crested the small hill and kept going. I increased my pace to walk beside her, because if I did not, I was not sure I would be able to fight the urge to touch her much longer.

  “Religious studies was a minor of mine. The closer you look at the religions of the world, the more you realize they are all based on the same basic story. And, the Norse story is older than most, so yes, I believe it to a degree. What about you, were you raised to be religious?”

  We went several strides before she answered. “My dad believed in Odinism. He taught me the eddas, t
old me the stories, but he never pushed it on me. My mom is of the Cherokee Nation, so she taught me the beliefs of her ancestors. After Dad was gone…” Laughter chirped from her, but it was humorless, filled with pain. “I pretty much raised myself. My next meal and getting to school took priority. After that I never put much thought into religion.”

  I tried to hide my shock with a compliment. “Well, you did a fine job.” The old religion was gaining popularity in small pockets of the world, but it was still too rare for this to be a coincidence. I was going to have to research her family.

  She stopped and craned her neck back to look up at me. The light spilling through the trees over her, making her eyes look like sunbursts of gold, distracted me so much I almost forgot what we were talking about. Now that she had mentioned her mother was Cherokee, I did not know how I missed seeing it in her.

  “Really? I’m a struggling med student who was a bartender in a hole-in-the-wall bar in Nowhere, Idaho. A moment of weakness led to the worst decision of my life, which pretty much ended it as I knew it.”

  I shook my head. “Could have done worse. You could have ended up a drug-addicted prostitute living off the system. And your life has not ended, it has just moved into the next stage.”

  Openmouthed, she stared blankly at me for a moment before nodding and turning away. “Thanks,” she said, then sighed deeply. “It has to be connected. But what could this have to do with my dad?”

  I shook my head. “No idea. You talk about him in the past tense. May I ask what happened to him?”

  Her jaw tensed and I smelled the musk of her wolf trying to rise. She calmed it into submission with an ease that I would not have thought a newly bitten could manage. Impressive. And very sexy.

  “He was killed in prison by white supremacists who didn’t like him having Norse tattoos when he wasn’t one of them.”

  My own wolf stirred along with my anger. I wanted to touch her, to try and comfort her, but her stiff shoulders warned me against it. “My deepest condolences for your senseless loss. Our kind are not like that, not at all. In fact, varúlfur are from every race. Many Icelandic varúlfur are of African descent.”

  Her brows rose. “How’s that?”

  “Their ancestors were slaves that our ancestors stole or acquired, and they were bitten in by one of our kind. Varúlfur do not discriminate based on skin color, just like wolves do not discriminate based on coat color.”

  “Interesting.” The impressed tone of her voice gave me hope that she might be starting to accept our kind, a little at least.

  She began walking off the path into the shade of the trees. Birds sang a piercing siren song overhead as she passed beneath them. Something about her stance and demeanor became almost trancelike again. She stopped next to a waist-high boulder with a flat top that was set within a hundred-foot circle edged by twenty-four spruce trees, each nearly a hundred feet tall. Her fingers trailed over the knotwork carved into the concave surface of the boulder, touched the dried lavender piled in the center. It was as though she felt the power of this place. But that should not have been possible, not before she was through the verða.

  “You can feel that?” I asked.

  “Yes…” Her voice trailed off, gaze turning to the trees.

  The circle of trees we stood within was so big that sunlight poured down upon Sonya despite the long boughs that stretched out from each tree. The limbs did not start until eight feet or so up the trunks. Those trunks drew her attention. The scars of old carvings marked each of them. She started toward one.

  “This is amazing,” she murmured.

  Amazing about summed it up—her and whatever drew her to this place that is, not the crude carvings my father and I had done over twenty years ago. I remained a step behind her, feeling as though we were tethered together. Disturbing as that was, I could not question it or stop. I tried, oh how I tried.

  Flaky bits of brown bark surrounded the raised edges of a scar in the rough shape of an S. She ran her fingers over it, slowly, reverently. I stopped several feet away, not wanting to interrupt such an important moment.

  “You are drawn to the Sowilo, interesting,” I murmured. Maybe she really was starting to accept what she was.

  Pulling her hand slowly from the tree, she turned to me. “I don’t remember what it means.”

  I lifted my head in the direction of the tree she hovered near. “The Sowilo is the Norse rune for an elemental force, or a cleansing power. It signifies a deep connection between one’s unconscious and higher self.”

  When she did not scoff or roll her eyes, a breath eased from me—taking the tension that had been building with it. Telling someone you espoused obscure beliefs was one thing, exposing some of the details of those beliefs and not having them judge you was another altogether.

  “These are all the runes, aren’t they?”

  My arm swept out to indicate the circle of trees. “They are. When my parents found out they were going to have a baby, they had these trees shipped over special from the old country. My father and I carved the runes into the trees when I was ten years old.”

  Her eyes sparkled with fascination. “Why?”

  I looked up into the trees, enjoying the feeling of their pull, and half hoping they might shield me from her scrutiny. “To create our own place of power.”

  “Place of power? And what is that exactly?”

  Though no judgment or doubt colored her tone, worry still nagged at me. But I could not stop now. I had promised not to keep things from her. “Somewhere the power of the Earth intensifies, becomes concentrated, if you will. For varúlfur, such places become places of renewal, healing, and recharging.”

  Fascination lit up her eyes, filling me with encouragement. She gestured toward the next tree. “Remind me what they all mean.”

  Grinning, I grabbed hold of her hand and led her to the next tree. The warmth seeping off her smooth skin and into me distracted me so completely that I had to take a moment to gather my words. I described what the arrow-shaped rune meant but all I could concentrate on was the way she licked her lips as she watched my own. We moved from one tree to the next, the next, and the next. She followed the tug of my hand, and I was grateful that she never let go, but dreaded what that meant. When we reached the rune shaped like a trident, I leaned over her too much and my chest brushed against her arm. The sensation sent a hot trail of sparks all the way down to my groin.

  Forcefully, I turned my thoughts to anything but her. The trees, the birds singing overhead, to the history of the rune. What did it mean? Oh yes, Algiz, protection, shield. That worked for all of a moment before the sound of her voice responding sent blood to my groin. The most delicious part was, I knew from her heavy breathing and the way she pressed closer than necessary that I had the same effect on her. My hand slid lower on her back, just above the swell of her ass. The brush of her waistband tempted me to go lower. Her tongue darted out and licked a line across her upper lip. Her breathing quickened, making me hard as iron. Yet I did not sense her wolf rise up. Impressive. She brushed against my arm and I felt her nipple standing at attention. Too much more of this play and I would be dripping, which, with her new heightened senses, she would likely smell.

  Term papers! My mind retreated to the most boring term paper I had graded that I could think of. After I reached the outline I had my cock under control. Dammit, I could not allow her to affect me so. The stakes were too high. If I did not make light of this quickly and discourage her, things might progress to a dangerous point of distraction.

  “Well done,” I said.

  “What?”

  I caressed the back of her hand. “Suppressing your desire.”

  She jerked her hand from mine and took a half step back. “Excuse me?”

  Damn. That had been too much. I held my hands up. “Sorry, but with the promise you have shown today, I could not resist testing you a bit.” A poor excuse, and a lie, but a small one. Or so I tried to tell myself.

  Despite the
cute upturn of one corner of her mouth, anger burned in her eyes. “Promise? What the hell are you talking about?”

  For a moment I leaned forward, but then gathered my control and leaned back against the tree instead. “You were drawn to this place, you felt its power. Most varúlfur would not be able to do that until they had shifted for the first time.”

  “I happened across it.”

  “No, you walked straight to it. There is something special about you…” My voice trailed off as my gaze traveled up her body. “I am not sure what it is yet. But I think it is why Raul chose you.”

  She stiffened, fangs extending. “Yeah, well, you ‘testing’ my control by flirting with me isn’t much different than him choosing me for the wrong reasons. Just another man with an agenda.”

  She spun away and began to storm off. In two quick steps I caught up to her and gently gripped her arm. She stopped, but did not turn. It was one thing to discourage her, but I did not want her upset—and not just because it might force her to shift.

  “I am sorry, Sonya. I did not mean to offend you. Everything I am doing here is for your sake, not my own. I promise.”

  After a moment she turned toward me. I did not let go of her arm, but I was hoping by the look on my face, she would know it had nothing to do with testing her.

  “How do I know that for sure? You’re virtually a stranger to me.”

  “I was chosen to be your kennari because I am neutral.” My eyes dropped to my feet. I really did not want to tell her the next part, but after how I had botched things up, I did not see a way around it. “I have no pack.”

  “Is that strange, to have no pack?”

  She sounded like she did not consider that a bad thing. Which made me want to kiss her. The desire made me feel like possibly the worst kennari in varúlfur history. It was a very good thing the Council could not read my thoughts. I was a history teacher, dammit, I should be used to this role. No student had ever affected me this way. The Council would have my head if they knew what was going on inside of it.