“No, please—“
I suddenly felt my entire body break into a cold sweat, and then I started slipping into a contortion. I was changing. I was changing into a wolf in the middle of the yuletide ball with every damn human in town in the room. I garbled out something before my mouth started stretching. My necklace was choking me, my body tearing through another dress. I fell off the chair, my hands scrambling for purchase somewhere. The transformation was not quite complete as I tried to resist it; I must have looked like a monster. I saw Katherine’s face looming over me, shrieking.
“Get her out of here!” Father cried.
I tried to get onto my feet, tussling with the dress. I saw Patrick in the crowd. He looked apprehensive. He was not here to save me from a lecherous stranger this time. He couldn’t save me from my own self. I saw girls dashing away. I had never felt so small in my entire life. My instincts roared panic. I howled with fear.
No…no!
And then stars filled my vision, and my knees buckled beneath me.
I woke up in my bed, fully human as far as I could see, with Father and Katherine sitting nearby.
“She’s awake,” Katherine said. “Fersa…sweetheart?”
I trembled at the tender words. She didn’t sound angry. I could hardly believe it. “I’m—I’m sorry.”
“Ina told us you’ve been changing into a wolf every morning,” Father said. “You should have told us you weren’t fully in control.”
“I—I thought I was in control as long as I was awake.”
“Then what happened?”
Lord, but I didn’t want to explain to my father. “Once a year, wolves have a…um…a mating season,” I stammered. “I mean, we can mate other times. But at that time it becomes…you know—stronger. I’ve never been around men since…”
“Oh! That’s all it is!” Katherine sounded relieved. “Douglas, why didn’t you tell me? You must have known. Mr. Arrowen alluded to it but I didn’t really understand it was so serious.”
“I’d forgotten.”
I covered my face. “I can never—“ I stopped, realizing that I was wearing bracelets of silver. I touched my neck and found a silver choker.
Just like I was forced to wear at the work house, to keep me from changing. The jewelry locked around me so I couldn’t remove it myself.
“Only until you can control your transformations,” Father said. “I’m sorry, Fersa, but…I know you don’t want another incident like that one. Isn’t it a relief?”
“But I’m supposed to go into the forest to visit my grandmother!”
“Yes, all the more reason! You definitely should not lose control there,” he said.
“You had these…sitting around?” I could barely keep from losing it. I wanted to think these people truly loved me. What did they really think, if they had silver cuffs and collar waiting for the moment when my transformation had to be bound? Silver was not cheap enough to buy on a whim. “Take them off! Take them off!”
“Don’t be upset, dear, it’s a temporary measure,” Katherine said. “Do they hurt? Is that it? I just don’t want you to be embarrassed.”
I made a noise of frustration. “They don’t hurt. You don’t understand!”
Father patted my shoulder. “I think we do, kit. We’re just trying to do what’s best for you. You can still visit your grandmother and I think you’ll feel a lot better having a respite from all these new experiences. The older you get, the easier it will be to balance all these feelings.”
“I’ll make you some tea,” Katherine said. “Is there anything else that might help?”
“No.”
They shut the door and I heard them whispering about me. “She’s young…”
“I think we’d better get her married sooner rather than later… I’ve seen the way she looks at Mr. Arrowen!”
“Patrick could always teach her to read, little by little in the evenings…”
“Can Patrick read?” Katherine asked, with a laugh. “He’s all muscle, isn’t he?”
I slumped onto the pillow, looking at the silver shackles on my wrists, the walls that bound me. I’ll keep your instincts well tamed, lass…
There was one strange sort of relief to it. Patrick could not ask me to hunt a fellow wolf now.
Chapter Twelve
Fersa
My father let me mope in bed a few days, all my tutoring sessions canceled, while he arranged my travel. Grandmother didn’t live that far away. Apparently her cottage was along the High Road, once it snaked off into the forest, and you could walk there in a matter of hours. But of course, he said I must go in a hired carriage. Ladies didn’t walk through the woods unchaperoned. Mercy me.
I had just a small valise packed with what Katherine called “practical” clothing (it had less lace than usual), lunch, and holiday sweets for Grandmother. The coach set off early in the morning, rattling over the roads out of town.
An hour into the journey, we were in the forest. The driver stopped to take a piss. He was already taking out tobacco and I expected he wasn’t going to be quick about the break.
While he headed one way, I grabbed my valise and ran the other way.
I ran like I was being chased. I ran until my lungs were bursting against my still very impractical clothing. I ran until I couldn’t run any more, savoring the fresh air, the wind on my face, the smell of snow and wild things all around me. The snow was covered in tracks. If only I could turn into a wolf!
But I still had keen senses and I knew how to find my way. I worked my way back to the road, hopping over frigid creeks and falling into unexpected drifts.
Guilt pricked at me. The coachman was going to take the blame for my disappearance and Katherine and Father might be worried. But they ought to be able to guess. I’d protested about the coach already. I needed this time alone in the world that would always be my first home.
I grew reflective as my steps slowed down. Yes, this was my home and so it would always be. I was probably a few days’ walk from the forest where I had grown up, from the place my mother died. But it was all part of the same northern sea of green, and it smelled the same; had the same trees and animals. The streams might have been the same ones I drank from before, only closer to where they met the sea. I realized I was shivering, and pulled my cloak tight around me, one frigid hand clutching my valise.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t hunt without being able to transform. A simmering anger was building up in me slowly over the fact that my own family would entrap me. I worked up an appetite quickly with all the exercise and cold. The packed lunch was gone quite early and before long I was tempted to eat Grandmother’s presents.
I heard something in the distance. A presence, moving softly through the snow.
“Is someone there?” I picked up a large stick. I sniffed the air, trying to pick out a scent on the wind. “Damn it,” I cursed, infuriated by my weak human senses.
My eyes skimmed over the forest, and I saw something move. I watched as a wolf approached in the distance.
The white wolf.
Well, a white wolf, at least.
He was a male, and he was beautiful, with fur that matched the snow, pristine and soft. His golden eyes were intelligent; I knew he was wolvenfolk and not a pure wolf. He might be dangerous. He might not follow clan laws.
“Sir Wolf…,” I breathed. “I’m just passing through.”
He stopped at the edge of the path and tilted his head as if to ask me a question.
“I’m visiting my grandmother, that’s all.”
He took a step closer. His ears were lowered, not quite aggressive, but tense. I was painfully aware that he could have killed me.
“You know I’m a wolf too,” I said. “You can smell it. But look—I can’t change. It wouldn’t be a fair fight, so I hope you’ll let me pass.”
His eyes seemed a little judgmental.
“You think I wanted this to happen?” I remained still and then held out a hand. “Are you the whi
te wolf? The one who made an enemy of the forest itself, and the king of the wood elves? You don’t look half as scary as they said.”
He sniffed the silver cuff at my wrist.
I snapped it back. I felt weak, to be in this position, to have let this happen at all. “Yes, well.”
He looked sympathetic.
“Horrid, isn’t it?” I said. “Here I was going to run through the woods with my clothes in my teeth.”
He huffed and came closer. I sank my fingers into his soft fur. This was not proper at all, even among wolves. You were not supposed to take a human form and pet a fellow wolf like a dog. But I couldn’t resist. I hadn’t felt another wolf in a long, long time. I missed the soft, safe feeling of other wolves around me at night. That was so long ago, it seemed like a dream I’d once had.
But this one-sided conversation was getting aggravating.
“You could change back and talk to me,” I said. “I’ve seen plenty of naked men.”
He squinted at me.
“You smell familiar…,” I said, drawing my hand away.
He made a little warning grunt and took a step back.
“Let me see you,” I said.
Now his ears flattened a little.
“Stubborn, are you? Don’t look at me like that. I would change if I could and then we’d see what’s what.” I missed the language of howls and huffs and grunts, ears and tails. It seemed so simple compared to the human world. “I miss being a wolf.”
He had rather deep eyes for a wolf, I thought.
I shook my head. “Fine. I don’t know what you want. Just let me pass.” I started to walk and he leapt onto the path ahead of me, as if to block me. He nudged his head against my skirts.
“Get out of the way.”
He stayed in the center of the path, and I nudged him with my stick and went on by. I was a little nervous now, because he was acting so strange and I couldn’t change. I was really quite helpless if I started thinking about it. But I wasn’t going to show any fear.
Suddenly he tackled me, his massive form hitting me and knocking me onto the soft snow. My valise tumbled out of my hand. I managed to keep hold of the stick, and I tried to whack behind me with it, to beat him back, but no sooner had I started to move than I felt his body shifting on top of mine, and human hands pinned me down.
Chapter Thirteen
Agnar
I watched her from a distance first. My fur blended in with the snow and yet I still took a risk, staying this close to the road. I had to know how she would react if she saw me.
When I saw the silver cuffs on her wrists, I realized there was no other way she could react. They had bound her to her human form before sending her off to the forest. Any wolf could maul her to death if they wished, so of course she was friendly. I knew this must be breaking her heart.
I knew so well.
When I killed the blue stag, Mr. Giardi opened his doors to me. He taught me how to read and write, everything he knew about plants and planets and mathematics and medicine, and how to speak and conduct myself like a human in society.
But he also dyed my hair a dark color and told everyone I was his country nephew. It didn’t take long before I realized why. He was a curious man, and I was an object of curiosity. Could a wolf take to learning? Could a wolf abandon his true nature? That was what he wanted to find out. I was young and I had not known that killing a blue stag was a crime in this land. Once it was done, the true payment I offered him was that I could never leave. I could not be a wolf anymore, not if I wanted to; the locals were keeping an eye out for me.
It’s all right, Mr. Giardi said. You’re safe with me. He was attentive to me, and offered much praise. He spread the stag’s pelt on his bedroom floor and mounted its striking black horns above his bed, and after a little while, I started to feel sick whenever I saw them.
One day, I found the notebooks. A dozen of them, little black books, filled with notes on me. All the times I shifted into a wolf or fell into “a temper” or what he called “wild moods”, how my eyes seemed to flash gold and I raged and snapped in my struggle to gain control. How much food I ate, and how much I slept, and how tall I was, and how quickly I learned the things he was teaching me. Countless opinions on me: “impetuous”, “struggles with abstract concepts”, “will probably never be welcomed in royal houses anywhere”, “he battles against his animal nature but cannot overcome it”.
Up until I found the notes, I thought I was doing a pretty good job of learning, but in the notes I saw myself as I really must be: a failure of a human, but stuck in the guise of one. I gathered my clothes and a few coins he had given me for spending money, hoping he would not accuse me of stealing, and left. I was seventeen at that time. I wandered, asking for work, until I found a country school that needed a teacher, and so my career began. I was far from Mr. Giardi at this point, and I dared to shift my shape a little more often. I ran free in the woods when the workday was over.
That ended this past autumn, when I heard that my little brothers had kidnapped a princess, nearly raped her according to the accounts, and that now King Brennus was looking for me. At first, I didn’t believe the reports, but they were corroborated everywhere. The Longtooth brothers. The Stone Hollow clan. A white wolf…
And the crime that would haunt me forever, the slaughtered stag.
I didn’t know what had become of my brothers in the time after I left them, that they would have become kidnappers. I couldn’t believe the story was true, but it seemed that nothing good was likely to come of me either, at this rate.
Mr. Giardi was right, in the end. I had been battling my animal nature since I was a child and I couldn’t overcome it now. I knew I would make Fersa mine, even as I knew I might be jailed for it—or worse. I already knew I was bound to her. I could never leave Pennarick. I could hardly stand being apart from her.
The last time I’d seen her, she was dancing with him. The very thing I begged her not to do.
I held her wrists in my hands, leaning my weight against her. I was already growing hard with desire for her as she wriggled under me. I dreamed of ripping off her clothes with my hands and teeth and taking her naked right there in the snowbank.
She bit my hand.
“Ugh!” I snapped my hand back.
“Agnar?” She tried to twist back and look at me.
“Who cuffed you?” I asked, pained by the sight of her slim wrists firmly encased in those bands of silver. “Your father? It serves you right. I told you to stay away from Patrick Rafferty.”
“I—I didn’t know the white wolf was you. Your hair is black!”
“Yes. I dyed it so no one would kill me.”
“But why—why did you kill a blue stag? Or—did you?”
“You’re not entirely sure that you believe that poster, then?”
“I can’t imagine you would do something so…forbidden. Everyone knows the blue stags are guardians of the forest…”
“So you’re not sure? But if you helped Patrick capture me, I would be dragged to the capital in chains and executed, like so many wolves before me. And you would never know the truth.”
“I…I… Let me go!”
“Not yet.” I kept her pinned under me. “I want to know what is in your head, that you would trust a swaggering young human with an axe over one of your own kind. That you would believe those posters. You know how elves treat wolves. You know, of all people, you know! I will not be hunted down, especially by the first woman I’ve—“ I broke off with a growl.
An angry sob ripped out of her throat. “I’m sorry! Then tell me—why do they hunt you?”
My grip on her arms finally softened a little, hearing her cry, even if she sounded more furious than anything. “I did kill a blue stag. But I was young. I didn't know just how serious it was. I traded the stag for…an education.”
“Who asked you to make a trade like that?”
“He was a lord, a wealthy man of learning from Bondino.”
&
nbsp; “Were those really your brothers? The other wolves who were killed by King Brennus?”
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t know what happened or why… They were much younger than me when I left my clan. No older than your little brothers.”
“I’m sorry…”
“What matters to me now,” I said, right into her ear, “is that you didn’t trust me. I need your trust, if we’re going to do this. I would never deceive you, Fersa. But I’m a wanted man. If you deceive me, I might be a dead one as well.”
She swallowed thickly. “I guess, deep down, I just wanted to belong. And you don’t know what you want. One minute you touch me and the next minute you push me away.”
My stern demeanor was broken abruptly by a pinecone hitting me right in the back of the head. This sort of thing happened to me all the time when I left town. The forest itself was angry at me for killing one of its guardians.
She almost smiled. “The forest really doesn’t like you, eh?”
“No. I am not welcome here anymore,” I said, making no effort to hide my bitterness. “I’m lucky the forest can’t carry a bow. I only come during this time, when I don’t have much choice. I’m afraid I might betray my animal nature…”
Animal nature…yes. Even my human nose could smell the heady aroma of desire—hers and mine.
“You wanted to see me as a wolf. You said this was what I had to prove. Well, here I am. I’m not here to play nice anymore,” I said, finally releasing her wrists so my hands could have my fill of other parts of her.
Chapter Fourteen
Fersa
His body was intimately close to me—and naked. I couldn’t see him well with him pinning me, but I felt the warm weight of him. “Then what are we here to play?” I asked.
He made an urgent growl in my ear, spurred on by my words. “I want you to make me that promise. Stay away from Patrick.”
“Patrick has never tried to make a lady out of me like you did. He’s never criticized my accent or cared that I can’t read.”
Taming Red Riding Hood Page 8