by Chanel Smith
For several moments neither could move, straining against each other with all their might. Then the spasms began to relax and with that, Raya slumped gently on top of Elizabet with her legs still clamped around him.
“Love you, I always have.” The words barely reached his ears, and to his shock he felt his eyes well up.
She who’d always feared aging so greatly, feared being alone because of growing old and ugly—that woman now trapped in this dingy room. She ended up living the life she feared; she created a life that was more alone than even she could have imagined. For a moment, his heart welled with pity before images of her sadistic cruelty flooded his mind. Young girls hanging from hooks from her ceiling; their pleading eyes fixed on his even as their life’s blood had been fully drained from dangling wrists into her special bath below; the piles of desiccated bodies that lay in waiting behind the castle to be burned, not even the compassion to give them honor in their death with a Christian burial.
Convulsively he shuddered, unable to restrain himself.
“And it didn’t even work,” she murmured as if she’d read his mind. Her old cocky voice was back and there wasn’t so much as a scintilla of regret in it.
Raya rolled to his side to sleep. He’d stay with her one more night, but was certain he couldn’t bear any more than that.
Two days later, there was excitement in the air when Elizabet’s old servant hobbled in and whispered in her ear. Her eyes lit up, and Raya knew. He didn’t know how, but he did.
The servant had managed to procure a young girl for his mistress.
Well, this was as good a time as any to leave.
“Going out for a bit,” was all Raya said as he strode to the door, opened it, and walked through.
He stopped dead in his tracks, eyes riveted on the three women who stood casually leaning over the railing. One looked younger than fifteen, just the age. Raya shivered and the girl turned to face him. She had the coldest golden eyes he’d ever seen. She used them to rake him with evident disgust, from his face to his shoes and back again. Finally she stared deeply into his eyes and frowned as if she hadn’t found what she’d sought.
“You’re never going to...” Raya was unable to complete his statement; distracted by her frame. His eyes ran over that slim form, tiny breasts and a tinier waist. She didn’t even come up to his belly button and shortly she’d be hung from that old familiar hook—the fuck she would! He reacted as rapidly as the fighter in his prime that he was. One moment he was staring at the girl, the next she was over his shoulder as he pounded down the tower steps.
As he reached the bottom and raced for the courtyard door, he noticed that both of the other women were right on his ass.
“Don’t try to stop me,” he yelled back in warning, “I don’t want to hurt a woman: don’t make me do it.”
Then with several leaps he was at the door and through it even as voices rose in panic from the tower. At a dead run he headed for the dense woods, and not until he was at least a mile inside and had crossed a river did he stop to catch his breath. It was then that he noticed the other two women, impossibly, were still with him. And neither of them had so much as broken a sweat.
***
Sitting around a small fire after a successful hunt that night, Raya addressed the women, “You were there to kill her, weren’t you?” It wasn’t a question as it was the only reasonable answer.
“And you were there to fuck her,” the younger woman said with no inflection in her voice whatsoever.
“Back off. She and I were close many years ago, just prior to her obsession with the youth of her skin,” Raya stated.
“Yet you stayed,” one of the other women said.
“For a short while,” he admitted. “Then I left and haven’t been back till now.”
The three women looked at each other and it was plain to Raya that something passed between them. The younger one nodded decisively and turned back to Raya.
“Why did you come back now?”
“Because they’re going to kill her. She was my first love, no matter what else she was, and now they’re going to kill her.”
To his horror he heard his own voice crack. Christos, they’d run from him now. Couldn’t blame them, he’d run from himself, he thought as he hung his head.
There was the slightest disturbance in the air and his head shot up, his warrior instincts taking over. But what he found was nothing he’d ever expected or encountered.
Where the younger woman had been, a large, grey-spotted wolf sat on slender haunches, dark eyes pinning his. The other two women were still totally relaxed, watching him with an air of curiosity.
Raya’s jaw dropped. Could these be... when he was very young, his mother had taunted him about such creatures, “Do that again and the wolf-men will get you!” How many times had he heard that threat?
Mom had said their teeth were almost as long as his little arm. Now he stared at the wolf’s mouth, silently wondering. Suddenly she yipped, leaped to her feet and walked toward him. Raya didn’t dare to breathe much less move, and his eyes never left hers. But suddenly she blurred as she scrambled into motion so rapidly he couldn’t see what she was doing. Then teeth sank deeply into his arm, she let a short howl and vanished into the night. Speechless once again for the second time in as many days, Raya looked at the two remaining women who looked back calmly as if nothing had happened.
At last he said, “Would someone care to tell me what the fuck is happening here?”
Werewolf Moon
is available at:
Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK * Amazon AU
About the Author:
Chanel Smith was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She has since moved to Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and two dogs. When not writing, she spends her time training dogs, hiking, biking and anything else that will get her outside in nature.
Please find her on Facebook.