Orán lowers his arm slowly. We move into the hallway as one, each step more daunting than the next, as the vicious growl grows louder. There is a promise of violence and a clear warning to it that we do not heed.
“Prepare yourself, Brother,” he murmurs. “I left her bound to the bed, and she doesn’t sound pleased about it.”
I bar him from pressing forward for only a second, thrusting out my arm. “That is not the sound a woman makes when she’s angry.”
Confusion mars his features, but only for a split second before he grasps the situation. “It’s happening,” he says quietly. “Your face.” I don’t need him to elaborate.
I lift my hands and see it for myself. My nails lengthen, darkening, sharpening into claws that flex with instinct rather than thought. The heat has become a sweltering inner tempest, and magic that only myths and fiction speak of kindles into existence and spreads.
The man I am gets pushed back as the wolf presses forward toward the surface, impatient, insistent.
The White Witch doesn’t growl this time when she voices her discontent. She snarls.
I stride forward, unable to stop myself.
Orán is at my back immediately, fingers biting into my shoulder, his voice harsh in my ear as he hisses my name, commanding me to stop—to think—to remember myself.
I don’t.
I can’t.
We reach the doorway.
She’s crouched on the bed and is as beautiful as I remember and also more so. No living words could breathe the ones necessary to articulate what I see. She’s barefoot, gown torn open, fabric hanging in shreds from her body, revealing opalescent skin that catches the light, like red-stained moonstone. One breast is exposed, her chest rising and falling too fast, too hard. Her spine is bowed, shoulders rolled forward like a cornered and wary predator.
The bindings dangle in tatters from one wrist, shredded beyond recognition. Her fingers curl and uncurl, nails darkened and sharpened, spearing through sheets and mattress, tearing into fabric as if it were flesh.
Her eyes glow—piercing white swallowed by blown-out black pupils, luminous and other. There is no confusion in them. Only awareness. Challenge.
The sound she makes is not human.
It’s rage personified.
A clear warning to stay back, or she will attack.
Instinct overrides reason. The world narrows, edges warping, until she is all I see. I breathe her in as a wolf. As a creature much like the one I see in her, I meet that threat with one of my own.
The sound that tears from me is one not of this world’s making and can’t be restricted to this space. It tunnels through all that surrounds us and shakes the very ground beneath my feet.
Violent. Possessive. Dominant.
Untethered and dangerous.
Skin tightens, then shifts. Thick, coarse hair breaks through follicles in a hot ripple down my frame. My jaw restructures, then, pain as sharp teeth tear through gums. Muscles reform and harden. Bone reshapes. The beast within me rises fully, no longer pacified to remain a shadow beneath my skin.
I am a man, but also not.
I step toward something in between beast and man.
She snarls.
Lips peel back from elongated teeth, eyes blazing as she slices through the last of the bindings and rises slowly higher on the mattress, body coiled and ready to strike. She is all feral grace and fury, power vibrating just beneath her skin.
“Pollock.” Orán's voice is threaded with unease. “Don’t. She knows not what she does.”
I lift a hand without breaking my stare. “She knows,” I say, voice pitched low. “And she’s terrified. But she knows what I am to her. This is her fighting the claim I intend to place on her.”
I push the truth into her mind, firm and unyielding.
