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“I know you fear us. You should.” He reached for the strands of hair that hung in my face and softly brushed them away, tucking them behind my ears. “I can’t promise you anything, or tell you the lies you want to hear to make yourself feel better. I can’t make the darkness go away. But you still need to come with us.”
I had nothing to say. And he was right. I did have to go with them. I knew that. I knew I had no other options. Not yet.
“She dropped her basket when she ran,” one of the men said as he walked up to us after fetching the basket and all the goods. “Tonight we feast.”
“Oh yes,” another man said, staring at me with the same hungry eyes that Grimm once had. “Yes, tonight we will most definitely feast.”
CHAPTER 3
“Drink.”
Stubbornly, I turned my head away as I burrowed further down into the pile of furs they had placed me on.
“It wasn’t a request.”
Returning the beastly man’s glare, I snatched the bottle from his hand and took a long pull, immediately regretting it the moment the strong wine hit my empty stomach. Sputtering and coughing, I only had a moment to catch my breath before he tilted the bottom of the bottle, forcing me to drink again.
“Good girl.”
Not sure if the warm feeling enveloping me was from his praise or the wine, I once more settled back into the furs. Lifted over the one they called Grimm’s shoulder, I had been carried deep into the forest. There against the jagged rock face of a mountain, they had placed me at the entrance of a large cave. The floors were covered in thatch with large piles of furs in different shades of brown and gray stacked in haphazard piles. I watched in anxious silence as they built up a large fire, chasing away the cold darkness.
Each was crouched down on their haunches, tearing through the contents of the basket, eating the pieces of sweetened cake with their hands as they passed the bottles of wine around. The only sound, their grunts of pleasure. The warm glow of the fire cast strange shadows over the men surrounding it. Deep-set eyes, lowered brows and strong jaws were made all the more fierce by the play of light. The heavily muscled brawn of their bodies was on full display as each wolf-like man wore only the barest of animal skins and fur to cover his frame.
I shifted my hips and winced from the soreness between my legs. Certain I had made only the barest breath of sound, I was startled to see five pairs of eyes trained on me, alert and still.
One broke from the pack and approached me.
“What are you called?” he asked. His voice was low and hoarse. His words halting and stilted, as if he were not accustomed to speaking.
Licking my lips, I answered, “My birth name is Raina, but I am called Red.”
“Red?”
I could only nod, feeling foolish for imparting even the sparest personal detail to these men. My mind and body were too bruised and worn to comprehend what was happening. I felt a distant numbness as if all that was occurring was happening to some other poor girl, not me. No. I was still under my favorite tree reading my favorite fairy tale. Perhaps I had fallen asleep and at any moment would awaken from this strange nightmare.
“Drink.”
This time, I didn’t hesitate. I took the offered bottle from his hand and drained what was left, welcoming the hazy feeling flowing over me.
“I tell you it is a sign,” said one of the men.
“You don’t know that,” said another.
“In close to five hundred years they have never sent a woman to appease us, and now they send us one with hair the color of the blood moon. Who can see us in our true form. It’s a sign.”
“It is remarkable that she sees us in our human form and not as wolves. Is it possible the village has finally learned a way to break the curse?”
The others snorted in derision.
“Perhaps Beo is right. This may be the sign we have been waiting for.”
“They don’t care about you,” I called out, the wine freeing my tongue. Rising on unsteady feet, I kicked away the pelts and walked toward the fire. Swinging my arm in an arch, the bottle held loosely in my grasp, I began to laugh. “They don’t care about you, and they really, really hate me. Especially my grandmother. You think you’re cursed?” I asked as I hiccupped loudly. “I’m the one who is cursed. Cursed from birth.”
“What the hell, Canis! How much did you give the lass to drink?”
“I don’t know. The dregs of one bottle and half the other.”
“You should know a woman her size can’t handle that much wine.”
