Her Wolf Protector

Lola pulled in harsh, ragged breath after harsh, ragged breath. Her legs were tired and rubbery but she pushed herself to keep going. To try and get away from the horror of what happened in her village. It took less than an hour. That was all. In less than an hour, her entire world had been shattered so thoroughly, she would never be able to fit the broken pieces back together. She could hardly believe how quickly it all happened. The acrid smell of the burning bodies still filled her nostrils and the little bit of food she had in her stomach kept wanting to eject itself in spectacular fashion. That wasn’t the worst of it though. Not by a long shot.

The worst were the images she kept seeing inside her head. They played on a constant loop as she ran. She saw the painful, horrifying deaths of childhood friends she’d grown up with. Saw adults she’d known her whole life slaughtered or burned alive. As heartless as it sounded, those deaths were easy to handle compared to what those animals did to her parents. Those images were the real threat to her sanity. They were the ones that almost completely unraveled her.

Run Lola!

That had been her father. He had screamed that as loudly as he could, doing so when fire chewed at his skin and body. One of his arms had been missing and looked as if something had ripped it right out of its socket. An entire section of his cheek was also gone, bitten away by a creature with extremely sharp teeth. There were other injuries he had, worse injuries, and each one had been given before they set him on fire.

She felt the tears now but didn’t want to cry. She couldn’t afford to cry. Not right now anyway. They were still coming for her. She could feel them back there, a dark presence full of murderous intent. Their bloodlust was almost tangible. An oppressive wave against her back.

“I can smell your fear, bitch!”

Thankfully, the voice was still behind her but he wasn’t far enough back.

“We’re coming to eat your heart.”

She remembered the faces of those murderers, all five of them. She managed to hide herself but still saw them as they rampaged through her village. Three had been females, each one wearing shredded clothing that barely left anything at all to the imagination. One’s clothing had been torn so badly that her breasts were covered only by a thin strip of cloth straining to fulfill its mission. The other two had been males, one short and sort of hunched over; the other tall and lean, his frame almost gaunt. His eyes had been filled with a manic glee at the murder he’d caused and it was clear he was their leader. On top of that, each one had been covered in blood, gore, and all manner of filth. Every so often, when the light would hit them just right, their eyes glowed with an amber shine just like an animal’s. That meant only one thing.

Werewolves.

"No, no, no," she wailed to herself. This couldn’t be. What about the treaty? And why were a bunch of werewolves here, in her town of Gloucester? Her village was deep in the heart of the human country of Alcroft. No werewolf should be this far inside the country. Were they trying to start some kind of war?

She wasn’t sure.

Eventually, when the werewolves were distracted with their mayhem, she made a break for the forest. She ran with everything she had, vowing to burn the faces of those monsters into her memory for the rest of her life. One day, she told herself. One day she would come for them. She would come for the monsters that had slaughtered her family. Her friends. Her entire life. She didn’t know when or how, but she pledged to herself that each one would be dead by her own hands.

"I’ll kill you all," she whispered to herself, brushing hot tears from her face.

She wasn’t sure how long she spent running, only that by the time she was forced to stop, she could barely catch her breath and her throat felt raw. And dry. She didn’t have any water handy so she gulped down whatever spit she had to try and soothe the pain there. The werewolves were still behind her, not letting up. It would be a hard task to try and lose them, not with their enhanced senses anyway. Most of the children in Alcroft’s villages, towns, and cities were taught the lore on werewolves. At the time, Lola barely paid any attention and elected to goof off in school with her friends, thinking there was no way they would need to know all that information. If a werewolf ever made it as far as Gloucester, then they were suicidal because the King’s soldiers would wipe them out.

And yet here she was, running for her life because a wild pack of werewolves were hellbent on killing her.

'What’s the lore, what’s the lore, what’s the bloody damned lore!' Lola screamed in her head.

Werewolves heal, she thought to herself, trying to force her fear-addled brain to cooperate with her. Werewolves have the ability to regenerate most wounds.

"That’s great but not what I’m looking for," she told herself. "Now come on, brain, give me something!"

Werewolves mostly track by scent.

That’s mildly more useful, she thought to herself. What can I do with that?

The answer came to her suddenly after running past a muddy puddle. If she could cover her scent, they wouldn’t be able to track her as easily. She backtracked to the puddle and threw herself into it as quietly as she could. In seconds, she had a layer of mud and gunk spread all over her entire body. It was cold and having it caked on her so thickly leached the warmth right out of her body. She started shivering almost instantly but a few minutes of running all out warmed her up a little bit. She was still cold but it wasn’t as bad.

“You’re only making this worse for yourself, you stupid bitch,” one of them called, his voice a loud bellow. “When we catch up to you, and we will catch up to you, I will be cutting bits off you and eating them while you watch.”

She tried to ignore him, tried to focus on getting as far away as possible, but his voice tore through everything she tried to throw up to push it away.

“I can’t smell her no more, Drake,” one of the werewolves said. The voice was far away but still loud enough to where she could faintly hear it.

“Hey, me either,” another one said, this one a female. “It’s disappeared.”

She wasn’t sure how far away she was but if she could still hear them it meant they were still too close. The problem, however, was that her body was starting to give up on her. The rabbit-skin boots she wore felt soaked in blood now. Her pants were ripped in several spots and she could feel gashes and cuts burning as she ran. The coldness of the mud caked to her body made her muscles want to seize up every few seconds. She stumbled and tripped more often and her eyes kept wanting to lose focus. The forest around her got blurry and hard to make out and the fact that it was night and dark didn’t make it any easier. The moon hanging in the sky gave her a little bit of light to see by but the thick branches of the trees blocked a lot of it.

"Keep…" she huffed. "Going…Keep…Going."

But she couldn’t. She tried so hard to listen to her inner commands and the promise she made to get revenge, but no matter how much she pushed herself, she couldn’t do it. There was nothing left to give. Her body finally failed her and the only thing left to do was to try and find some sort of hiding spot and hope the wolves would somehow not find her.

Her legs gave out and she fell to the ground. Behind her, she heard the werewolves still coming for her. They weren’t being quiet either. In fact, they made it a point to stomp and crash through the woods as loudly as possible. Part of the mind games, she was sure, meant to scare her even more.

She hated herself knowing that their scare tactics were working so effectively.

Eventually, she managed to crawl forward and eventually found a fallen tree with just enough of a gap underneath for her to hide under. More cuts and scratches were flayed into her skin when she did but she didn’t care. She physically couldn’t run anymore. This tree was her best option for staying hidden and staying alive. She thought about praying but told herself it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. Gods were fickle beings.

What’s the point? she asked herself. It was a depressing question but it was also a realistic one. Her fate wouldn’t rest on some god to rescue her. She was almost certain that within the next ten or even five minutes, the werewolves would find her, do unspeakable things to her, and then kill her.

She closed her eyes.

She didn’t want to witness what was about to come next.

“I see you.”

Lola’s blood went ice cold.

“Can I ask what you might be doing underneath a tree?” The voice sounded curious and held no malevolence.

Lola was confused for a moment. Was this some sort of trick? Was her attacker trying to lure her out of hiding instead of coming in for her? The werewolves hunting her didn’t seem like the subtle type. Also, this new voice sounded nothing like the harsh, almost growling tones of the filthy man from before.

“I think I have begun to understand,” the man said.

Definitely a man, she reasoned. His voice was deep but also alluring. She heard him move closer toward her.

“You are being hunted, yes?” he asked. Then she heard him sniffing the air like a…

Werewolf, her mind screamed. He’s a werewolf too!

That made her heart start rampaging in her chest again and she completely freaked out. She tried to roll away from him but in her panic, she didn’t realize how close she was to the trunk of the fallen tree. She bashed her head into it so hard, she felt the impact travel all the way through her body.

“Easy,” the new werewolf said but this time his voice was quiet. It held none of the slight humor from just seconds before when he thought all he had come across was a peculiar girl in a remote part of an equally remote forest. “I am going to give you instructions and it is imperative that you follow them without question.”

She groaned, her head still hurting, but this command of his struck her as offensive. As if she’d blindly trust a werewolf.

“Why would I do that?” she hissed, still trying to edge herself away from him, albeit much stealthier this time.

“Because if you don’t, Drake and his band of mongrel dogs will rip you limb from limb,” he explained, his voice still quiet. “I am assuming they are the ones hunting you?”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I can tell you that at a later time, assuming you aren’t killed in the next few minutes,” the man responded. “Now I am going to cause a distraction and you are going to find a better place to hide. The trick with the mud was impressive but it’s fallen mostly off your body now. Your scent is coming through. You will need to think of another clever move like that if you want to get safely away from him.”

“Why are you helping me?” she asked.

“The simple answer?” he replied and although she couldn't clearly see his face, she imagined him with a sly, devilish smile. “Because I hate him and his entire kingdom. They’re nothing but unhinged, psychotic maniacs. No better than feral animals. He wants you dead and I want to not let him get what he wants.”

“Fair enough,” Lola told him. “And by helping me, you don’t mean to get rid of him and then murder me for yourself?”

“I think I'm more than capable of murdering you right here and now if it suited me,” he answered. She imagined him with that devilish grin again. “For someone getting rescued you certainly ask a lot of questions and are quite distrustful.”

“I suppose so,” she told him. “But then again, a pack of werewolves just raided my village, burned it to the ground, and slaughtered everyone in it including my parents. I guess that had a lasting effect on my mental state.”

“Ah,” the man responded thoughtfully. “Fair enough.”

A hand suddenly appeared through the fallen tree’s branches and after a minor second or two of hesitation, Lola gripped it. She felt the strength in her rescuer immediately as he pulled her out with ridiculous ease. One second she was safe and securely hidden and the next she was sliding easily over the wet, muddy ground. The branches scraped along her body but she threw her free arm over her face to protect it a bit.

“Stay low to the ground and try to move as quietly as possible,” the man explained, his dark, stormy blue eyes piercing into and through her.

The deep, alluring tones of his voice had given her a little bit of a mental image of the man but what she imagined and reality were two completely different things. In her mind’s eye, she had pictured a slim, proper man dressed in a dark-colored suit with gold or red accents despite the fact that wearing a suit in a forest like this was absurd. She even imagined him with a fancy gold pocket watch, its gold chain draping from a buttonhole and into the pocket where it lived. He’d also been dark of hair with a streak of gray and a pointed goatee. In reality, her savior was less dapper and more sensible. He wore a pair of thick, denim pants that had seen a lot of wear and tear, tanned hiking boots made from leather, and a navy and gray flannel over a simple white t-shirt. His hair was actually more of a light brown and had no gray streak in it. He did have facial hair but not a goatee. It was a full, thick beard that covered the lower portion of his face.

“There you go,” the man told her. “That’s right.”

At the same time she was coming out from under the fallen tree, the werewolf pack that burned down her village found them. They must have been a lot closer than either one thought.

“Well, well,” the one called Drake muttered, stepping out from behind a tree a dozen or so yards away. “Caught up to you didn’t I?”

He caught sight of the new guy and his eyes narrowed with intense, fiery hatred.

“What the hell are you doing here, Russel?” Drake snarled. The others with him fanned out, each one keeping their eyes locked on Lola’s rescuer.

“Came for a bit of a stroll and wouldn’t you know it, I came across the scent of a rabid animal. Had to see what that was about,” Russel said, smiling somewhat.

It does look a bit devilish, Lola thought to herself. It was a totally weird and inappropriate thing to think at that moment but she was reasonably sure her mind was starting to sort of shut down. Or something like that. All the horrors of recent events were compounding inside her head until she felt deadened inside. Numb almost.

“You can go back to your weak ass kingdom. Go play it safe with the humans behind your borders. This has got nothing to do with you,” Drake said, letting his body drop into a sort of hunched-over crouch. He held both hands out and both Lola and Russel watched the nails at the ends of his fingers elongate into vicious, black claws.

“You really want to do this?” Russel asked. He looked at Lola and then back at Drake. “You want to risk all-out war with both my kingdom and the human kingdom over an insignificant girl from a backwater village in the middle of nowhere?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he shot back, spit flying from his mouth. His face started to sprout more hair. His nose and mouth gradually elongated. He was shifting and as he did, the harsh growling tones to his voice became more pronounced. “Now get out of my way before I slice open your throat.”

Russel smiled and dropped into a low crouch too. His eyes flashed with amber light and claws grew out of his fingertips too.

“Let’s go then,” he said.