Darcy Branwyn

Danielle Howard surveyed her new domain.

Another fixer upper. 

Who was she kidding? It was a dump.

She ran her fingers along a wooden window ledge in the main room of the hunting cabin she and Lothar had just purchased cash in hand. Peeling paint disintegrated into a shower of dust on the boot trodden wooden floor. She peered through a cracked windowpane. Things could’ve been worse. At least the ramshackle hunting cabin was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by virgin forest. 

It was perfect.

Danielle smelled pine in the air, damp vegetation, and the musky scent of warm blooded animals. She breathed deeply, scenting out a buck to the north.

Who needed electricity anyway?                                    

She turned from the window. “I’m going out.”  

Lothar Ludvitski, her hunting partner, set aside the cardboard box he was carrying and straightened his long, lean body.

“I buy you steak for lunch, is not enough?” he said, English rolling off his Lithuanian tongue exotically. He could read several languages, but he only pronounced one correctly.

“Never enough.” Danielle smiled. He knew full well she could only pick at human food.

“You will leave me to clean this?” His brows arched over brown eyes as he glanced around the cabin with its sagging cupboard doors.

Even after having known him for years, she wasn’t immune to his old world charm. He was the kind of man that defined tall, dark, and handsome. She wondered if he had any idea what he did to her insides, just by being near her.

Probably not.

“You could go with me,” she said. “No one’s stopping you.”

“Ne, I work. You go play, Darling,” he enunciated his name for her, his r rolling longer than necessary, even for him. “Someone has to make this dump good for you.”

“Hot water would be nice.”

“I’ll get to it.” He bent over his box and pulled out a mini-fridge they would run off a generator.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” Danielle walked past Lothar and toward the open door.

“Be careful,” he said, his tone changing from joking to dead serious.

She glanced over her shoulder. He was forever her protector. They had first met when she was seventeen. She’d been floundering in her new existence when he’d come into her life. She’d had no awareness of her potential at the time, and had hated herself for the monstrosity she’d become. Lothar had opened the doors of magic within her. Now he was her best friend, her hunting partner, her everything but . . .

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

“We haven’t scouted the perimeter. If you do not return in an hour, I come for you.”

“I know. I’ll be careful.” She left the cabin, walking into the forest.

Danielle pulled off her boots and padded through the trees, pine needles springy beneath her bare feet. Her blood pulsed hard through her veins. Hunting wild game wasn’t as gratifying as hunting vampires, but it filled her stomach. Steak? It had nothing on this.

 Lothar had embraced every facet of his existence. Human and wolf, balanced and equal.

Not her.

She had what werewolves called, Arrested Development. Due to her human upbringing, she was trapped between two worlds, with little hope of equilibrium.

She unwound the elastic from her hair and shook it free, then peeled off her lavender V-neck sweater. She shimmied out of her jeans and tossed aside her bra and panties.

Danielle let free the growl vibrating in the back of her throat. And shifted.

A sensation similar to an electric shock pulsed through her. If she didn’t embrace it, shifting would hurt, like it had when she’d first started morphing into a wolf. Her growl changed, deepened as she accepted the impossibility of what she was and what she could do.

 Danielle’s paws hit the earth with a sound like thunder in her hypersensitive ears. In human form, her senses were acute. Like this, they were on fire. It took her a moment to adjust to the change. She sorted through sounds, smells, and sensations. Pine and spruce trees were fresh in her nose and sweet. Damp earth was heady. She ran.

This was freedom.

This was where she belonged. The only way she belonged.   

Her nails scrabbled as she slid to a halt at the edge of a ravine. Her growling had frightened her prey, and now the buck splashed through the water below, white tail flicking behind him as he sought to escape her. Her stomach clenched with hunger, and her mouth watered. Danielle paced, whining, watching him crash into the forest beyond the foaming creek bed. She examined the rocky wall. After deciding on her course, she backed up, took a running start, and sprang off the ledge. 

Her paws gained purchase on an outcropping of rock on the opposite side. From there it was a series of leaps from ledge to ledge until she splashed down. Water beaded on her dense brown coat as she waded through cold peaks.

She shook herself and lurched after the stag crashing through the underbrush, his instinct for survival driving him on long, supple legs. His breaths were heavy, his heart a thrum in her ears. His antlers rose and fell as he leaped over the uneven ground. Sniffing the air, she threw back her head and howled.

Danielle scrambled onto a fallen tree trunk.

And launched herself at her meal.

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