A/N: There's a bit of violence in here and romance, so if you are not a fan of either... Shoo! This story is told in the second voice with an alternating character POV. Do tell me if the shift jars you or something because I'm curious if I made the voices stand out properly.

[edited 04-17-2016. Thank you to purple_porpoise and ReddHumann

A full moon hangs on the very bowl of the night sky, its pale rays break through bough and branch, hollow and root. Stars wink their cold light where thin cirrus clouds fail to obscure them in the sky. A distant howl breaks through the stillness of the night—an ear-shattering cry that sends shivers to the spine of any creature who hears it. There is agony in that plea.

An agony that curiously calls to your very blood.

Your mother often told you to take precautions at night, but you fail time and again to heed her warnings. With legendary stubbornness, you will nod your head but at the same time forget what she just said and go on your way. Always your way.

Now as the wind blows your rich auburn tresses away from your shoulders, you feel the prickle of fear hover over your skin like a lover's caress. You pull your jacket tighter around your body; curse your own foolishness as you trudge through the first winter snow on your way to Grandma's house. If you had listened to your mother, you would not be on a cold, deserted road; lit only by a handful flickering lights, with the first powdery snow melting on your cheeks and your shoes squeaking on the slush quickly forming on the pavement.

No, you would be at home drinking hot chocolate and eating Mother's pumpkin and carrot pie. She would scold you for leaving crumbs on the couch and your mug on the sink. You'd be on the phone talking to Aurora about the new boy in school and how you think you caught him staring at you during English class. You'll be watching some old chick flick on cable before falling asleep without finishing your Math assignment because, really, you don't understand a thing about functions and equations and how they can be applied to everyday life.

Instead, you chose to visit Grandma's house to check on her and maybe spend some time learning her secret recipe for apple tarts. You need it for your Home Economics class on Friday. You could have Googled any recipe on the internet, but you chose instead to travel the forty-five minute walk from your suburbs home to her house at the edge of the National Forest. Night is quickly falling, and anyone can accost you and leave you for dead, but yet... you felt the pull of something unexplainable today of all days.

There it is, that cry again. You start walking faster. Faster and faster until you are clearly running. The moonlight turned the puddles into shiny, silver mirrors. You feel sweat trickle between your shoulder blades despite the coldness of the night. Stupid, stupid girl.

A whisper of sound, light as a moth's gossamer wings, reaches your ears. Your mind tells you to run, but something—you can't put a name on what, compels you to stop.

There it is again. You listen and pray. Listen and try to determine where the sound is coming from. Listen and try to think of why you would stand so vulnerable in the middle of a snowy road while something is obviously in the dark canopy of the forest watching and waiting, listening and moving so very slowly towards you.

A rustling of leaves alert you and your eyes fly to the thicket to your right. Golden eyes gaze back at you: calculating, measured; a predator sizing up its prey.

The scream seems to be stuck in your throat, just as your legs refuse to move. No, no, no!

It begins to emerge from the shadows. Pristine hide as pure as the first snow of winter, eyes the colour of liquid amber framed by long, dark lashes. Long snout; filled, no doubt by rows of endless sharp teeth made for rending flesh from bone.

A small whimper escapes unbidden from your lips. It bares its teeth and you feel your heart slam in your chest. Stupid, stupid, idiotic, girl.

Slowly, one paw after the other, it makes almost no sound in its approach. It is nothing like any wolf you've seen up close. No, this one towered at least four feet on fours.

Man and beast stare at each other as it stood in your way. You feel paralyzed as you watch it watching you. Is this how your stupid eighteen years will end? In some deserted road, to be eaten by a monstrous, hungry wolf?

No, not monstrous. This magnificent creature cannot be a monster. Stop, shut up! You are about to be dinner yet such worthless thoughts play in your brain. You therefore conclude that your mind must have given up its miserable existence and that your futile praying has fallen to deaf ears. The gods have not chosen to even lift a finger to an insignificant slip of a girl.

What are you?

Your hands lose whatever strength they have and the plastic bag filled with juicy, red apples that you had hoped to turn into tarts tumble to the ground. The creature shifts its gaze to the splash of colour suddenly marring the pristine snow.

Red as blood.

***

You taste her fear in the air—heady, sweet, and addicting. It's been decades since you last caught a whiff of that precious scent. A scent that you'd love to lick off the skin of her neck where the skin is the thinnest and her warm blood too close to the surface. You are captivated by the diamonds forming on the edges of her lashes, threatening to fall, fall, fall... like how you wanted her to fall into your arms.

It's been a lonely, long life, but here you are, and here she is... once more in the middle of a road. The same road so very, very long ago where you first saw a glimpse of her, and knew deep in your heart that you are no longer free for she has captured your heart and your soul.

You weren't sure if it was her at first. The angle of her jaw is too sharp, her lips too full, her skin tanned where the sun had been unmerciful, but that scent.

Your senses cannot lie to you... has never lied to you.

Not in the full century that you have waited, waited, waited... holding onto a promise from her dying lips before the flames consumed her. When the harsh realities of the world have exposed your secrets and her own people turned on her. You can almost taste the flames that consumed her, how they marred her snow-white skin, and swallowed her screams while you watch helpless; teeth bared, body held tightly by the chains that bit, and blood -- rivers of it flowed to be soaked by the parched earth.

The first of her tears fall and you watch as it soaks into the fabric of her coat. She's crying; lips half-open, and breath coming out in soft gasps. You hear the erratic beating of her heart like a bird in the throes of sheer terror from a raptor.

It's me, little one... I will never hurt you.

But it comes out in a growl and you hear her whimpers increase.

The sight of her tears makes you want to rush to her side and comfort her, but you hold yourself back. Her fear is a palpable force in the air and you get drunk in her scent.

She fears you.

It's the last thing that you wanted. The pain cuts you like a knife... much deeper than the bite of the chains, more painful than all the nights you howled to the moon and wished that you were dead, so that you wouldn't have to exist without her...

Without her life had no meaning.

You would rather lose your life than lose her, and here... here in this deserted road you are at an impossible impasse.

And you realize then that you would do anything for her.

You gaze at the moon once more. It seems you've been forever gazing at it, mesmerized by its countenance. It was the first thing that you remembered when your senses woke up and perhaps the last one you will see tonight. Your people have long since left this world, and you, old, lonely relic; the only one left.

Your decision makes you take a step.

Backward.

Back to the shadows that swallowed you wholeheartedly in its embrace. The coldness that you have always held at bay held no promise now. You feel the emptiness of time. You hold her gaze for the final time. You watch how she licks her upper lip before biting the lower one. That gesture.

You break the connection. The shadows swallow you whole. There is only darkness and the cold.

***

You gasp as you watch him take a step back. Another. Then another. The look in his eyes tear at your heart. It seemed in that gaze that something is breaking, breaking, breaking. Bleeding... and the pain threatened to consume you.

And you realize that it was your own heart that is breaking, watching him leave.

Him.

You do not understand how you know that he was a he. You are no expert in wolf anatomy, and the angle at which he is standing made it impossible to determine for sure.

But you feel it. You know it. As sure as the heart that is beating in your chest. As sure as the pain cutting through your soul as you watch him break and bleed.

You do not understand why you know this. Or why you suddenly find yourself taking a step.

Forward.

Another. And another.

But he was swallowed by the darkness and you are left once more. Alone once more, in that deserted street.

No, no, no.

And you see them. The tracks. Your eyes follow the unmistakable trail. Red against the first snow. Virgin and pure. There it is, red as blood.

But at the last moment before you fully enter the cold embrace of the forest, something pulls you back.

Did he already give up?

The cold hand of fear grips your heart. Why, why now? Why so soon? Why, why don't you know? Yet know. You know him. You know you should know.

You take a step back. Back to the path that would bring you to Grandmother's. You must hurry for twilight is approaching and the cold has started to invade your soul. Perhaps Grandmother has an answer; she who has filled your childhood with tales of princesses and princes, enchanted forests and secret treasure troves, of creatures that lurk in the night and in the moments of in-between.

In no time you find the path again and there it is at the edge of the forest mouth. The towering aspens that protect it from the elements stand strong and lush. They have yet to surrender their coats to the elements. The light of her porch is cheery, and you find whatever it is that had burdened you all night vanish like mist on the first blush of sunlight.

"Grandmother?" You call once you reach the steps. You immediately shake off the snow from your coat and take off your boots. "Grandmother, it's me..." The door swings open at your merest touch. Suddenly the air seems to take an edge.

The first thing you notice is the carpet. You remember it being a warm cream that you love to rub your feet on.

Red. Red as blood.

A hand clasps your arm tightly. Wide grins. Warm, sweaty bodies. Breath reeking of alcohol and cigarette, and yesterday's lunch.

You scream.

***

You stop in your tracks at the sound of that mortal scream. You know that voice, know it far more than your own. Your breath comes in gasps and you realize that you are loping down the frozen ground, jumping over boulders. Twigs, leaves and thorns tear at your coat, but you pay it no heed. There is nothing more important than reaching her side.

You realize this time that you do not care. You do not care if she fears you, or hates you, or wants nothing to do with you. The only paramount thing is that she is safe, that you will save her from whomever or whatever wants to bring her harm.

The house comes into view in a few heartbeats and you halt and smell the air. Three, no four males. You bare your teeth and snarl at the still, night air.

If they touch a single, strand of her hair...

You burst through the door with the force of a hurricane. A thousand years of evolution solidifying in one wild, crystal-clear moment that has brought you and your kind the reputation for being killing machines.

Later you will process how they screamed for mercy as you tore their throats out; warm blood spurting, blood sailing across the cold, stale air to paint the cream walls a garish red. You will smell the fear and watch as one of them loses control of his bladder and falls down the floor, crying and screaming in a pool of his own excrement.

Or how another scrambled out of the parlor and you ran him down, his mouth hurling every imaginable curse at you, and you grin your wolfish grin; for you do not care for whatever hatred he has for you so long as you see the light in his eyes extinguished forever. You will kill, and you will maim, and you will do all these things without remorse for her. Always for her.

And moments later, when the last of the violence has ran dry from your blood, you pick your way to her side. There are tears in her eyes, and a long gash on her arm weeping bright red blood. Crimson droplets as the colour of her hair. Hot as your sin.

Yet she looks at you this time. Looks at you with eyes that hold no more fear and you stop in your tracks. Is it real?

And she lifts one ivory hand to you and you fall on your haunches. Crawling towards her, keeping your head down... lower, lower than her as the way of your people; the way they show their abject surrender.

You whimper like a pup on the first touch of her fingers on your fur. Warm, wet from her blood and tears, but it is as solid and real as the love you feel welling in your heart; as pure and true as the first day you met her, for a wolf loves only once in a lifetime.

You lick the blood away from her wound, sealing it with your healing saliva. Her taste is all it takes for the change to take place.

You feel the pain of the transformation; bones realigning one by one, fur receding back to reveal smooth skin, hair lengthening to just below your shoulders. Only your eyes remain as they are. Locked on hers. Locked on her shocked, dark brown orbs.

"Aethelwulf..." your name falls from her lips. Noble wolf. You bask in the heat of her touch as she reaches for your face; fingers tracing maddening whisper-soft touches on your skin. And you surrender. Just like all the nights so very long ago, you surrender to her power.

***

"Aethelwulf..."

You do not know why you know, and you find that you do not care anymore. Right and wrong blur in perfect clarity. His face still holds vestiges of blood. Their blood.

You cannot help but touch his flesh. The contact to his skin forming a bond that started long before you were born, to a time in the distant past where one of your people became bound to one of his. The ritual repeating time and again, in different places, different faces, but all one and the same.

The story of a girl and her wolf.

It was your favourite story of all, the one grandmother tells you every night on this very same night for the past eighteen years. You did not understand why it was so important that it has to be tonight, this night.

Until now.

"Thank you," you whisper to him. It felt obscene to break the silence between you. He gives you a smile, and you gasp as he reaches for you, pulls you in his warm, naked embrace. You close your eyes and you feel like you just found home.

Maybe you did.

He brings you outside and you cling to his shoulders as he trudges through the cold, white, first winter night. You fear of falling, not knowing that you already did, and he already caught you, and he will never, ever let you go. Not this time.

Or ever.

Much, much later... tangled in fur and sweat, and sweet, sweet promises in the darkness of his den he finally brings you both to fulfillment; the century-old promise made and sealed with a kiss; your hair a tangle, a cloak red as blood; your love, pure as the eternal moon.

A/N:

This story just wouldn't let me go until I let it run free. There's probably grammar mistakes here and there. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy. Drop me a line or two. It would be greatly appreciated.