Author's Note: 

Hello! If you are reading this, thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to write for you! If you would like to see more WEREWOLF stories, make sure to check out my profile and read "The Mad Prince and The Little Bird" my current WIP! 

This story is something I have written in the last two years, and while it is still going through editing stages, thank you for taking a chance. 

All of your feedback, votes, and comments matter so much to me! Once again-- thank you for clicking on this! I look forward to hearing what you think!

Dragged down by ice and blood, the dirty velvet hood blanketing Marsella acted as a sticky second skin instead of a protectant from the glacial winds she marched through. The red fabric hung off the slim promise of a drawstring, which was cinched tightly underneath her soft round chin. Although Marsella was of childbearing age, she was still just a girl—just old enough to see 17 summers and 16 winters. And because of that, she was doe-eyed and supple-faced, not yet wilted by life in the village, Core.

Even with wool and fabric separating her from the winter outside, it seeped in, grasping at her copper hair, and prickling her alabaster skin with gooseflesh. It carried down to her bones. This was the kind of cold people died in, the kind that turned lips a violent lilac before an hour passed. There was only thick, white sleet beyond her hood. It pelted her body, drove into her, filled up Marsella's every breath with ice until her lungs rattled.

Trees drooped in deep, angry bends— two months of winter storms forced the straight spines down, until their branches turned from the sky and back to the ground, from where the trees once grew, from where the trees once ran.

Marsella felt home in this pale world, hiding underneath her hood, lost completely to the eyes of onlookers. She was a strange winter creature in the forest, her fine velvet puffed out to keep warm, her beastly joints moving to stop ice from seeping in and hardening her muscles to stone. Perhaps she was part wolf, for only a wolf was brave enough to face the Allmother's worst fury.

It was unusual for a villager to venture this far from Core. No one willingly traded wool blankets and fire for the hungry mouth of the forest. On this night, families thawed their bodies with bone broth and warm bread; in the morning, the cobblestone streets would be thick with the spoors of fresh yeast and burnt firewood. Yet, something unusual blossomed in Marsella's chest. There was no yearning for furs, for bitter soup, nor simmering Devilshair tea. Something from somewhere deep inside of Marsella forced her forward, and as much as she wanted to collapse, to stay still, to turn into a puddle of frost on the forest floor, she continued. Because this something formed the identical pain in her thorax as a rotten tooth, as if a gaping hole replaced the space between her lungs.

She was a mother— a new, fresh mother, not even an hour from her birthing bed. Blood stuck to her thighs, crawled up her pubic bone with hungry hands, and dried uncomfortably at her navel. In her hands was proof of her status— a dead, snow-white newborn.

With numb fingers, Marsella combed through the baby's thin curls. She either had the same bright red hair as Marsella or blood covered her scalp. For now, the young mother called her Little Red, because a real name, one created only for her, was poison in Marsella's mouth.

Little Red's eyes remained closed, as they were from the moment of birth. If Marsella could waste even a moment, she would press a kiss against the child's forehead. Instead, Little Red remained in the safe cocoon of Marsella's arms and her wool baby blanket. It was green once, but the blood—there was so much— stained the fabric a deep lilac.

Marsella searched for the rising sun. The darkest of the night crawled down to the horizon and allowed the sky to morph into a bruised, purple-red, the color of a rotten plum. Between the treetops, the first rays of light peeked and split the land into shards of broken gold.

"There is still a chance," Marsella's words spread like morning gossamer across the frozen air.

There was an old wives' tale her mother spun over boiling pots and under clotheslines. And like the child Marsella still was, she believed whatever escaped her mother's lips. Because her mother said so, left is left, down is down, and death— no matter how unfortunate or gruesome— was only permanent when the night ended.

Only a few footsteps ahead of Marsella, a boundary line made of tall, white pines stretched across the snowy plane. The entrance to the most forbidden place— Mirkwood forest. A shield of magick stretched well above the girl's head— higher than even the tops of the Mirkwood trees, which disappeared into the thick white bellies of clouds.

Inside Mirkwood was untouched grass, still a furious verdant, as if spring never left. No snow blanketed the ground. No rotting foliage to prove winter ever seeped in between the pines.

Not even the bravest of woodsmen dared to enter the forest, but that same fear never bubbled in Marsella's chest. Instead, the girl took a deep breath, steadied her right hand beneath the infant's head, and planted her brown leather boots into the springy green bed of Mirkwood. The white icy flakes on her shoes melted as she took another step forward.

***

It was as though Marsella walked between two separate seasons—one the pale fury of winter, and the other— a gentle summer night, illuminated by the glow of fireflies. Core had not seen summer in months. There were times when Marsella doubted she would even see it again.

Around the girl and the infant she carefully cradled, pale pines the same color of sun-bleached bones blocked the night sky and the sinking moon and its white beams. If the stories held true in Core, if Marsella climbed all the way to the top of the nearest tree and broke through the first cloud, then she would discover the Veil, where all the dead go. Where she would find her father. Where she would find Aleksi.

Stretching out from all sides of Marsella were unending acres of fresh emerald greens, sunflower yellows, and blood-red crimsons. Thick vines braided with delicate flowers crawled up branches and created canopies between the trees. Mirkwood was alive. Dry. Eerily silent.

"Hello!" Marsella shouted to nothing.

A hundred years ago, her village once carved out a peaceful life here, surviving long winters by living off the rich soil. That was before their migration, before they ran from false idols and dark magick and found the end of their exodus in the promising hands of Allmother.

"I know someone is here," Marsella shrieked. "Show yourself!"

Her ears rung from the silence. With freckled hands, she clutched the infant closer and then, without permission, Marsella's legs gave out from beneath her. She pressed her temple against Little Red's forehead. Stone-still. Cold. Like she was pressing her skin against a granite slate.

Above, the moon sunk slowly into the ground, preparing to disappear for another morning— ready to make all death of the day before permanent.

"I have heard the stories," Marsella cried. "I know what you can do. My mother— she is a Fewfolk— she is one of you. And this child, this baby, is mine. Mine and dead."

Marsella laid the baby on the dry bed of grass before her and unwrapped the tight swaddle. Although the girl's hands were gentle, her fingers trembled. She uncovered a fuzz of red hair, the same color as Devilshair—one of the ferns native to Mirkwood.

"Allmother," she whispered. "Please. Let her breathe." Marsella closed her blue eyes and pressed her nose into the newborn's cool skin. The metallic tang of her own blood curled into her nostrils. "Do not leave me just yet."

"You're in my forest, trespasser," a deep voice boomed above the young mother.

As every inch of her body locked up in response, she shifted her gaze from her child to the wet, red mouth of a wild beast. The Wolf— the one she was meant to run from, the one that haunted the dreams of village children, naïve wives, and even full-grown men. The one she purposefully sought.

He stood four heads above her. From his black snout to his sleek, long tail, every inch of him dwarfed Marsella. His white teeth, each the same length of her forefinger and as sharp as a woodsman's ax, hung over his black top lip. An unfortunate overbite.

She heard stories before, from Core, from the priests, from the woodsmen. Before years spent hunting in the forest, the wolf's pelt was a pure white and as soft as silk. But the darkness, the black that wrapped around him, was a matted canvas of dried blood, permanently marking him as a monster.

Marsella saw no blood. Instead, only a sleek pelt the same color as a moonless night sky.

This was no beast, like the stories told, but a forest god.

"Do you know where you are, little one?" The Wolf asked. Hot breath fanned over Marsella's face, and it was rotten with a metallic tinge. Blood.

To keep her hands from noticeably trembling, she picked Little Red from the earth floor and tightened her grasp over the newborn's tiny back. His sharp eyes, unmistakably gray and amused in the dim light, focused on her movement. She took a step back as if increasing the distance from the Wolf would make her feel less like cornered prey.

"I am in Mirkwood, my Lord." She tilted her head forward in a quick bow.

"I am no Lord," the Wolf growled. The rumbling in his chest shook the forest; Marsella remained perfectly still— either too afraid, too stupid, or too brave to move. "Do you have any idea of what fate awaits any who dare to trespass into this land?"

Rather than facing the Wolf who undoubtedly imagined tearing her apart, Marsella turned to her child. Delicate blond lashes lay against the infant's pale cheeks, framing eyes that never had the chance to open. The young woman would not mind dying. Nothing was left for her here. No husband. No daughter. Two of her greatest loves—gone, as if they were never here.

"Kill me if that is what you want, Wolf," she whispered. "If that is the fate you have chosen for me, then I can only help make it swifter. Kill me. Please."

"You did not come here to die," the Wolf said, his words softer than before. The creature took a long stride forward, closing the distance between the three of them, and pressed his wet snout to Marsella's clammy forehead. "You look like a village, but yet you do not smell like one."

Marsella did not move as he whipped away from her face and into the open gap of swaddled blankets. There was no use to throwing her hands into his teeth or forcing her elbow hard against his right cheek. He would be unaffected by the mundaneness of her strength. A girl fresh from her birthing bed, weakened by hypothermia, and gutted completely by unexpected grief was not even a threat in the Wolf's eyes.

He breathed deeply into the small opening of the blankets and gently exhaled, the creature's entire body rippling like the tired, shallow currents of Mother River.

"And your daughter, she smells like magick," the Wolf whispered.

"I have heard that you are not what the villagers say," Marsella rushed out. "You are ancient, but you are not cruel, at least not without any reason."

A gray gaze steadied on the young mother before the Wolf's head tipped toward the sinking moon and his wide, sharp mouth split open with a laugh stitched together by growls.

"Tell me," the creature said once he caught his breath. "who dares to spout these fairytales?"

"If you wanted to kill me, I would be dead. Otherwise, you would have never let me take a step into this forest." Marsella ignored his question, haste causing her words to slur together. Above, the sky was turning from a cool purple to the promising orange glow of an early sunrise.

"Perhaps I am playing a game," the Wolf said. "Or maybe I am still deciding your fate."

"You can help me," Marsella ventured further. She kept her gaze burning into the Wolf's, the grasp on her child tightening. "I know you can."

"You believe you deserve my help? What have you done to earn my favor?" the Wolf dropped his head, until his snout hovered over the empty, deflated space above her pubic bone. "There is blood running out of you. Have you traveled this far just to beg for your life, dear girl?"

"No," Marsella whispered tightly. "I have come to revive my child."

The Wolf tilted his giant, dark head, perplexed by her desperate request. As the creature remained completely placid in expression, Marsella leaned forward, searching for any kind of response. After the silence between them settled in her stomach like rotten broth, he opened his wide mouth.

"I will bring your child back," the Wolf said. "For a price."

"Anything, it is yours," Marsella replied breathlessly.

"The forest demands balance. For every year she lives, a life must be traded. If she is to survive this night, I must take a villager." The Wolf tilted his eyes toward the sinking moon— cut in half by the horizon. "Core is miles away, yet we are only minutes from daybreak." Marsella set her face into an expression of stone, flattening the tremble in her lips, forcing her eyes to remain dry. She did not want the Wolf to see her fear, terrified he would take his word back. "Do you understand what I am saying?"

She traced three fingers over the delicate surface of her child's tiny face. The newborn was Aleksi's twin, down to the stubborn curl of her cupid's bow. Marsella imagined her cries—weak at first, before they grew into loud bursts of frustration. Perhaps she would be calmed by Marsella's gentle humming.

"I understand," she whispered. "My life for hers."

The Wolf strode forward and pressed the tip of his black nose into the sunken cavity of her daughter's doll-sized chest. Against all possibility, a sputtering mewl escaped from the child's throat, and then, a quick, shallow rhythm forced her body up and down. Her first breath.

Two watery blue eyes blinked up at Marsella.

In this moment, she hated the sinking moon and the rising sun. Every second brought the mother and daughter closer to dawn—closer to an inevitable goodbye.

She leaned down to press a tender kiss against her child's nose, skin suddenly pink with life.

"Her name is Marjorie," the young mother whispered. "Take my daughter to her Grandmother's house, Wolf."

Marsella laid Marjorie against a nearby bed of red Devilshair. With unsteady hands, she unknotted the drawstring of her red cape, pulled the velvet away from her thin shoulders, and dropped the thick fabric around her daughter's makeshift cradle.

"I am ready."

No later than when her words split into the night air did the Wolf rear back in a blur of black fur. The creature dove down into the girl, and his exposed canines glinted from beneath his red gums with the sharpness of a whetted sword. His bite discovered a home in the small crook of Marsella's throat, the skin slicing easy like a spoon to freshly churned butter.

A brilliance of red blossomed from her new wound, and the Wolf yanked up, mercifully as to not give any time for a slow death or pain to grow.

Her body went limp between his mouth, the young mother turned to dead weight. The Wolf exhaled slowly against her broken collarbone, memorizing the stench of her blood, the barely-there smell of adrenaline.

He warily led Marsella back to the forest floor, away from the ruby pool of her blood. She stared blankly at the sky above, which had just begun to swirl with hints of auburn and pink. Morning arrived.

An infant's cry shattered the silence between the Wolf and the dead body, forcing him back to the present, to the breathing human child taking up space in his forest. He nudged her with the tip of his crimson-stained snout, and almost took himself by surprise—one required hands to carry a child so small.

As if he were never a Wolf at all, he shed his dark fur like a man peeling off a heavy satin hood. He stretched ten, long, dark fingers over the infant and found that she was cold to the touch. It had been years since he shifted to this simpler form, of a man.

He gathered the red hood and swaddled the girl tight into the velvet warmth. With unsure hands, he plucked her like a tiny, red flower from the green ground.

"Come, little on," he whispered above the child's flushed face. His fingertip pressed into the button of her pink nose, surprised by the softness of her newborn skin. "You have no place with a Wolf. To Grandmother's house we go." 

Author's Note: 

So!

 What did you think! 

A pretty long preface, but needed to set up the world! I hope you enjoyed! 

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