The Wolf Witch

Chapter 1: So It Begins

I danced through three punches, but the fourth landed. Dirt and dust clung to my sweaty and bruised body as it hit the ground, and I rolled to the side on instinct as my brother pounced where I had just been.

"You can't run forever," he snarled. Jaaran rose back up to his full height, over a head taller than me, and shook the dirt from his dark skin.

"I wouldn't have to if you shared your food," I could still taste the stolen meat on my tongue.

"I killed that boar, it was my meat," he was five years my senior, but acted even younger than me sometimes. "You're the last person I'd have given it to anyway."

I stood up from the dirt, looking much less impressive than usual next to my brother. My chocolate brown skin was caked with dirt and scratches, and my dark black hair showered it with more of the former when I shook it. Jaaran narrowed his eyes at me, and my feet carried me cautiously away from him. I felt the ground start to moisten beneath my feet; we were close to the river.

I open my mouth wide and stuck my tongue out. "You want your meat? Come take it," I taunted.

He growled, low and menacing. I turned quickly so he wouldn't see the fear on my face. My feet carried me quickly away from Jaaran as he started to shift, but it wouldn't be enough. The mud I ran through, the river I ran towards, it would do nothing to stop the pure gray wolf that was coming for me.

My foot caught in a hidden hole and I stumbled and fell into the mud. I swallowed some of it, and my skirt was ruined, but I kept going, knowing that Jaaran had something worse in store for me. Wet dust and blood covered me, and I began to pant as I ran. I chanced to glance back, and the sight only made me run faster. He had shifted in full, leaving his pants on the ground behind us, and the gray wolf he had become was bearing down on me.

He was on me not a moment later, and he pounced. Jaaran's claws dug into my back as I face planted in the snake's tail river. He didn't stay on me, and I rolled over, coughing as his weight left me. There was pure hatred in his eyes, and those eyes watched my every move as I slowly sat up.

The wolf knocked me over again. He placed one paw between my budding breasts and another over my throat. His weight was on my chest, and the two back legs, but that didn't make me any less wary. He could not speak while shifted, none of us could, barring the use of magic, but his body communicated well enough what he meant to do.

He had me pinned for only a moment, but his rage had cost him. As he stared me down, I brought a fist around to his face. The gray wolf was only stunned momentarily, but that was all I needed to push him off of me.

I stepped back carefully as we both gathered ourselves. There was only one thing I could do if I wanted to win. I dropped the ruined skirt in the river and stood naked in the afternoon sun. Its light bathed my brown skin, all the way from my midnight black hair to my toes and the black nails that adorned them. Like I had many times before, I reached deep inside me, searching for my inner wolf. Like always, I found nothing. They said I was at the age where it would begin, but something else entirely had bloomed in me two months prior. There was no wolf to be found, I could not shift.

Though he was in his wolf form, I could still feel the sneer on my older brother's face, and it was not a pleasant thing to feel. He pounced again, and this time I did not resist. His claws tore my skin, but Jaaran was quickly bored with my reaction, or lack thereof. He stalked off, leaving his sister naked and bleeding, half submerged in the shallow edge of a river,

The scratches he had left me stung enough to make my eyes water, but I did not cry. I still had the scars from the last time that had happened. I was five, and my birth mother had been challenged and killed over something stupid. Jaaran had seen my tears and pushed me to the ground. He was just starting to shift, so he decided to put that skill to use and leave me a permanent reminder of what happens to those who shed tears. Eight years later, I still remembered every detail of that day. Weakness was not tolerated among the vir.