Every Wolf's Temptation

Copyright2013 Chloe Quinn

All rights reserved.

The following events, characters, dates and locations are purely fictional and not based on any real event, character, date or locaction. This story may not be distributed, edited, transmitted or placed anywhere else without my written permission.

And ENJOY!

Re-written - will be re-edited shortly.

Prologue

At that moment, I wanted death. I welcomed the dark abyss that I walked along. But as a Rogue, that luxury of a quick death is always small and yet, as I moved in wolf form, I wandered if it was simply easier to give into the madness branded on us by the Packs?

I tore forward, powered purely by the basic instinct urge to run and survived. My limbs screamed in white hot agony, long since had any reprieve come to them, and, as I struggled to keep my eyes open from the blood that caked around them, I let out a haggard cry of pain. Another drop of dark blood fell across my eyes. Each stride, each long, agonising stride, my wounds reopened and bled with rich blood.

The forest blurred around me in mashed shades of nightly green, ash brown and earthy black. Stars glittered ahead like millions of tiny gems against a stormy sea; thick dark grey clouds beckoned rain in the distance. Peering through slits, I spied the first shapes of civilisation. Instinct screamed at me to turn but my body refused to respond; my mind eventually gave up, as I so badly wanted my body to do. As I neared closer, my energy waned like the moon itself.

Death was close.

My eyes closed, sealed shut by blood. Yet my limbs didn’t give up, they didn’t cease. Long had adrenalin burned from my system, lingering only as a timely reminder so why was I still alive? After all of this, was I still seen to be punished?

Then I heard it. At first I cried out, wordlessly, in anguish, believing that what I heard was an illusion meant only to torment. The sound, at first no more than the thumping of a base, followed by the whine of guitars and the melodious vocals of...was that a woman?

Spurred by a flickering flame of hope, I dug deep into my empty reserves and leapt forward. Adrenalin swept back into my system, a tidal wave of dizzying relief, pushing back the onslaught of pain. Without pain, my paws dug deep into the earth and thundered forward, easier, without restraint. Unaware of what brought this relief on, I leapt over a fallen tree and then swerved sharp at a ditch, then ducked low underneath a cluster of low branches that reached out with their spindly hands and tore at my bloody matted fur. I took off once free of the low branches and dodged the flowering bushes with nimble ease. Reaching a small shallow stream, I ripped through, sending glistening droplets against my fur, glowing like rubies. Shining like wolf gone mad under the full moon, I let out an elated and maddened howl.

The cluster of lights and sound that I had seen earlier grew defined, focused by the adrenalin. A hundred metres away, I smelt the enticing aroma of cooking meat; beef, chicken, deer and pork...and wolf.

Torn by the hunger for food and the fear of Packs, I once again, with a bit more determination, yanked on the brakes of my body. And, just like before, she refused to yield.

Fifty metres away, suddenly the fear became frighteningly real and my gait faltered. Too slowly. I broke through the tree line, straight through a bush full of prickly thorns that imbedded themselves in my wounds. Catching onto the knots in my fur, I cried out as my feet tucked underneath me, sending me tumbling forward as fresh wounds reopened and blood spewed from the wounds. As I collapsed, I was only just aware of the presence of them.

Weak, I could only muster a brief, weak growl as one presence got so close I felt the warmth emanating from their body. It was just one. Male.

Then, as my energy reserves hit completely empty, the switch that kept my body in wolf form, switched. As every single one of my bones broke at once, I felt nothing. No pain, or perhaps my body was simply to drained to feel pain. The feeling of being human again was strange. Though all of my bones, now in human form, merely changed into their broken counterparts and all my wounds were opened again, I felt the pain return like a slow trickle like white hot needles.