Madison Adams feels like her life is pretty perfect, but everything comes crashing down when her biological father passes away suddenly and leaves his legacy in her hands. She ultimately regrets that she hadn't taken the opportunity to get to know h...
His voice urged her onward. Her paws ate up the ground beneath her, the pale light of the moon spearing through the trees to show her the way. Not that she needed it, she'd hunted these forests for years, every corner of this land. Her nostrils flared, pulling in the smells of the night. The decay of vegetation, the dampness the evening rain had left behind, she smelled it all, but nothing stood out stronger than the scent of blood.
She skidded to a stop at the edge of a clearing, her claws digging into the earth, churning it up as she grabbed for purchase. The scent of blood had become overwhelming here, and a shadow lingered underneath a lone oak tree covered in moss. The clouds began to cast a halo around the moon, light spilling into the clearing but stopping inches short of the imposing tree.
Breathing deeply, she began to change. Her bones cracked and snapped in fits and pops as her body became more erect. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly to ward off the pain. She braced one large paw up against the trunk of a small spruce tree, bending it with the force of her agony. She clawed into the bark until it scraped the sensitive flesh of her budding fingers, moaning as her spine finally straightened, the worst of it finally over.
Putting one barefoot in front of the other, she took her first wobbly steps into the light. The clouds shifted, shadows danced on the ground, but the figure shrouded in darkness under the tree never wavered, never moved.
Fear began to choke her, each breath harder than the last, grasping at her throat she willed her lungs to work, but the cloying scent of death rattled her to her very core. She forced her feet to carry her closer to the large oak, a single step at a time.
She fought the urge to turn and run, she willed her lungs to drag in one breath after another. As the clouds continued to shift in the sky above her, casting light where none had been, the aging tree finally started to give up its spoils.
A boot.
She saw a man's boot, worn and scuffed, splattered with blood. Her heart hammered in her chest as she inched closer, covering her mouth with her hands to hold back the bile scalding her throat. She'd hunted many a deer in these woods, but a man? This kind of death seemed foreign to her.
The boot belonged to a leg, a long lean leg, his trousers ripped and torn, his skin sliced and covered in crimson. He had his left leg tucked up under his right thigh, his shirt in tatters. What had done this to him? An animal?
No. A man. He'd been sliced and diced by the sword of a man. She sensed his pain, his fear, and his agony. His energy surrounded her, engulfed her body and brought her to her knees in front of him.
The ground cried out beneath her as it swallowed his blood. His soul demanded revenge against those that had ripped him from his vessel before his time. She found a familiarity in his angst. She'd met him before, she'd known his touch. She'd loved him.
As the light of the moon reached his face, she let out a blood-curdling scream.
The Duke of Uradel.
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