Chapter 2: The Wolf in the Dark
1043 Words
Pain dragged Ivy back into the world.
It clawed at her shoulder a dull throbbing ache that pulsed with her heartbeat. She flinched as consciousness returned the memory of teeth and claws flashing through her mind like lightning.
She wasn’t dead.
Yet.
Her eyes fluttered open and immediately squinted against the soft flicker of firelight.
She wasn’t in the woods anymore.
Rough wooden walls surrounded her lit by a crackling fire in a small stone hearth. A heavy plaid blanket was draped over her the air thick with the scent of pine and something darker wilder.
Movement.
She tensed instincts screaming as a figure emerged from the shadows.
It was him the man who wasn’t a man.
He was dressed now though barely just a pair of worn jeans slung low on his hips. His hair was tousled damp as if he’d only just shifted back. Across his chest and arms angry pink scars crisscrossed his skin like old battle maps.
He moved with an animal grace stalking toward her on silent feet.
Ivy pushed herself up with a wince. The blanket slipped down revealing her bare shoulder and the ugly clawed wound slashed across it. Someone had cleaned it rough but effective and bandaged it tightly.
"You’re awake" he said voice a low rumble.
No emotion. No smile.
Just cold assessment.
Ivy’s throat worked uselessly. Questions flooded her mind Where am I? Who are you? What the hell was that thing that attacked me? but all that came out was a croaked "Water?"
He tossed her a metal flask without a word.
She caught it clumsily and drank. Cool water slid down her parched throat reviving her enough to croak "Whowho are you?"
The man leaned against the wall arms crossed. Shadows danced across his face highlighting the sharp angles of his cheekbones the grim line of his mouth.
"You can call me Calder" he said.
Calder. The name tasted strange on her tongue. Dangerous.
"Wherewhere am I?"
"A hunting cabin" he said. "Deep in the woods. Far enough from your friends."
Ivy flinched at the word friends. Had they even noticed she was gone?
Probably not.
"You were attacked by a rogue" Calder continued watching her like a hawk. "A lone wolf driven mad by hunger and hate. You’re lucky I was nearby."
Her mind whirled.
Wolf.
Rogue.
Shifted into a man.
Nothing made sense and yet deep down something inside her whispered that it was all true.
"You" Her voice cracked. She tried again. "You’re not human."
"No" he said simply.
She sucked in a shuddering breath. "And me?"
Something flickered in Calder’s golden eyes. Pity. Anger. Regret.
"You’re… complicated" he said finally pushing off the wall and moving toward her. "You’re not fully human either. Not anymore."
Ivy recoiled instinctively.
He stopped a few feet away respecting the space but still close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him.
"The rogue’s claws tore you open" Calder said quietly. "It would have killed you should have killed you. But your blood fought back."
"My blood?"
"You’re not just human Ivy Cross. Not entirely. Something... dormant inside you woke up tonight."
She shook her head her heart pounding painfully. "That’s impossible. I’m I’m normal."
"Are you?"
Calder’s voice was soft almost kind. But his gaze that wild golden gaze didn’t waver.
"You stepped into the Deadwoods" he said. "The moment you crossed the threshold you woke things that have been sleeping for centuries. Your bloodline... your past... it’s tangled with things you were never meant to know."
Ivy’s head spun.
This was insane. This was straight out of some bad horror novel.
And yet she remembered the way the rogue had snarled at her not like prey but like a challenge.
She remembered the way Calder’s hands rough calloused searing hot had pulled her from the jaws of death.
Something had changed inside her. She could feel it.
A buzzing under her skin. A restless energy that hadn’t been there before.
"You need to stay away from me" Calder said voice rough. "It’s not safe."
"Yeah no offense but I wasn’t planning on adding ‘feral man-beast’ to my contact list" Ivy snapped anger sparking through her fear.
Calder smiled a slow humorless curve of his mouth that made something tight coil low in her belly.
"You don’t get it" he said. "It’s not just me. It’s you."
"I don’t even know what I am anymore!" she exploded the dam inside her finally breaking. "I didn’t ask for any of this! I just wanted to survive one stupid dare"
"That dare could have killed you" Calder growled stepping closer. "You’re lucky the rogue found you first and not something worse."
"Worse?" she whispered.
"You have no idea what’s out there Ivy. No idea what’s hunting in these woods."
Something darker moved behind his words memories regrets he wasn’t sharing.
Ivy clutched the blanket tighter around herself.
"You should have left me" she said bitterly.
"I couldn’t" Calder said almost too soft for her to hear.
The fire popped sending sparks into the air between them.
Their eyes locked her heart a drumbeat in her ears.
And for a moment the world shrank to just him and her and the raw aching truth between them.
Ivy broke first glancing away.
"Fine" she said stiffly. "What now?"
Calder hesitated.
Then reluctantly he said "You stay here tonight. Tomorrow I’ll take you back to the edge of the woods. After that… you pretend none of this ever happened."
"And if I can’t?" Ivy asked staring up at him.
"If you can’t" Calder said voice dark and heavy "then God help us both."
The cabin was too quiet after he left disappearing into the night like a shadow.
Ivy lay awake for a long time staring at the ceiling.
Her body ached. Her mind whirled.
But somewhere deep inside her deeper than fear deeper than reason a new feeling bloomed.
A connection.
Not to the woods.
Not to the rogue.
But to him.
Calder.
The man who wasn’t a man.
The one who had saved her life.
And maybe just maybe ruined it too.
Outside in the blackness of the trees golden eyes watched the cabin.
And this time they weren’t Calder’s.
- Writer
