Page 132 of Flirting with Darkness

Another ghostly howl, this time from the right.

I spun, breaths starting again, quick now where they’d been steady before.

Craggy brown bark. Green ferns. The occasional patch of snow that had broken through the canopy.

More howls came, this time joined by yips and something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

Blade before me, hand shaking, I turned. My eyes strained, my ears, too, but my thundering heart was so loud, I’d be lucky to hear any soft noises over it.

A silent shadow split from the shade of a thick tree trunk. Over six feet tall, it walked on two legs, but it wasnothuman—not with that long, shaggy head, the large ears, the bent, clawed fingers. It had arms, yes, but they were coated in dark fur. It didn’t even bother to hide as it drew closer, yellow eyes on me all the while.

My lungs twitched as I backed away. I worked my tongue around my mouth, longing to tell the creature to fuck off, but the stories Ari’s papa had told us were clear: don’t offend the fae. If there was one thing they loved more than a bargain, it was a rule, and if there was one set of rules they loved most of all, it wasgood manners.

“Good… good morning.” I tried to smile. “I don’t mean you any harm.” My smile threatened to turn into a hysterical laugh. My little knife, the blade no more than six inches long, against this beast with a muzzle full of sharp teeth. Sure, he wasreallyscared I might hurt him.

Tittering laughter and yips echoed from all sides. Clearly they found it just as ridiculous.

“Is that why you bring iron into our forest?” Behind me.

I gasped, whirled, and found a man less than two yards away, though there had been no rustle of leaves or crunch of twig.

Yellow eyes, a toothy smile, more claws. He didn’t have the first one’s wolf head, but his fingers were long and bent. Brown fur tipped his pointed ears, and more fur peeked over the collar of his shirt and darkened his bare forearms.

Beyond him, three more shapes slipped from the shadows. Bent and shaggy, they ranged from wolf to man and all the twisted forms between.

Throat tight, I blinked and it was as though that brief, blank moment let my brain catch up with reality and serve up the word.

Werewolves.

As clever as people; as strong and vicious as beasts. I’d never found the wolf inLittle Red Riding Hoodthat frightening—not when wolves were very muchout there, beyond Briarbridge, while people could walk our streets and taverns and be far more cruel to each other.

But these wolfmen?

They had my heart in my throat, cold sweat trickling down my neck, stomach churning around the couple of mouthfuls of bread I’d eaten. At five foot ten, I was tall for a woman, but they were all over six foot and thick with muscle.

My mind coughed up another detail from the stories: they could only be hurt by poison, silver, or iron.

I kept my blade between myself and the one who’d spoken.

He’d asked a question, hadn’t he? And I was only gaping in response.

Backing off a step, I swallowed down the tightness in my throat. “It’s for defence, not attack.”

His smile widened to a grin that showed off long, sharp canines. “You’re going to need it, girl.”

Screw politeness.

He took a step closer, but I was already gone, bolting into the trees.

“We only want to play,” they called after me.

But I crashed through the undergrowth, bread forgotten somewhere in my flight, one hand shoving away branches, the other gripped around the iron knife.

My legs pumped. My lungs heaved like the bellows I used to stoke the fire for baking. My heart roared.

Not a single footstep sounded behind me, but their yipping laughs and snarls said they followed, some much too close.

From somewhere behind and to my right: “We need a new plaything, pretty girl.”

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