Page 73 of The Lone Wolf Café
Then the man lunged forward and grabbed her arm.
Rowena’s sharp scream pierced the air, sailing through my cracked window and directly into my ringing ears. Her meetings with this man had always been secretive, with them both keeping their voices down. The fact she’d screamed loudly enough for nearby witches to hear made me realize how much danger she was in. It meant getting caught talking to an outsider was less severe than this man hauling her off to gods-knew-where.
In an instant, everything that happened in the past twenty-four hours didn’t matter. I tossed the harrowing reality that Rowena was a werewolf hunter out of my mind.
Because now, she was the one in danger.
And I had to save her.
But I had to do so carefully. If I was going to risk shifting into my werewolf form to rescue Rowena, I at least needed to make sure this wasn’t some sort of misunderstanding.
So I opened the front door, pulling it as slowly as possible so the old hinges wouldn’t screech, and scampered along the outside wall of my cottage toward Rowena’s backyard.
Another scream ripped through the chilly breeze as the garden came into view. The man had managed to drag Rowena a few steps off her porch and into the garden. I could see ragged streaks in the dirt from where Rowena had been digging in her heels, resisting the man’s grasp.
“I’m not going with you!” she howled as she ripped her arm free. The force of tugging away from him sent her tumbling to the ground, and the man hovered over her like a wolf over a deer carcass, ready to deliver the killing blow.
He kneeled down, ready to grab both of her arms, cementing her capture for good, when I tore across the fallen leaves and jumped the fence into Rowena’s garden.
“Nettie!?” Rowena shouted, her voice a mix of confusion and relief.
“Get away from her!” I hissed at the man, baring my teeth and standing my ground. I tried to look intimidating, which was difficult since I was still in my human form, with every muscle in my body trembling. I tensed my limbs, keeping them as rigid as possible, with my emerald eyes locked on the man as if I could kill him with my glare alone.
The moment the man looked up and saw me, a fire ignited in his eerily dark eyes. Both panic and rage illuminated his features, hardening the lines in his weathered face, and when he clenched his teeth, I noticed his canines were abnormally sharp.
Then he vanished. His transformation was smooth and natural, as effortless as breathing. One moment, there had been a grizzled, middle-aged man with an unkempt, greying beard, dressed in worn flannel and denim. The next, I was staring down a familiar four-legged figure, all sharp claws and snarling teeth, with jet-black fur frosted with snowy flecks of grey.
A werewolf.
Oh dear gods. My stomach plummeted. If Rowena discovered my secret, there was no going back. There would be no more concealing the truth of what I was.
I didn’t have the chance to make a decision. The instant the black-and-grey werewolf lunged for me, my anxiety took over. And just like the night before, it wasn’t just my ears and tail. I transformed, losing my human form entirely, just as his exposed teeth grazed my thick red coat. I twisted my body, hurling my shoulder into his mouth, and sent him flying into the dirt. I leered at the werewolf, who growled as he gagged up bits of my red fur.
He returned my menacing glare once he recovered. We paced in circles, studying each other’s beastly forms, looking for signs of weakness. I knew this game all too well; I’d played it with my sisters and cousins for years. We could call it strategic analysis all we wanted; in the end, we knew it was stalling the inevitable. It was a game of chicken to see who would strike first.
And it wasn’t me. The black werewolf was all rage and brute force, hurling everything he had at me without contemplating a counterattack. He missed with his bite, which allowed me to knock him prone. He frantically tried to scramble to his feet, legs kicking and splaying like a dying spider, but I quickly had him pinned.
One bite to the neck would do it.
I hadn’t expected it to be this easy. I’d never killed someone before, and in my frenzied mission to save Rowena, I hadn’t had time to consider the emotional consequences of taking a life.
“Nettie!”
My head shot up. Rowena was still on the ground, fists clutching the soil in a panic, eyes as wild as a spooked deer. Her chest heaved as she took deep breaths through her mouth, struggling to calm her shock and panic.
“Please! Don’t hurt him!”
Don’t hurt him? He tried to kidnap you!
I couldn’t speak to Rowena in my wolf form. But her words made me pause and contemplate my situation. If this man was a werewolf, then that meant he wasn’t a werewolf hunter, or an accomplice to one. Which meant Rowena also wasn’t a werewolf hunter.
But if that was the case, who is this man?
And more importantly… what is Rowena hiding?
Those few seconds, lost in thought, were enough time for the black werewolf to wrestle his muzzle free from my claws. I tried to stop him, to push his hulking form back down and restrainhim again, but it was no use. Those snarling, wicked teeth were aimed right at my neck, and there wasn’t much I could do to stop him.
“Enough! Please!”
