Page 1 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Part I

Chapter 1

I took a deep breath in, then slowly let it out.

My muscles quivered as I held the bow and aimed it at the stag. The effort it took to draw the weapon was one thing. The strength required to hold it at the ready was a much greater one. Exhalations needed to be slow, slight, mixing with the breeze on the moors, just as Nordred had taught me. Nothing should alert my prey to my presence. I’d made sure to stand downwind of the beast, so my scent was not washed his way, and as a result, the proud woodland king kept cropping at the grass. He popped his head up every now and then to look for danger, his crown of horns perched proudly on his head. I let out a low sigh as I watched him drop it back down again to eat. I moved my aim just slightly, looking down the length of the arrow’s shaft, seeing the spot I needed to hit.

Along the beast’s side, the arrow would slice through the brown pelt. It would cut deep, through muscle and skin, stabbing straight into his heart. It would be a good kill, a clean kill; so why was I waiting? I sent up a brief prayer to the gods then, one of gratitude for the strength of my arm, for the bounty of the lands, of wishes for a true aim and a kill worthy of them, of… My horse, Arden, whinnied just then, something that should have alerted me that I was not alone, but right at that moment I was deep into the hunter’s mindset. There was only me, endlessly patient, and the stag.

He jerked his head up at the sound of my horse, forcing me to curse silently inside my head. This might not be my day. The hunt was, as always, in the hands of the gods. The stag took a furtive step, its muscles bunching, readying those massive haunches to bound away, when the hissing sound of the breeze seemed to soothe it. I drew the string back just that little bit further as the stag began to eat again and then…

Nordred, the man who’d taught me to shoot, he’d told me that when I attained a warrior’s mindset I would feel, become, the very weapon I wielded. My father’s men, they snorted, thinking him gods-touched in the head. Some had informed me very frankly that the only thing they thought about on the battlefield was how not to piss their trews. But none of them could best Nordred on the training grounds and so it was his advice I followed. I let the string go, loosing the arrow, my mind travelling with it along its path, slicing through the air in an almost soundless passage until it met its final destination.

I jumped when the arrow found its mark, blinking madly when I heard the stag cry out, then had to force my stiff fingers to sling the bow across my back and draw my knife. I moved across the grass as quickly as I could, cursing loudly at the way my skirts flapped around my ankles as though they were trying to make me take the dainty steps Lady Linnea was always going on about. My teeth ground tight as I watched the beast thrash. It was in its dying throes, its head, its legs, moving with less and less energy, and I was forced to bite back a sob at the sight of it.

“You’re not a true warrior without a notch on your belt,” Magnus, one of my father’s men, had told me before patting me on the head like one would a child, not a woman of twenty. “All this swordplay and archery…” He’d turned to look back at the targets I’d spent the day aiming at. “Well, it’s a bit like fucking, isn’t it? No blood on you and you’re still just a callow virgin with no real idea of what you’re doing.” He’d glanced up when the others grunted, edging away from him. “What?”

“I don’t want to be anywhere near you when the duke finds out you’ve been talking with his daughter about fucking,” Rolf said with a shake of his head. “Or Kris.”

I wondered at what the hell I’d done when I reached the stag’s side. Its eyes were dulling, its attempts to rake the air, to right itself and run away, pitiful. It hit me. I’d done this. I’d deliberately brought down this grand creature. I blinked away tears, then forced my teeth to grit hard as I gripped my knife with both hands.

“Give thanks to the gods,” Nordred had said, leaning over me, clasping my hands around the knife’s hilt. “Thank the beast itself for the gift of its life, because it is a precious, if savage, thing. Then do it the courtesy of making it a swift death.”

“Thank you,” I croaked out, the words feeling bizarre, obscene, but I followed the ritual I’d been taught, and then I stabbed down, the blood of the stag pouring out, splattering me. My knife fell from my cold fingers, as with the blood went its life.

As the knife hit the grass, I looked at my hands and was stunned at how bright red the blood was. For a moment, all I could do was turn them from front to back, over and over, and stare at the red now staining my hands.

Then they came.

“Well done.”

My head jerked up, just like the stag’s had, looking for danger: the voice coming from one direction, then a series of slow claps coming from another. The moors were misty, the trees and undergrowth thick here, but that shouldn’t have been enough to hide whoever was out there. One man stepped out from behind the trees, his eyes blazing pale blue even in the low light of early morning. He had long blond hair raked back into a queue, and he smiled, a small sardonic twist of a thing, as he came to a halt just at the tree line.

The other man didn’t stop immediately, just slowly sauntered forward, forcing me to step backwards, like that was what I needed to do to take all of him in. He was tall, taller than any man I’d ever seen, but more than that he was huge. Broad of chest, of thigh, of arm… He wore armour, but it was nothing like I saw in my father’s court. Leather armour covered in chain mail, the lightness of it would have made my father’s men laugh, but this man didn’t seem any worse for wearing it. Over it, like his friend, he wore a long cloak made of silvery grey fur, beaten metal clasps keeping it around his shoulders. But strangest of all? The man sniffed the air like an animal and that’s when I knew what these men were.

My eyes flicked from one man to the other, taking in the bright glow of their blue eyes, the long hair, the stubble and beards staining their jaws. Hands on hilts of swords I’d never seen the make of …

“Wargen?”

I barely breathed the word out, the title for the worst thing I could stumble upon out here, but the big man’s head jerked up, his brows creasing, a snarl forming.

“Peace, brother.” I spun around at that and saw another man standing there, one with hair so dark as to be almost black, his eyes just as pale as the other men. He smiled at me, then nodded his head slightly. Same armour, same cloak, same bearing. “You’re scaring the little huntress.” Those blue eyes shifted to me. “You’ve brought down quite the beast there and with just one shot. We held our breaths as you took it, wondering if the gods would be kind—”

“But how’s a little thing like you going to get it home?”

One last man appeared and that’s when I knew what this was. All women had heard tales of the wargen and their unnatural appetites. They came slinking over our borders like foxes to a henhouse, looking for placid, fat-breasted chickens to snatch and … I dropped down, snatching up my knife, then wiped my hand and the hilt on my dress when I found it was slippery with the stag’s blood.

But this man, he noted my actions, the deer and the knife with a sneer. Unlike his brothers-in-arms, this man’s shaggy brown hair hung in his face, covering one eye, the lone blue eye that was visible burning with an endless hatred.

He would hate me, because his people and mine had lived side by side in an uneasy peace for centuries. Didn’t stop my father’s men from having to ride out and patrol the border, to see to our people’s complaints. Didn’t prevent them from having clashes with the wolf men of Strelae, returning home bloodied, but victorious. Didn’t stop them from dragging poor specimens to our keep and then having to ransom them back to their Ulfric, the Wolf King. And it definitely didn’t stop them from treating our land, our people, as if they were theirs, stealing citizens away, never to be seen again. I thrust my knife out into the air between him and me, and the other three laughed in response.

“A huntress and a warrior born,” the blond-haired man said. “And they said that Granian women are weak milksops. It appears we’ve been misled.”

“If this one is to be ours, I’ll not complain,” the big man said, running his eyes over me. “One with enough fire to keep things interesting and who can bring down enough food to feed the pack?” He shook his head slowly, then treated me to a sly smile, so my knife swivelled around to point at him. “If she can bring me a bite to eat after I've rutted her into my furs, she’ll be damn near perfect.”

“Brothers…” the dark-haired man said with a hiss, and while I moved my knife in his direction, the shaggy haired man appeared at my shoulder. I sucked in a breath, having heard of their unearthly speed, but the evidence of it went well beyond the tales. One moment he was off by the trees, the next standing right beside me, and before I could even move, his hand clamped down on my wrist.

“Stop,” he snapped with a frown. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

---