Page 40 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Part II

Chapter 18

It’s in our dreams we’re the most powerless or the most powerful and, right now, in mine, I was omnipotent. I grew and grew, becoming taller, harder, stronger. I towered over the keep’s occupants cowering before me, and they watched in horror as my body changed.

I didn’t have hands; I had vicious, slashing claws. I was no longer weak; my body was roped with enough muscle to do terrible things. But it was my face that made the greatest change. Not a pretty girl, eyes downcast and pretending to be docile. No, now I was wild. My face was longer, sharper, my mouth opening on row upon row of vicious fangs, the people below me shying away. They didn’t want me to bite them, rip them in two and so, they turned and ran. Like the frantic scurry of a disturbed ants’ nest, they scattered everywhere, and I just laughed.

Run, I thought, because I am—

I sucked in a breath,eyes flicking open, and for a moment I could only stare. At a room not my own. A room in … an inn, if I wasn’t mistaken. The exposed beams, the small window, a bed crammed into a stuffy room, but I couldn’t pay too much attention to that. I shoved the bedclothes off me, the sheets sticking to my clammy skin and that’s when I looked down at my hands.

Shaking, long, slender fingers with too many calluses for a lady, I turned them over and back again, reassured somehow by their ordinary appearance and yet at the same time that felt utterly wrong. I couldn’t, shouldn’t look exactly the same, not after what I’d been through. So I jerked myself to my feet, walking across the room to where a small mirror hung on the wall and found the evidence I sought.

I still had hair that was too red, skin that was still marred by freckles, a long thin face, and a full mouth. But that’s where the similarities ended. I had changed after all, my instincts ringing true, as those trembling hands came to land on my cheekbones. The deep brown of my eyes, the same colour as that of my mother and my father, was gone and perhaps that was fitting. I wasn’t their daughter anymore. Because my eyes? They were the glowing blue of the wargen, standing starkly against my now milk pale skin.

I watched my eyes shift rapidly as I remembered how that came to be, that alien presence rising inside me. The girl, no, the woman who stared back at me now in the mirror, she had none of that appropriately modest look to her, feigned or otherwise, and she’d never be able to fake that again. Because she’d discovered who she was, whatever that was, and it refused to kneel.

Or wear stays. My hands clapped down on the boy’s clothes I was still wearing, tearing off my shirt, to remove the loosened corset and that’s when my hands froze.

“Undo her corset, Linnea.”

But instead of it being that bitch revealing my back for my father to beat, it was me removing a source of restriction and control. I wrenched at the laces, hearing them groan under an onslaught the like of which they’d never experienced before. The bindings snapped all too easily and I looked with wonder at the offending article as it dangled in my hand. But that sensation of wresting freedom after being constrained paled in comparison to the feel of my bare skin against linen when I pulled my shirt back on.

The stays were ruined now, that’s what I told myself as I strode over to the open fireplace, the flickering fire about to get a whole lot more fuel to burn as I tossed the corset on top of them. Something inside my chest loosened at the sight of the white cotton going black, red flames eating it all up until all that remained were some sooty whalebones. They had been the crushing supports that were used to bind my ribs, turn my figure into the shape dictated by society rather than nature, but they were just refuse now.

Refuse someone was coming to take away.

My head jerked up as the lock clicked and the door swung open, my hands bunching in anticipation of who might be on the other side. I hadn’t expected to see a woman. She was young, fresh-faced, with a tumble of brown hair and wide blue eyes, a small smattering of freckles across her nose. She smiled when she saw me, putting her hand on her hip.

“Hello, you’re awake then.”

“And who are you?” I asked, my head turning to one side.

“Hey, stand down there, girl.” She held her hands up. “Not here to encroach on your turf or anything. I’m Pepin.” She thrust a broad, brown hand at me. “Pep for short.”

“That tells me what you’re called,” I said, eyeing her hand. “Not who you are.” Part of my brain was quietly appalled by my words and actions. Not shaking a person’s hand, then interrogating them at first meeting? This was not done, yet I did it.

“You’re wary,” she said, wiping her hands on her trews. “Makes sense. The princes have filled me in on what happened to you.” She frowned slightly. “Well, the basics. I live here in Bayard.”

“Bayard…” My mind raced effortlessly, recalling the geography of either side of the border and able to put a pin in the map in my mind, identifying where we were. “We’re in Strelae?”

“Of course, we’re in Strelae. That’s where you ordered the princes to take you, right? They half killed their horses trying to get you here fast enough.”

“Arden…” I said, my voice little more than a whisper, as an ache set up in my chest so severe that I felt it physically. “Poll?”

“Arden’s the black war horse, right? He’s in the stables, as is old Poll, the cheeky bastard. You could go—”

“Take me to them,” I insisted.

She grinned at that, her teeth even and white.

“Right this way, princess.”

I’d been rightabout us being in an inn. We walked downstairs to the alehouse below the accommodation and found it only a quarter full, but that wasn’t what drew my eye. I had rarely been able to visit one, only being allowed when Father and I travelled, but the few I had seen weren’t like this. Rather than buxom maids ferrying tankards of beer from the bar to the customers, being tugged down on men’s laps, both men and women sat and drank, and the staff were comprised of each gender too.

“Through here,” Pep said, gesturing for me to follow.

We walked down a hall and out a door that opened onto an adjoining stable, the sights and smells instantly helping to settle me. But it was the sight of Arden that had me running.

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