Page 95 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

“Come,” Selene said, then the two of us nodded to Aeve as we walked away from her to a quieter corner of the training room. “You’ve had some kind of training.” Her eyes roamed all over me, searching for evidence of it.

“Yes, I—”

“That can be as much a curse as it is a blessing. It may mean you have a lot to unlearn,” she said. “Show me this hybrid form of yours.”

I just blinked then. Something shifted inside me, something restless, ready to surge up and meet that challenge, but…how? No warm-up? No explanation?

“Show me or be gone,” she said, in the same even but very firm tone. There was to be no arguing, no prevaricating with Selene. You just did or were dismissed and that’s when I saw my out.

If I let the doubt and confusion in my heart have its head, if I faffed around and struggled to manifest the hybrid form, as I really felt like I might, she would dismiss me instantly. That would remove me from the requisite training with the Maidens, leaving the queen open to pester me in other ways, but my days would be free, for as long a time as it took the queen to come up with something else.

I just had to fail to impress Selene.

But some part of me, something that lurked much further down in my core, it couldn’t back down from a challenge and it never would. I stared into her blue eyes, caught all the shades of faded grey and steely blue in them right up until they began to narrow. Then, I let a breath out, and something came out.

Wolf-Darcy, she was harder, tougher, a stick figure carved from whippy birch branches and twisted rawhide, and she was not someone I allowed out very often. The fact that I now wore a mantle of fur, that my fingers were claws, that my mouth ached with fangs, was irrelevant. This was just the most recent evolution of what I was, what I had always had the possibility of being. But I could bring her out now. Because when I looked at Selene? Rather than clutch at her pearls or bristle, thinking me a threat, she just smiled.

I didn’t realise how long I’d waited for this until I felt it. A rush of something heady simply for its rarity, that small flash of approval going straight to my head like strong liquor. She saw me, saw my hard, vicious little self, and she smiled. But there was more. While she remained in human form right now, she wasn’t like other women and that’s when I really understood what Aeve had tried to tell me. This was a wolf who took the form of a woman when it suited her, not vice versa.

“Well, well,” she said, walking around to take a look at me. “Looks like we have something to work with after all. You’ve done strength training and conditioning with your tutor?” I nodded. “Then show me, wolf girl. Ten laps around the perimeter of the room to get you warmed up and then we’ll see what you’ve got.”

And with that, I was dismissed, left to return to my human form and follow her orders, or not. I got to choose, but each choice would come with consequences. I nodded then, just to myself, and then jogged over to the edge of the room, already feeling my body moving differently as I did. My limbs were looser, my gait smoother, like this was the most natural way for me to move. Other black-clad women acknowledged me as I passed, even as the girls in human form just stared. Then I took a breath and began.

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