Page 102 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 41

I’d dreamt of the Morrigan, of the wolves running over the land and towards Strelae so many times, that to have a dream featuring someone else was a strange thing.

I walked down the aisle of some massive cathedral, people watching me pass with genial expressions. My steps felt long and ponderous, like it required a great effort to take them. I worked out why as I looked down and saw I was trailing a huge cloak behind me. Ermine trimmed and made from a deep red silk velvet, the nap of the fabric felt like it clung to the carpet as I moved, providing significant resistance.

“Don’t worry about that,” a tall woman said with a smile. She was wearing the kind of brief leather armour that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Empire four hundred years ago, a bow and quiver over her shoulder, as she nodded for me to keep going.

So I did, my head bobbing as I went, and when my fingers touched my forehead, I felt something heavy and cold sat upon it.

“Don’t touch that,” a big stern man said, standing in the aisle. He stroked his beard thoughtfully as I passed.

There were several people also in the aisle as I walked by, each one encouraging me to keep going until I drew nearer to the front. Two women stood either side of the aisle, one catching my eye instantly. She smiled slowly and her mouth was all I could see, hooded as she was by the fur and skull of a wolf. And when she grinned? I saw the razor-sharp canines of a beast flash as she did so.

But the other woman? I stepped towards her then, frowning as I did so. My cape felt even heavier now, like it was actively grabbing at the ground to stop me from taking another step, even as she smiled.

She was radiant, that’s why I struggled to get close to her. Her hair was a cloud of strawberry blond, her eyes gentle and warm as she held out her hands to me. I knew I needed to get closer, to take them, somehow, deep in my heart.

“Mother?”

The word seemed to resonate throughout the whole chapel, containing some kind of weight, but I didn’t care. People were chattering, their voices getting louder and louder, but I couldn’t hear them.

“Mother?”

She nodded then, and that’s when I saw the thing I’d longed to for so long.

She rushed towards me, no, my mother did. “Mother?” I asked, as our hands touched, but that was simply a formality now. I knew it was her. There was something about the feel of her skin, her sweet floral scent, the softness of her body as she pulled me close.

“Yes, my darling girl.” I let out a long sigh then, deflating against her. Everything felt too hard and too heavy once she took a hold of me. “You are my daughter, and you must carry a terrible burden.” I didn’t want to hear that, snuggling in closer and she stroked my hair as a result. “More than any of my other children.”

“Other?”

At that, I turned in her embrace and looked back down the aisle I’d walked down, seeing now that I wasn’t in a cathedral, but in a field somewhere. We were perched up high on a hill and, as far as the eye could see, there were people clustered around us.

“I am everyone’s mother,” she said, and tears pricked my eyes.

“No,” I said, shaking my head and wanting to pull away, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to. I’d wanted, needed, her for so long. “No, you’re my mother!”

“Yours, theirs.” She let out a long-suffering sigh, the like I’d seen Cook and the other older women in the keep do often. “All of them. I birth the world.”

“And it’s not doing so well right now,” another voice said.

I turned to see the wolf headed woman had prowled closer. I spun around, forming a protective barrier between me and my mother, but she just chuckled.

“You don’t need to protect her from me,” the wolf girl said with a smile that seemed to belie her words. “The three of us, we’re supposed to work in harmony. I’m all the wild, viciousness of youth. The part of a woman who won’t sit down and submit.”

She winked at me slowly, as if I knew exactly what she was talking about.

“She’s all the sweet self-sacrifice of motherhood, but she’s got some of me in her,” the wolf girl continued. “She surpasses my savagery when her pups are threatened.” And when I looked up, I saw my mother’s eyes burned bright blue now, a terrible determination there. “And then there’s her.”

The old dream, the vision I’d seen so many times, kicked back in then. The wolves that threatened to swallow the world, a golden-headed raven at their head.

“They woke our sister with their worship and that wasn’t wise. She’s ravenous, with a maw that can’t be filled, no matter what you feed it. She wants to eat every damn thing. All the people, all the towns, all the animals, all the plants, all the insects and worms, all the microbes, until there’s nothing left.” The wolf girl turned to look at me. “And then she’ll eat us too.”

“A balance must be restored,” my mother said. “That’s why I gave birth to you, brought you into this world. You are my weapon against the darkness, and you must strike true.”

“You won’t like the process much,” the wolf girl said with a rakish smile. “Sorry for that. If it could all be done with a few firm words and some gentle correction, well…” Her smile faltered as she watched the wolves come closer. “We wouldn’t be in this predicament then, would we?”

“Remember what is true,” my mother insisted, drawing my attention back to her. “Amongst all the games and lies, focus on what is, not on how things appear.” She leant in then and pressed a kiss to my forehead, an explosion of light following it, flaring up and blocking out the aspects of my dream vision, only my mother’s voice remaining. “You are the queen we have been waiting for and now it’s your time to rise.”

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