He had never been close enough to know.
He squinted, chewing jaw going slack, saliva accumulating in the jowls. That's right, tonight was spaghetti night. Any moment now she would open the window to air out the beef scented steam. Then he could lift his snout to draw in evidence of his female's provision skills.
Often he would have fantasies involving that spaghetti.
The American-family-esque: He would be behind her, and they would laugh over shit not really funny, his arms around her, her shrugging him off and playfully claiming they would starve if he did not quit it that instant. This fantasy ended with her bent over the table.
The unlikely version: her burning the spaghetti and them laughing as she dumped the failed attempt in the trashcan. He would kiss away her puckered lips of dismay and those kisses would trail. This fantasy ended with him on his knees, the unlikely part being her burning the pasta.
The inevitable, recurring version: didn't really have spaghetti. Just dark wounds in the walls where his claws had dragged to remove the worst of his tension as he took her against every unyielding surface. But, like, the thought of spaghetti was still pertinent somehow, somewhere in the lustful oblivion.
The harrowing problem with these fantasies was exactly that: they were fantasies. Never-gonna-happens. He would forever be on the outside looking in. Because reasons. Because agreements. Because such and such.
She was not even aware of his existence.
It was as a thin trail of drool teased downward that he heard them. His ears stood, flicked and swiveled backwards toward the source.
It was too early for it to be Scythe. He usually came around sunrise to leash him back to the property and attempt reconciliation via Anila Meatballs. The bastard knew he could never resist her tender, lightly glazed meatballs.
No, these voices were unfamiliar. Strange even, though that could have been the distance between them, delivering the noises into high pitched lines none in the clan were capable of. Lines that caused a continuous flickering of his ears' tips. Maybe it was the leftover agitation sending him false sounds. Wouldn't be the first time.
Either way, he was pretty sure they were not coming to offer meatballs.
“Shut up. You want them on us?”
“Last I done checked, they didn't have no super hearing.”
“When you check?”
The light banter drew in others. All male.
“How about all of you shut the hell up—”
“What is that?”
The moon overhead cloaked the dark woods in a glossy film of blue. Fang abandoned the rock. The leaves of shades orange to brown shuddered away each step he took, the still winds compressing their sound to flat notes of nothing. His footfalls were soundless, whereas he was not. It was only him and his growls causing the woods to shiver and the intruders to fall silent.
The last time vagrants had thought to overstep bounds onto the territory, he had mauled them. His mid-massacre apathy had graced some with their lives and a lesson well received, leaving them to scurry back into the shadows with missing limbs and the permanent scars that werewolf gashes left behind. Leerah had been none the wiser.
How it would remain. If he could prevent it, his dark little elf would never experience fear.
No longer was he padding along in utter stealth. He tore through the trees, a blur in motion. Their voices, feathery and despondent; their breaths, low and far too slow to deem human, sank into his ears louder than thunder. Their heartbeats held familiar patterns of hail pattering a window pane; fast, contradicting. Their scents . . . exotic. Tangy like clipped dandelions and garden roses. It hit him like sweet nostalgia—familiar, familiar, so familiar. It would be nice to open nostalgia's belly and let his breath roll over his canines as he leered into the carnage.
Because familiar or not, they were not of the Teir'Lorn clan. They were not of the Fetchers. They were trespassers.
He plowed into the nearest figure. Abrupt. Effective. His jaws locked around its face. He cranked them closed until he felt his top and bottom canines meet. Warmth filled his mouth, slipping down his throat. Nails scratched frantically at his fall pelt, tugging and ripping fur free.
There was no cry of pain from the trespasser; he felt his paw descend into its throat, sweltering heat bleeding between his toes. Though it was already as good as dead, the connection with his claws caused the body to go spastic and ruined.
Unmoving.
Next.
He whipped around but came up short. Around him, the shadows vibrated. No . . . not vibrated, but moved at impossible speeds. What were once blue-hued shadows now carried the color like a whipping glow stick outlining their bodies.
And there were a lot of glow sticks.
He snarled and pounded heavy paws into the ground matter—beckoning, challenging those things to come near.
“Nooo regulaaar woolfiee,” their voices bled in ghostly tenors, as though the space around them could not quite carry the sound.
“Weerewolf.”
“Deeeliinqueeent.”
“Thizz iz their wooodzz.”
Damn right it was the werewolves' woods. For decades, most of the preternaturals in Virginia understood not to come near it—especially the vampires after the number Fang had done on them. News of that mild massacre had spread, enticing all preternaturals to respect another’s territory. So what was possessing these strange creatures?
His hairs lifted as a presence climbed up his spine.
He snapped toward the whirring motion and came back with a howling creature. It raked at his face, but his flesh and bones were nowhere near as giving. He rattled the lanky body hard like a chew-toy and tossed it in front of him.
Familiar, familiar. The ease of breaking the bones. The sweet and sour taste of its blood.
He bit into its throat, unintentionally severing the head before it tried to run.
As he drew away and the head rolled away, those glowing things hushed closer. He got the sense that they were curious of him. Very curious.
That weird observation aside, he spotted one that was not in constant motion but watching him with these big dark eyes and pale features. Vampyric almost. Slowly it ordered, “Fucking kill it already.”
That was when he saw, as he turned in aggravated circles, the number of them. Thirty, fifty shadows outlined in blue. So many. Too many. Fang used to think these woods had always been hollow and empty. Seeing so many bodies occupying it was almost surreal. What the hell were they?
The answer was delivered in pain when something smacked him in the head, hard enough to lay him out on his side. False stars blended with the night's, blinking into his vision as he peered through watery—no, bloody— eyes.
“Bop!” one of the elves shouted.
Fang looked at the root sticking up from the ground, his blood smearing along the dirt-crusted curve. Elves were the only creatures known to this world capable of calling up the earth's roots and bending them to their will. Which meant . . .
His worst fear had finally come; an invasion. After years of dread, the light elves had finally discovered his dark elf living in these lands, and had sent a surprising many to take her life away from him.
No, no!
His mouth lifted. He needed the others. He needed to alert the clan—
A drawn howl came in from the east, formless and vast. Everyone paused as it sank into them. Even him. The sound was hollow yet thick, traveling through the trees softly yet loudly. Fang felt it stir something in his blood, his throat tingling at the back to rear his head and answer Blue's nightcall, but a second later, another howl overlapped from the west. Terse's.
His ears twitched.
He saw the fear enter the elves' eyes. Brief, instantly washed away. They knew better than to mess with werewolves, elves whose bones sliced like butter under werewolf teeth. It seemed they were learning the folly of their actions on the spot, learning the suicide forest they had walked into.
Another howl poured in fr
om the south. Drone.
Howls from all three guardian points had been delivered. Any moment now, he would hear Scythe give the official golden nightcall to gather all of the clan who were not guardians.
It was just like those seven years ago, with Anila's mate.
Sure enough, Scythe’s vibrant song turned every head toward the direction of the house.
He would have to take a rain check.
It wasn't his place to alert the others. He was not a guardian. But it wasn't logic that took over him. No, he so seldom used his logic bits. It was instinct that threw back his head. It was instinct that boiled up the onyx nightcall to warn the others that this sector was infested as well and that he had other priorities.
Before the air traveled heartily through Fang's lungs, something crashed into him. He was tossed back, hurdling into a collecting bundle of woodland litter. For an elf, it was incredibly strong.
He rebounded through the cracking of his spine, chomping his teeth at anything near him. His canines only caught air.
“Forget the wolf. Move, move.”
It must have been their leader commanding them, because like grass blown in the wind, they flooded toward Leerah's cottage in eerie motions, flying through the night like young wild moneys, racketing off tree trunks, pouncing with momentum, leaping like long crouched panthers.
That was when the memory hit him hard. Heady. Needy. Desperate. That blood. That smell. Leerah . . . It was the same scent she carried in her veins.
Hell, they were all dark elves.
Questions began to combat his clear head, blackening the night further. Through this cloudiness, he ran. He ran after the lot of them, howling a broken howl that was nondescript of the three nightcalls.
But what was he saying, who was he calling? If the others had spotted danger at the perimeters of all three stations, then the pack would have their mouths full. He was on his own here.
While that was just fan-fucking-tastic, he didn't let up on his pursuit. Not until he skidded to a stop at the outskirts of her cottage.
Wait. Why did he stop?!
They were flooded around the dainty home like ants crowded a crumb. Purposeful.
Fang went from paw to paw, worrying the borders of the declining hill.
Rules. Restrictions. Scythe's words. He was to never go near her so long as she lived in this forest of theirs.
Rules, rules. A whimper slipped from a desolate place in his belly.
It was more than just the rules.
Fang knew himself well enough to know that if he got nearer to Leerah, if he got closer than he had in the five years of watching her, whatever line had been drawn in his head by Scythe would be erased. Whatever calm inside of him would erode. Mentally and physically, he would not go back to such unnatural distance.
He would bring his fantasies to life. And he feared the manner of which he would go about doing so.
Just as he was about to really fuck up royally and barge into the fray below, rules abandoned, a shift of fur blasted past him. In the draft of its wake, he smelled promises of death, smelled the excitement.
That was enough. Redbone's auburn coat was the waving flag and Fang was the bull.
He charged towards the elves.
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