PROLOGUE

Scarlett was running. As she dodged between the trees, her cloak flying behind her, she heard the blood pounding in her ears as twigs and branches snapped under her feet. She cried out in fear as there was a long howl behind her. It was closer than before. Scarlett didn’t have a lot of time to get out of the woods before she was caught. She could have sworn she hadn’t gone this far into the trees. It should not be taking this long to get back out. Had she taken a wrong turn?

Scarlett pushed on as fast as her feet could carry her, her chest heaving as she desperately breathed in the icy night air. She knew she could not last much longer, which proved irrelevant when she ran into a clearing and suddenly came across a massive wall of boulders blocking her way.

It was not possible. She had roamed these woods all her life. There had never been anything in it like what she was seeing now. Where had it come from?

Scarlett did not have time to consider the thought, before the clearing filled with a low, deep growling. She spun around and found herself face to face with a monster sized wolf; its long, thick fur the darkest russet red. Scarlett screamed and fell back as it leapt at her, jaws dripping. She hit the ground and started scrambling backwards, but her cloak got caught on a branch.

The wolf was upon her in two strides, and as its paws landed on her shoulders, the fur melted away to reveal scarred, pale skin and thick locks of the same dark red hair. It was a man; a man with deep green eyes and black, talon-like fingernails. His canine teeth came down over his bottom lip… and he was completely naked.

Scarlett’s heartbeat was coming in short flutters now. She felt herself grow slick. The shock had left her frozen before his talons raked across her chest, tearing away her blood red cloak, leaving her as bare as he. “You are human!” she finally choked.

“I… am hunger,” he growled, his broad chest rumbling with the depth of his voice, before he raised Scarlett’s hips and plunged deep inside her.

Her eyes snapped shut at the impact. She let out a strangled gasp and when she opened her eyes again, she was lying in her own bed, the cool night air drifting in through the open window and the mattress damp with her wetness, as she had found herself so many times before.

1-SCARLETT

Scarlett had lived in the Boque Village her entire life, and for half of that life she had been plagued by nightmares. They followed her into her waking moments, reminding her of what she had suffered even when the townsfolk were not around to do it themselves with their looks of pity, awe, and commiseration.

Only recently had they taken a turn she had never experienced before. She usually woke up before the wolf caught her, her heart still racing and her bed just as moist, but with sweat. Recently however, her dreams had turned carnal in nature, with the wolf catching and devouring her in different ways almost every night. She remembered every single one, too.

As she strolled through Boque on her way to the bakery, she caught numerous glances from the village people. “How are you today, Dear?” Mistress Quinn asked.

“I am very well, thank you, Mistress Quinn.”

“Holding up alright, Scar?” Bobby the stable boy at Winston Farms called out from across the square. Scarlett smiled and waved in reply. “I am just fine, Bobby.”

“My condolences, Girl,” an elderly man called Blue said to her as he sat out the front of the blacksmiths. “As if you have not been through enough already.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Scarlett answered politely. This was the way in Boque. She would go to the town square to collect the things her family needed and trade her herbs in return in between market days. On her way people would stop her multiple times to fuss over her. It was getting rather tedious after all these years.

When Scarlett was ten years old, she had fallen afoul of the wolf plague. Her grandmother had been rather ill and her mother was stuck at the family farm making sure they could make ends meet while her father was away on patrol, hunting the pack that had started targeting the village. Her mother had asked her to take some supplies to her grandmother’s and help her with anything she might need around the house and garden, but she had stressed to Scarlett the importance of remaining inside once the sun went down and not attempting to return until the sun had well and truly risen the next day.

Scarlett had readily agreed and insisted she understood, eager to see her grandmother and help her, but also to get away from the monotonous life of the farm that was becoming drearier and more miserable every day. However… Scarlett was also ten, and at that age, was an easily distractible girl. She passed others on the outskirts of the trees who she dallied with; adults who questioned where she was off to and children who asked her to play for just a few minutes.

These encounters slowly dissipated the deeper she went into the woods, for only her grandmother lived so far in, but when she neared the main fork in the path, she heard a deep voice coming through the trees. It was odd because the only other people who travelled this far into the woods were the woodcutters and they were usually gone before the heat of the day had settled in during the summer, or the work became too arduous.

She had forgotten at the time that the woodcutters had started taking shifts roaming the forests in an attempt to find the wolves den while they slept during the day. “Sir?” Scarlett had called back cautiously, peering through the trees.

“What is a pretty little thing like you doing out here?” the voice had asked softly.

“I need to take supplies to my grandmother,” Scarlett had answered proudly, holding herself tall. “She is very sick and cannot get out of bed, you see.”

“Is that so? And she lives all the way out here? Alone?”

“Yes, Sir; just down the left hand fork, but I know where I am going,” she had insisted. “I come here all the time.” It was the way of Boque; to keep an eye on all around you and to check in with your neighbours regularly. When Scarlett heard the voice talking to her, she assumed it was one of the late working woodcutters, finally remembering the wolf den search was still underway.

“That is very kind of you,” the sickly sweet voice continued. “You know what sick people find particularly pleasing?”

“What’s that?” Scarlett had asked eagerly.

“Flowers!”

“Flowers?”

“Yes, Child, such as the ones growing around the trees here. Night lights and bluebells. People find great cheer in them, I have noticed.”

“What a wonderful idea! Thank you!” Scarlett had called out gratefully, before setting out to collect as many different wildflowers as she could find. She picked flowers and fruits and as she passed them, amassing a collection for her to carry to her ailing grandmother. With a full basket she had rejoined the path and continued on to the cottage in the woods.

When she had arrived, calling out as she climbed the stairs, her grandmother hadn’t answered. Scarlett had let herself in, finding her grandmother already asleep in bed, the blankets close up near her face. She quickly and quietly set about pulling the flowers and supplies from her basket. When her work was complete and the flowers were sat daintily around the kitchen and living areas around the fireplace, she had found herself unbearably tired from the journey, so she had curled up with several blankets in the front of the fire and gone to sleep.

When Scarlett awoke just before sunrise, she went to wake her grandmother for her morning tea, her ten year old eyes not noticing the torn blankets on the floor, or the trickles of blood splattered on the walls, or even the upended table by the trunk that sat at the end of her grandmother’s bed.

Her grandmother wasn’t in the bed. When she drew back the covers, there was a chilling snarl and she was knocked to the ground by a mountain of dark grey fur. Just as its jaws locked on her forearm, there was an almighty crash and the door flew open. In a single swing of his axe, a Boque woodcutter had felled the beast and saved Scarlett and her grandmother, who was found clawed and bleeding on the other side of the bed.

Scarlett’s father never returned from that patrol. Her mother had lost her husband and very nearly her mother and daughter all in one night. Scarlett had relived the memory of the attack almost every moment of her life in the years that followed. Thoughts of it would plague her throughout the day and nightmares would wake her at night.

Her mother, Ingrid, had insisted Scarlett’s grandmother move in with them following the attack, forcing her to give up the cabin in the woods for the safety of Boque. Ingrid Black was a proud woman, never accepting help from anyone after the death of her husband, adamant that she could do everything herself. Once her mother and daughter had become the potential second and third losses of her family to the wolf plague, she had committed herself to ending it for good. Every single day from that to this, she had trained.

She utilised the skills of the woodcutter, who gladly taught her how to use his tools for defence. She then turned to other forms of weaponry. Swords, daggers, the bow; she learnt them all. The farm had fallen almost completely into Scarlett’s hands as her mother started a lucrative side business in hunting.

She started with the wolf that had attacked Scarlett and her mother, returning to the cabin in the woods one final time to collect the pelt. Using it, she tracked the others; or rather, she used it to allow them to track her. One by one she hunted every single wolf in the area. Sometimes other hunters and woodcutters joined her, but most did not want the company of a woman and so kept their distance from her endeavour. They considered her to be reckless and courting disaster to be out hunting the beasts and as such, they wanted no part of it.

Every trip she would return with the heads of her kill, which were placed on spears that ran along the fence line of the farm. When the final wolf den had been discovered and eradicated, Ingrid had returned home from the final hunt with the last of the heads to find the people of the town were all there to greet her. Their opinions had changed greatly. Where once they chided her, they now cheered her name for the great deed she had done for the safety of Boque, and whenever they found themselves prey to vermin, be it pest or predator, they came to Ingrid for help, and so her business grew.

Scarlett ran the farm now, with the help of attendants paid for by her mother. There was a multitude of herb gardens which she tended to herself, as well as a fruit orchard, a vegetable patch and a large hen house. It was a small enterprise by farming standards, but with her mother’s business doing so well, there was no need to expand when Boque already had everything it needed, and Scarlett would not be able to handle any more responsibilities even if it did not.

Ten years had passed since that fateful day. The scar on her arm was still disfiguring but had faded over the years. What hadn’t faded were the memories. Not only was Scarlett famous for being one of only two who had ever survived a wolf attack during the plague, but she was the trigger that led her mother to become one of the town’s most respected and well-known citizens. This meant that wherever she went, people knew her.

Even after she grew out of her red woollen cloak her grandmother had made her as a child, her long dark locks, her scar and her very presence were enough to draw attention. She had actually come across another cloak, packed away deep in her grandmother’s trunk at the foot of her bed at the farm only a few months past. She had shuddered in horror and dropped it back in; slamming the lid closed like it housed a poisonous snake and had not gone near the trunk again.

But, despite not wearing the infamous cloak, and even when she would actively avoid the topic, the people of Boque would always bring up the attack, bringing with it the memories, pulling them back to the forefront of her mind. This made her feel like she was living in a never ending time loop, where no matter how much older she became, a child she forever remained.