Wolf's Cross (27 page)

He bent down to remove his breeches and Maria forced herself to turn away, feeling the flesh burn on her face and her pulse throbbing in the back of her throat.

“You said you were ready for this.”

Maria nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“Then face me.”

She turned to look at him and couldn’t breathe. He stood naked before her in the clearing, brazen and unashamed, and without even a shadow for modesty’s sake. She found herself staring at his manhood, which even dormant was the size of both her fists, one on top of the other.

“You want to see what I am?” he asked.

She raised her gaze to his face and said, “Yes.”

Darien took a deep breath and spread his arms. He clenched his fists and his jaw, and every muscle in his body pulled tight. Tiny shudders crawled across his flesh—trembles that were echoed in her stomach. Even as he froze, unmoving, his muscles took on a life of their own, writhing under his naked flesh.

As his skin rippled, its surface darkened, softening with a downy golden pelt that grew and roughened while she watched. The movement under his flesh became more violent, and more
directed, as the flesh appeared to pull bones after it. His arms lengthened, and his fists spread open as his fingers did likewise, sprouting curved claws at their tips.

Maria heard a groan; she didn’t know if it was Darien’s voice or his body that had made the sound.

He tilted his head as his tensed jaw muscles pulled the bones of his face forward, a lupine muzzle pushing out from within, and his golden hair coarsened and spread itself to become a furry ruff around his neck. His shoulders broadened, his chest swelled, and his hips twisted to accommodate the wolflike legs that supported him. And between those legs, his member was an engorged fleshy red that began to subside only as he let loose a triumphant howl.

Maria stepped back from the thing Darien had become.

The giant wolf’s head tilted as he licked the length of his muzzle. His eyes were still the same—the left one paler than the other, marked by a white slash in the golden fur of his face.

He crouched, so his face was the same height as her own.

“Do I frighten you?”

Maria opened her mouth, but speech was beyond her. She just nodded.

“Why?”

“Why?” Maria repeated. She stared at the muscles rippling under Darien’s fur, at the way his muzzle wrinkled in a near grin, revealing sharp canine teeth. “Why shouldn’t I be frightened?”

“Can you not protect yourself?”

She thought briefly of the silver dagger she had left with her brother, but that wasn’t what Darien meant.

“You know we’re of a kind.” His nose wrinkled. “The smell of the wolf is so rich upon you. Join me. Let me show you.”

“You want me to …”

“You wish to see? To know?” He reached out. Maria was surprised by his touch, but she didn’t pull away as a claw traced the
curve of her arm. “You cannot by pretending that this is all you are.”

Maria hugged herself.

What was she?

Woman, Christian, Pole, servant, daughter, sister, virgin, bastard …

Wolf?

She bit her lip and pulled off her surcote. Under Darien’s gaze, she pulled off her shoes, her chemise, everything. She stood before him, naked, skin burning with embarrassment, but forcing herself to leave her arms at her sides, as brazen as he had been.

He reached out a clawed finger, brushing shudderingly across her breast, to tap on her chest, next to her cross.

“You still wear that.”

He didn’t try to remove it, and she stood there while the wolf touched the naked flesh between her breasts. She could no longer admonish herself, protest that she was not wicked.

She reached up and removed the cross, then let it slip through her fingers to fall on the ground next to her clothes.

She closed her eyes and breathed deep his scent, which was earthy, strong, and male and hinted at every forbidden thought she had ever had. It filled her with a shudder that refused to stop. She bit her lip hard enough that blood trailed across her tongue and dripped down her throat. Her flesh moved and flowed around her, tearing and reknitting, stretching her skin in a cascade of agony where the only fixed point within her was her heart trying to hammer its way out of her body.

Every pulse of her spasming heart sent bolts of agony along her arms, her legs, every muscle in her body. With her eyes closed, she felt as if every part of her body was bursting open, to spill her life on the ground.

And mixed in with the incredible pain was the throb of something
deeper; something in the core of her that writhed with pleasure at every twist of a knotted muscle, every thrust of malleable bone; a thing that moaned on the brink of ecstasy as her skin pulled against itself to the breaking point and beyond.

I am wicked
, came her single coherent thought.
I want this!

When the pain stopped, her climax slammed her like a blow. She howled, the lupine wail vibrato from the waves crashing within her body. She fell to her knees, but did not topple over. She opened her eyes while the aftershocks still shook her body. She heard a growl and realized it was her.

She was nearly overwhelmed by different sensations, as every part of her body reminded her that she was no longer what she had been. The points of her teeth rubbed against her lolling tongue as she panted. A light breeze tickled the fur on her back. In her crouch, her backside, muscular and narrow, rested on heels far more pointed and knobby than those of a human foot. The balls of her feet, now great splayed paws, dug clawed toes into the cool earth.

Power filled every joint and muscle—an intoxicating energy that made her feel that she could leap beyond the tops of the dead gray trees that surrounded them. She felt as if she could leap to embrace the sun itself.

Her muzzle wrinkled as she breathed in the now-overwhelming scent around her. It was as if her nose had been packed with linen that had suddenly been removed. She could pick out the scent of moss, the different types of grass, the woody scent of a hundred slowly decaying trees, the vapors from an unseen nearby marsh, and over all she smelled
him
.

Darien faced her, staring at her as if her transformation had racked him as much as it had her. “Are you still frightened?”

She licked her muzzle, feeling her new canine lips and the cool leather of her nose. “Of course I am,” she said. She stood, slightly
unsteady on her new legs, turning to let the breeze caress her new black-furred body. She took a deep breath and added, “But that doesn’t matter, does it?”

He stepped around to face her, moving with a lithe grace that showed none of the clumsiness she felt balancing on a pair of oversized wolf paws. As he moved, she saw that he had a tail, and seeing it move made her aware that she now had her own. She felt it twitch, and the feel of the base of it brushing against her backside was perhaps the strangest sensation she had experienced yet. Just thinking of it made it swing faster, caressing the backs of her thighs.

“You are beautiful,” he growled at her, his voice lowering in tone so much that she doubted the human Maria would have understood him.

“I am a monster,” she said. The words came out as low as his, and it seemed that it was someone else talking—
something
else talking. As much as fear gripped her, for the moment she couldn’t find shame in the statement. She repeated, more to herself than to him, “I am a monster.”

The words held more revelation than horror.

He reached out and touched her cheek, stroking the side of her face. “You want to see what we are?”

“Yes.”

“Then follow me.”

Darien turned and ran, becoming little more than a golden shadow disappearing into the woods.

M
aria hesitated for only a moment before running after him. She was clumsy and uncertain of her own strength. Her first leap carried her nearly ten paces over a deadfall, slamming her shoulder into a tree. But the pain was nothing compared to her transformation, and she rolled and was back chasing his scent before she realized she had fallen.

He ran so fast.

The faster she went, the more her body pushed her forward, wanting to use her arms to grab the ground before her. It was awkward, and she could barely keep up with the golden shadow rushing ahead of her. In glimpses, she saw him through the trees and realized why he was so fast.

He ran on four legs now, completely a wolf—a massive gold-furred creature running though the woods, tongue lolling.

The sight shook her for a moment. She’d been half-prepared for the monster she was, but to become fully an animal? It didn’t seem possible.

She was losing him in the forest.

Could she do that? Did she want to so completely change?

I want to know what I am …

She focused on the golden wolf ahead of her as she reached for
the ground beneath her. She leaned into her arms as if they were forelegs, holding her head up as if she was meant to run this way. She pulled against some form of internal resistance, a barrier within her between what she was and what she was becoming. But she forced herself through it, pushing her new self through her skin as if she was giving birth to herself.

The internal resistance gave way with a shuddering wrench. Another transformation rippled through her body, tearing spasms of pain and ecstasy—and she threw herself into it unreservedly.

But she never stopped running.

Even without looking at herself, she knew that she was now fully a wolf. Black-furred, smaller than Darien perhaps …

But now she was faster.

And she caught up with him.

She could see—in his panting, his strides, the scent of his exertion—that if he had been holding back for her sake, he was no longer. She was catching up, and on four legs she had lost all trace of clumsiness.

He darted around trees, leaping over fallen logs, plowing through underbrush, sending twigs and leaves flying. And she chased after him, on his heels, close enough that she tasted the dirt he kicked up as he ran. Close enough that she could have snapped and grabbed his tail. She let out a low growl—one that let him know she was right behind him.

He had been holding back, a little. He sprang forward, throwing a clod of dirt that exploded against her face. She licked the aromatic mulch off the fur of her cheek and realized that a wolf could smile. She bounded after him, barely winded, and saw her chance as he scrambled down a nearly treeless hillside that sloped down to a shallow brook.

She crested it right after him, but he was already halfway down. Without hesitation, she leapt from the crest of the hill. For
the brief moment she was airborne, she had the time to think,
What am I doing?
Then she tackled him, sending them both tumbling down the hillside.

One of them yipped in surprise as they hit the water. Maybe both of them. For a moment, she had him pinned below her, her forepaws resting on his chest as he lay on his side in the shallow water. For a moment she saw him—wet, golden, beautiful. She felt a rush of incredible power as he looked up at her.

Then his lips curled back in a savage snarl as he snapped at her neck. He bit only air, but he jerked his body upright, throwing her off him. She yipped and sputtered as his paw came down on her back, slamming her face into the water. He might have said something in his growling wolf’s voice, but she couldn’t hear it for her own growling, and the water rushing through her ears.

She fought two instincts. Maria the woman, the servant, the bastard—she knew that she had somehow overstepped her bounds, that she needed to accept the consequences. Maria the wolf, the monster—that one knew that, right now, the human rules didn’t apply.

She didn’t
have
to submit.

She let loose with her own waterlogged snarl and pushed up from the riverbed against his weight. He might be stronger than her, and outweigh her by half, but she felt that the strength of this lupine body could lift two of him.

And she felt his mouth clamp onto the back of her neck, forcing her down.

No!

She dug into the mud of the creek bed, pulling herself and Darien forward, toward deeper water. He pushed her head down, into the water, but she pulled it back up again. She tried to shake him off, but his grip was painful and tenacious.

She pulled them both into the deepest part of the creek, chest-high
on her, and when he shoved her head down, she allowed it to be submerged. She folded her legs and dove, dragging his head down with her. She could feel him gag, but he held on.

She held her breath, and wondered how long he could hold his.

Her lungs burned for air. The old Maria inside her screamed for her to surface. The new Maria knew it was a test of wills between them. His jaws tightened on her neck, and she felt the points of his teeth digging through the thick fur of her neck. He tried to shake and pull her up, but his movements were slow and halting underwater.

The rush of water filled her ears, accompanied only by the thudding of her heart. The core of her body ached for air, but it was still less painful than becoming what she was had been. Darien struggled above her while she forced herself to be still.

A calm heart
, she thought, feeling a canine smile on her lips.