wolfsbane
simon 'ghost' riley x f!reader | 10.7k
widowed after a terrible tragedy, your only company was a wolf who seemed even more grief stricken than you.
cw; werewolf!au, abandonment issues, loneliness, grief, angst, tension, hurt/comfort, very brief smut, references to self-harm and depression, hunger, suicidal ideation, references past violence, descriptions of pain, description of death, canon typical violence, simon is a wolf through most of this, he shows affection in the only ways he knows how, don't ask me when or where this takes place
A shadow followed you through the woods.
Soft as a whisper, slicing through the dense copse of trees behind you, he stops at the edge of the woods, venturing no further than the brush at the edge of the thicket. The fields, thick with grazing sheep between the edge of the sharply culled forest and the village in the distance, was wide.
A growl spilled out behind you, warning and wary, as you stepped onto the path that cut through them.
You ignored the sound and hurried toward the village, just beginning to flicker with orange lamplight, wine dark dusk settling over the land like a thrown quilt. Thin tendrils of light still reached across the Earth in shattered ocher threads.
It wasn’t raining for once, and sunset was still about an hour away.
Plenty of time.
The rumbling growl faded as you crossed through the meadow, undulating with wavering grass, skirting clumps of calmly grazing sheep. They paid you little mind and the walk was easier now that you were once again on flat land. The bunched muscle in your calves seemed to lengthen with your strides.
Their shepherd was not so forgiving. He had not forgotten the flock that was killed.
He watched you with a malevolent gaze.
He spit as you passed, muttered something about devils as you went. Of the villagers, his hatred ran the deepest.
The forest stretched over the mountains behind you, refuge and shadow in one. Already you ached to slip back into its dark, safe roots. The shadow at your side.
People quieted as you passed them on the street, eyes following you warily.
The apothecarist did not greet you when you pushed open his door and slid back the hood of your cloak; he did, however, keep his eye warily on you, watching your progression to the counter, basket over your arm.
To the village, you are an omen and a curse, a gravedigger dragging the corpse of the past behind you.
He continued to arrange his vials and potted tinctures until you cleared your throat and pointedly set your burden on the counter between you.
You waited silently as he lifted the emerald cloth and examined the herbs and plants you’d collected over the last month. When you left the village again, you would not return for at least a fortnight.
“Ten years ago,” he said suddenly without prompting, his voice as weathered as his face. “The last of the wolves were killed. That werewolf, too. We’ve had no trouble with killings since.”
You watched him remove the herbs, bundled with twine, and lay them in a neat row over the length of the scarred wooden benchtop.
“There are no wolves left,” you agreed. “Only stories.”
His hands froze, then resumed their work. “Stories,” he said slowly. “Do you want to know what tales are told about you?”
You didn’t reply, waiting for him to finish assessing the plants.
“A sheep was found mauled.”
“Foxes?” You offered. “Shame.”
“Do not think, girl,” he said lowly, as he finally looked up and coin was slid toward you across the counter, “that we do not see the smoke that follows you.”
You counted the coin into a pouch at your hip. “Smoke,” you huffed, gathering your basket as you turned away. “You’re seeing things. Smoke doesn’t linger, does it?”
The floor creaked beneath your feet as you crossed the shop again, eager to be back in the quiet hum of the woods, nestled between the trees, shrouded beneath the mountains.
Summer was in full swing, the sky a bruised purple, fingers of sun still draped over the fields. You passed through the village, an outsider looking in. The townsfolk milled around each other in that easy way only people who had known each other their whole lives could. They watched you pass uneasily, and you knew it wasn’t only the wolf rumors that made them draw together like a clutch of frightened sheep.
A woman alone in the woods was suspicious by nature, and you had been outspoken even when your husband was alive.
You traded a little of your coin for a new gutstring and departed as quickly as you’d come.
The air in the valley was still warm as you left the village, sweet with the scent of freshly cut hay and lavender pocketed along the path.
The shadow was waiting just inside the treeline, and vanished as soon as you glanced at it.
You knew, though, that you were not alone. The so-called smoke kept an even pace behind you, though you knew it must be tiresomely slow for it, only veering sharply to the left and away as your cottage came into view.
To circle the perimeter you knew, the vegetable patch and the herb garden and the crooked fence that contained it all. The pine trees swayed, shushed against each other in the darkness that had finally fallen. The stars were bright overheard, silent pinpricks in the purple black sky, a crescent moon rising through their sea. A rare clear day was transitioning into a beautifully crystal night.
The shadow, the smoke, returned, coming no nearer than the gate. No more than a suggestion of a shape in the dark.
“I told you it would be fine. We need to hunt in the morning.”
The growl was, you thought, unilaterally troubled with your assessment of your little excursion so near nightfall to a place so hostile. “Okay,” you conceded. “In future, I’ll plan better.”
Your wolf was gone from one moment to the next, faded from existence, as if in agreement with your promise.
He would be back in time for dinner. He would slink through the gate then, and keep watch while you ate, back to you, body tense and coiled with unwavering intensity.
If it weren’t for the pained, lonely yips you had sometimes been privy to in the early years of your grief, the gentlest, lowest of howls cut short without answer, you might have believed once, too, that he was no more than a phantom that haunted the hills.
.
.
.
You had first seen the wolf nine summers ago, a year after the hungry madness that had engulfed the town in the valley. He was silent as a wraith, immaterial and immaculate, flickering between the swaying pines, shade and ink and smoky impartiality all at once.
Not one of the wolves, you thought at first, from the pack that used to live there.
He was big, even for a wolf, massive and unearthly silent, his coat a pristine, dove white.
The mountains were covered in snow for much of the year, but in the mild summer months, he moved so quickly he was only the suggestion of something monstrous moving through the ever present fog, nothing more than an apparition. Blink and you missed him, blink and you might think you were seeing things.
He kept his distance and you kept yours, worlds orbiting each other but never touching. Wolves never quite scared you. Stories of monsters lurking in the woods had been more like a siren song than a cautionary tale. Your husband had loved them, too.
Though that pack had tolerated your husband, uncannily seemed to understand some truth about him and disapprove, like he’d made a choice they could only begrudgingly accept, they embraced you. They loved you, your unusual wolves.
And you’d loved him, and them, and your home, and these breathing mountains he’d settled you in. It felt as though you were finally home.
You’re more wolf whisperer than I’ll ever be, he’d once said, delight, love, in his voice. He had been fascinated with them, understood them, but they were fascinated with you.
You waited anxiously for a new pack to emerge when the pale wolf arrived, to enforce its territory around your cottage. You dared to hope that maybe some of your wolves had survived the culling.
But none ever did.
He was alone.
It hadn’t been until that winter, six months later, that you truly saw him for the first time.
That winter had been a harsh one. Food was in very short supply as nearly every creature had gone to ground. It meant that traveling down the mountain for supplies was impossible. Your stomach shrank with hunger.
You weren’t sure you would survive.
The wolf’s fur blended into the barren landscape, invisible among the snow that fell in ever increasing drifts, shimming, beautiful, deadly waves. Hungry, bored, trapped, you lay in the snow in what was a vegetable patch in the warmer months, by your husband’s grave.
Perhaps you would have been more concerned with the possibility that the beast was lurking somewhere nearby, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You spent hours sitting at his grave, the grave you’d been left to dig yourself, a black hole in your chest. If you were eaten by a wolf, you wouldn’t be hungry anymore, or lanced with cold pains, or lonely, and the wolf would be fed. A sound victory all around.
The supplies in your larder dwindled to nothing; the once full shelves were left with only a few jars, and the spring thaw was very far away. You spent nearly all your time digging for winter potatoes with bloodied, dry fingers, or hunting, sitting statuesque on icy ground with your bow, waiting for deer or hare that never came.
It seemed, for a time, that you were totally alone in the world. Nothing moved, nothing breathed.
Then, one afternoon, the snow stopped, and a rabbit appeared.
You were lucky, given how your arms trembled with the pervasive chill, that you were able to pull back the bowstring, let alone hit your mark moving stealthily across a clearing in the gray woods.
Your mouth watered as you dressed it and hurried home, reminding yourself that this was no feast, that you would need to make it last.
Darkness had curled in the air as you cooked a small portion, divvying up the meager remains for maybe two more meals, if you were lucky.
Still, you felt as if you could finally think again. Things were not so bad as they seemed.
You were crossing the garden with a basket for firewood, not willing to sit in the cold and stare at the fathomless, bleak sky that evening, when movement caught your attention.
You stilled, and turned slowly.
The wolf who moved too quickly to be seen, who you had not glimpsed since the autumn snows first came, was sitting perfectly still at the threshold of your garden, neatly in the open gateway.
The garden smelled of fresh snow and blood.
You had carried the scent of meat and blood for miles through a frigid, empty landscape, and here was your reward.
But he did not move, only watched you.
Despite his size, he had clearly not been eating either; he was thin, gaunt. You had spent so much time observing the wolves when the mountains were thick with them, that you knew that they could go for long stretches without food. But it had been a very, very long winter. You wondered when he had last eaten.
Belly fully, you suddenly did not want to be eaten alive. You could survive this winter, as you’d survived everything else.
A minute passed in thick silence, regarding each other warily, before you noticed the blood on the snow behind him, that his right front paw was torn and bleeding red in a steady pulse into the snow. The scent of copper in the air was the smell of his own blood. It was tracked all through the snowbanks outside the gate, as though he’d been pacing, waiting.
It was clear he had stepped into a trap. He must have been exceptionally hungry, to have ventured so close to the village where they still lined the edge of the woods with metal claws.
Wolves were too clever for traps. He must be exhausted, starving, ignoring instincts dulled and deadened, to have come close to a trap at all, let alone step on one.
You lowered the basket to the ground, feeling a fool when you spoke. “Did you step in a trap?” He did not blink. He had never been still enough for you to see his eyes. They were a deep, dark brown, near black, glittering with lupine intelligence and pain. The fur around his eyes was darker, too.
You also saw, for the first time, that the fur along his right shoulder was matted down, laced with scarring that spoke of burns. He was one of your wolves, then. It made your throat close. Though you had never seen him among their number, that did not mean he hadn’t been there.
You knew better than anyone that this wolf wasn’t seen when it didn’t want to be. He’d lost as much, more, than you had. His pack was dead.
He didn’t move when you crossed back into the cottage, retrieving your medicine bag and the leftover portions of rabbit.
Likely, you were about to be mauled by a wolf, but you’d never been good at letting things lie. You hunted out of necessity, but a hurt animal, even a wolf, wasn’t something you could ignore.
He didn’t move when you kneeled in the snow with a healthy distance still between you, and offered the back of your hand, eyes cast down. “I can help. I have food.”
You couldn’t help feeling that was the point. He’d returned to your cottage because he was hurt; he already knew you could help.
Minutes passed, and you jumped when his cold snout pushed into your hand. He moved, as always, so silently.
You allowed him to sniff your hand for a long moment, warm breath fanning over your wrist and palm. When he sat, nose pulling away from your skin, you reached for the rabbit and lay the two reserved portions in the snow.
He gulped down the raw meat in one great swallow, two of your future meals gone in half a second.
“I’m sorry I don’t have more,” you said, his warmth seeping into the air around you. You didn’t move, afraid to be the next thing chewed and swallowed. “You must have been very hungry to venture so close to the village.”
You dared to glance up.
He eyed you as he licked blood from his maw, huge teeth glinting in the low, pale light. Snow began to sift down, flecks stuck to your cheeks, his lashes. His face was scarred as his shoulder, cross sections of lines across his snout and brow as though he’d been in a lot of fights.
You held out your hand. “Those traps are barbaric.”
A long, unblinking, tense moment passed, then his paw settled in your hand. It wasn’t like the paw of a dog. It was large and heavy, bigger than your hand. The fur was soft despite the blood, the pads rough.
Tentatively, you felt along the musculature of his foreleg, found the wound where the trap had clamped around his leg. “Poor thing,” you murmured.
He didn’t so much as twitch as you cleaned the wound, applied a poultice and wrapped cloth around it. “There you are,” you said softly, lowering his great paw to the ground, after you’d tied the bandage off and tucked the ends into themselves.
When you looked up, the wolf was regarding you again, watchful.
Your heart nearly stopped when his head dipped forward, sure you were about to be eaten now that your utility had run its course.
But he only pushed his massive head into your jaw, then along your throat, great, warm huffs of air venting against your cold skin.
You were being scented, remembered. It made you want to cry, just a little. It had been such a hard, lonely winter, but this was good, this made it worth it.
Slowly, you lifted your hand to his scruff and let your hand lie there for a long moment. When he didn’t seem to mind, you buried your fingers deep in his fur and felt just how thin he was beneath his coat. His fur was soft, silken against your dry, rough palms. It had been a hard winter for both of you.
His nose touched the soft flesh beneath your ear and your shoulder ticked up when it tickled, a laugh escaping your mouth. You froze but he only inhaled hard again and then pulled away.
You let your hand fall and watched him stand, test the foot. He limped a little, but he was no longer bleeding out. He disappeared in a blink, left you kneeling there. If not for the blood, your missing rabbit, you would have thought it a strange dream.
The following week he would return each evening to stand sentinel in the garden. You ignored him, letting him craft whatever boundary his instincts told him he should.
On the fifth day, he approached and guided you bodily out of the garden as you were collecting wood. The sky was silvery and fat with the promise of more snow. He led you, huge shoulder pushed against your hip, to a sheep in the forest, carried up the mountain between his teeth. Smart, you thought, not to have the blood trail lead to your front door.
Impressive, too, when you knew the sheep remained inside barns for most of the winter.
“You went back to the village?” You asked him of the sheep at your feet. He sat several paces away, watching you, still wary. “Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time?”
If wolves could appear unimpressed, this one did.
You shared the sheep.
He remained an unmoving guardian between a pair of spruce trees as you took a cut of meat, the still hot blood melting the snow, draining in rivulets through ice. “You shouldn’t take their sheep,” you said.
The wolf was unmoved. We needed to eat, his stare seemed to say, and here is food.
“If they think there are wolves here, they will come again.” You shook your head, something shaken in your voice. “Thank you. Please don’t take their sheep.”
The fucking sheep, got your wolves killed. Got your husband killed. Got a man in the village killed.
You were almost killed.
Perhaps you’d been alone and isolated for too long, but you swore he seemed to understand you.
He didn’t follow you home, but he returned a few hours later, muzzle wet with blood, and allowed you to change the bandage around his leg.
The wolf never brought you another sheep.
As best as you could understand it, you began to hunt together through the rest of that long, lonely winter. The snows eventually abated, and though teamwork was no longer necessary, you continued hunting in tandem.
He watched the cottage at night; he protected you while you ate. You cared for his wounded paw until it healed. He laid in the snow with you, albeit feet away, his back always to you, watching the dark landscape beyond the garden gate.
You kept each other fed through those inhospitable months.
A partnership of sorts, you realized, had formed somewhere along the way.
When summer finally arrived, cool and wet, the mountains awash in humid fog that now provided cover in lieu of snow for your wolf, you thanked him with a meal. Venison with potatoes and carrots and plenty of bones to chew and suck the marrow out of, presented on a plate in the garden.
You watched him eat, lined cloak tucked around you.
It was dangerous to name wild things. A wolf was still a wolf, no matter how he had adopted you. Still, it felt like it was time. Each of you were well fed, no long starving, haunted, lonely creatures.
Naming something, too, meant it was yours. A protection or a curse.
You carefully held out a hand when he finished, and, as always, he met the back of your hand with his cold nose.
“Would you mind having a name?”
He huffed against your skin.
“Suppose that means you wouldn’t,” you hummed, slowly moving your hand along his snout, lined with scars. His eyes closed as you stroked the silky black fur around his eyes. “Shadow,” you mused. “You move like one, afterall.”
A grumble.
“Grudging acceptance won’t do, darling.”
You pulled your hand back and tucked your cloak more tightly around your shoulders as you thought. “Hm.” Shadow didn’t fit. “Smoke?” Another grumble. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
Gloomy names tracked through your mind, his disposition and his penchant for skulking about in the dark, blending into the landscape in a near undetectable mass.
“Ghost.”
This time he did not grumble. Those oddly intelligent eyes flickered.
“Ghost,” you said again, just to be sure it would stick.
He turned his back to you, the great heft of his flank leaning heavily against your calf as he watched late shadows crawl across the garden.
It was the first time he kept watch next to you.
It was as much acceptance as you could ever hope for, even if you did still find yourself waiting for him to turn and sink his teeth into you.
Ghost only trotted to his usual spot at the garden gate when the stars emerged from behind the usual gray sweep of clouds.
You had weathered a season together.
.
.
.
They called you wolf whisperer in the village.
It was a dangerous thing to be called. You’d played witness to the madness that overtook the townspeople ten years before. Vast swaths of your beloved mountains burned, wolves shot and left as carrion that you had buried with your own hands.
It had, too, left you a widow.
Your husband had been a great defender of the wolves, and died for it. Shot, they later claimed, accidentally, during the hunt. Suspected to practice communicating with wolves, the gossip in the village said he had taught you this dark art before he died. Not only did you understand wolves, you could control them, so the stories went.
It had been a hungry year, the sheep in the pastures dwindling day by day, and hysteria had given way. The outsiders in the mountains, those people who loved wild animals, were to blame, convening with devils and wolves to destroy their flocks and livelihoods.
You were only tolerated now because you stayed away, safe in the great shadows of the hills and trees. Your innocence was proven only by the accident of having been locked in the jail while it all unfolded.
And, most importantly, because there had been no mauled sheep for many years now, and no wolves to do it.
But your wolf survived it, somehow. He was the last of his kind. You had heard it in those howls. There was no one to answer, a grief in the song that you at once recognized and could never understand.
The morning after your too late descent into the village, the wolf was waiting in the morning mist at the gate again.
“Ghost,” you greeted as you sat on the front step to restring your bow.
He crept through the gate and settled among the herb garden, nestled neatly beneath the blackberry bush.
Despite his size, he was quiet and always careful of the plants. His fur often smelled of soil and thyme and yarrow. He was surprisingly clean, for a wolf, when he wasn’t covered in blood and viscera. He smelled mostly of mountain air, something animal and smoky just beneath.
“They found a dead sheep. Did you kill it?”
Those clever brown eyes found yours, glaring from beneath the shade of the foliage. “I didn’t think so. But they’re worried again.”
You wondered how far a wolf’s memory stretched, if he remembered the forest in flames, the sounds of the hunting parties moving through the trees, underbrush cracking like bones beneath their boots. The other members of his pack dead.
When you stood, bow slung across your shoulders, basket over your arm, he trotted alongside you for a moment as you trailed into the trees, fur brushing your fingertips. His size never failed to surprise you. His shoulder reached your hip, his head could easily rest at the curve of your waist.
And then he was off, noiselessly disappearing between the trees, a testament to the name you’d given him years ago. He would return to your side, once the way ahead was well scouted. You padded after him at a slower pace, over a deadened carpet of orange pine needles, the breeze warm and gentle on your skin.
The hike to the stream took a few hours.
You knelt at the waters edge as the fog dissipated, sun peaking through the ever present thick bank of clouds, to harvest the meadowsweet that grew in clumps along the edge of the water.
His behavior was not typical of a wolf, you’d known that for a long time. You had told yourself he was an unusually intelligent animal, that without other wolves to form a pack with, he’d formed a pseudo pack with you, driven by loneliness and survival instincts.
But the apothecarist’s words rattled around your mind.
That thrown away line—you’d forgotten about the man they’d accused of being a werewolf. Some kind of amorphous being that could shift between wolf and man, wrecking havoc on their sheep and fields, marshalling the other wolves along with him.
He’d been tried, found guilty, and killed in a matter of hours.
You had spoken for him, or tried to. Rumors already swirled about your husband speaking with wolves, it didn’t help that his loudmouthed wife had defended the town outcast accused of being a wolf in disguise, shoved into the lone holding cell for it as things escalated beyond anyone’s control.
It had been, you’d heard years later, an uneasy, difficult struggle to drag him to the gallows, which had only confirmed what they thought they knew.
He was easy to blame. An outsider with a suspected checkered past because he was not a regular in the village, in a too large body that loomed above most of the other men in town. You had never seen his face, his nose and mouth always covered by cloth, his hood always pulled over his head. But he sold you the best cuts of meat back when you still bought meat, and spoke quietly in a rough voice.
His body was burned, you had been told, afterward, to be sure.
You dipped your fingers into the stream, cool water rushing over your skin.
Ghost gracefully loped out of the underbrush and sat next to you, close but not touching, until his nose nudged your cheek and then your throat.
“That tickles.”
His nose dug in a bit harder, right over your pulse point, rough tongue lathing over your skin before he bit you lightly. You laughed and pushed his face away. A grumble followed, but he leaned heavily against your side instead.
You sat there for a long while, watching fish dart beneath the crystal water, a ridiculous idea turning in your mind. The sun emerged and disappeared in quick flashes, warmed your skin beneath your hooded cloak.
“They would have me shot for this,” you said, burying your fingers in his scruff. “I’m already a traitor.”
A snarl shuddered against your side.
“You’d like to see them try, yes, I know,” you answered.
The wolf had heard it all before, the story of that night, many times over. He never seemed to mind. But you had a different story to tell.
“There was a man killed, the same day as my husband, when all that madness broke out,” you said. “They said he could transform into a wolf. I hadn’t thought about him in a long time.”
Ghost went motionless against you, listening, you guessed, to something you couldn’t hear, something other than your voice.
“He was kind to me in his own way,” you said. “He didn’t live in the village, but I saw him often enough. I’m from a city. I was just learning how to dress an animal, and I wasn’t very good at it. Very messy. He showed me how.” You rubbed one of his pointed ears between thumb and forefinger. “I spoke for him that day, tried to save him. But I think that’s why he died. And I think that’s the only reason I wasn’t shot during their hunt too.”
The water burbled, a bird sang a sweet song, clouds drifted over the sun again, dark rainclouds rain on the horizon.
“What am I still doing here?” You wondered. “It was my fault and I’m all alone, but I don’t know how to leave.”
The question inspired a discontent noise from your wolf.
You leaned into his shoulder, buried your face in his fur.
There had been an absurd notion stirring in your head since the apothecarist reminded you of the supposed werewolf.
You were just lonely.
But this wolf.
He seemed to understand you, his behavior was nothing like a wolf’s. The—
The wolf was just a wolf.
Your wolves had just been wolves.
You couldn’t bear it any other way.
Still, you murmured into his scruff because it didn’t matter, because he was just an animal you were projecting every bit of loneliness and hope you’d ever felt onto, because he didn’t—couldn’t—underrstand you, “I wouldn’t mind, you know. If it was you.”
Ghost rumbled, and then stood and padded off, splashing up the stream a little way before bounding onto a river rock and turning back to you, clearly waiting for you to follow.
He hardly ever left you alone in the woods.
You stood and followed him upstream to your usual hunting grounds.
.
.
.
Ghost repaid the favor of saving his life the second winter you spent together.
The nights were long and unending, the days so short the sun barely breached the horizon before it descended again. The mountain became impassable once more and food dwindled quickly, though that summer season had yielded a better backstock than the one before.
It had been months since you spoke to another person, years since conversation had not been tinged with wariness and barely leashed disgust. You were so lonely, it was like a spectre in the room with you, following you. Much as you adored the mountains, your wolf and your solitude, it was not enough.
Grief was like a rock in your chest.
You cried a lot, sat for hours at your husband’s grave, talking to ghosts, to people and wolves and a time long dead.
Then Ghost disappeared, too, as he was wont to do occasionally, following some smell or instinct you could never be truly privy to. It made the long, nearly endless and enterally dark days seem even longer. You, too, were without a pack, without something tangible and worth holding onto.
Snow piled up, and though you had plenty to eat comparatively to the winter before, you didn’t.
You laid in the garden or at your husband’s grave, staring up at a sky you knew there must be stars in if only you could see past the clouds.
Ice stuck to your eyelashes, collected in tiny piles on your frozen skin and clothes. You were so cold it hurt, but still you didn’t move. You missed your husband, and wished you knew how to howl.
The cold turned warm and comfortable, a sense of serenity curling amongst your bones. You closed your eyes, so relaxed you felt sleep, and peace, was only a breath away.
You didn’t know if you closed your eyes or slept, but it seemed that seconds later you were being pawed awake. Something high pitched stinging the air.
Ghost’s teeth were latched into the hood of your cloak, tugging your body over the frozen ground toward the cottage.
“Ghost?”
The high pitched whine stopped abruptly. He peered down at you, nudged you.
Then, desperation seemed to set in, if a wolf could feel such a thing. For the first time, he snarled at you. It was an angry, mean noise, lips pulled back over huge teeth. When you didn’t react, your limbs stiff and unwieldy, he did it again, snapping at your face and hands in huge, ferocious bites that never landed.
But it was hard to keep your eyes open, let alone move.
“‘S okay,” you mumbled, wishing you had the energy to pat his neck, feel his fur between your fingers. “Go ahead. You can have me.”
Your eyes closed again, soothed by his dark eyes staring down into yours. He would have something to eat, at least, and you’d failed the other wolves you’d known so badly.
The night went dark, sleep curling at the edge of your mind.
Your body swayed, a voice whispered.
It was a nice dream.
Arms fitted beneath your knees and behind your shoulders, a warm chest pressed against your ear.
Johnny, it must be.
A dream of your husband.
“Please,” a graveled, weak voice said. “Please, love, stay. Fucking hell, I need you to stay.”
You tried, but the dream faded.
Morning light woke you, bled into your cottage through a gap in the curtains. You were on the floor before the fireplace whose embers had burned down, but were still putting off heat.
The wolf, inexplicably, was next to you, radiating a heat that was almost defiant and daring in its intensity.
Ghost had managed it, somehow. He had dragged your unwilling, unyielding body inside next to the fireplace you don’t remember lighting, but that you must have.
His body was half atop yours. Sweat slicked your forehead.
He was an inert mass over you.
You put your hand in his coarse fur and pushed your face against his scruff, turned into his body. “I’m sorry.”
His maw closed around your opposite wrist. His teeth pinched and dug in, but he did not bite. It felt like being held.
He growled when you tried to move, and would not let you up for several hours.
He would not forgive you until spring was well and truly arrived.
Neither would he leave.
.
.
.
That second winter with Ghost was at the front of your mind as you knelt near the blackberry bush.
The inexplicable fire in the hearth, blanket and wolf curled over you, the door shut tight.
Did it matter, you wondered, if it was him?
Your fingertips were stained purple and red as you picked and dropped the fruit into your basket. Autumn was already upon you, showing its face earlier than you had hoped. The berries were still a bit under ripe but you were determined to make a pie.
Since that winter, you and Ghost were rarely apart. Protection, spell, determination, you didn’t know what to call it.
He had loped off something earlier, you had thought he wasn’t far.
But when a twig snapped behind you and a human voice rang out, you were decidedly alone among the dead orange leaves beneath your knees.
“Get up.”
You glanced over your shoulder to find a rifle aimed at you. You looked past the gun to the man. The shepherd had finally come to call. It was a small miracle Ghost wasn’t there, and at that moment, you were grateful for it.
“Up,” he barked when you didn’t immediately move to follow his command.
You put your hands up and got to your feet slowly. You didn’t say anything, blinking placatingly at him, uniformly unimpressed.
“Where is it?” He said, lowering the rifle a fraction when you didn’t lunge at him.
“Where is what?”
“That goddamned wolf.”
“I don’t—”
He took a step forward, silencing you as the barrel lifted again. “Don’t lie. I’ve seen you with it, calm as can be, just walking along. Talking to it. I told the others we should have done you in that day too.”
You shook your head. Anger prodded delicately behind your breastbone. “I’m alone here. There are no wolves left.”
“Liar,” he snapped back. “You always have been. Crying for those wolves, screaming for that beast we burned.” He jabbed the barrel of the gun at you. “I’ve seen you,” he said again. “You and the big, white one, yeah? Always knew we missed one.”
You breath caught but you slowly shook your head again, trying not to look at the rifle. “I haven’t seen a wolf since that night.”
A flicker of doubt crossed his face, before his resolve hardened again. “We didn’t have wolves before you. You brought them with you.”
“To eat your sheep? What’s that get me?” You shot back, unable to help yourself. The grief, the loneliness, that bleak darkness in you, surge to the back of your throat. “You lost sheep. I lost my husband.”
“I lost everything!”
His voice echoed off the mountains, loud as thunderclap.
You flinched a little, feeling, for the first time, a thread of fear.
“You seem to have recovered well enough.”
He huffed. “I lost half my flock. It’s taken me a decade to recover. And now my sheep are dying again. Three are dead. If you were decent, you would have left while you had the chance. We starved that year while you set wolves on us. I won’t let you do it again.”
You gritted your teeth. “I’m sorry for what happened that year. But it was not wolves killing your sheep then, and there are no wolves left to kill your sheep now, even if they had been.”
And, you thought, the only wolf left, your wolf, didn’t kill sheep. You knew he didn’t, because you’d asked him not to, because he inexplicably listened to you.
The shepherd’s mind was already made up. You were guilty the moment you stepped into the village. Outsiders were easy to blame. “We didn’t have wolves,” he said again, “before you and your husband showed up all those years ago.”
You stepped forward, until the barrel of the gun was pressed against your chest. “Do it then, if you’re going to,” you said calmly, evenly. “Shoot me. I don’t care.” Maybe you would be enough, maybe if he killed you, he wouldn’t go looking for Ghost.
Surprise pulled at his features. He didn’t know what to make of you, most of the men in the village never had.
His lips parted instead of pulling the trigger, when a horrifyingly loud growl echoed around the silent garden.
No, you thought desperately.
But Ghost was already there, stalking through the garden gate, circling you and the shepherd in a wide arc.
There was no fear on the man’s face, just a vindictive satisfaction. “Liar,” he said softly. “And now I have proof. You’ll hang for this.”
Ghost snarled again, louder, but you didn’t look at him. You grasped the barrel of the gun with both hands, to keep it pressed against your chest, to keep his focus on you. “Yes, you’re right. I lied. I’m the one you should be angry with. I brought the wolves here.”
He considered you, holding the gun against your chest, eyes not leaving yours.
Ghost growled again, louder this time, more desperate than menacing. You dared look at him, then, hoping he could read the do not behave like the violent wolf he thinks you are in your eyes.
The shepherd slowly shook his head. “You aren’t the one killing my sheep.”
“He’s not the one killing your sheep,” you rasped, anguish coloring your voice now. “Please.”
He was all you had left. You were the only two left.
“I reckon there’s only one way to know for sure,” he said, suddenly thrusting the gun forward into your chest. You doubled over in surprise, before the butt of the rifle smashed into your temple.
Vision blurred by sudden tears, you couldn’t see.
But you heard the violent, ferocious bark, followed by the sound of tearing cloth and a snarling so deep and deadly it seemed to shake the ground, before a gunshot cracked through the air that rendered you deaf except for a terrible ringing in your ears.
Your heart lurched into your throat, fear curling up the back of your neck like an electric shock, so swift it made your head swim.
“No,” You leapt forward blindly and latched onto the shepherd’s elbow, dragging his arm down with all your weight.
He threw you off and another gunshot rang out. A blinding pain you couldn’t understand the origin of tore through your side.
It threw you to the ground in its intensity, rendered you mute and confused, a desperate, feral howl renting the air apart. It’s shredded tatters swept across your vision in painful stripes.
Leaves churned beneath paws and boots in a horrible struggle.
You stared across the garden, Ghost tearing, covered in red.
The man still had the gun in his hands. Even with his throat torn out and Ghost’s massive paws pushing all his weight into his chest, he was still trying to kill your wolf.
You lurched up, just lifted the gun again a final time, even as his throat was being shredded to a fine pulp by Ghost’s ripping, tearing teeth.
“Ghost!”
Ghost unhooked his teeth from around the shepherd’s neck and his massive front paws pounced on his forearm. Bone snapped loudly, like a twig beneath a boot.
The gun went limp in his grasp, and he stilled with a final horrible groan and sigh.
You took a shaky breath and slumped unceremoniously back to the ground, hands trembling as you pressed them to your side. There was so much blood.
You could feel it rushing out of you, pooled warmly on the ground beneath you, steaming in the early season chill.
Dizzy, you looked to Ghost instead.
“Come here,” you mumbled, beckoning your wolf forward. “Are you okay? Did the first shot hit you?”
Ghost didn’t move, terribly still, eyes locked on you, but the only blood you could see dripped from his scarred muzzle. The rest of his coat was its usual pristine white. Relief made your shoulders sag, the tension in your head pulsing along with your slowing heart. You choked out a deliriously happy laugh.
“Please come here. I’m going to die and I don’t think I can do it alone.”
The pain spread, glass shards tumbling through your veins.
There was so much blood. You were swimming in your own red sea. Your fingers were stained with berry juice, slick, salted blood. You were just picking berries and now you were going to die.
“Ghost—”
Ghost finally appeared silently at your side, nudging your hand with fierce, unforgiving growls until you put your arm around his neck. You tried, just for his sake, to stand, leaning on his massive frame, but your body would cooperate, and you slipped back down to the ground.
He whined, a sound you hadn't heard in a long time. Once when he had been newly alone, pack mates gone, and that night you almost died in the snow.
“‘S okay,” you mumbled, petting his muzzle when he stuck it in your face, still making that horrible, grief soaked sound. “I probably deserve it. My fault, all of it. It’s over now.”
The whine cut off suddenly when your eyes slipped closed.
Sleep beckoned, but, just like the last time you’d been tempted to lapse into oblivion, arms pushed beneath you, under your legs and shoulders, lifting you gently. Violent pain lanced up your side with the motion. A cry slipped out of your mouth.
A voice rough with disuse murmured in your ear. “I know,” the voice said, strangely gentle and desperate. “None of that. Not again. Eyes open, love.”
You peeled open your eyes with no small amount of effort. The blank gray sky wheeled overhead, droplets of rain pattering against your skin.
A man was cradling you to his naked chest, the movement of his body like the lull of wind through the trees. You recognized the scars cast across his face, the dark eyes set forward. That intelligent, steady, lupine gaze. He smelled like autumn woods, the crackle of leaf and loamy wooded forest floors, undercut by the smokey brine of blood. There was a certain handsome wildness about him. Brutal, some might have called it.
It would be hard not to recognize your wolf after nearly ten years together.
“Ghost?” You murmured. Your hand moved of its own accord, left bloody fingerprints across his stained jaw.
He looked down at you. “Don’t close your eyes,” he barked. “Keep lookin’ at me.”
You wanted to, for as long as he’d let you, but you were so tired. You could hear your blood pattering onto the ground as he walked, steady and unyielding as an oak tree.
His voice was familiar, but you couldn’t place it, didn’t know how it could be.
“Sorry,” you said as your vision tunneled and the world went dark.
.
.
.
There was a lot of blood.
He packed the wound to stem the flow so he could search for the medical supplies he knew you had somewhere.
He yanked on trousers from the wardrobe that he knew belonged, once, to Johnny.
Ghost’s hands trembled. He wasn’t used to this body anymore. The pale hands he extended made him want to bare teeth he didn’t presently have.
He was unwilling to admit that the shaking might be in part due to watching as you were shot because of him, that you were catatonic and might die. Because you had been trying to protect him. Some wild animal that you shouldn’t care about at all.
He slammed into a wall and lurched into the kitchen to scrub your blood off of his hands in the bucket of water by the basin, and hoped you didn’t die while he did.
He was near blind with pain from the sudden colorful clarity of his sight. He couldn’t smell anything, couldn’t hear your breathing or the tempo of your heart. All the avenues of you that he had painstakingly mapped over the last decade were lost to him. Your scent was familiar to him as his own, maybe even more so. He could smell your fear and joy and sadness. He knew what your grief and loneliness felt like in the back of his throat. He could track your mood through the spikes and dips in your breathing and heart rate.
All of it was fucking lost to him. Years of carefully collected information, inaccessible.
But a wolf was not suited to assessing or tending wounds. He had to stay, remain exposed, in this horrible body until at least then.
He scrubbed until his hands were raw, and thankfully didn’t have to search long for your medicine bag, stuffed full of cloth bandages, poultices, disinfectants. A needle and surgical thread.
Ghost had only been in your cottage once, when you nearly froze to death in the throes of your grief. He’d been assaulted by your scent, your blood and musk, and, worse, the dead smell of his pack mates still somehow lingering in the air. He had been sure you would die then, that he had not found you in time and wasted too much time trying to warm you in the garden, then to move you. His wolf was useful in many more ways than the human ever could be, but it was not suited to that kind of movement and care.
You might have died, all because he had not wanted to transform and suffer the ache of being a person for even a few minutes. Of being seen for what he was, even by you.
There was too much to explain, too much history.
He returned to the bedroom, still clumsy with the taste of another failure so close.
Fear still gripped him, the sight of you with a gun pointed at you, him not there to prevent it. He should have been there, should have smelled the shepherd from miles off.
Though your skin was clammy and ashen, you were breathing evenly, closed eyelids fluttering.
Ghost carefully maneuvered your body to the middle of the bed, and sat next to you. The feather mattress dipped a little under his weight and when he pulled the packed cloth away from your side, blood gushed out and then stemmed a little.
His hands were unsteady, shaking. This body was slow, cumbersome.
It didn’t look as bad as he’d feared. It would have been a graze, if you had not been shot at such close range. Flesh was missing. You would scar horribly, and his surely botched stitching would only make it worse.
He cleaned the wound, slow and methodical. The shaking stopped as he worked, hands steadying.
His stitching was as bad as he predicted it would be, but you wouldn’t bleed to death. The cloth bandage had to be wrapped around your middle, his unwieldy hands sliding between your inert form and the mattress, rough fingertips brushing the soft skin of your back and belly.
It was all he could do, all he should do.
He should leave, disappear into the forest and let you think the whole thing had been a bizarre dream.
Instead, he pushed his fingers against your pulse and felt the reassuring throb of it, imagined it was loud enough for him to hear. Ghost kept his hand there, pressed to that thin delicate skin. He lifted your wrist to his nose but all he could smell was the salt of skin and blood.
Though he wished he could taste your scent on the air, be comforted by it, for the first time in a decade, he was seeing you with clear sight. The wolf’s vision was poor; he, ironically, saw you best at night. Now, it was like finally seeing a finished painting after looking for so long at a rough charcoal sketch.
He’d taken for granted those years he’d been able to see you clearly, speak to you as you smiled and your lashes touched your cheek. Something of a pretty bride. Gentle in a way he didn’t know people could be.
The village had been a way to check in with Johnny, to learn anything he couldn’t glean just from watching the two of you. News of fear of wolves, that he’d disastrously failed to heed.
He’d waited for you to leave for so long, counting the days and weeks and months like a clock that had timed itself to the moment you would realize there was nothing left for you there. You would go back to the city; he would live out his days as a lone wolf.
He had known, at first, why you didn’t go, all those nights you lay in the cold at Johnny’s grave. You couldn’t leave him, couldn’t leave the memory of him there.
But the grief had faded with time, and still you’d stayed. You laid in the snow with a wolf, opened your arms to it, talked to it. And though you didn’t have the words for it, didn’t understand the feeling, Ghost knew.
The pack had shrunk, but it was still a pack.
He would wait for you to wake up.
You knew, now, after all, what he was.
Ghost didn’t want to leave, anyway.
In the meantime, he had a body to dispose of, and your blackberries needed bringing in.
You would not wake up for two nights.
.
.
.
A candle was guttering on the window when you woke, warm yellow flame jumping against the dark glass.
It was late, quiet in a way it only ever was when most of the world was asleep. Rain pattered against the roof. Its familiar rhythm would have been comforting if not for the sharp pain in your side and the memories that accompanied it.
Ghost.
Your wolf turned man, just as the stories had said.
A fever dream, surely. Delirium and shock.
Gingerly you pushed yourself upright.
The sheets were clean. Your wound was bound, and when you lifted the bandage, you found it had been expertly cleaned, and stitched. The stitching was messy, but careful.
You winced and attempted to change the bandage with more cloth wrapping that had been left on the sideboard. But your fingers were stiff and graceless and you could not get the wrapping to cooperate. Since it wasn’t bleeding, you decided to leave it for just a moment. Just to check on the house, to make sure your wolf was okay—
As soon as your feet hit the floor, something in the house shifted.
You were so used to being alone, that another human presence within the walls beats like a second heart in your hand. For one moment, you forget, think it’s only your husband stoking the fire. He would come back to bed and smile and ask why you were getting up.
But when you turned to glance over your shoulder, pain swelling up your side, the unfamiliar-familiar man loomed there like a shadow manifest real.
You stared at each other for a long moment.
He was wearing Johnny’s clothes, too small for him. The trousers are too short, the shirt too tight.
“Shouldn’t be movin’,” he said.
You could only stare. Massive as your wolf was, this man was bigger.
Fear and dread coiled in your stomach. He was an unfamiliar man. And men could hurt you in ways a wolf never could.
You touched your side and a needlepoint of pain raked up your side, settled just under your arm. A hard breath caught in your throat.
The man didn’t step forward, still as stone, just as your wolf often stood.
“Ghost?” Your voice stammered out of you.
He nodded, once, the movement barely perceptible.
You stared at him, your wolf made man.
“You’re a wolf.” He nodded, gaze guarded, maybe even afraid. “You’re my wolf.”
Possibly you were in shock, but you thought a hint of pride replaced the fear behind his eyes, satisfied, at least, with that assessment.
“A werewolf?”
He huffed, his mouth ticked up a little at the corner. “No. Not like your stories.”
Ghost still didn’t move closer, and you were glad for it. The space was a kind way to let you adjust to his presence.
The word werewolf loosened something in you, though. The man they’d executed. You shifted your gaze to his shoulder, to the same burn scars your wolf had, that you had always assumed were from the forest fires that day.
The knowledge sunk like a stone in your belly. The wolves. How your husband loved those animals. How odd their behavior was. How they seemed to know something they shouldn’t. How he was killed along with them. How they loved you.
You were, you were beginning to understand, part of a pack all along.
Your chest constricted, throat tightening.
You looked away, salt welling at the corners of your eyes, inhaling shakily.
One question would tell you all you needed to know, but you were afraid to ask it.
The floor creaked gently as he shifted in the doorway.
“I need help,” you said instead. “With the bandage. Could you—I can’t get it to—” When you looked back again, he was already moving across the room, rounding the bed, as though he’d only been waiting for permission.
He knelt on one knee and whatever threads of fear and anxiety you’d felt dissipated. You recognized his eyes, the scar across the bridge of his nose. Your wolf who had never done you harm, and wasn’t likely to start.
You hitched your shirt up beneath your breasts and watched him carefully clean and tend your wound as you’d once tended his paw. He worked as if he’d done it many times before, cleaning it again carefully, applying a poultice when you pointed it out in the medicine bag.
“Shouldn’t have done that.”
You knew what he meant. Shouldn’t be speaking for wild animals.
“What?” You ribbed. “Stand there? You did all the work.”
He ignored your joke.
“Get shot,” he clarified roughly.
“Next time I’ll dodge,” you tried again, touching his wrist.
His mouth twitched. It was, you suspected, the equivalent of the wolf huffing into your hand. Irritated that he was amused.
“Willin’ to get shot over a bloody wolf.” He shook his head.
“Not just a wolf,” you said. “In more ways than I knew, apparently.”
He remained silent, focused on his task or ignoring you, you couldn’t tell. His lashes were very blond, angelic around such dark irises.
“Why?” You asked. “Why did you never tell me. . .show me?”
He didn’t answer, working quietly. He wrapped your wound methodically, and though his hands shook a little, his work was sure. He looped the cloth around your waist, arms circling your body but not touching. His biceps were massive, all muscle and corded blue veins.
His hands anchored tentatively on your hips when he finished, as though waiting for you to throw him off.
It was the closest you had been to another human in a very long time. You tilted your face closer to his. He smelled like your wolf, cut with blood and sweat.
You lowered your free hand to his shoulder and when he didn’t shake you off, rubbed your thumb against the column of his throat.
“Not exactly the easiest thing to tell,” he finally answered, meeting your eyes. “Don’t like people much,” he added when you nodded in understanding. “Don't like being one either.”
“The other wolves—“
Grief crossed his face. It was answer enough. He carried the blame and guilt like armor, something to wield. It was his fault they were all dead and that was reason enough to never reveal himself to you. You both wore that guilt and grief so poorly.
“I’m sorry.”
His thumb tracked down your side, beneath your ribs. Your breath caught and hitched, which made your side ache. “You—” you shuttered, and inhaled slowly, “—You don’t have to stay like this.”
His gaze was unwavering. “You have questions a wolf can’t answer.”
Slowly, you shook your head, brows knitting together. “I don’t think I do,” you said.
You could see all the markers of the story laid out in front of you. The pack, your husband, what choices had been made about who wanted to be human and for which reasons.
One question would give you all the answers you needed.
“Was he like you? Johnny?”
“‘e was.”
You wriggled your hand into his, found you missed his teeth around your skin. His fingers tightened instead. “He never told me.”
“It was supposed to be behind him. For you.”
You felt raw, tuned inside out. Your body ached all over.
He moved his hand from your hip to your chin, angling your head to the side, examining your temple. A dissatisfied sound rumbled out of him, more animal than human.
“But all of you came, too.”
“He was still ours.”
It was the simplest kind of belonging, where leaving didn’t mean you were alone, didn’t mean you were forgotten.
“Do you have a name?”
You wondered if it was a product of being an animal for so long, or if he was unusually prone to long silences. You waited.
“Did,” he nodded. “Once. ‘aven’t been him in a long time. ”
You hummed.
Exhaustion tugged at your eyelids. The warmth of him so close was a balm. “Would you like to have one again?”
He pushed away from the floor, and pooled over you lithe and liquid as the wolf you knew he was. You breath caught again, your side ached, but you allowed yourself to be guided down, his large hand supporting your spine.
His gaze was steady and intense. He had been watching you for a long, long time.
“Already gave me one, yeah?”
“Ghost,” you said. “Yes.”
“You don’t want ‘im,” he said softly. “No use to you.”
“Who?”
His body engulfed yours. You felt torn apart beneath him, though he wasn’t touching you, supporting all his weight on his palms against the mattress.
“I feel blind,” he admitted.
“You don’t have to. . .you can be a wolf,” you said again. “I don’t mind.”
It would, in actuality, be more comfortable. You didn’t mind the unease, though, of being so close to another person again.
He only stared at you again, his body easing down against yours. It was so careful, so tediously mindful of the fragile stitches on your side. You wondered what he saw, what he was blind to now that he hadn’t been before. It was a terribly different experience, too, being watched by a wolf and being watched by a man whose body heat was slowly bleeding into yours.
The silence unraveled, then winched you together.
Just as there were questions a wolf couldn’t answer, you realized, there were things a man wanted that a wolf couldn’t have.
You tilted your chin up, offering.
You expected him to hesitate but he didn’t. He pressed his face against your throat. The inhale was sharp and frustrated. His biceps bunched around your head when he fell to his forearms instead. His weight settled over you still so carefully.
"Can't smell you proper," he complained.
"Sorry."
You widened your legs to accommodate his bulk, sliding your hands beneath the shirt that once belonged to someone else. His back was littered with scars, raised lines against your fingertips, constellations of who he claimed was no use to you. His past, his previous name, all the grief and pain you’d experienced in tandem. Your fingers trailed gently over the blanket of old burn scarring.
His teeth digging into your skin wasn’t totally unexpected, but it still made you flinch. A choked groan carved a path through your throat.
“Are you real?”
Maybe it was a dream, a feverish delusion brought on by your long weathered loneliness. Your wolf was a man who saved your life. The world knew the husband you’d lost, the pack that had been slaughtered.
But then he touched you, and the doubt sloughed away.
He pushed one hand to your hip, holding you in place though you weren’t moving. It covered an alarming amount of skin before he pushed it along your spine to the base of your neck. His fingers tangled in the hair at the nape, resting against your skull that suddenly felt incredibly fragile.
He lifted his head and tilted onto his side. His body formed a neat pocket for you to fit into. He drew you further into him when you cupped his jaw. Your neck pulsed with an ache. Unlike your side, it felt good.
Ghost closed his eyes, a pleased hum lodged somewhere in his chest. You rubbed your hand through his hair, traced the scar that hooked the corner of his mouth.
His cock was heavy and half hard against your thigh, fingers of arousal you’d thought long dead curling to life in your belly. When you brought your face close to his, eyes fluttering nearly closed, he automatically met you, as though it were the easiest thing in the world.
He shook his head when your fingers skimmed the waistband of his trousers.
“Stitches,” he said.
“So be gentle,” you answered. “This time, at least.”
His hand tightened on the back of your neck. Your breath hitched as you waited for him to decide. “If that is something you want,” you said after a moment. “It should go without saying.”
“If,” he repeated. “Funny, that.”
But he seemed to make up his mind, hand wandering to your waist instead, curling his fingers in your dirty tunic. You felt as though you couldn’t breathe, air crushed from between your ribs as he kissed you again, tongue sliding against yours, hand squeezing your breast until you gasped and hissed.
“Careful,” he said.
It was only when he was deep inside you, tears gathering at the corners of your eyes from the stretch, the slow, even rhythm of his body against yours, the heavy, intoxicating weight of him in your cunt, cautious and gentling, that he told you.
How careful he was, for someone with such a sharp bite.
His name was pressed into the skin below your ear.
For safekeeping.
A past self he thought dead slipped into your mouth.
It was a name you already knew.
I read a book about lone wolves recently. can you tell?
as always thank you for reading, thank you for being here. would love to know your thoughts <3
