The Wolfen Lover Read online

  The Wolfen Lover

  Copyright © April 2009, Tessa Lane

  Cover art by Anastasia Rabiyah © April 2009

  Amira Press, LLC

  Baltimore, MD 21216

  www.amirapress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-935348-30-6

  No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and e-mail, without prior written permission from Amira Press.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my husband, who inspires the romance in my heart.

  Chapter One

  Michael moved restlessly in his sleep. He thrashed in the dim cave where he lay. The nightmares that haunted him each and every night made his body spasm. He twisted in misery, held captive by his dark dreams.

  He dreamed of his pack and the night they were attacked. He moaned, emitting a low, animal sound, and he thrashed upon the pelts and leaves that were his bed. His nightmare took him back to that terrible night, when he had lost the ones he loved the most. And he began to cry in his sleep—not for the first time.

  Michael woke from his terrible dreams just before the dawn. He opened his eyes to slits, watching the fire he had lit in the late evening turn to ashes. The night skies outside the cave were black and starless, and he closed his eyes for a moment as loneliness and despair overwhelmed him. For a long time, Michael had been alone, so alone. The inky expanse of night sky seemed to plunge him deeper into sadness.

  Michael lay by the dying fire, and he opened his eyes and stretched out upon his pallet. I am always alone, he thought. Day or night, it is always the same. He had left his tribe some time after the attack, when the vampire clan descended upon the Wolfen cave and destroyed their peaceful existence forever. He knew no visitors would come to ease his solitude, for all the creatures of the forest feared him now. They know I’m dangerous, he thought, and he rose and began to prowl the cave. His thick muscles ached from another tortured sleep, and only movement helped to ease the pain.

  The fire was ashes now. Michael noticed the walls of the cave seemed painted with strange shadows, which seemed to cast mysterious images over the cold stone, like clouds moving through a stormy sky.

  Michael hated the nightmares. He could see his mother’s face, her soft fur streaked with blood. He could hear the cries of the wounded. Every night they died again, and every night he could only watch helplessly, just as he had on that macabre All Hallows’ Eve. I was young, he thought angrily. I was too young to defend them, and now they are dead. Michael had cowered in the back of the cave with the other young wolves. They were hidden in darkness, and the others held him back from running out to fight the vampires. He would always hate them for that.

  Michael had other dreams, too, at times disturbing dreams. He dreamed of mating, and he would wake up aching with the desire to share his body, and his heart, with another. He would arise each morning, draw warmth from the rising run, and he would be a man again. For each morning, he awoke a young man and not a wolf, and he never made peace with his own magical nature.

  Michael sat down on his pallet as dawn drew closer. The cave was cold now, an icy chamber. He groaned in pain as the change began, his sleek coat turning to warm, golden flesh, his animal limbs lengthening and becoming the lean, taut limbs of a human.

  Michael sat up, feeling the pain recede. The transformation was over now, over for another day. He stretched and rose to his full height. His skin was covered in gooseflesh as he stood up, completely naked in the morning chill, and went to find his clothes. The warm, animal smell that permeated the cave reminded him of the night before, when he had hunted and dragged his prey back to his lair. He was Wolfen, and none but his own kind could understand the terrible hunger that forced him out in the woodland. No one but his own kind could feel the joy and freedom that was as tangible as the rough ground, when he ran with all his strength, on his four legs, feeling his prey grow closer and closer.

  Knowing he must get rid of the carcass by the mouth of the cave, he wrinkled his nose at it. As always, he marveled at waking each morning, clean and scented, with none of the blood and sweat that always clung to his Wolfen form. I am magical indeed, he marveled, pulling on his clothes that he had hung on a thick branch he had broken off and brought in to the cave.

  He stared down at his own body. It was smooth and almost hairless. He ran his hands through his short, dark hair. Sadness no longer filled his heart. It was morning now, and his anger took over.

  Michael had all the beauty and animal grace of the Wolfen kind, and he knew this was a gift of the Creator. At one time, he had praised his God in thankfulness, each night, for the Tribe. His pack had been as he was, and he had joyfully shared his life with them. After that night, when the vampires came, his old life had become impossible. He was motherless and afraid, separated forever from the only ones who could understand him.

  Now, he spent his days seeking revenge and trying to fight the irresistible urge to mate that seemed to come upon him so often as he grew into a full-grown creature. Michael felt guilty for such feelings when he remembered the night his pack was attacked. What right had he to ask for love or happiness? When almost all the others had to die in terror?

  Michael could not help but think again of his nightmares, and he could never tear his mind away from the night his mother was killed. He grieved and he raged against his enemies and his own kind.

  Never again would he look into his mother’s eyes, see her tenderness and her compassion. His heart seemed to explode with pain, and the desire for vengeance was all that was left in its place. From that day, he had decided to seek the vampires and destroy them. He would use his human form to deceive them, and he would especially enjoy killing the one he remembered most, the one who had murdered his mother and had drunk her blood.

  The other young ones did not wish to fight. Cowards, he thought, angrily. They are nothing but cowards, more concerned with their own safety, than with avenging our kind, and our terrible loss.

  He made his plans, gathered food and supplies for the other young ones, and waited for the elders to return, or such that remained. But no one came. There were four of them out there—two males and two females—but they had not returned. All had abandoned the young wolves, or else they had died trying to escape.

  He saw to the burials, and he maintained the ancient rituals as well as a young one could, but all the while, he knew the time was coming when he would pass on the leadership of the pack, and he would go on his quest. He would find the murderers, and he would make them suffer.

  He waited until the moon was dark, and he moved through the night while hiding by day in caves and other shelters. When the morning came, he would cloak himself and walk through the forest, his eyes blazing.

  He knew the vampires well. The tales had been told to all of the pack, and he knew they hunted wolves for sport, or when they could not find human victims. He had listened to the stories, but he had never believed.

  Now, he wracked his brain for all the details, and he moved toward the village they came from, full of dark purpose. Each day, he went a little farther from the depths of the forest, and all the while, he grew stronger, more mature, his royal Wolfen blood showing in both his earthly forms.

  He moved through the great forest, day by day, growing ever closer to the village where the vampires ruled, their pale bodies hidden by day, in a great estate that the villagers knew to avoid. The desire to hunt warred with the desire to mate, and he moved, man in sunlight, wolf in shadows, to the town where he would find his revenge.

  Chapter Two

  Laina sat in her bedroom sketching a portrait of a Wolfen creature. She had been forbidden to draw them anymore, but she could not help her
self. They were a source of fascination to her, and she had to hide the pictures under her bed when she finished them.

  She moved the piece of charcoal along the paper, capturing the lines of the strong haunches, and the fierce, proud expression she loved. She wished that her mother and father could understand why the Wolfen kind were so special to her, and her eyes filled with tears as she thought of their extinction at the hands of her parents.

  I should be happy, she thought. I am a princess. But she was not happy. She was like a fish out of water, and she had never blended well with her own people.

  Laina was the youngest of all the vampires and, according to her clan, the most beautiful of them all. She was the product of a royal father and mother, after all. Laina was proud of her strength, for she appeared so delicate and feminine. And yet I am so strong, she would marvel when she hunted. When she had been younger, she would hunt with her parents to learn their ways. In time, she became more independent, and she would devote herself to sketching and writing instead. She would hunt alone and spend her days depicting the tales of her kind in storybook texts with drawings, calligraphy, and knot-work borders. Laina was an artist, and she brought the lore of their clan to life with her pictures and words.

  I deny my hungers every day, until I can’t control the urge to feed, she thought wearily. And I will be like this forever, for all of eternity. Her role as historian for the clan only made her more unable to forget the truth of who she really was.

  Laina finished her picture and admired the beauty of the wolf she had created, based on images in her own memory. It has been a long time since I’ve seen a Wolfen.

  She hid her portrait in a pile with the others and moved to her vanity table. Staring at her reflection, she wondered why she was so uneasy in her own skin. But still she went through the motions of maintaining her beauty, because it mattered so much to her mother and father. She began to brush her long, raven hair until it shone against her skin, so pale and white. Her eyes were onyx black, and her lips were deep reddish brown, although she did not paint them. They are the color of blood, she thought sadly, stained with the lives of others.

  Laina should have had no qualms about her existence, strange though it was. She was treated well among her kind, and she avoided the village where her strange beauty was legendary. She had no interest in humans, especially not the simple folk of the village with their archaic spells against magic and their fears of so many things that need not be feared. We are all you need fear, she would think as they made their sacrifices to their gentle gods.

  I am a vampire, she told herself, and she walked to her window, watching the people walk, far from her high turret. She felt odd as she watched the town’s women with their children. She felt a sense of loss she could not reconcile. I was like them, she would think, sadly, in another life, perhaps, but now. I am only this, and I drink their blood while they walk through the dark forests, alone and fearful . . .

  How many have I killed . . . but not their children. No, I will never drink from that well. I will never kill a Wolfen, either, she thought angrily. Not like the rest of my family.

  When Laina was young, her parents had gone into the forest to wage a Halloween attack on the Wolfen ones, whose powers threatened their own. Attacking the pack while they slept, her mother and father had destroyed their queen and left the young ones to die. They had come home blood-drunk and exultant while Laina watched them with huge, dark eyes. She had hated them that day, that they would destroy another magical tribe, so like their own, just to cement their own power.

  When she was young, she had always dreamed that the two tribes could merge, so that they would all be stronger, and so that there would be variety and new pleasures in life outside of the clan and simple hunting. On that day, she loathed what she was, and her heart turned ever colder toward her own kind. She continued to hunt, for how else could she survive, but she dreaded the hunger that seemed to kill her compassion and blacken her heart.

  The others saw her as an oddity, but still they cared for her in their own way. They permitted Laina her strange sensibilities, but they could not understand her fears and sadness. They gloried in their power and beauty just as Laina had, before that Halloween night. They posed and preened, garbed themselves in pilfered jewels and gleaming satins in shining jewel tones that made their paleness beautiful, instead of fearful.

  They were all of the same cloth, every one of them, Laina thought in misery, and she lay on her bed and closed her eyes against the painful truth. Laina knew her royal lineage was her only defense against exile. Her mother and father would permit her eccentric behaviors, as long as she did not go too far. She knew, though, that there were limits, and she tried her best to share their views when she spoke and to echo the thoughts of the tribe.

  Tonight, she longed to escape, and she remembered her solitary trips to the forest where she had watched the wolves, shining silver-grey in the moonlight, and had marveled at their beauty and grace. They had fascinated her, and she had longed to see them in their daytime form, but the sunlight would harm her, and it was dangerous besides, for they had their own powers. Or so my father had told me.

  How can I not love them? How can the other vampires not feel this way, too? Laina loved all animals—their agility, their grace, their raw instincts, so like her own. Unwilling to on them, she preferred the humans who she knew were criminals, or sinners. She would play God, choosing the worst examples of humanity she could find and punishing them by draining them of their own, tainted blood.

  Feeling the hunger again, Laina twisted on her bed. She was growing hungry, and soon she would take her next victim. She would watch a human for days beforehand and plan her attack. They must always deserve it, she thought. The rough men who struck their wives and made them cower were always her favorite targets. The women who sold their bodies for a couple of coins were often second on her list, unless she saw some sadness in them that matched her own.

  This night, she wished she could ignore the blood-lust that consumed her, and instead go to watch the wolves as they slunk into their caves. It is my only joy, she thought, smiling into the darkness. But it has been taken from me. And she wished, as she had so many times, that she was one of them. They never came into our clan and waged murder. They are good, and we are evil.

  Her mother and father laughed and chattered downstairs. She could hear them from her room. But inside, they were cold, stone cold, centuries of power clouding their judgment. . But I am young, she thought feverishly. I am still young. I can still imagine the wolves running free through the forests of the night, and I can still dream.

  With a sigh, Laina rose to her feet. She crossed the floor of her bedroom to throw open the window, watching the pale crescent moon in the sky. She gathered a bundle that contained another dress and cloak about her waist, and she went to the window. She stepped onto the windowpane, crouched, and pushed herself out into the crisp, dark air. The familiar joy of flight filled every corner of her lonely heart. I cannot stay, she told herself. I am one of them, but I feel like a stranger, and I would rather be alone forever than be here among the destroyers.

  Laina loved to fly, as high as she could. She circled the great forest and found her target, the caves where the wolves made their lair. She started at the edge of the forest, determined to find the Wolfen kind who were men and women by day and to feel their magic.

  She knew it was dangerous, but she did not care, for what could immortality bring but a lack of fear and discretion? She landed gently on the cold forest floor, her robes swirling around her slim body, and she went to the first cave she saw, moving as silently as a ghost.

  Laina would grow hungry and need shelter from the sun in just a few hours, but for now, she was free. She peeked into caves, and she listened, and she tried to sense the wolves where they lay in slumber. She found a few empty caves that seemed to carry an animal scent, but she saw no signs of their pack. Wandering free, she wondered if her mother and father had watched her fl
ight and if they would let her be or seek vengeance.

  She found the cave in the early morning, when it was still dark, and she tiptoed in, watching flames dance against the walls. A great wolf, all alone, slept by the fire, his body moving restlessly. She knew he was Wolfen because his silvery color was pure and distinct and set him apart from other wolves.

  Fear and excitement filled her heart as she watched him sleep, so fitfully, with his head hidden from her view. She knew his eyes would be beautiful, and she longed to stroke his pelt in the warmth of the dancing flames.

  He is so large and beautiful, she thought, moving closer to his body. If he woke, he would attack her, but she did not worry. She could simply rise into the air and out of the cave like a great bird. She went to him, until she was very close, so close she could touch him. She marveled at the softness of him.

  She felt some joy in her heart because she had always dreamed of touching a Wolfen creature, and although she could not say for sure, this wolf seemed to be male. She wondered with rapt curiosity how he would look in the growing daylight when she must hide. What would he do if he woke as a man and discovered her in his private lair? She imagined his eyes, his animal eyes, running all along the length of her body, appraising her. What would it feel like to be the subject of his Wolfen gaze? Would I be frightened, or excited?