Page 6 of The Ashpaw: Part One

“Bound to another clan?” someone suggested. “Or dead?”

“Then why would Darion still be indebted?”

The group continued to speak over each other, offering their own theories as to what could have happened to the girl—a woman, now—when finally his father held up his hands, the room quieting instantly.

“If the debt still lives, then so does she, likely among the humans.” He stopped, fingers tapping on the table as he thought. “If she were first marked as a child, it stands to reason she had caretakers. Adult humans who could recognize the signs of a shift and keep her from the light. Half made, half formed.”

Heads nodded, murmuring their agreements. Wolfkin could only shed their human skin under the light of the full moon, which meant that if one were to stay indoors and keep all windows closed, they could, in theory, suppress the shift entirely and stunt the transformation.

But gods, at what cost? His wolf whined at such a thought.

“But she would not be invisible to wolfkin. Even hidden, her scent would have changed into something we would be drawn to.”

He looked at Darion.

“Find her, bind her, and ask the Ironcoats for their forgiveness over your youthful, indulgent mistake.”

Darion stood, fist over his heart as he bowed his head, not as chuffed as he thought he might be over the image of himself begging on his knees before Kyntha. He caught the smile before it bloomed on his lips.

“It will be done.”

Chapter 3

Fern

Despite the dangers the wolfkin posed to humans, an uneasy truce between the two races permitted wolfkin to cross into human territory to conduct trade and other business during the two weeks surrounding the new moon.

The other two weeks brought increased aggression, hunger, lust, and enough volatility that both had agreed long ago humans should be spared it.

Fern had no objection to the arrangement, especially because she was almost sure they knew there was something different about her.

Even if they couldn’t name it yet, Fern felt their eyes linger on her a little longer than they did on the other human girls, even ones prettier than she. Could see their nostrils flare and pupils dilate when they scented her, their hands trailing in her skirts as she walked by, balancing trays of drink and food.

But as long as she never shifted, her wolf would remain dormant, and she was safe.

She’d gone to bed immediately after returning home ten years ago, and her finger had healed by the time she awoke, so her parents had never even seen the injury.

Fern had thought nothing of it at first, her memory of the night hazy and leaving her wondering if perhaps it had just been a strange dream. And then a few days later, she had forgotten it even happened.

Until the next full moon, when she heard the call to shed her prison of flesh for fur and fangs.

She still remembered the first fever, the way she sweated through her clothes, clawing at her own skin until her father had been forced to bind her hands in thick cloth to protect her from her own, sharpened fingernails.

They’d locked her in the closet and held the door shut while she screamed, swore, and battered herself bloody against it until the sun rose. Then the fever broke, and she fell into a deep sleep.

By the next full moon, they were better prepared—with chains and a gag.

And so the years passed, with Fern isolating herself to the closet once every four weeks to suppress the shift that would have her banished from the village and bound to the alpha that had marked and made her. Forced into a life of servitude for him and his clan.

One might say serving drinks in her family’s tavern wasn’t all that different, but at least here there was no censure for her occasionally sharp tongue.

As a wolfkin, she’d be beaten or worse for speaking back to an alpha.

She shuddered at the thought, her resolve strong. Better one night a month with the gag than a lifetime of it.

* * *

It was a few days before the new moon, and the door opened. Four beta wolfkin walked in, men who had visited before.