Chapter 14 Moab #2
I tried to shield Scarlette, but it wasn’t aimed at us. The arrow struck Lady Elise between the shoulders with a sound I’ll never forget—a wet, dull thunk, like a fist breaking through rotten meat.
She stumbled, arms pinwheeling. Scarlette screamed, caught her before she went down, and they both collapsed into the weeds.
I spun, looking for the archer. He was back by the gate, already nocking another, grinning in the torchlight. I wanted to kill him, but Scarlette was crying out, voice raw and high, and I dropped to my knees beside them.
Lady Elise was still alive, the shaft buried deep, blood black in the moon. Her face was slack, but her eyes found Scarlette’s, and for a moment they were just mother and daughter, no history, no debts.
Scarlette cradled her mother’s head, hands slick with blood and mud. “Please,” she whispered, “please stay, please—”
Lady Elise coughed, a thin red line at her lips. She managed a smile, softer than anything I’d seen on her. “You are…braver than all of them,” she said, voice fading with every syllable. She reached up, fingers trailing along Scarlette’s jaw, then dropped to her chest. “Run, my love. Live.”
The next breath didn’t come. The hand on Scarlette’s face slid away, leaving a streak of blood from temple to chin. Lady Elise stared at the sky, seeing nothing now.
Scarlette bent over her, shaking so hard her teeth rattled. “Don’t go,” she sobbed, “don’t—”
But it was already done.
I put a hand on Scarlette’s shoulder. The animal in me wanted to roar, to tear the world apart, but there was no time.
The guards were coming, three of them at least, crunching through the orchard, spears out. The archer hung back, arrow drawn.
“Scar,” I said, voice sharp as I could make it, “we have to move.”
She didn’t answer. Just pressed her forehead to her mother’s, and for a second, I thought she’d die right there.
I grabbed her by the arm, pulled her up. She was lighter than she should have been; all the fire in her gone out at once. The blood on her hands smeared across her own dress, soaking the fabric.
I carried her. I didn’t give her a choice.
We slipped through the trees, low and fast. The guards didn’t expect us to break left, and we lost them for a minute in the orchard’s maze.
I ducked us behind a half-dead apple tree, and for a moment, the world went quiet except for the sound of Scarlette’s breathing and the rustle of frost in the branches.
She was sobbing now, soft, the way a kid cries when they know nobody can help. I held her, tried to block the cold, and watched for the flicker of torches in the trees.
When the guards did come, they went right past, chasing phantoms.
We waited, silent, until the sound of boots faded. Only then did I let go.
Scarlette wiped her face, the blood drying in rough patches across her cheek. “She saved us,” she whispered.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
She straightened, set her jaw. “We have to go.”
The way she said it—flat, certain, final—made me believe we could.
I took her hand, and together, we slipped through the orchard and out into the night. The manor, the guards, the pain, all left behind in the silence, under the empty eyes of the moon.
***
We kept moving, every muscle strung tight with the need not to stop, not look back, not let the past drag us down like quicksand.
Scarlette’s breaths were ragged, every exhale a ghost in the cold.
I’d seen men break on the run before, but I had never seen a woman hold it together with such naked, bloody loss stitched into every motion.
I wanted to say something, anything, but the words kept catching behind my teeth.
The woods were a wall of dark, the trees older than sin and twice as unforgiving. We moved through them, animal-quiet, stepping where the ground was soft, and the branches hung low. Behind us, the bell’s echo chased us like a curse.
Scarlette stumbled, knees hitting frozen leaves, and I knelt beside her. She didn’t weep—just breathed, fast and sharp, her hand still stained with her mother’s blood.
“We can’t stop,” I said, voice softer than I meant.
She looked at me, eyes rimmed in black, the pupils wide and wild. “You saw what they did to her,” she said, words stripped of anything but truth.
I nodded. “We’ll make them regret it. But only if we live.”
She flinched, then nodded, pressing the back of her wrist to her eyes. “I’m fine. Just—give me a second.”
I did. I listened to the wind, the crunch of boots far behind, the distant rumble of men who thought they’d already won.
She looked at her hands, then at me. “You ever want to just—” She mimed ripping her own skin off, like shedding a coat. “Become something else?”
I grinned, even if it was a bad time for jokes. “You know I do.”
She tried to smile, then stood, knees unsteady but determined. “Okay. I’m ready.”
We ran again, silent but for our breaths. The torches behind us multiplied. The pursuit was gaining.
We reached the creek, half-frozen, the water black and angry. I helped Scarlette down the bank, then pushed her ahead of me into the tangle of willow on the far side. We crawled, soaking wet and shivering, but the reeds hid us from the searchers for a minute at least.
We waited, flattened in the mud, listening to the men thrash through the brush above.
Their voices were close now, too close. I caught the scent of sweat, metal, the sour tang of fear.
My own, maybe, or Scarlette’s, or theirs.
Didn’t matter. I couldn’t shift here, not with her hurt, not while the men with swords were still too close for a clean getaway.
But she must have sensed it, the change in me. She pressed her hand to my chest, right over the tattoo.
“If you go wolf,” she whispered, “I’ll be right behind you.”
I wanted to believe it.
The men passed, too busy shouting at each other to notice anything but their own panic. One of them nearly tripped over us, but then moved on, cursing the night.
When their footsteps faded, I breathed again. Scarlette squeezed my hand. “We need to make the circle before sunrise.”
I nodded. “If we don’t, they’ll catch us on the open ground.”
She looked at me, eyes shining in the moon. “Then we don’t stop.”
We didn’t. We ran, even when it hurt, even when her ankle bled through the bandage, even when I thought my own lungs would catch fire. The woods thinned, and the moon painted the world in a colorless hush.
In a clearing, Scarlette stopped. I nearly barreled past her, but she caught my sleeve.
“Here,” she said, voice hollow but certain. “This is where it happened. The first time I changed.”
I looked around. The space was empty, save for a circle of flattened grass, and the faint smell of wild garlic under the snow. I’d been in enough rituals to know what came next.
“You sure?” I asked.
She nodded, then set her jaw. “I want to remember her. Not the way she died, but who she was. She was always wild, always running. I think she’d understand.”
I got down on my knees, the mud freezing through my jeans, and waited.
Scarlette tilted her head to the moon. She whispered words—maybe prayer, maybe curse, maybe just the memory of her mother’s lullabies. Then she bit her lip until it bled and smeared the blood across her palm. She pressed her hand to the ground.
I felt the air charge, the kind of hush that comes before a storm. My skin prickled, every hair standing on end.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, but she shook her head.
“I want to.”
So I let the wolf out.
It hurt, as always, but this time it hurt differently. The bones reset, muscles snapping and twisting under my skin, fur erupting in a wave down my arms, spine curving until my shoulders split my jacket. My mouth tore itself wide, teeth lengthening, eyes burning.
Next to me, Scarlette changed too. She bit her wrist, the blood bright in the moon, then threw back her head.
Her scream was a song and a challenge, and as it faded, her arms shortened, her hands curled to paws, her teeth grew sharp and white.
The shift wasn’t easy—her body fought her, maybe more than mine ever had—but she did it.
When it was over, she stood beside me, smaller, leaner, her coat a silvered auburn with a stripe of blood down one foreleg. She looked at me, and for the first time since we’d met, she didn’t seem afraid at all.
We touched noses. She growled, soft, then turned to the woods.
We ran.
The world snapped into focus, every leaf, every heartbeat, every whisper of mouse or owl or man.
The wind no longer cut, but filled me, driving us forward.
The pain was gone. Scarlette raced beside me, her limp erased, her pace quick and sure.
We dodged fallen logs, jumped ditches, skirted the edge of a hunter’s fire before the scent even registered.
Behind us, the shouts of men dwindled, torches lost in the snarl of trees.
We ran until the sky paled, until the first crow called out from the crown of a dead oak. We ran until we couldn’t remember what it felt like to be hunted, only the joy of being alive.
At dawn, we stopped, chests heaving, tongues lolling. Scarlette pressed her head to my shoulder, and I pressed mine to hers.
Together, we howled, and the sound split the cold and made the world ours again.