Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
The pain crests, peaks, then suddenly stops. My nerves braced for the next wave but it doesn’t come. I lie on the forest floor, eyes clenched shut. The agony is gone but its ghost remains, phantom fire tracing patterns across my skin.
Silence presses down and I slowly open my eyes.
My vision fractures into something strange.
Colors I knew are gone, replaced by a spectrum that makes no sense.
The greens of the forest canopy are too golden.
They make my head ache just looking at them.
Everything seems washed out, muted to near-gray. It’s disorienting and nauseating.
Smells explode in intensity, overwhelming everything else. Every breath brings a flood of scents so complex and layered.
I can sense the forest breathing around me.
The slow exhalation of rot from the deadfall to my left.
Every blade of grass has a story. This one was crushed by a boot an hour ago.
That one grows in shadow and tastes different from its sun-fed brothers.
The earth beneath me smells ancient and has a rhythm.
I try to stand but my body moves wrong. The command goes from my brain to my limbs and gets lost somewhere in translation.
I have four legs now.
Four legs instead of two. I try again, attempting to translate the familiar motion of standing into this new body.
Push with my arms. No, front legs.
Brace with my legs. Nope, they are hind legs now.
I immediately fall.
The hunters laugh as I struggle.
Their laughter is different now too. I can hear individual tones in each voice. The archer’s laugh has a wheeze in his breath from old lung damage. Quinnlan’s is deeper, more measured.
I can hear all of it. My ears swivel toward the sounds.
When I finally manage to stand without collapsing, I realize my body is compact. I can feel muscle coiled under fur, ready to spring or run or fight.
But I’m lower to the ground. The world towers over me now. I’m covered completely in charcoal fur.
I can see it coating my… paws. Four of them, tipped with claws that dig into the forest floor. My tail moves without my conscious control, tucked between my legs in fear.
Wait—what the fuck. I have a tail?
I try to look down at myself but my neck doesn’t bend that way anymore. I can’t see my own body properly.
“Can you understand us, Wolf?” the mage asks, crouching to my level.
His face is too close. I can smell everything about him. The component herbs in his spell reagents. The faint scent of fear buried under confidence.
He’s afraid. Good.
I bare my teeth, try to say ‘fuck you.’ It comes out as a snarl.
“Perfect. He’s all there, just... repackaged.” The mage stands and brushes dirt from his robes.
“This is brilliant!” the archer exclaims, still laughing.
I want to kill him and tear out his throat. The urge is more intense than any human rage I've ever felt. It’s instinct and emotion mixed together into something overwhelming.
I lunge at him, or try to.
My new body responds differently than I want to. I’m aiming for his throat but my angle is too low. The archer sidesteps easily and I crash into a tree.
Pain explodes across my skull and stars burst across my vision. The archer laughs harder at my failure. I hear his heartbeat underneath it, steady and amused.
“He’s still getting used to it,” Quinnlan observes, watching me shake off the impact. “Give him a few days, he might actually be dangerous.”
“Doubtful,” the archer scoffs. “Should we leash him?”
“No need for that, Stark.” The mage pulls out something from his pack.
A black leather collar with runes etched in silver. It’s a fucking collar.
“This will do,” Quinnlan says, approaching me with calm confidence. The writing pulses faintly in the fading light.
I back up instinctively.
But I can’t run far. My muscles are still sluggish from the transformation and fail to coordinate properly. The collar clicks shut around my throat.
It burns the moment it touches my fur. The magic sears straight through my skin and muscle, branding itself into my very essence.
I feel the compulsion.
The collar doesn’t just bind my body like chains or ropes. It is far worse. This thing burrows into my mind and wraps around it like a parasite.
“Come,” Quinnlan commands.
My body moves, following him. Every part of my consciousness fights against the movement. But my paws keep walking.
No, I don’t want to do this.
I plant my feet, trying to resist. The collar tightens. I dig my claws into the earth and refuse to move.
I will not obey him.
But the magic squeezes my throat from the inside, choking off air until black spots dance across my vision. I take a step forward and the pressure releases.
“Beautiful work,” the archer approves, watching me struggle. “How long will the transformation last?”
“Forever.” The mage shrugs easily. “I’m the only one who knows the specific weave to this curse. He’ll die a wolf unless I break it.”
His words echo in my head as they lead me through the forest, growing louder with each repetition until they’re all I can hear.
Every step is humiliation. My tail tucks between my legs no matter how hard I try to control it, broadcasting my fear to anyone who looks. But the worst thing is the sensory overload that never stops.
My nose catches the path of a rabbit from hours ago and something in my brain insists I should track it. The urge makes me sick but I can’t ignore it.
Every sound is magnified. My ears swivel toward a bird landing fifty feet away and a stream trickling somewhere far to the east. I can even hear the archer’s fingers drumming against his bow.
It’s too much. All of it is too much.
But the collar keeps me moving forward toward whatever fate the guild has planned. Each step takes me closer to Tiamat and the crypts, to whatever punishment awaits a failure who tried to run.
I think of Aurora.
I imagine her running through the forest. She’s fast and she’ll make it to the border. Hope burns in my chest despite everything. The image sustains me for exactly three steps before doubt creeps in.
No, she definitely made it.
Her feline grace and years of training will get her to some distant city where she will be free living the life she always wanted. I have to believe it. I have to hold onto the hope that at least she made it out.
At least one of us survived.
I think of Garrett.
Does he know I ran? Does he know what happened after I fled Aelfheim like a coward? The questions circle my mind like carrion birds, picking at wounds that won’t heal.
I picture him waking up alone and finding me gone. Maybe he assumed I abandoned him. I didn’t leave him a note for fear the Hunters might use him to get to me. Perhaps he thought my contract was over and I left. He’s better off thinking that than knowing the truth.
“Missing someone?” the archer asks, noticing how I’ve slowed. He knows exactly what he’s doing, picking at wounds for entertainment.
I don’t respond. Well, I can’t.
My throat works uselessly, trying to form words. All that comes out is a soft whine that makes Stark laugh.
“Don’t worry about your friend,” he continues, his tone light and conversational. “The guild only sent two hunters for Wolf the failure. But Aurora Vortigern? Five hunters and the best trackers we have. She’ll be found soon enough.”
No.
The word screams in my head but dies in my throat as another pathetic whine.
She can’t be.
Aurora has to be safe somewhere far from here. But five of the guild’s best are tracking her. She’s been running for days, exhausted and alone. It doesn’t work in her favor.
“Maybe I’ll be her first customer when they drag her back to the Gilded Lily,” he adds, and the words are vile. “I hear she was quite popular before the guild bought her contract. I’m curious to see if she lives up to the reputation.”
Something snaps inside me.
Rage floods through my veins, incandescent and all-consuming. I lunge at him with everything I have, compulsion be damned. All the disconnected instincts align for one perfect moment. My jaws aim for his throat and that smug voice, for anything I can rip apart.
He stumbles backward with a shout of surprise, arms coming up to protect his face.
My teeth almost find flesh and—
“Stand down!” Quinnlan’s voice cracks like a whip.
The compulsion slams into me. It seizes every muscle at once. My body locks up and I crash to the ground. I hit hard, shoulder first, and the impact drives the air from my lungs. All four of my limbs go rigid. I am unable to move even as rage burns through every fiber of my being.
My body is a prison and the collar is the warden.
The archer kicks me in the ribs. “You little bastard.”
Pain explodes through my side. I want to cry out but can't. I try to curl around the injury, but my body won't respond. I can only lie there and take it.
“Careful, Stark,” Quinnlan warns him. “The guild wants him intact if we’re going to collect the reward.”
“He attacked me,” the archer, Stark protests. He pulls his boot back for another kick.
“The leash stopped him as designed.” Quinnlan crouches beside my frozen form, his cold eyes meeting mine. “You’ll learn, Wolf. The Servitor Band doesn’t just bind your body. It binds your will. The more you fight it, the more it hurts.”
His face is inches from mine. He stands, brushing off his robes. “We’ll camp here for the night. I want to see how well the transformation holds when he sleeps.”
Shit. I’ll spend hours more lying here paralyzed while they eat and rest.
Stark grumbles but starts gathering wood for a fire. They settle down as darkness falls, laughing and talking like they’re on a pleasant hunting trip. Quinnlan releases the paralysis command with a dismissive wave.
The sudden return of movement is disorienting.
I try to stand and my legs shake, barely supporting my weight.
I can move now but only in ways the collar allows.
The invisible leash keeps me close to the camp and docile.
When I try to walk away, even just a few steps, the suffocating pressure returns.
It forces me to be obedient and not to threaten my captors.
I lie where I fell, too exhausted to move.
My body aches from the transformation and the impact and Stark’s kick. But worse than the physical pain is the mental exhaustion. The horror of being trapped in this form with no escape.
Forever, the mage said. I’ll die a wolf.
The stars come out overhead, cold and distant as the gods who abandoned me. They look different through wolf eyes. I can see more of them than I ever could as a human, tiny pinpricks of light.
But I don’t want to see them. I don’t want the beauty of the night sky when everything else is horror.
The hunters’ fire crackles and pops. They pass around dried meat and water, talking in low voices about the journey ahead. How long to reach Tiamat. What route to take.
They don’t offer me anything. Stark doesn't even bother to acknowledge my presence except to occasionally glance over and make sure I’m still there.
I am.
Of course I am. The collar won’t let me be anywhere else. I close my eyes and pray for oblivion that won’t come.
Sleep should offer an escape for a few hours. But my wolf body won’t let me rest. My ears keep swiveling toward sounds and my nose keeps processing scents. I worry about Aurora. The thoughts circle and circle, endless and inescapable as the collar around my throat.
Somewhere in the distance, a real wolf howls. The sound cuts through the night. My body wants to answer. I want to throw back my head and howl with it.
But I don’t.
I won’t give Stark and Quinnlan the satisfaction of seeing me embrace what they’ve made me. So I lie there in silence while the stars watch and the fire dies and my captors sleep.
And I endure.