They swung open the cage door, cattle prods at full power, humming with electricity. The man lazily lifted his hands in surrender. "Now, now." He said softly. His voice was like velvet. "No need. I'll do as you please." The man in the cage said, his...
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The festivities had resumed, although there was an undercurrent of tension in every movement. The children had been packed away in the basement of a home on the far side of the village- saged and protected by a sparse few individuals. If all went well, the wolves of Ilaross would be prevented from heading further inland- further into the village, long before they ever detected the scent of a second group of more vulnerable prey. It was a good plan. Even Dancer struggled to pick out a living scent so far away beneath the smoke and cooking meat.
Most of the adults had remained, trying to force smiles onto their faces as they prepared for the attack. Their placements looked haphazard to the unknowing eye, but Dancer knew better. Rodion had arranged the group into a defensive battle formation, or so she'd been told. Whatever skill was being employed, she knew too little to recognize it for herself.
Theo didn't know how long she sat behind them all, crouched in a tangle of thistles and pine needles, also heavily saged so that she might remain a secret until the battle had begun.
Until the bloodshed was required of her.
Just before the break of what would be dawn anywhere else, she smelled something odd. A new, overpoweringly sooty, animal scent. The wind had changed, blowing in from the sea. Dancer coiled within her, knowing with a different sort of knowledge that the oncoming fight was an inevitable one.
Theo, for once, agreed. The fight had been inevitable.
Death was the only way to avoid fate, and she'd fought too hard to live.
There was a rustle at the eastern edge of the clearing- the sea facing side. For a split second, everything was still, filled with tensing muscles and realizations.
Then the tension shattered like a pane of glass beneath a hammer. Bodies flew from the woods, their fur covered in fireside ash and smoke sears. She couldn't tell apart any of their coats. They were simply ashen beasts, all replicated impressions of one another.
Rodion was the first to fly into action, shifting as he leapt forward to meet a lanky wolf that might've been white. His wife was not far behind. Her wolf form bore the same blind eyes, but she fought with a stunning precision, all teeth and whirling claws.
Theo watched, waiting for a moment where she was needed, but they were coordinated. They left no blind spots for the enemy, fighting not as individuals, but as a larger whole. When one moved, the whole body did, like they were a singular, greater animal.
Dancer turned her attention away from the fight, yanking Theo's head to the side so that her eyes could scan the treeline to the northwest. Her nostrils flared as the lycan forced her to inhale. To open her mouth ever so slightly to taste the air.
'There's someone else out there.' The lycan finally spoke. Reluctantly, Theo loosened her grip, accepting the painful sharpening of her own mundane senses. It was the smell of old snow. Of cold itself, carefully hidden beneath that burnt smell of ash. She dreaded what was out there, but she knew she had to go.
