Home -- Wolv book 3

Chapter 8 - Turned

Two days.

Two long, sweltering days, she sat by his side, moving only to eat and re-hydrate herself from the tiny cantine in her canoe. Humfrey slept soundly through the heat of sun, just as he slept soundly through the bitter cold of the nights, while Nadie lay curled up in a tattered sleeping bag, shivering beneath the moonlight.

Spike hadn't left the island, either. At first, his presence was a comfort--with Humfrey being, for all intents and purposes, comatose, Spike was the only company she had in all of Atikaki. He'd even tried to talk with her, speaking to the girl in his strange, canine language of low barks and growls.

It hadn't bothered her in the beginning. She'd even made a decent effort to understand him...but really, by the end of day one, she understood him about as well as she undertood any barking dog. He hadn't given up; every hour or so, he would trot along back to her and paw at something, flashing his teeth slightly as he spoke--

Teeth.

In the end, it was his teeth that finally broke Nadie.

As the first day stretched into night, she began to grow wary of the red-furred canine that accompanied her on the island. He was friendly, to be sure...but the overwhelming amount of blood that painted the granite floor of the island was a constant reminder of what had happened to her friend. What would happen to her if she herself was ever unfortunate enough to be bitten...and Nadie knew well enough that there was nothing stopping Spike from sinking his canines into her, no matter how well mannered he was.

The odd, tiny sets of growls and whines in which Spike communicated eventually turned from comforting to unnerving, to the point where the very sound of his voice was enough to make Nadie flinch. By the middle of the second day on the island, she found herself making a point of steering clear of the little red wolv, fearing the teeth that he kept sheathed just beneath his jowls. What if it was his intention to bite her, too? He'd seemed pretty adamant just days ago that he wasn't going to turn her--what if he had lied?

Even if he hadn't lied...she didn't want to risk getting too close. What would it even take to turn her into a wolv as well? Did Spike's teeth only have to graze her skin to initiate the change? Or did it have to be a deep, deliberate bite?

She spent her second night on the edge of the island, huddled into a ball on one of the granite boulders that protruded from the lake mere feet from the island's shore, her eyes wide and alert. In the twilight, Spike had regarded her with a pained curiosity from the shore, no doubt wondering why her attitude had suddenly become so hostile.

She wanted to go back, and throw her sleeping bag down next to Humfrey's furry form...but Spike was stubborn. He was determined to stay on the island.

Spike wasn't the only problem--as guilty as it made her feel, Nadie eventually realized that she was afraid of him, too.

He wasn't human anymore. He was now a furred, muscular, beautiful wolv, just like the ones she'd spent so much of her childhood dreaming about. That fact didn't bother her...but she'd lost the courage to stay next to him.

The image of him, breaking and twisting beneath the change, was forever burned into her retinas. And that was what had stuck with her.

What if Humfrey woke up, and bit her? Even accidentally?

The dream she'd held for so long had, at long last, finally evaporated. She didn't want to be a wolv, not anymore.

As morning finally broke, a few muffled, pained whimpers sounded from the island behind her. Nadie flinched as Spike responded in kind.