A Match of Monsters

Chapter Twenty-One

Spluttering and coughing, Elain jumped to her feet and stared about her in confusion as freezing water dripped from her chin and hair.

Pressing himself tightly into her embrace, the kit growled quietly under his breath. His sharp little tail was beating against her ribs, and she could feel the scales along either side of his spine beginning to flair and rise up like a cat's fur. The raised hackled scratched against Elain's skin through her clothing, drawing her attention first to him, and then to where he was looking.

Endless rows of rotting, yellow teeth with greying flesh embedded in the gums and the gaps between each sharp point. Black lips were stretched taught to form terrifying grins with the purpose to scare her and to bare their disgusting fangs.

Their pelts were covered in dirty snow; discoloured, matted and stinking to the high heavens. Pristine and washed, they would have ranged between all possible hues, from ice white to midnight black to bloody auburn and shining gold. But with such thick layers of filth packed on their body from their ears to their toes, the majority of the monsters just appeared in earth brown.

Only a single pair of the werewolves were in anyway clean, but even that was stretching the word. Course fibres of fur knotted itself and stuck out in all manners. It was unkept but also uncovered, and as Elain looked at the Alpha and her mate, with their matching gold and silver coats, everything began to make sense again.

Filthily glittering in the fading sunlight in a cruel parody to the great collection of shining treasure that Elain had been amongst just more than a week ago, the grime that covered the beasts seemed to catch the slowly decreasing glare and reflect in directly into her eyes. She raised her hand from where it had been holding the kit and turned her face away from the alpha pair with her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

It wasn't until too late that she realized she had bared her neck to them, submitted to them.

Elain bit her lip but did not dare to look up at them, or even turn her head back around so as to stop exposing her throat. The deed was already done, and by attempting to take it back she would only insult them. If she was careful, and thought everything out the best she could, there was a slight chance that she could even survive the encounter. As in, possibly one in a thousand.

"Little Human knows our way; Little Human wants to live." The golden creature remarked to its companion.

The silver turned to the other, "then Little Human will be prisoner, no longer prey."

Elain gulped audibly, her heart beating a rapid tattoo against her bruised ribs. Relief flooded her mind at the knowledge she was not about to die, but fear immediately followed when she realized that she would remain in their capture.

Starling ice-white eyes focussed on her as she adapted the most submissive pose she could think of. On her knees with her arms held loosely at her sides, her head tilted and neck stretched with her nose only inches above the packed earth.

Elain did not look up, but already she could notice the differences in their voices, and could tell that it was the silver beast that addressed her now. "If Little Human is to live, Little Human will give all knowledge to Alphas. Little Human obey, or not breathe to sunrise."

She whimpered quietly when the roughly spoken words, but nodded her head as the silence stretched on. She would have to be careful with what she said, she could not betray her Lady, but if she said to little she would not live until morning – and then how long would the silver hatchling in her arms last? The werewolves were renowned for hating dragon kind, and her Ladyship in particular.

"I will answer your questions." The words were barely whispered, but the rang clearly through the stillness of the atmosphere.

"Good." The golden one grunted.

The wolves turned their bodies to face each other, and Elain was now able to see the muddy runt with a leaking water pail that had been hiding behind them. So that is where the water came from, she thought as she dragged her fingertips through the wet knots in her hair.

One of the alphas snarled at the other before the golden one stalked up to her and yanked her up by the thick curls she had been attempting to comb through. "Come," was all he growled at her as he began to walk. Not yet risen from her knees, she was dragged along almost two meters before she managed to find her feet.

With all she had gone through, her mother would be horrified by the state of her dress. She cringed even as she rushed after the alpha, imagining the raised voices that would be used to express such displeasure, no matter that Elain had not been able to help it.

Maybe she would be able to get a new dress before returning home.

Elain cried out in pain and surprise when it threw her carelessly into a shallow cave, crowding her where she still sat stunned and roughly grabbing the leather thong that had been intricately tied around her neck while she was still unconscious. The sound of metal sliding against metal had her flinching again and the werewolf growling out his displeasure at her movement as he attached the ring in her collar to a chain imbedded into the back wall of the cramped cavern. Elain just held as still as she could, fearful of angering him, as he turned her head about which ever way she wanted and forced her to look where ever he turned her head. Up and down his belly, or to the snow drifts, or to the cold stone that now surrounded her.

Lastly, her roughly grabbed her hands with his claws, careless of how the rough pads on his paws scraped at the wounds in her own palms. He did not force them behind her back, but all the same firmly tied the wrists together with a thick leather strap, placing the knots underneath her hands where neither her fingers or teeth would be able to reach.

As he let them go to fall to the juncture in her lap, she could just hear him muttering about her needing to be able to care for the "dragon pup". They must have been meant for her, despite the difficulty to hear them, for otherwise the words would not have been spoken in the human tongue.

Elain watched him stalk away for her like there was any place he would rather be, her thoughts now trying to untangle what he had said. It was to her a riddle from all she knew and heard about the werewolf kind.

"I don't know why," she whispered as she kissed the kit's forehead, "but they don't seem to want to kill you. I might not, but you might be able to survive this after all."

The alpha stopped at her words and his shoulders tensed, but he did not turn around as he replied to a comment she had not intended he hear.

"No honour killing dragon pups, death only bring shame to pack if too young to fight. Be different if two winters aged. Some packs different – my pack different –more human blood, human mothers to survive hunting."

Elain tried to wrap her mind around this logic, this morality, that werewolves had been known not to have throughout history. But then she remembered the second half of his explanation, and suddenly she knew why they acted more human, but also what her fate would be. Why she had been allowed to live.

The alphas were going to force her to marry one of their werewolves.