Chapter Text
I woke up outside.
I woke up outside and naked.
See, if this was a normal story, I’d tell you that my friends had taken advantage of my drunken stupor and dragged me to the middle of nowhere for shits and giggles. I’d also tell you that my friends were filming my freak out from behind some boulders and having a blast at my flailing.
There were two problems with that, though.
Numero uno, I don’t drink. Like, at all. Daddy dearest was an alcoholic, so let’s just say that I don’t see the appeal.
Numero dos? This isn’t a normal story. No, this is so far from normal I’m not even human anymore.
“Oh, my god,” I whimpered. The lips of the thing in the pond’s reflection moved with my words. “No, no, please…”
The thing’s ears drooped. Its pointed ears.
“If there is a god…” My hand reached up slowly. The thing’s hand followed. Hesitantly, my finger touched the lobe of my ear. I inched it upwards, expecting it to round out. It didn’t.
Shivers racked my body at my touch. Sensitive.
The thing had followed me the whole time.
“Oh, god. Oh, god,” I moaned. “I’m an elf. I’m an elf. I’m stranded, I’m naked, and I’m an elf. Oh, god!”
My heart rate picked up, and my breathing became shallow. Spots danced in my vision to the point that I couldn’t see the thing’s too bright amber eyes and too flat nose and too sharp teeth. I couldn’t see its hair that was too light and too long, or its shoulders and arms that were too thin to be healthy and skin that was too dark. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. I don’t even know what was happening, but it couldn’t be happening.
I would have fallen unconscious if it wasn’t for the rustles of the leaves breaking my panic attack. The sound was so out of place in the quiet of the pond area I found myself in that it had my senses on high alert.
“Please, don’t be something bad,” I begged. I don’t know who I was begging to, but let’s just say that I was ignored.
Out of the bush came a single, brown paw. Yellow eyes seemed to glow from behind the shrubbery, and I knew that, despite the thing in the water and my unknown location, this would be what fucked me over.
A wolf.
It was snarling at me, head low and eyes intent, and I could feel the other members of its pack circling around, blocking my escape.
“Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”
I didn’t think about it. Something in me just said to run, so I ran. Jumping over the head of the lead wolf with a surprising amount of grace, I took off into the greenery around me. The sound of pursuit followed me as I weaved between trees and hills. I ran quickly, too quickly, and I executed turns that should be impossible with little to no effort. My breathing was erratic from panic, not exertion, and this only made my breathing shallower and heart race faster.
“I’m going to die,” I sobbed. Even with tears obstructing my view, everything still looked too clear, too pristine.
Behind me, a loud, low howl pierced the air. Shortly after, several more howls responded. They came from around me.
“Go away!” I cried. “Just leave me alone!”
There was a break in the trees ahead of me. With desperation, I lunged through it…
…and into the arms of a man who reeked of stale beer and looked like he just stepped off a farm in an Arthurian legend movie remake.
He said some words in a strange language that I couldn’t understand, but the look in his eyes and the disgusting smile he wore needed no translating. The laughter of the two men beside him offered further interpretation.
I thrashed to get out of his grip. The wolves were a better alternative to these beasts. He was strong though, too strong. They laughed some more.
Paws shifted against the earth from beyond the tree line. I whimpered. The man’s friends looked apprehensive. The one on the right, shorter with straw-like hair and flat blue eyes, said something; he sounded worried. The one on the left nodded, his bald head marked with perspiration and his beady eyes flickering between me and the trees.
The man that held me laughed them off. He said something in a commanding tone towards the trees, and the wolves walked out slowly. Twenty odd wolves with their heads bowed low and tails between their legs formed a semi-circle around us.
His companions looked unsure. In response, the man removed one of his hands from me to root around in his dirty tunic. I held my breath. This is it, I thought. I can make a run for it.
In his hand, he held an amulet. It was a silver snarling wolf head with a long, sharp tooth protruding from its neck and bound by a grubby leather cord.
The man spoke some words to his companions casually. I don’t know what he said to them, but they relaxed. Their leering began anew. Seeing no other alternative, I slammed my knee into the man’s groin and pulled free. The men shouted angrily, reaching towards me, but I danced out of their reach and turned away from them.
The snarling brown wolf from before tackled me, its claws digging into my shoulders, teeth inches from my throat. A low, rumbling growl emanated from within its chest. Stay down, its stance said. Or die.
I stared into its vibrant yellow eyes and saw the eyes of an animal. When I turned my gaze to the grunting, kneeling man, I saw the eyes of a monster staring back at me with soulless grey encircling a bottomless pit. He gave me a look that promised me Hell and no reprieve. I focused on the wolf again.
The man said something, commanding, hard and cruel.
The wolf’s eyes dimmed a moment before they brightened again, and he stepped off me and back in line with his pack. No longer an animal, but the monster’s marionette.
“What did you do?” I croaked. The men spat on me, speaking in harsh, guttural words. I pulled my eyes away from the cowering wolves around me and to them. “What did you do?”
The amulet around the man’s neck emitted a strange glow when he spoke again in his hard way. The wolves started growling.
Was he controlling them!?
Panic skyrocketing, it became hard to breathe. I was hyperventilating and the sick bastards looked as if they were getting off on just my fear. These men had less than pure intensions and a fucking wolf pack in their thrall like some kind of fucked up magic show.
I was going to die.
The complete and utter terror that shot through me then froze me. Even when the men moved towards me, their leader in front, and reached to their trousers, I didn’t move. When their filthy, ugly hands pawed at my (wrong, so wrong, too wrong!) body, I didn’t move. It wasn’t until their leader was knelt in front of me with his hands forcing my knees apart that I moved.
The sun reflected off of the man’s amulet, and I had this sudden all-consuming idea to reach out and grab it.
So I did.
With too fast reflexes, my too thin, too dark hand wrapped around the wolf tooth, grip too tight that it sliced the flesh of my palm open and sent a rivulet of blood streaming down my arm and to the floor. I yanked until the leather cord snapped and thought only of how I wanted these men away from me. I wanted them gone. I wanted them dead.
And they were.
The wolves—with relish—pounced on the men whom couldn’t run even if they realized the danger they were in with their trousers tangled around their ankles as they were. Snarls, growls and barks filled the air as the men screamed out in agony, their bodies torn apart and strewn around the clearing to be devoured once the deed was done. Blood and viscera coated every inch of my bare body, my eyes screwed shut and too pointy ears twitching with every new sound and pitch.
Sobs shook my body as my mind conjured up exactly what the wolves were doing to my assailants.
Then, silence reigned.
My cries were the only thing to break the stillness of the clearing. I refused to open my eyes because I could feel a warm, slick substance coating my face and didn’t want to risk getting whatever part of the men’s bodies—be it blood or organ—in my eyes when they were already in my head and torn into itty bitty pieces.
The coppery taste of someone else’s blood on my tongue had me silencing my cries and whimpering.
There was a moment of rustling and shuffling approaching me, and the warm, wet feeling of a tongue dragging across my face from chin to brow assaulted me. My head jerked away quickly, the first thought in my head being that I was next on their menu.
That was quickly put away when the tongue continued to lick at my face as if I hadn’t moved away. When every inch of my face was licked, the tongue moved to my jaw and then my neck.
Only when the licking stopped did I open my eyes.
In front of me stood the brown wolf from before, standing proudly, yellow eyes gleaming.
Look at me, his eyes said. I’m free.
“You’re free,” I nodded before tears gathered in my eyes as the severity of what almost happened to me hit me. “Oh, god.”
The wolves shifted, their ears flicking, and the brown wolf whined. His head ducked down, eyes boring into mine, and he nudged me. This fucking wolf, whose fur was matted with blood and whose teeth had strings of muscle hanging from them, just took his gore covered nose and nudged me.
The move was so ridiculous that I burst out laughing. My laughs quickly turned to sobs, and I collapsed against the wolf. My hands gripped at his fur blindly, amulet still in hand, and I buried my face in his neck. He smelled of blood. He felt of blood. I was sitting in a puddle of blood and organs. I was naked and covered in blood. The desecrated bodies of three would-be rapists surrounded me. I was in the middle of who-knows-where. I was a fucking elf.
I sobbed until my stomach grew sick. I sobbed until I had to let go of the wolf in order to lean over and purge my body of its contents. I tried to aim for a patch of clean grass, but there wasn’t any. Just blood and bones and body parts. Now throw up.
When I was just dry heaving over a severed finger, I sobbed some more.
The wolves were growing antsy. They didn’t try to leave, and I couldn’t figure out why. That man had been controlling them, but he was dead now. Why weren’t they leaving?
The brown wolf whined again, but this time he nudged my left hand. My left hand was still gripping the amulet.
Gasping, I dropped it.
The silver wolf was crimson with my blood. A moment later, I watched as my blood seemed to disappear into it.
“That’s fucked up,” I moaned. “This is so fucked!”
The wolf whined again.
Another wolf, this one a beautiful black with deep brown eyes, approached slowly. She whined quietly, calmly, her head low and eyes hooded. She kept my gaze firmly on hers. Don’t look away, her eyes told me. Be calm, child.
Slowly, oh so slowly, she lowered her head to the bloody ground. Her mouth closed around the amulet carefully before she lifted her head, stepped towards me and dropped it in my naked lap. As one, every wolf dropped to their stomachs, head against the ground, and looked at me.
“Oh, shit,” I breathed.
I glanced away from the sight of over twenty wolves kneeling before me briefly to look down at the amulet. Something had changed about it, but I couldn’t tell what. I played with the torn cord idly, my eyes locking with the black wolf once again.
“This is…mine?” I took a deep breath in when the wolf moved her head as if she was nodding and blew it out in a quick gust. “This controls you all…”
The brown and black wolf locked gazes for a moment, two, before they looked at me again and nodded.
I nodded back, pursing my lips.
“I’m fucking insane,” I laughed. “I’m surrounded by dead bodies, and I’m fucking insane.”
If wolves could look exasperated, these wolves did. Nearly all of them exchanged looks that just screamed “Is this bitch for real?”
A scared shout from a distance away had all of our ears twitching and heads turning. A couple of men, wearing similar clothes to what the men from before wore, stood at the tree line on the opposite side of the clearing. One held a pitchfork while the other held a hoe.
As one, the pack launched to their feet, hackles raised and growls thundering. The men stopped clutching at the tools in fear and held them as if they were weapons.
The shorter one said something angrily, waving his hoe around.
My experience with the last group of men was enough. Following the wolves’ example, I launched to my feet. The move wasn’t nearly as smooth as I slipped on particularly saturated patch of bloody grass, but I managed to catch myself before falling completely. Unlike the wolves, I wasn’t prepared to fight.
“Run!” I yelled.
As one, a huntress and her hunting party, we ran through the trees, zipping between hills, jumping over boulders, me leading and then the wolves, until we arrived at a cavern hidden among the foliage.
It wasn’t until the black wolf was urging me in and the wolves started to settle around me that I realized they had taken me to their home and that I was now a part of their pack.
Somehow, I handed ended up in a place where wolf packs reached membership ratings of 20, amulets could control said wolves, men wore tunics and tights and went unwashed for who-knows-how-many days, and fucking elves frolicked.
And said used-to-be-human elves get adopted by said controlled wolves.
I was so fucked.
