1 Where the Wolves Are

A long, mournful howl rang out from the woods, and Dante jolted awake. He had only just started to drift off when the sound had roused him, sending a shiver down his spine. He threw off his covers so that the cold night air cooled his bare skin. Standing, he felt his way through the dark, feet padding on smooth, cold wood until he reached the window.

The moon was high, shedding light upon the forest a story below him. He unlatched his window and threw it open, letting in a burst of fall air that was chilly and scented with dying leaves.

His room was on the second story of the castle, but it wasn't so far up that he couldn't see the grounds below him, merging from storage buildings and well-worn paths to thick forest. The moon gleamed down on the intertwining branches. Their lack of leaves increase his visibility, letting him see further along paths cutting through the forest than he would be able to in spring or summer.

He knew that the forest was filled with all sorts of animals. He'd seen the corpses of a couple of the many beasts that his cousin Diego had hauled out of the woods as hunting trophies. Dante even had gone hunting once or twice himself before deciding that it wasn't his thing. But the possibility of seeing a live wolf excited him, especially if he could be at a distance where he wouldn't be at risk of being attacked by it and at an hour when he wouldn't be pressured to try to kill it for sport.

Dante crossed his arms on the windowsill and leaned against them, peering down at the forest paths and watching expectantly for movement. But the paths were still. He didn't even see any patrolling guards, not that any would be out at this hour. No one ever dared attack the castle, or at least, no one had made an attempt for as long as Dante had been staying there.

Sleep mixed with boredom lured the teen back toward bed. Dante reached for the window to close it, but as he was about to shut it, a second howl cut through the night. Dante froze, his gaze darting this way and that, seeking the source of the sound. A shifting shadow soon caught his eye, and he watched it as it slunk nearer to the boundary between castle and forest.

Dante had been brought to the Nascent from a different world, and he hadn't been expecting the wolves of this land to be the same as the ones in his home. But he was surprised to see the wolf exit the forest on two feet instead of four, its front arms swinging gangly and long at its side.

Still, it looked enough like a wolf that it had to be the source of that howling. A long muzzle ended in a wet, black nose, and two furry ears perked upright on the top of its head. Its posture was that of an apex predator, confident in a lack of creatures big or vicious enough to pose a threat. Its long limbs ended in large paws, the front ones almost resembling hands. Behind it swung a long tail. It was beautiful in how deadly it was, all toothy maw and sharpened claw. The fur that covered it seemed soft from a distance, running gray-black down its back but snowy white across its chest, stomach, limbs, and under its chin. As Dante watched it skulk along the path, head raised as it sniffed this way and that, he wondered how possible it was for him to get one as a pet.

Light started to tinge the edges of the night sky, and Dante swore softly under his breath. He had headed to bed even later than he'd intended, and now the howls and his curiosity had kept him up until dawn.

The wolf below him made a snuffling sound, and Dante returned his focus on it just in time for him to catch the changes.

The fur coating its body retracted into its body, revealing tanned, smooth skin. The ears shrank and shifted to the sides of the creature's face as the hair on its head cascaded down its back, long enough to keep Dante from seeing too much as firm breasts bloomed from its chest.

The wolf was a person.

The wolf-woman staggered as even more changes took hold, whimpers rising up in her throat that changed from lupine to human the more she changed. Eventually, she collapsed to the ground near the smallest of the storage buildings. Her claws shrank away, leaving her with regular nails and slender fingers to use to claw her way toward privacy.

Dante stared, fixated on what he was observing and not quite believing his eyes.

The wolf-turned-woman managed to open the door to the storage building and vanished inside. Dante lingered, his muscles tight. He wanted to lunge for his pants and shirt and race down there to face her and ask her questions. But he was worried that he wouldn't see what direction she went in if she left while he wasn't there to observe.

He watched, waiting. Hie breath came in short, sharp puffs.

And soon enough, she came back out again wearing a gray servant's dress, which she brushed off before heading toward the castle gates.

Dante sprung into action, throwing on his pants and a shirt. His instincts told him to pull on his black riding gloves and his belt with the silver buckle that held his rapier, but he knew those would take up time he didn't have. All that mattered to him was that he wasn't indecent and that he was fast. He didn't mind facing the woman unarmed. He was curious more than anything, and that overrode any thoughts of self preservation he might have otherwise had.

Once he was decent, Dante bolted out of his room and ran down the stairs, racing toward the gates. The guards who patrolled the halls so early in the morning jumped to attention at the sight of one of their young lords racing by, snapping out of their half-asleep dazes to pretend they'd been alert the entire time.

When Dante finally made it to the front gate, he was frantic in his searching, looking this way and that for the servant girl he had seen. However, other than a half dozen guards patrolling and the stable hands out doing some morning chores, the area was empty.