Sherrilyn Kenyon: Love At First Bite

She thought it had ended, the storm that raged between them, battered them, spat them out upon the shore to do nothing but lie exhausted, but then Merrick groaned and rolled away from her. He doubled up, clutching his stomach.

Anne struggled to turn on her side. Her limbs felt as if they had no bones. "What is it, Merrick?"

He didn't answer, but his body jerked. Anne wasn't familiar with lovemaking, but she didn't suspect this was part of it. "Merrick," she tried again. "Look at me. Tell me what is wrong!"

He tilted his head back. His eyes glowed blue, which was not something she hadn't seen before, but as he gasped with the pain, the moonlight gleamed off of his teeth, and they did not look like they had a moment earlier. His eyeteeth had lengthened and strongly resembled fangs. She touched his face and he grabbed her wrist. Anne nearly screamed. His fingers were bent, his nails jutting from his fingertips like claws.

Staring down at his hand, as she did, Merrick quickly released her. "What am I?" he whispered, and his voice came out garbled. "What am I?" he shouted, his voice in agony as his body began to convulse and contort.

Anne scrambled away from him. She grabbed her blanket from the ground and wrapped it around her. Trembling, she watched, both helpless and terrified. What she saw taking place before her could not be real. Such things only happened in nightmares. Merrick still lay on the ground, naked, contorting, but as she watched, hair began to cover his body. His limbs shrank, his features changed, and where once a man lay on the blanket it was a beast that rose on all fours and stood staring at her in the darkness.

"Merrick?" she whispered.

The beast did not respond. Instead, it glanced skyward at the full moon. The wolf howled, and in that sound Anne heard all the sorrow and anger of a man betrayed.

The animal lowered its head and stared at Anne. It peeled back its lips, displaying impressive fangs. Loved by him as a man, killed by him as a beast . That thought floated through Anne's mind before the darkness crept deeper into her vision, surrounded her from all sides, swallowed her whole.

The sun peeking through the trees woke Anne. She was curled in a ball, her blanket clutched around her. For a moment she couldn't remember where she was or why. She tried to move and her muscles protested. The ache between her legs brought the night before flooding back. She sat abruptly and glanced around the campsite.

Merrick sat on a log staring at her. He'd donned his trousers and sat with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, shivering. He looked human again… almost. His eyes were haunted.

"What happened to me, Anne?"

She didn't want to think about that. She wanted desperately to pretend last night had never happened… at least up to a certain point. "You turned into a wolf."

He blinked. "What do you mean? I acted like a beast?"

Anne had trouble grasping what had happened last night, much less explaining it, and to the person it happened to. She could only be straightforward. "No, Merrick. A wolf. An animal. You turned into one before my very eyes."

He ran a shaky hand through his hair; then he held his hand in front of him and stared at it. "What you're saying is impossible."

"It is possible," she countered, tugging her blanket tighter around her in the chilly morning air. "I would have never thought so… until last night."

He rose and shrugged from his blanket. "We must have dreamed it," he said, and the look in his eyes begged her to agree with him.

Could Anne pretend? Her whole life had been a pretense up until now. She must be honest with him and with herself. "Your gifts," she said. "Could this be another one of them?"

"Gifts?" he growled. "If what you say happened to me did, it's no gift, Anne. It's a curse."

"What do you recall of last night?" she asked.

His angry features softened for a moment. Merrick joined Anne, bending beside her. "Us," he answered. "Together. As one. Then the pain. The horrible pain. After that, nothing until I woke naked and shivering in the woods this morning."

Anne glanced down at her hands clasped around the blanket. "I thought I was going to die," she confessed, glancing back up at him. "When you stood before me as a wolf, I thought you would kill me."

His eyes misted and he glanced away from her. "I would never hurt you, Anne. I'd take my own life before I'd let myself, in any form, take yours." He glanced back at her. "I've got to go from here."

Today was to be her wedding day. And no, it would not have been a grand affair with flowers and a church and all of society turned out, but whatever it was, it was meant to be hers. Last night, Anne had found all she was looking for in this man. She couldn't let the dream go.

"Maybe it won't happen again." Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but Anne wasn't certain she wasn't right. Perhaps last night they were both drugged, drugged on each other, when she thought he'd turned into a wolf.

"What if it does, Anne?"

"What if it doesn't?" she countered.

He stared into her eyes for a long time before he said, "All right. I'll give it one more night. I hope it's not a mistake, Anne."

Merrick went hunting in the afternoon. His senses, always stronger, he suspected, than those of a normal man, were now heightened tenfold. He heard as he had never heard before. Saw movement in the brush and the distance no mortal man could see. At times, when he spotted an animal, he did not see the animal at all but only the blood pumping red through its veins.

Could what Anne said happened last night have really happened? Flashes had gone through his mind all day. Flashes of them together, making love, then the pain, the sight of his hand, covered in hair, claws jutting from his fingernails. He felt almost sick now with the memory of it… sick, and yet as he watched Anne move around the camp he felt something else. Something primal. The instinct to mate with her again.

Merrick shook his head and tried to dislodge the thought. He'd spilled his seed in Anne last night, certain that he would marry her today. If he really was this beast now, this man by day and an animal by night, he could not marry her. And yet he might have planted his bastard. He above all men should know better than to do that to any child.

"Anne, come here," he called.

She glanced up from throwing another handful of branches on the fire, where a spit roasted their supper. He hoped she would show wariness of him, but she did not hesitate to come to him.

"What is it, Merrick?"

She stood before him, so beautiful, her eyes etched with worry… worry for him, he realized. "Sit." He nodded toward the place next to him.

"But our supper—" she began.

"Can wait," he finished.

Anne sat beside him. He took her pale, delicate hand in his. "Tonight, once the moon is up, if it happens again, I want you to make me a promise."

"That tree," Anne said, nodding in the direction where their bedrolls were spread. "I can climb it easily if—"

"No," he interrupted, staring deep into her eyes. "I don't want you to run from me, Anne." Merrick took the pistol from his waistband and handed it to her. "I want you to kill me."

Her lovely eyes widened. She refused to take the weapon he tried to press into her hand. "No, Merrick," she breathed. "Don't ask me to do that. I love you."

His heart twisted inside of his chest. He took her hand and forced the pistol into it. "If you love me, you'll do this for me, Anne. I'll have no life. A man by day, a beast by night. I'd be better off dead."

Tears filled her eyes. She shook her head. "You can have a life, Merrick. One with me. Like we planned. I've been thinking. We could go to the Wulf brothers—"