Hannah Pole - Silence of the Wolves

Tam could barely hold in a gasp as she took him in. He had one of her towels wrapped around his hips, and shoulders that took up half the sofa he was leaning against. His chest and stomach were broad and heavily muscled, a light dusting of black hair ran down his chest and disappeared into the towel.

Even as he slept, his features twisted into an expression that looked particularly wolfish.

She must be going mad. This sort of thing just didn’t happen in real life. Hell, she’d seen stories at the paper on murders, rapes, the works. Her colleagues had worked on so many cases that resonated fear and destruction, but watching a wolf turn into a man was absolutely mad, it was something out of stories and bad television programmes, not reality. Taking a deep breath, and trying to process everything that had happened to her, Tam carefully scanned the rest of the room. It was completely empty. Nothing and no one else there. What the hell had happened?

She glanced back at the undeniably gorgeous man and panic swept through her anew. She needed to get the hell out of here. She needed to put as much distance between her and this insanity as she physically could. Her heart thundered violently in her throat, her hands trembling as she attempted to formulate a plan of escape.

Trying to be as quiet as she physically could, Tamriel moved her arms, attempting to shift the blankets piled on top of her. The movement had her flinching as pain ricocheted through her; what the hell? Carefully she shuffled the blankets down to expose her chest. Thankfully she had been covered with a sheet that was wrapped around her torso, but her top half was very bare underneath. There was one hell of a bandage wrapped around her stomach; it was dark red in places. Every movement, every breath, brought tears to her eyes.

As she eyed the wound, memories flooded back to her. She was running away from that mad man, terrified of what she’d witnessed, of what he’d said. Terrified of him. More than that, she was terrified of the fact that the words he’d spoken echoed the thoughts she’d had all her life. Words that she had questioned since she was old enough to realise that she was different, that she had stronger senses than anyone she knew. She was absolutely terrified of the fact that as he’d changed from wolf to man, it seemed to her like the most natural motion in the world. It had called to her instincts and made her hunger to do the same, to become wolf. And that, beyond all else, was absolutely crazy. Hell, werewolves were a myth, a thing of fiction not reality. And what she had seen, the transformation, should have made her question her sanity, look for hidden cameras or magic tricks. The reporter in her wanted to do just that; wanted to find the facts hidden beneath one of the most unexplainable things she’d ever witnessed but, in her heart, she knew there was something more to this. And she knew that she was something more than human.

Pulling herself back to reality, Tam tried to make a plan of action, but the pain tearing its way through her body made even thinking difficult. She needed clothes, and she needed to get out of here.

She took a deep breath in and forced her feet off the sofa. As her legs slid to the side, however, a new, searing pain shot up from her ankle. It must be broken.

Tam sat there for the longest of moments, tears streaming down her face, breathing deeply through the pain. When it finally subsided a bit, she blinked away the tears and tried desperately to focus.

As the room came into view again through her blurred vision, she gasped. That man, that wolfman, had woken up and was standing directly over her. He was still wearing the towel; the small bit of material barely covered him. Even so, he managed to look huge; impressively tall and excessively manly. Even in a pink bath towel. Fear wrapped itself around her so rapidly that she could have sworn her heart just stopped beating, and her body was shaking so violently it was a wonder she didn’t vibrate right off the sofa.

There was a madman in a pink towel stood in her living room, looming over her, and she was stuck, unable to move off her goddamn sofa.

‘You’re awake.’

Tam didn’t speak, couldn’t. She was in so much pain that she could barely breathe. And the sight of this mostly naked man was doing little to help that.

‘Are you OK?’ Then he winced. ‘OK, that was a stupid question. Here, let me help you.’

‘I’m fine,’ Tam hissed out through clenched teeth. The man didn’t listen to her. In one swift movement, he scooped her into his arms and, before she even had time to scream, he’d gently swung her around and carefully propped her up into a sitting position on her sofa, covering her with blankets.

‘Who are you?’ Tam spat, trying desperately to breathe properly.

‘I’m Leyth,’ he said, as if that would explain everything. She waited, but quickly worked out he wasn’t going to say any more, so she tried a different tactic.

‘What the hell happened?’ she said, motioning to her stomach.

‘You fell in the woods. Your ankle got caught in a trap, then you fell on a dead tree branch.’

‘I remember running. From you.’ He winced as she said it, his eyes darting away. He actually looked regretful, guilty almost. ‘I remember getting my foot caught. How did I get home?’

‘I carried you.’ Oh, obviously. A naked man carrying a bleeding woman through the streets of Folkestone, like that went unnoticed.

‘Well, I’m fine. You can leave now.’

‘You’re not fine, Tamriel. And I’m not leaving you.’ God this man was irritating.

‘Leyth, if that really is your name. I’m honestly fine. It’s just a scratch. You can leave me now.’

‘You’re not.’ To prove a point, he walked over and carefully prodded her stomach. She winced as his fingers met her raw stomach and those damn tears started filling her vision once more. ‘And I can’t leave you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you know too much.’ Crap. It dawned on her why he was so reluctant to leave. She’d seen him change, shift from wolf to man, though part of her was still insisting that it was a dream, a magic trick. She now knew a very big secret, an incredibly well-hidden secret. One that would make front-page news without a doubt. If she could prove it.

This man clearly wasn’t going to let her leave here alive if he thought she was going to tell anyone his secret though.

‘No I don’t, I don’t know anything.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘I can’t remember anything that happened in the woods, I’m not even sure how I got there.’

‘Nice try.’ He flashed her a grin. ‘But you remember running from me, and that means you probably remember why you were running.’ Crap.

‘I won’t tell anyone.’

‘I know, I won’t let you.’ Double crap.

‘So what, you’re just going to keep me hostage in my own house?’

‘Until I can work out what to do with you, yes.’

Panic rippled up her spine. Was he going to kill her? Why the hell had she chased that wolf out into the woods? Her tendency to jump into situations before thinking about them had always gotten her into trouble. Why was she such a stubborn idiot? Now what was she going to do? She was stuck in her own apartment, with a brute who easily swamped her in size, unable to run because she was badly injured.

‘Are you going to kill me?’ Tamriel looked the guy straight in the eye. No point in beating around the proverbial bush.

‘What?’ The man looked genuinely shocked at her words. ‘Hell, no. Why would I do that?’

‘Because I know your secret.’

‘Shit. Tamriel, no, I’m not going to kill you.’

‘Why not?’ OK, so maybe she shouldn’t be questioning his motives. If he wasn’t going to kill her, she should just leave it at that, right?