Page 64 of Witch Undecided
“Please…” Its crazy silver eyes widened, and its mouth quivered. “Please don’t kill me.”
The crunch of bracken filled the clearing. The feywarg stiffened, then froze as the golden form of Halle padded toward me with a feywarg dangling from her jaws. The feywarg by the tree let out a sound that was a cross between a wail and a shriek.
Halle dropped her cargo, lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl, and pounced. I acted on instinct, throwing myself between the feywarg and Halle.
“Stop!”
Three more wolves from our pack joined us in the clearing, carrying more feywarg bodies.
Halle jerked her nose up at me, her eyes clouded in confusion.
Did she know? “It can talk.”
Halle chuffed and then the air rippled as she shifted into human form. “What are you talking about?”
I looked down at the feywarg. “Say something, dammit.”
The creature fixed its silver eyes on Halle and hissed.
“Cora, get away from it,” Halle snapped.
This was crazy. “It spoke to me.”
“They can’t speak. They’re vicious predators. Nothing more.”
“You’re the vicious ones,” it squeaked.
Halle jerked back. “Fuck.”
“You kill us. You hunt us. All we want is food. We have a right to eat.”
The other wolves shifted back into human form, steam rising off their bodies and evaporating into the freezing night air. They joined us, faces pale with shock.
“This can’t be happening,” one of them said. “This must be a trick.”
Confusion rippled over us and then the feywarg bolted.
No one tried to stop it. Everyone’s attention was on the tree with rabbits piled next to it.
The elation in my chest from the hunt faded. The feywarg attacked livestock and wildlife, but if the stories of the fae realm’s demise were true, then these creatures were living in a dying realm. Starving. Maybe our world was the only place they could get food. The rabbits were their haul. To take home to feed their families? Oh, God.
The hunt didn’t feel like fun anymore. In fact, I felt kinda icky.
“They’ve never spoken,” a brunette wolf said.
“We’ve never given them a chance,” Halle added.
“It doesn’t matter,” another wolf said. “They kill livestock and cute bunnies.”
“And we don’t?” Halle ran a hand over her face. “They’re not mindless, vicious predators. We need to report this to Heather. Reassess the hunt. Maybe we can communicate with them and come to an arrangement.”
“How?” the brunette said. “They procreate too fast. The numbers will overwhelm us if we don’t cull them, and—”
Howls lit up the night in the distance. Halle’s head shot up. This must be a signal that more feywarg had been sighted.
“Fuck,” Halle said. “We’d better find Heather.”
I’d barely taken a step when the world went completely silent. The wolves tensed, and then a sharp crack of snapping twigs cut through the air. The women surrounded me, their naked bodies pale in the moonlight.
