Page 8 of Scarlett's Wicked Wolf
That smell. What is that smell?
It seeps into my lungs like silk, sweet and intoxicating. Rich chocolate. Red wine. The first snowflake melting on your tongue. Grandma’s spiced orange tea on a winter morning. It makes me feel… safe.
But also hungry. Desperate.Possessed.
It’s not the hunger in my stomach. No, this craving blooms lower.Deeper.
My eyes flutter open. A shadow stands near the bed, huge and male, cut from firelight and dusk. A fire crackles in a stone hearth. The room smells of smoke, soap, and rain-wet wool.
He smells like that scent. Something I want. No, something my body insists I need.
The light is low, a mix of firelight and dusk, so I can only see the hard lines of his body. Broad chest. Long limbs. Sharp cheekbones. Black hair brushing his shoulders. And those eyes…
Golden, bright, and unblinking. My pulse trips under the weight of that gaze, like it could consume me whole and call it mercy.
He looks like a man carved from storm wood and flame. But something inside meknows he’s not just a man.
Panic flares as my brain catches up.
The wolf.The one that saved me—no, bit me.Claimedme.
“Stay back.” My voice scrapes from my throat, raw and ragged. I push myself upright, clutching the heavy blanket to my chest as I shuffle to the edge of the bed. “Don’t come closer.”
“I won’t.” His voice is a growl wrapped in velvet, sliding down my spine like molten heat.
I glance around. I’m in a small cabin with one bed, a table with a dented kettle, shelves crowded with jars, bundles of dried herbs hanging like forest chandeliers. Not Grandma’s. Not home.
Where the hellamI?
And why does my body feel like it’s made offlame? I’m burning. My skin glows with sweat. My muscles ache, and my mouth is dry.
My hand flies to my chest and my neck. No blood. No ragged wounds. Just two raised scars on my neck, faint and pebbled like twin crescent moons.
“M-my wounds…”
“Are healed,” he finishes. He doesn’t move. His expression gives me nothing and everything: restraint, regret, relief.
“You… bit me,” I whisper.
“Yes.” The stranger doesn’t deny it.
I want to scream. Ishouldscream, but something stops me. My body hums with strange energy. My magic—usually quiet and cooperative—thrashes beneath my skinlike a storm trapped in a bottle. I’m tethered to him with something invisible but unbreakable.
“Who are you? What did you do to me?”
“My name is Reid.” He winces, jaw tight. “And I didn’t mean to. You were dying. I had no other choice.” His eyes flicker with pain, as if he could not have borne that outcome.
My mouth opens and closes. I know enough about wolf bites to understand what this means. “You turned me into awolf?”
His silence is answer enough.
“I don’t understand,” I say, quieter now. “I’m no one. I’m not even… I didn’t think this was possible.”
“It’s not. Usually.” His eyes drop to the floorboards. “But you’re not no one. You carry old magic. Wild. I tasted it when I—” The word catches and burns. “When I bit you. It didn’t reject the change. It accepted it.”
Acceptedhim.
A pulse flares low in my belly, traitorous and bright. I cinch the blanket tighter.
