A.N.D. - Wolf Woods

The last time a wolf chased her, she’d broken a vase over his head and pushed him out a window. There was neither vase nor window here... but there was a baby that she needed to protect. With a strength born of determination and fear, Virginia ripped a branch off the tree and slammed it down on the yellow curls in front of her.

The Persuasion winked out as he went down, motionless and bleeding. Startled, the youth jumped back, but the redhead snarled and pounced. Virginia rammed the branch into his gut as hard as possible, and he backed off. Then he lunged forward again, ripping the branch out of her hands on his next retreat. A vicious, bloodcurdling snarl rang through the woods as he crouched to pounce...

Wolf hit him like a freight train. They went down in a ball of snapping teeth, punching arms, and flailing legs. The youth stood irresolute, sometimes twitching towards the fighters as if to help, sometimes looking over his shoulder at escape. Virginia and her reclaimed tree branch made up his mind for him. She missed a clean shot to the head, but she got him hard enough on the shoulder to knock him over. Another wild swing caught him on the knee as he tried to get up, and he howled and started trying to crawl off.

Sudden silence behind her made Virginia turn in apprehension. In the gathering darkness she could see one form rising from a crumpled body, but not which wolf was lying on the ground. She got a better grip on her branch as the wolf came out of the shadows.

It was Wolf, bleeding from a few bites and with the beginning of a black eye, but otherwise okay. “WOLF!” She dropped the branch and flew to him as fast as she could waddle.

“Virginia, did they hurt you?” he asked as he grabbed her into a fierce, protective hug.

“Wolf? Virginia?” The young wolf gulped. “You’re... you’re...?”

Wolf snarled furiously, releasing Virginia and pouncing on the boy in one smooth move. “You’re in very deep trouble!”

“I didn’t know! I didn’t know you were... I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, we’ll never bother you again...”

“But you’ll go bother other people? This is what I fought for? This is what you use the pardon for?” Wolf knotted his fists into the boy’s collar and yanked him off the ground, letting his boots dangle as yellow eyes glared into yellow eyes. “I should kill you. But I need you. You’re going to take a message for me. You’re going to run to your home pack and tell them that any wolf who hurts a human from now on answers to me. You’re going to tell them that I’ll tell Wendell to rip that pardon right up if I so much as hear of anything like this happening again.” He shook the kid in time with his last words. “Do. You. Understand?”

“Y-y-y-y-yes sir!” As the boy whined and twisted in midair, Virginia saw that he’d wet himself. “L-l-l-let m-m-me just g-g-g-get my packm-m-mates...”

Wolf shook him once again. “You don’t have time, little boy. You have a message to deliver, and I want to hear it howling in the wind tonight. GO!” He threw the boy several feet away, where he scrambled to his feet and limped off into the darkness.

Behind them, the other two were stirring. No longer feeling all that brave, Virginia squeaked and hid behind her husband. “They said...”

“I heard what they said.” Wolf shook her off and strode back, savagely kicking the other wolves in the head and body until they stopped moving again.

She should stop him. This wasn’t right, he couldn’t just hit them when they were down. But instead of calling to him, Virginia cradled her gigantic belly, feeling the baby shift beneath her palms. What they had planned on doing... She winced in time with the blows, but said nothing.

Wendell was leaning out of his window, enjoying the warm evening, when he saw Wolf striding across the courtyard, tenderly carrying his wife. Virginia’s head was down on his shoulder, her arms twined around his neck. The pose was romantic, but there was something off. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was wrong.

He pushed his window wider and leaned out. “Are you both all right?”

Wolf paused in the light of the sconces by the palace wall and looked up. Wendell gasped at the bruises on his face.

“Wendy,” Wolf said matter-of-factly, “you’ve got wolf problems.”

“I didn’t want to believe the reports,” Wendell confessed as the royal physician and Virginia fussed around Wolf. “I didn’t know any wolves like that, and of course, no wolf wanted to discuss it with me. I thought that the people who complained were just trying to make trouble for wolves. There are people like that. Troublemakers.”

“Wolves are people too,” Wolf shot back irritably, hissing through his teeth as the physician painted his cuts with something. “Not all of them are nice. There’s no way to make all of them nice. What you have to do is treat them like people-reward the good, punish the naughty, and let everyone else just go quietly and peacefully about their lives.”

“You know that everyone’s just waiting for me to fail and rescind the pardon. I don’t want to do that. But I don’t know how to make things right.”

Wolf shrugged and winced. “Do what we did when we rescued you.”

Wendell glared at him. “You made it up as you went along!”

“And it worked, didn’t it?” Virginia pointed out.