Chapter 11

CIARA

Robert shoots Red.

Even as her body slumps above him, she snaps and blood spurts from his neck.

I should be horrified, should call an ambulance, but all I can do is drag her limp body away from his, towards the cottage.

The silence in the forest is deafening, with only whimpers coming from where Robert is bleeding out.

Red doesn't even whine.

He can stay there, I think furiously. He can stay there and he can bleed out and he can die. And then I'll be free.

From the woods there comes a throaty rumble, and when I turn to see, a whole pack of wolves come out from the trees. They head over to me first, sniff at Red and whine, and nose my hand in a way that feels welcoming. That feels like family, or pack, or whatever the hell this is. And then they turn on Robert and stalk towards him.

Maybe there is something I can do, but I choose not to. I choose to turn my back on the man who beat me and tortured me, who broke my spirit and ruined my life. I turn my back and I walk away.

Red is bleeding profusely when I manage drag her over the threshold into my cottage, and her eyes are open and unseeing.

She's dead.

I don't know what to do, how to mourn this wolf who came into my life and changed it around. Who saved me. It's almost as if I float outside my body, watching as I try to stem the bleeding, grabbing tea towels, blankets, anything to stop the nightmare that is unfolding in front of me.

It's never happened before. He'd threatened my friends, threatened my family—that's what visiting Grannie had been about—but the threat had always been enough to keep me in line. Red is dead and it's all my fault.

Her fur moves, just slightly and I wonder if it's some kind of post-death nerve aftershock, only it doesn't stop. The fur moves again, and this time it's rippling.

That's downright disturbing.

Red's fur ripples and undulates and then her whole body is moving and trembling and shaking and I must be hazy from the shock because she changes. She changes into a very bloody, very naked human.

A naked, bloody body, lying on the floor of my living room.

What the actual fuck?

I walk away from the body, towards the door, and most of the wolves are no longer in sight. There's just a bloody mess where Robert had been lying, and a wolf standing guard by the door. He yips when I go to leave and with a growl at him, low and gruff, his ears flatten back and he offers me his throat submissively.

Blinking, I stare at him.

Wolves don't act like that with humans. They don't act like with anyone but other, more dominant wolves.

He thinks that you're a wolf.

Why the fuck does he think that you're a wolf?

But there's a human that used to be a wolf in my living room, and if that's a thing that can happen then…

Stalking back, I grab a blanket and place it over this new Red. She's got dark hair, so dark it's almost black, and I feel a little foolish for having named her Red. I've got redder hair than she does. I want to check her body for bullet holes, but it feels intrusive, like I should get her permission—even if she is passed out on my floor.

I kneel down and just think, try to scan through all the information that I have. All the new information.

Red was a wolf. Now she's a woman.

Robert was here. Now he's… not here? I amend that thought, dead. Robert is certainly dead.

And me?

It hits me. Whatever Red and her wolf friends have done, I'm free. I don't have to hide anymore. I can start again, live a life in the open.

My hands shake, and I tremble so intensely that I think I might fall. So I sit. On the floor, in a puddle of blood, and I cry.

It's not the first time that I've cried like this, but it will be the last. And that knowledge hits me as hard as the sobs that wrack my body.

"Ciara." The voice is cracked, as if it hasn't been used much, a strong brogue coloring the word. "Are you well?"

I raise my head and see dark eyes looking back at me. The same eyes that I've seen for months, looking at me from a wolf.

"Red?" I don't know what to make of this, how to understand what has happened, but I clasp the shaky hand she proffers, and hold on. "You're alive?"

Her smile is tentative, as if the muscles haven't been used in a very long time. "I'm alive."