Free Wolf's Cross by S. A. Swann Page B

done so in the skin of a full wolf, which was not as hard as he’d thought it would be. Hunting before, he had always taken the halfway skin, which left him hands to grip and tear at his prey, as well as a muzzle to bite the neck. But his parents had told him that to be an adult, he would have to learn to use all the wolf he had within him.
    So, despite his reluctance, he’d done so, and the experience had changed him. Everything human became slow, pale, and bland in comparison. Even the power of the halfway skin couldn’t compare with the freedom he’d felt when he’d leapt at the animal’s neck.
    He had become an adult.
    Ever since, his bones ached for the change, and his tongue was hungry for the taste of the blood hot from the animal’s neck. Even though they were still eating from the carcass he had taken, Darien wanted to take another.
    That was why he had slipped away from his parents on a cold spring evening only three days afterward. He had shed his humanskin to revel in his fresh, fully lupine form. He didn’t understand why his parents were so reluctant to do this more often, or in the light. The freedom he felt was indescribable, the power over every creature in this forest. He could take any creature he wished and taste its lifeblood.
    He ran free as evening grew deeper, losing himself in the woods. He ran beyond the limits of his scent without quite realizing it. He was too intent on snapping at stray rabbits, taking the small bodies apart in a deadly snap of fangs and a spray of blood and fur.
    The shadows were long, and his muzzle slick with the blood of small animals, before he realized that he was lost. The thought struck him suddenly when he stumbled on an unfamiliar path heavy with strange scents. He stopped with the sudden realization that his disobedience had passed far beyond what his parents might forgive. He had no chance of returning before dark, before he would be missed.
    He looked desperately back and forth along the strange path, searching for any sign of familiarity, sucking in the air and hoping for the scent of his mother, his father, anyone from the village.
    He would never be taken on a hunt again …
    And with the growing terror in his breast, he would accept that as a worthwhile price for finding his way home.
    Panic and immaturity kept him from doing what his parents had told him to
always
do if he found himself in unfamiliar territory; he didn’t change back. He couldn’t. The woods were cold and dangerous, and he couldn’t face them clad naked in his weak human form. Fear made him pull himself into the halfway skin, the one he felt safest in while facing whatever terror the forest held.
    He was unprepared when the forest finally revealed its terror.
    It smelled strange, and stood astride the path ahead of him. Darien stopped, frozen at the sight of the creature. He couldn’tmake immediate sense of the sight. It was huge, four-legged, and the last rays of sunlight glinted off parts of its body. Something shaped vaguely like a person seemed to grow out of its back.
    He had never seen an armored knight before, and it took a moment before his brain recognized that someone was riding on a horse’s back—something his people never did. The rider bellowed and pointed an object at Darien. Darien was too confused to recognize the threat as the knight’s crossbow fired.
    He was saved only by distance and the panic of the rider. The bolt tore past him, grazing his side between his forearm and his shoulder. It stung like nothing he had ever felt before. He took off deep into the woods, where the rider and his beast couldn’t follow.
    As he ran through the darkening woods, he thought of the stories his parents had told him, about the men who lived beyond the dark woods. There was an especially dangerous type of man—the ones who had killed all the people who had worshipped their ancestors, the ones who had emptied the pagan village and left it abandoned, the ones who were the reason