Free Goldenlocks and Her Forbidden Desire by Julianne Reyer

Chapter 1 - Punished in the Forbidden Forest
    D ARK clouds shrouded the sun and hung low over the damp forest. In the distance, a single plume of smoke reached up from the tree-lined horizon like a shadowy claw damning the heavens above.
    As I stumbled over a loose root in the mud, I shot worried glances at the black blemish through the trees. My village was burning and I had nowhere to flee but these murky, forbidden woods.
    The wolfmen often wandered south during the winter, to raid and pillage the rural tribes who lived in the lower grasslands. But the cold season lingered too long into the spring and the vicious half-beasts were becoming bolder.
    I jumped down into a rocky creek, splashing my scratchy gray wool skirt and startling a fox, who bounded into the brush. My rough leather boots were already soaked and the skin on my legs was numb from the cold. But I ignored the discomfort as my fear drove me onward.
    They struck in the dim light of the early dawn, flowing across the grasslands in a tide of gray fur. I stood and watched with frozen horror as the wolfmen slaughtered our livestock. Then, as the townsfolk ran from the hamlet onto the plains, the raiders tossed burning torches into the peat and straw covered huts.
    My shocked disbelief caused me to hesitate as a burning stick flew through the door to my home, and ignited the rush-lined floor. Smoke stung my nostrils and the heat choked my lungs. But I was stuck, wide-eyed, fixated by the destruction of the only place I'd ever called home.
    The fire quickly spread out to the dry, insulated walls and grabbed for the timber-framed roof.
    Dancing in the flames before me, I witnessed a flickering image of a woman, growing into a tall shadow that crept up the wall and towered over me. She was naked and the long hair danced around her shoulders with the thrashing of her head. Horns grew from the top of the phantom and her arms reached around me, as if she would consume me in her searing embrace.
    A piercing howl woke me from my mesmerized state with a yelp. Then I turned and scrambled through the doorway as the room dissolved in the inferno. Dressed in their rough-hewn leather and dangling, bone decorated belts, the gray-furred wolfmen dashed from hut to hut, snarling and keening in their bloodlust. But I managed to slip out of the village in the chaos and into the grassy pasture beyond.
    Hopefully unseen , I prayed as I crawled up a soft embankment. Their wolf senses were sharp but they became narrow-sighted when they worked themselves into a frenzy.
    And I didn't want to find out what they did to the women they stole back to the snow-packed north.
    It wasn't supposed to be like this. The guardians were bound to protect us and bring forth the warm spring. Why have my fathers forsaken me? I lamented as I fled deeper into the woods I'd sworn never to enter. But I had to find them.
    And my mother. She always knew what to do.
    The villagers called her "Rowan the Wise Woman" when they addressed her directly, but all my life I'd heard the muttered gossip, "witch." My mother knew, of course, but she was unfazed by their judgment. She was beautiful, kind-natured, and connected to the living earth in ways I couldn't understand. Their scorn was trivial compared to the greater mysteries she'd spent her life studying.

    Growing up as an outcast hadn't been so easy for me. As a young girl, I'd been taunted by the other children, called "Aurea the Witch's Brat" as they yanked my blonde hair until I cried. And I found no refuge from the adults who'd sneered down at me, claiming that I was an unnatural child who had no father.

    The shame brought on by those insults hurt worse than the bullying of the other children. I didn't have a father, and my mother only shook her head sadly when I prodded her with questions of his whereabouts. So eventually I learned to swallow the pain and accept what life had given me.

    Then my mother's magic turned our lives upside down. She bound the three