Ten

It was a weird and eerie chorus. She knew it was the tundra wolves. Their baying was distinctive and she had learned to recognize it. They knew he had died and they were wailing at his passing, crying out to the night. First one would wail, like a weeping daemon, then the others would follow, their cries drifting like ghosts, climbing along the moonbeams into the dark.

Her own weeping had stopped. Her convulsions had died away, leaving her wracked and desolate inside. She had gone beyond grief into emptiness. There is nothing quite so terrible as the complete loss of meaning. And her own life, with the loss of his, had also lost its meaning.

She did not know how long she had lain there, listening to the agonizing cries of the wolves, watching the small flames among the embers of the fire. It might have been an hour or more. Tears welled up again in her eyes and she reached out her hand to stroke his head one last time. But she did not find hair with her fingers. She found skin, and it was not cold skin. It was warm.

She scrambled to her knees, wiping the tears from her face with the backs of her hands. He lay there, naked, with the light of the dying embers playing on his skin. She reached for his wrist and felt for his pulse, it was strong and steady. She gave a small cry and jumped to her feet. She ran and piled logs on the fire, fanning it back to life. Then she grabbed more bedding and laid it over him, cuddling up next to him with tears of joy streaming down her face.

“Mark, oh Mark...”

His eyelids flickered and his eyes opened. He stared for a moment at the ceiling, then turned to smile at her. He spoke softly.

“I was in a dark place. I was going into the blackness under the trees. But you came for me. The wolf is gone. I can feel that.”

She ran her hand over the hard muscles of his stomach and his chest. “It was the only way to save you…”

“I know. You have set me free. We…they…can choose the wolf form. But when death approaches they have no choice. They must die as wolves.”

“Was that you in Brooklyn? Did you come and see me as a wolf?”

He nodded, “But from now on, I will always be with you as a man. He rolled on his side so their noses were touching, and he kissed her gently on the lips. She smiled, “Take it easy. You’re weak, you almost died…”

He silenced her with another kiss.

“So let’s not waste time. Life is too short.”

It was not brutal. It was not bestial. He gently removed all her clothes so that they were naked together in the firelight. She lay bank, languid and luxurious, and he kissed every inch of her body, slowly, tenderly, lingering exquisitely on her nipples, running his tongue slowly down her belly to gently bite her hips. She smiled and writhed with deep pleasure, stroking his hair as he buried his face between her thighs, taking bug, succulent mouthfuls of her.

She groaned, and her excitement began to build as his tongue moved from long, moist licks to rapid flicks, sending burning tingles through her loins into her belly. She pushed up into his face and he cupped her ass in his hands. He growled and hunched his shoulders as her excitement infected him, flicking his tongue harder and faster until the spasms of pleasure wracked her and he plunged his tongue deep inside her, biting at her with his teeth.

Then, as she collapsed, he towered over her. Her legs parted and she dilated, groaning with pleasure. She felt him, hard as stone, slide inside her. He bent down, biting her nipples, sending shards of exquisite pain piercing into her. She arched her chest to him. He gripped her waist in his powerful hands and ran his tongue from her chest to her neck and bit hard. She cried out and he began his steady driving rhythm. She felt him growing bigger and harder as he pushed and withdrew, then pushed again, deeper, growing faster. The sting of the friction of their moist skin rubbing and slipping together was an intoxicating tingle. She groaned again, then cried out. He smothered her mouth with his, driving into her, pounding faster. His face grew savage, his neck swelled and suddenly he was roaring like an animal. She was clawing at his back. They were grappling, clinging to each other, her legs wrapped about him as wave after wave of orgasms shook their bodies.

Then they lay in exquisite stillness, he still inside her, pulsing gently, and they kissed, long, deep kisses, luxuriating in each other’s perspiration, and the intoxicating smell of each other’s bodies. As they drifted off into sleep, she whispered in his ear, “You are still a fucking animal…”

He smiled and kissed her.

“Your animal.”

They came just after dawn.

He was suddenly awake and sat up. She rolled on her back and smiled luxuriously at him. But he was not smiling.

He said, “They are here. Have you a weapon?”

She sat up, trying to focus. “Only the tranquilizer rifle.”

“That will have no effect when the howling is on them. I haven’t the strength anymore. We need weapons.”

She got to her feet and began to pull on her clothes.

“Knives, the wood cutting axe…”

“Haven’t you got a hunting rifle? Don’t you hunt?”

“No.” She stopped and stared at him. “But I might have an idea. How far away are they?”

He looked abstracted.

“I don’t know. I haven’t got my senses any more. It’s like I can sense them, but not clearly. They will arrive soon.”

She said, “OK. Get dressed. Fast!”

Five minutes later they were scrambling onto the snowmobile and tearing off across the snow towards the forest. Mark shouted in her ear. “You are leaving huge tracks. They will follow you easily!”

“I know!”

She drove fast for maybe ten or twelve minutes, until she came to a wide clearing by a shallow valley. Then she slowed, killed the engine and climbed off. Mark stared at her and shook his head.

“This is your plan? To meet them in the open, without weapons.”

She swallowed and wished she felt as confident as she was trying to sound.

“Trust me.”

“Yes, Mark, trust her.”

They turned. Sylvia and Cún were standing some fifteen yards away from them, down wind, where they had emerged from the cover of the trees. It was Sylvia who had spoken. Now she went on.

“After all, she has been really good for you so far, hasn’t she? What has she done for you? She has cost you your leadership of the pack, your position of Tiarna, your wolf-blood, and now, your life. I would say you would be wise to trust her.”

Then Cún spoke, saying, “Not to mention leaving a trail that a young whelp could follow, from New York to Alaska, and then from your little cabin right to this spot which, I think you will agree, is a perfect spot for a wolf to make its kill.”

It was Maria who answered. She stared Sylvia right in the eye and said, “Yes, it is, isn’t it, Sylvia. I thought it would be rather poetic.”

It happened in a fraction of a second. The pack erupted from the trees on all sides, with vicious snarls and growls, led by the huge alpha male and his female. They overwhelmed the Sylvia and Cún in a matter of seconds, dragging them to the ground and tearing at their throats before they had time even to begin their metamorphosis. Their screams of terror rent the freezing air as the pack closed in over them in a wild feeding frenzy in the frozen wilderness. Maria watched their feet kick and thrash, and then go still. It was a fitting place and a fitting way for these two predators to find their final resting place, as humans, devoured by wolves.

Mark and Maria turned away as the pack dragged the two corpses off into the trees, to feed the pack. Maria said, “It was the only weapon we had. They had befriended me, they lamented the death of your wolf for hours last night. I knew that if we were threatened here, on their patch, they would come to our aid. I am sorry you had to witness it like that, Mark.”

He put his arms around her and held her tight.

“It was a fitting end. It is I, Maria, who should apologize to you for everything you have had to go through because of our arrogance.” He looked down at her and held her face in his hands. “Thank you for seeing the human being behind the beast, and setting it free.”

And he kissed her.