The she-wolf raised her snout to the starry void and uttered a shattering howl. Her fur was stained with blood; her belly was hot with meat; the bristles of her pelt seemed to sing with the light of the white moon. The whimpering thing sprawled on the earth below her, clutched in her paws as she crouched over it, tried to push her off with bloodied, flailing hands. The sound that rumbled from her throat was somewhere between a growl and a laugh.

Wolfish eyes glared down into wide and terrified orbs of crystal blue, the eyes of a young and beautiful man whose voice and gestures had enchanted thousands on the Vilais stage. None of that helped him as the she-wolf lowered her muzzle to his throat, sank her fangs into his flesh, and tore his life away in a spray of crimson. Around them the stand of trees rustled pleasantly in the crisp night wind, the lights of Vilais shining a few miles to the west.

Lightly she felt something press against her side. Her muzzle wrinkled in a warning snarl, showing her dripping fangs. But the touch was soft, gentle, tender, the pawed hand she had come to savor since they had fled Munazyr. Her eyes met those of the wolf she had taken as her mate of both convenience and pleasure in the last few weeks, since Nashal had become so skittish and fearful. Korl's eyes glittered with a blaze of gold, boring heatedly into hers as he stretched his neck forward and lapped the hot blood from her cheek.

"Syerre," he growled against her ear, "share your kill with me."

The night was too pleasurable to argue. They had roistered the evening away in one of the more sumptuous brothels of Eastshore, Syerre turning the whores green with envy at her dancing, teasing the patrons with promises of carnal delights on which she had no intention of delivering. Korl and Nashal had both watched and applauded and drank without indulging -- the gift of the moon was not something to be wasted on a Vilais whore.

The city was too overcome with ostentatious grief at the loss of one of its greatest lights to pay any attention to a few missing (and foolish) witch-finders from Talinara, or to notice the proper justice that had been handed down to the erring Swiftfoot who had so arrogantly rejected the gift of the White Moon's champion. And through it all they had exchanged delighted glances and felt the wolf clawing its way to the surface in anticipation of the moon's brightness. Now they ran and hunted under it, and even Nashal seemed a little closer to his old self, to the Nashal that had prowled the night before being scorched by the cursewright's hateful sorcery, pierced by Captain Thalia's shot and powder.

Andreth had sent them here rather than have them accompany him and Melirra back to Gallowsport for Nashal's benefit. He had barely survived that night on the Old Godsway. Korl and Syerre holed up with him in an abandoned fishery for three days before he recovered enough to slip out of the city in the company of a band of mummers bound for Vilais. They had latched on to them both for the opportunity to recuperate in what was a comparatively quiet corner of the world and to take care of a thorn in the champion's side.

Nashal had performed well enough, dealing with the local Swiftfoot boss personally, but he was not the wolf he had been. Nightmares plagued him; they drove him awake in the small hours screaming in panic about how the dead were all around him and only waiting to tear him apart, and he had even had difficulty maintaining control of his shape. But perhaps there were advantages to his seemingly incurable anxiety.

"They are here, they are here," he had panted the morning before, clutching his knees to his chest. Syerre and Korl had found him that way at the edge of the campsite they had made on the furthest borders of the city, at the edge of a small farmhold.

Korl had been deeply concerned at first, wondering if the cursewright's magic had infected Nashal with a madness from which he could not recover. But as he and Syerre had tried to soothe Nashal's growing terror, almost in unison they realized that, lightly and enticingly, the scent of a newly turned she-wolf drifted through the morning air. That Nashal had fixated on whatever he sensed of the cursewright was troubling, but if not for his pained awareness they might not have cottoned onto the Princess Carala's presence until it was far too late.

The beauty of the moonlit night, Saya's rays gleaming on the distant walls of Vilais and shimmering through the rustling leaves, turning the blood of her kill black as it poured from the dead man's throat, reminded Syerre how much she envied the girl. For the pleasure of the hunt to be so new, for the unspeakably lovely sensations of surrendering to the moon above and the wolf within, to be experiencing those things with fresh senses again was something Syerre would have killed to feel for herself. Perhaps it was nostalgia that so colored her perceptions. It had been on a night quite like this one she had, trembling and as naked as any creature about to be born, been brought before Saya's champion, the White Moon Made Flesh, resplendent in silvered fur against the gleaming white sands.

The sounds of the ocean roared in Syerre's ears, for the champion's abode stood far closer to the sea than Vilais. With soft whimpers in her throat she had bared her thigh to snarling jaws, felt the hot animal breath on her flesh, then the delicious pain of the bite, accompanied mere hours later by far sweeter ministrations from Andreth himself, binding her to the White Moon as thoroughly as Carala would be only a few years later.

Nashal crept closer to them. Korl snarled at him. "Seek your own kill, Nashal. If you can stomach it." Nashal hung his head and padded off.

Syerre watched him with a contemptuous flicker in her eyes. It might do for them to return to Gallowsport without Nashal, though such decisions were really not theirs to make. But if they had the wolf princess with them, Syerre thought it unlikely either Andreth or Saya's champion would have much to complain about. Certainly the disposal of one fangless wolf ought not be held against them.

Korl bit at her side with a playful growl, eager to be running under the moon again. They would take their pleasures tonight, in blood and in other diversions, just as they knew Carala would be doing a few miles away. When the moon had set and no longer sang to them they would seek her out, her and her ragged little band of would-be protectors. Nashal and Korl could take their pick, from the tattooed giant who had killed Jossel to the fat little lordling who wasn't fit to lick his princess's pawed feet, but Syerre wanted the cursewright. For what he had done to Nashal, for defanging a wolf she had craved and admired, she would tear his guts out and make him eat them before ripping his head from his shoulders.

Or she would whisper into Carala's ear that she ought to do it. Even a princess of wolves could not afford to be pampered, or allowed to deny her nature for too long.

*