Page 1 of Meeting Her Mate

Chapter 1: Alexis

Harrowing darkness wove through the forest, shrouding everything in shadow. Where was moonlight when you needed it most? According to the lore of old, the moonlight was a werewolf’s best ally. And yet, here, in the cursed depths of Fiddler’s Forest, the moonlight was merely a myth, never managing to make its way past the thick, suffocating canopy of ancient trees.

In what little luminescence there was, every branch, twig, and protruding root resembled the malignant fingers of an old crone. Between the dreadful imagery and the unnatural cold in the atmosphere, this much was clear to me: This forest bred fear. It thrived on terror.

I could easily shift into a wolf and show the forest my colors. Tell it by baring fang and claw that I was not one to give into fear. But doing so would alert others of my presence. After all, I was not alone in this forest.

Even in my human form, I could make out the outlines of their bloodied leather cloaks flapping soundlessly as they moved swiftly through the trees. There was a reason the werewolves of the Grimm Abode were forbidden from stepping out of their commune after hours. There was a reason why none who had sought to escape the town ever made it out alive.

And now, the reason was staring me dead in the eyes.

“She’s here! I found the cur!” It was a red-eyed, bald, pale-skinned, long-fanged vampire crouching in front of me, claws jutting out of his fingers. He hissed at me menacingly, masking my scream in that abysmal sound issuing from his throat.

I had done so well so far. Crept from thicket to thicket, bush to bush, to make sure that no creature would be able to spot me. What chance did I have against a horde of vampires? A thought flashed through my mind—this is how you die, Alexis Richards—before I could free myself from the paralysis of horror.

Now that the vampires had found their quarry, they weren’t so silent anymore. The air resounded with the flap of dozens of cloaks converging from everywhere in my direction. It created a mental image of thousands of bats fluttering toward me.

It had only been a second since I’d been discovered, a second that had seemingly stretched into an eternity, thanks to the adrenaline rushing through my body. I only had one course of action left, other than to give up, accept defeat, and let that Nosferatu-looking monstrosity tear out my throat.

I took a deep breath and shifted into a wolf in one swift motion. As my feral form towered over the cowering vampire, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of glee upon seeing the dread dawn on that vampire’s face. Immediately, I could see better and make out the shapes of the vampires who were quickly closing in on me.

No more the hunted. Now I was the hunter. It was apex predator against apex predator. But that still did not remove the fact that I was heavily outnumbered.

I used the element of surprise to my advantage and tore out the throat of the vampire who had ratted me out to his comrades. I had granted him a quick death, better than what he and his kind deserved.

As much as I wished to stay and see him clutching his bleeding throat while writhing on the forest floor as his cursed soul left his body, I had to leave. Satisfaction would have to wait. Right now, I had to flee.

Despite my agility, the vampires closed in on me from everywhere, leaping out from the shadows and slashing at me with their clawed hands. Their nails dug into my skin, issuing blood far too many times for me to account for. They jumped from above, pounced from below, reaching out to me with their fangs, their daggers, and their—

Guns!?

A loud bang issued from behind me, and a fraction of a second later, a bullet whizzed by me, grazing my fur. This singular bang, it turned out, was merely the overture, the prelude, to what was to come. Gunfire rained from behind me as I raced behind the covers of rocks, trees, and crevices.

“Draw her out! Search every bit of the forest. She can’t have gone far! I reckon the bitch is bleeding,” a grisly voice roared.

He was right on the count of me not having gone far. As for bleeding, well, I was bruised and scratched, but it takes more than passive slashes and stray bullets to make a werewolf bleed.

This crevice I’d tucked myself in would not provide me cover for much longer. I could hear their footsteps right above me. I was surprised that I had eluded them once after being made out. Truth be told, it was more luck than skill. I had never been this deep in the forest before. I did not know the lay of the land as they did.

Someone was coming toward me. I could not hazard a peek, as it would betray my position. I could see that they had a military-grade flashlight in their hand that they were flashing about, looking for my paw prints on the ground. From the sound of dull metal thudding against clothes, I gathered that they were carrying a firearm. If they turned around at the wrong time, they would see me hidden in this crevice, and then I would have nowhere to run.

“Here, wolfie, wolfie!” Ah. It was a male vampire. “Here, girlie. Come out and play.” Then he started making those dry lip-smacking sounds as if I was some sort of common dog.

In my desperation, I looked around the ground for something. Anything. A rock would do. I closed my jaw around a particularly large piece of tree root and ripped it off the ground. I flung it out of the crevice and watched it fly in a trajectory and land far from me.

The vampire stopped dead in his tracks, pricked his ears, and began walking toward where the root had fallen. He started prodding the place where the root had fallen with the tip of his gun.

He never turned around in time to see me creeping behind him. Before I could attack him, I had to get that long rifle out of his reach. Lucky for me, the vampire was still using it as a prodding stick to investigate the source of the disturbance. I pounced upon him, thrashing away the rifle from his grip using the momentum of my forefeet. Once he was defenseless, I clamped my muzzle shut around his throat, crushing his windpipe, and ripped out his vocal cords, rendering him unable to make a single sound. I shot a look behind me, suspecting the worst. Their flashlights were focused on me, their guns raised in front of them, their red gazes glaring from behind the blinding sheen of their torches.

It was in this moment of being trapped between a rock and a hard place that I reconsidered why I had chosen to escape Fiddler’s Green. Had I stayed put in that sordid town, I would have been miserable, but at least I would have been safe. One only needed to ascertain how miserable my existence was that it prompted me to put my life on the line in an attempt to escape that town.

That awful town was named after old maritime folklore about a heaven for sailors. It couldn’t be further from heaven. At least not for me. I did not know what the other wolves thought, but then again, none of them were orphans like I was. None of them had to raise themselves on their own as I did. None of them saw abject poverty as I had. Oh, and this one takes the cake: None of them were treated like outcasts by the pack as I had been all these years.

It's not just pain and sadness that have a threshold. My misery had a threshold that it had crossed long ago, making it impossible for me to live there. Between staying at Fiddler’s Green and dying here in this forest at the hands of vampires, just a mile shy from freedom, I’d have rather sacrificed my life for freedom than be subjected to the nightmarish existence that awaited me in that town.

“Nowhere to run now, is there?” A vampire sneered as he broke rank and walked up to me, aiming his rifle at my face.

I growled at him and stepped back till my tail touched a tree trunk. There were trees all around me, and wherever there weren’t trees, there were armed vampires advancing on me from all sides.