Scarlet Moon (Once Upon a Time) by Debbie Viguié Page A

her own emotions, let alone care about his. For a month her world had been in chaos, and now, once again, everything had changed, but in a way for which she never could have prepared herself The one thing she kept coming back to, though, was the absence of her fear.
    “Every day since then I’ve lived with fear,” she said finally. “Never knowing where the wolf was or when he might strike has haunted me. Now, strange as it is, I know where the wolf is and when he could strike. I feel free for the first time in nine years.”
    He laughed, a strange, strangled sound. “When I was young, I would wake up and never remember anything about what had happened—what I’d done. As I grew older I learned to remember, and then, by the time I was twelve, I could control my actions while in wolf form. What scares me is that this morning I woke up with no memories, and apparently I did horrible things.”
    “Maybe you didn’t kill the tanner,” she said, voiceshaking, wishing she believed it herself.
    “If not I, then who?” he asked, his voice suddenly fierce. She jerked back, frightened.
    “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “Maybe another wolf—”
    “There are no
other
wolves,” he snarled. “The last natural wolves left several years ago. A different pack controls these lands,” he added bitterly, “though I’m more a lone wolf with my father so often gone to the Holy Land.”
    She didn’t know what to do. She desperately wanted to comfort him and yet, to her shame, there was a part of her that cried out for his blood. It was this part of her that kept the dagger, its blade naked, in her hand.
    She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. Her heart had begun to pound again as a war raged within her. She stared down at the knife and her white-knuckled fingers gripping it.
I could plunge this dagger into his heart before he could stop me. I could kill the wolf that took so much from me.
Tears began to stream from her eyes.
I could kill him before he tries again to kill me.
    She didn’t realize how hard she was shaking until he reached out and placed his hand on hers, wrapping his fingers around so that he, too, was holding the knife.
    “I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” he whispered, his lips brushing her ear. “I think part of me would thank you.”
    She sat stunned, staring at their fingers intertwinedaround the blade.
Has God or fate brought us to this?
she wondered.
Is this what was meant to happen? Our lives have been entwined for years, though we did not know it. He has been the shadow haunting my steps all along. As the noonday sun kills the shadow, am I the light to destroy his darkness?
    She gripped the dagger even tighter, her nails digging into her palm until she could feel the blood begin to flow.
Twice now I have been in the wolf’s jaws and I have escaped. A third time will surely kill me. Should I risk it all? And for what? This tortured man has not offered me anything in return, only a kiss stolen in the forest. Grandmother was right—a girl should not follow a man into the woods.
Her tears fell onto their clasped hands.
But I did not follow him; he followed me.
    She turned to look at him and found that he was crying as well. He kissed her then, their tears mingling on their lips. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close and trapping the dagger between their bodies. She could feel the edge cutting her, but she didn’t care.
    She kissed him with everything she had, every drop of love and anger and pain, and he kissed her back in kind.
    “I need you,” he whispered against her lips. “You are the light to my shadow, the sun to my moon, the innocence to my guilt. Without you I am lost. If you will not stay with me, then use that knife, because I am dead already.”
    “I have died a little every day since we met, butnow we shall both live and learn what it is to love,” she answered.
    She could feel the blade cutting yet deeper into her as he crushed her tighter, but it