The Devil's Wolf

"Your mother says to remember to ward yourself every day," her father's deep voice filled the cab of Ashlynn's car. "Don't forget, it is very important. We miss you, your mother and I, and the pack. When will you come home?" Home, Ashlynn thought ruefully. It had ceased to feel like it three years before when she had performed the full moon ceremony with the other cubs, and they had transformed into their wolves around her, whilst she had remained as she was. No matter how she tried, no matter how she had envisioned her transformation as she had been taught by her mother and grandmother, she had remained human.

Like her mother, Ashlynn was a hybrid - the result of a mutation blending over generations with Others of almost every kind. She had the potential, the abilities of the Others dormant within her, but unless that potential was activated, she could not be turned.

They had tried that, too, she had the bite marks to prove it.

Her mother's potential had been triggered by a fall that would have ended her life, causing her instincts to react. Raiden had sternly forbidden Ashlynn, his tone heavy with alpha command, from trying that.

He had not forbidden Ashlynn's lover at the time, and the subsequent attempt had placed Ashlynn in hospital, and had almost seen Raiden tear Archer's throat out.

Her mother could transform into a wolf, and that was the hope that Ashlynn clung to. After the fall had enabled Lia to access her abilities, Raiden's bite under the full moon had turned her.

After Ashlynn failed to turn, the pack had never excluded her, but she had not belonged anymore, caught between child and adult, without the coming of age ceremony of turning.

When Archer had met his mate, she had taken her broken heart and left.

She had left the pack, without actually leaving the pack, unable to take that final action of severing - at first living in the city near the packs' lands, in a shitty one room apartment (despite Raiden's objections) where she had shared the bathroom with four others on her floor, whilst she worked her way through the trial period with a construction company.

It had been too close to the pack, and she gradually began to realise it. It was inevitable that she would encounter someone almost every day as she made her way around the city - she walked past them on the street, bumped into them in the queue at the local coffee shop, or was served by someone when she picked up takeaway. And there were the family barbecues every Sunday, and the twice weekly dinners that her parents insisted on. Each encounter was salt in the wound, that she did not really belong anymore.

Over the next two years she had worked her way up the company, moving from the shitty apartment into a nicer one on the other side of the city to pack lands, which decreased the number of encounters and gave her the excuse to avoid the twice weekly dinners, and more and more of the family barbecues.

Four months ago, she had managed to land a better position in management, but it required her relocation to the other side of the world, something she had leapt on, the ultimate excuse, the ultimate escape. As soon as her passport had cleared, she had taken a flight and settled into her new life, in a place where she knew anyone, and the local pack knew of her, but with whom she did not have more than a casual acquaintance.

She missed her family, her pack. But daily the gap grew larger between the belonging she remembered as a child, and the not belonging that she felt now, as her life outside the pack became more vivid than her life within it.

The message ended, and her music resumed, filling the cabin with sound. Her father's voice lingered, however, in her heart, the sadness of a distance that was far more than physical, along with a side serving of guilt that she had enforced that distance when her parents had never wanted it.

She had been the only child born to them, something unusual amongst the werewolves. Not through lack of trying, Ashlynn knew. There had been a series of miscarriages, and one cub lost at birth, which had been devastating to both parents. For her to leave, and separate herself so totally, was like losing another, she knew, and hated herself for doing it to them.

Ashlynn turned the volume of her music up as she whipped her Audi round the narrow streets that had been built before cars existed and put her foot down as she pulled out onto the open road, where the speed limit was a suggestion only. A suggestion, she smirked, well beneath her speedometer.

She raced herself, mentally. There was a straight of road, where no others turned onto it, that she particularly enjoyed. And it was along this stretch that something struck her.

Her scream cut over the music, as she fought to control the car. She could see through the windscreen, that the front corner of the Audi had crumpled under the impact, though she had seen nothing that could have caused it.

The car spun, and her hair blocked her vision, and she saw smoke as the tyres burnt under the friction of the spin. Her hands fought against the steering wheel, but steering was unresponsive, jerking the wheel painfully out of her hands. The car might as well have been aquaplaning.

Her screams were broken by the jolting of the car as it slid off the tarmac and into the embankment, kicking up soil and greenery. She heard something explode, and the impact of the airbag, spilling out powder like flour. The smell of burnt rubber, petrol, and the powder bit the back of her throat and she coughed, her lungs protesting.

There was a buzzing in her head where shock and pain combined in an inaudible scream, its inhalation foreboding. When that inhalation was exhaled, she knew she would be in f-king deep shit.

She watched a drip of moisture run down the driver's side window, her head cushioned on the airbag an inventory of injuries running through her mind, all minor but painful, starting from the bite across her chest from the seatbelt, through to the bruise of her cheek where it had struck the airbag.

When had it begun to rain? She wondered vaguely.

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And then sound returned, a roar of it on the edge of painful, and she dragged herself up off the airbag, aware of flame in the corner of her vision, and knowing that its presence did not bode well.

She felt for the door handle, but the door would not open, the handle springing uselessly. "Shit," she exclaimed, tugging against her seatbelt as she mentally thanked her father for drilling into her its use. For a moment it would not give, locked into place as a result of the collision. She felt for the release catch and managed to get enough slack to unclick it.

She coughed dryly on the fumes as she fought against the door. It was not going to open. She managed to get her legs under her on the seat and slithered through the gap between the front seats into the back, bracing against the car seat so that she could drive her heel against the rear window, feeling the bite of the impact sting up her heel into her calf. She tried again and felt the heel of her shoe snap.

"F-k it!" She cursed.

The roof of the Audi peeled back like the lid of a tin, and she looked up.

A man's face appeared above her, impossibly beautiful, his golden hair sucked forward in the vacuum created by the flames. The stubble of his beard pierced like gold metal spikes through his cheeks, and his eyes were otherworldly in their blueness. He had wings, white and feathered, held semi-open behind him, balancing his pose.

His expression as he looked down at her was caught between revulsion and horror, and yet he held out his hand. "Stupid human," he said quite clearly. "You are going to die if you just lie there. Take my hand."

She reached out her hand in wonderment and felt the warmth of his palm against hers.

He pulled her up, catching her against him so that poised for a moment on the frame of the car, and she felt the powerful muscles of his thighs tighten a moment before he leapt, the sudden motion snapping her head on her neck painfully. His wings caught the air, the strike of the feathers loud and forceful. They lifted from the car, as the flames leapt in ferocity.