Ravenwood(71)

He bowed his head for a moment and when he raised it again, his eyes had gone the deep amber color she remembered from her dreams. Then, he opened his mouth and where his blunt, human eye-teeth should have been, he had upper and lower canine teeth - pointed at the end and startlingly white. She leaned forward to get a better look and then reached up and touched one lightly with a fingertip. It was sharp against her skin. If she pressed down, it would pierce her flesh. Elinore had a sense memory of when the feral wolf bit her arm - the way its teeth punctured her skin and slid into her arm. Yes, Caleb’s teeth were easily capable of that. She grabbed Caleb’s jaw lightly and turned his face slightly to one side, looking at his teeth, then his eyes again, turning him to and fro for better examination. He bore her scrutiny without sound or motion, letting her do as she wished. Finally, Elinore let go and lowered her hand.

“And you become a full wolf?” she asked. He nodded slowly, his expression wary. The canine teeth slowly retracted back into his mouth and she nearly asked if he would open his jaw so she could watch them retreat, but wondered if that were rude. He had a careful expression on his face, as though she had been the one to show fierce teeth.

“And I’m becoming a wolf as well?”

Caleb hesitated. “Perhaps. We don’t yet know if the bite will take.”

“It doesn’t always?” Elinore asked and he shook his head. “But you suspect it will.”

He nodded. “When it started healing, it did so with a black color instead of staying as a normal animal bite.”

Elinore looked down at her arm, thinking. “Mrs. Davenport’s poultice? The foul smelling paste? Is it medicine at all?”

“After a fashion. It’s meant to halt the transformation, if it’s applied early enough. But you’d already been in the woods for so long, and the bite was deep. Once the color began traveling up your arm…” he trailed off. “But we won’t know for certain until the full moon.”

Elinore’s eyes darted to the window where the sun was coming up. She knew the moon was in its waxing phase. Indeed, she’d felt strongly tied to phases of the moon since she’d been bitten. “What will happen on the full moon?”

“If the bite takes, you will shift into a wolf and your transformation will be complete. You’ll be like me. Like us.”

“And if it doesn’t take?”

“You may have some lingering affects from the bite - increased hunger, better hearing or sight. I’m not sure. But you’ll never shift.”

Elinore paused, taking in his words. Was this madness? She pulled her bitten arm close to her, cradling it against her chest. “We. Us,” she said. “You and…”

“Hayter. Yes,” Caleb confirmed his voice grim.

“What of my aunt? Hayter’s wife, Victoria?”

Caleb shook his head. “No. She was… bitten as you were, but didn’t survive. She was sick,” Caleb rushed on at Elinore’s expression. “She had tuberculosis. The bite… we are strong as wolves. Hayter thought to save her, but… it doesn’t always work. We don’t know why. She passed away from her sickness.”

“What of the wolf that bit me?”

Caleb’s lips went thin, his jaw flexing. “An omega.” At her expression, he continued. “A wolf not of our pack, not of Ravenwood. He’s been killing animals, perhaps gone mad, I don’t know. We don’t know where he’s from. We’ve been tracking him for months.”

“But you can’t find him,” said Elinore. She thought of the wolf she saw just inside the forest, on Ravenwood grounds. “I’ve seen another wolf in the woods, not black. Grey and white. But not the one that bit me.”

Caleb blinked, looking surprised. “It must have been Hayter. We… hunt better as wolves.”

“Is that where you were? Your business in Haleton?”

Caleb nodded. “We went to meet with another pack, one to the North and find out if they had any information on the omega.” His jaw tightened. “They did not. Hayter returned to Ravenwood and I went on to meet another pack with which my father had an alliance.”

“What will you do when you find it? The… omega,” Elinore asked, the word slow and unusual on her tongue.

Caleb’s eyes again went amber for a moment before turning back to their normal blue color. “We have to kill it. It’s feral. Killing horses, cows. Biting you.” He glanced down at her arm. “You should never have been traveling that night. On the full moon, we are more powerful, stronger. It was foolish of Hayter to allow you to travel that evening. Bad enough you were bitten, but if you’d not had the pistol Thistle gave you, if you hadn’t shot the wolf…”

Elinore could see in her mind’s eye what could have happened to her; the image of blood on the ground outside the stables foremost in her mind. That could have been her. Thinking of Thistle and his pistol only brought more questions to her mind.

“Those bullets were special, were they not?”

Again, Caleb nodded. “Silver. It can be deadly to us. We can heal from other wounds, but ones inflicted with silver take time. If we’re injured badly enough, a wound from silver could kill us. Hayter does not like to have silver on the grounds and I thought he’d had it all removed.” His lips quirked. “But Thistle still had his pistol. He’s a resourceful man.”