…The light itself had grown magical during our passion, and when we finally stopped, lying spent and satiated, we watched the sunset. Intense vermilions, golden shreds of cloud, rippling purples and pinks, a stronger and more transforming beauty than I had ever imagined possible. It was as if every sunset this island had missed, until it finally appeared again, combined all their beauty into this one display. By morning, it would all vanish again.
We lay tangled together, lulled by the buzz and chirp of insects, which were the only sound we could hear except the distant roll of surf from the beach. We must have dozed off for a little while, because when I opened my eyes again, the dazzling stars were in full view against the black velvet of a clear sky above. Suddenly I worried – what time was it?
I grabbed Orin’s arm. “Orin! Wake up!”
“mmmf… uhn…” His eyes struggled open. As soon as he saw me, an open, innocent grin brightened his eyes. “Princess. My love. What is it?”
“The rendezvous? What time is it? Is it past midnight?”
Orin sat up quickly. There was a techy looking chronometer on his wrist, one of those things with more dials and meters than the cockpit of a 737, but he didn’t even bother to raise it. He just pointed out at the ocean, and the horizon of the inky night sky. “No worry” he chuckled. “See? The moon is just starting to rise.”
A feeling of relief flooded over me. For a brief moment…
And then I realized something felt different, something in my hand...
I looked down to where I was holding Orin’s wrist. It was the hair. It was longer, thicker, more coarse than it had been only a moment before. The light stubble on his jaw had turned to a five o’clock shadow that would put Tricky Dick Nixon to shame. “Orin,” I asked. “Are you feeling… different?”
“About you? Yes. I worship you more than ever.” His words were fine, but his voice sounded much lower, the timber thicker, more guttural.
Then, from behind us, I heard a growl.
As I turned, Weylyn spoke. “Well. What a lovely sight. A big, beautiful moon on the rise, eh brother?” He stood at the edge of the trees, not ten yards from us, but cloaked in shadow.
“You missed a wonderful sunset, brother.”
“I haven’t miss a thing.” His nostrils flared as he drew in the night air, tasting all the scents it carried. As he glared at Orin, his eyes narrowed, and the growl returned, rumbling from deep in Weylyn’s throat, unbidden.
Orin stood now. As the moonlight now struck his magnificent, still naked body, I could see that every inch of him was now looking as hairy as a caveman, and he stood with a bent kind of hunch. His lips drew back from his teeth, and now he emitted one of those same wolfish growls. It started me. I looked away for a moment, as Weylyn’s movement caught my eye. When he stepped from the shadows, I could see he too had shed his clothes. Entering the grassy clearing, the moonlight now struck him full on as well. And while I could still see the sculpted, muscled beauty of that body, I could hardly see any skin. All over his body, a darkening of hair, growing visibly as I watched.
Lycanthropy. This was not a voluntary shape-shifting into their wolf forms I was witnessing. It was a powerful, autonomic response to the bright, silvery shine from the rising full moon. They were changing – not just into wolves. They were becoming werewolves. As Weylyn stepped closer, Orin move quickly, aggressively, in between myself and his brother.
Weylyn growled again, then said, “You have no claim to Keira as a mate, brother. Step aside, she is mine.” It wasn’t his words that chilled me to the core. It was the mouth they came out of. A mouth that was now filled with gleaming, razor-sharp teeth, lips curled back from the now pronounced protrusion of his jaw. I then saw that as Orin heard his brother’s words, his ears twitched. His long, pointy, fur-covered ears. Then Orin half turned, facing more directly toward the shining moon above. As he did, Weylyn also looked up into the sky.
They then both began a full-throated wolf howl. Baying like hounds, the both of them, as the shifting accelerated. Vicious claws sprung from their hands and feet, and both were now fully covered in a thick, bristling hide. One white, one black, but both fully and completely inhuman. They were werewolves. Not their normal shifted form, which was your basic wolf. But without the normal control over their state as shifters, Orin and Weylyn had both had been taken over by their animals. They weren’t just wolves. They were savage monsters, in ‘Wolfman’ form. Werewolves.
They began to circle each other. Threat and warning poured from each of them in their savage growls. “Orin?” I implored. “Please, let’s all calm down. Weylyn. Darling? This is not the time to—” Weylyn cut my words off with a snarling bark. Orin answered this with an aggressive string of his own barks. Their circling speed up, and as it did they grew closer to one another, each expecting the other to strike.
Orin tried to speak to me again, but I could only make out one word.
“RUN!”
Red Sky at Morning
- Keira -
“NO!” I screamed, to no effect.
Snarling and snapping, Weylyn made a lunge, but Orin dodged, then launched himself at his brother. I screamed as they crashed together, jaws snapping. They were rolling on the ground in a savage torrent of fangs and claws. I couldn’t stand watching it – blood and fur filling the air, along with furious howls, and yelps of pain. Brothers. I knew how much they loved each other, but now each was bent on murdering his brother. They ripped at each other, trying to tear apart
