Vengeance

It was a couple of days later that Graea finally left the cave. She was well fed and well rested and most of her wounds had healed to nothing. She left her few belongings in there for now and stepped out into the dusk. The newly sharpened dagger was strapped to her right arm with a twisted leather thong. With a crack of her neck to one side and a hardened expression on her face, the female headed out into the woods. Rage bubbled just beneath her skin, itching to burst through, but she held it back. She would use it in time, but she had things to do first.

Creeping stealthily back towards the stream it didn't take her long to catch his faint scent. She'd missed it as he'd watched her from the trees as he'd stood downwind, but she would never forget his scent now. The smell of him all over her battered body, mingled with her own blood, would haunt her for many months to come. She ducked through the undergrowth, searching out a trail that she could follow and eventually found one. A cold and distant patience served her well as she tracked him over the next few hours. The scent led her to the outskirts of a small village.

Glad of her humanoid form, she crept through the village, skirting through the shadows between buildings, nostrils constantly flaring. She was no longer his victim. Now she was his hunter. Emerald eyes blazed in the occasional flare of torchlight as she moved closer to the source of the scent. Eventually she found him. He sat alone inside a small hut just outside the village. Hanging meat swung outside the door and the musk of male wolf filled the air. At this range the scent managed to turn her stomach, but the memories it stirred were quickly buried. She was becoming good at that.... pushing back everything from her mind that she didn't want to deal with, hiding it away behind closed doors.

Her ears perked towards the door. No sounds came from within but the scent of him now was too strong for the hut to be empty. Slowly she untied the dagger from her arm and threw it towards the door. It hit with a loud thud against the wood before clattering onto the doorstone. With a bristling and squaring of her shoulders, Graea continued to hold back her shift, fighting against the urge until suddenly the door was yanked open. Standing in the moonlight several paces back from his door, she said nothing, just let her vengeful gaze watch him, full of repugnance and loathing. He looked startled for a brief moment, small satisfaction for her, but then his expression darkened.

Graea didn't wait for him to react, she'd already given in to the rage that boiled her blood and before he could step through the door, she launched her snarling form towards him as the snapping of bone and tearing of muscles reshaped her into her inner beast. A mass of golden fur, snarling jaws and swiping claws landed on his chest, throwing him back into the room. She leapt back from him to snatch up her dagger from the step and kick the door shut. A massive paw raised, mirroring the last movements she'd seen from him before she woke bleeding and battered. Seconds later, not having had time to shift himself, the rogue wolf male lay bleeding and unconscious on the floor, his clothes ripped in places where her claws had bitten into his flesh. Graea dragged him into the middle of the floor with one leg and crouched over him with her dagger in her hand.

Sometime later the massive golden crinos wolf stepped back out into the moonlight, paws and dagger covered in blood. She stalked away from the hut, back towards the woods and never looked back once. Many hours later, inside the hut, the dark haired male would awake, weakened by his own blood loss, his legs and groin covered in blood and his clothes cut away from his body. She hadn't killed him. That had never been her intention. Death was easy... you just laid there and accepted it. No. Graea wanted him to live, and live with a reminder of what he'd done, but she also wanted to be safe in the knowledge that he would never do it again.

A chilling scream would echo around the hut, heard as far as the village and the woods beyond when he finally lifted his head to work out what the bloody mass was that lay in his hand.