Page 3 of Scarlett’s Wicked Wolf (Filthy Fairy-tales #1)

Scarlett

That smell. What is that smell?

It seeps into my lungs like silk, sweet and intoxicating. Rich chocolate. Red wine. The first snowflake melting on your tongue. Grandma’s spiced orange tea on a winter morning. It makes me feel… safe.

But also hungry. Desperate. Possessed.

It’s not the hunger in my stomach. No, this craving blooms lower. Deeper.

My eyes flutter open. A shadow stands near the bed, huge and male, cut from firelight and dusk. A fire crackles in a stone hearth. The room smells of smoke, soap, and rain-wet wool.

He smells like that scent. Something I want. No, something my body insists I need.

The light is low, a mix of firelight and dusk, so I can only see the hard lines of his body. Broad chest. Long limbs. Sharp cheekbones. Black hair brushing his shoulders. And those eyes…

Golden, bright, and unblinking. My pulse trips under the weight of that gaze, like it could consume me whole and call it mercy.

He looks like a man carved from storm wood and flame. But something inside me knows he’s not just a man.

Panic flares as my brain catches up.

The wolf. The one that saved me—no, bit me. Claimed me.

“Stay back.” My voice scrapes from my throat, raw and ragged. I push myself upright, clutching the heavy blanket to my chest as I shuffle to the edge of the bed. “Don’t come closer.”

“I won’t.” His voice is a growl wrapped in velvet, sliding down my spine like molten heat.

I glance around. I’m in a small cabin with one bed, a table with a dented kettle, shelves crowded with jars, bundles of dried herbs hanging like forest chandeliers. Not Grandma’s. Not home.

Where the hell am I?

And why does my body feel like it’s made of flame? I’m burning. My skin glows with sweat. My muscles ache, and my mouth is dry.

My hand flies to my chest and my neck. No blood. No ragged wounds. Just two raised scars on my neck, faint and pebbled like twin crescent moons.

“M-my wounds…”

“Are healed,” he finishes. He doesn’t move. His expression gives me nothing and everything: restraint, regret, relief.

“You… bit me,” I whisper.

“Yes.” The stranger doesn’t deny it.

I want to scream. I should scream, but something stops me. My body hums with strange energy. My magic—usually quiet and cooperative—thrashes beneath my skin like a storm trapped in a bottle. I’m tethered to him with something invisible but unbreakable.

“Who are you? What did you do to me?”

“My name is Reid.” He winces, jaw tight. “And I didn’t mean to. You were dying. I had no other choice.” His eyes flicker with pain, as if he could not have borne that outcome.

My mouth opens and closes. I know enough about wolf bites to understand what this means. “You turned me into a wolf?”

His silence is answer enough.

“I don’t understand,” I say, quieter now. “I’m no one. I’m not even… I didn’t think this was possible.”

“It’s not. Usually.” His eyes drop to the floorboards. “But you’re not no one. You carry old magic. Wild. I tasted it when I—” The word catches and burns. “When I bit you. It didn’t reject the change. It accepted it.”

Accepted him.

A pulse flares low in my belly, traitorous and bright. I cinch the blanket tighter.

I should hate him. I should slap his beautiful, rugged face and demand he undo this.

But when I look at him, all I feel is heat. The pull. The ache. It coils around me like a vine wrapping around bone.

“What’s happening to me?” I ask.

“The fever,” he says, still not looking at me. “It’s part of the change. Your body’s adjusting to the new magic in your blood. Soon, you’ll shift. Because of the bond.” He finally looks at me full-on, those amber eyes catching the firelight. “The mate bond.”

My breath catches. “That’s not real.”

“It is.”

“But we just met—”

“I didn’t choose this, Scarlett,” he says, voice sharp.

“How do you know my name?”

“You told me when you were sleeping.”

“I-I did?”

He nods. “I wasn’t born a wolf. I didn’t grow up waiting for a fated mate. I’m just a man who was turned into a monster at a Halloween party because he was stupid enough to drink something he shouldn’t have.”

My eyes widen. “Screaming Woods,” I whisper, knowing all about Dr. Karloff’s Frankenpunch that turned half the residents into monsters from myth and lore. I’ve met several myself, including Xander, a griffin, and Galina, a white dragon, Gregor, an ogre, and Arya, a shapeshifter.

Reid nods. “It turned me into… this.” He gestures to himself like he doesn’t know what he is anymore.

And maybe he doesn’t.

I study the lines bracketing his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the guilt he wears like armor. Dangerous, yes. But also… wounded. I see it in his eyes, sense it through the bond. Our bond.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I should have found another way. But I couldn’t let you die. Not once I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That you’re mine.”

The room spins a little, and I press a hand to my head. “Your mate.”

“Yes.”

“But… you’re not even a real shifter.” I regret the words instantly, but it’s too late to take them back.

He flinches. “I know. And that’s why I’ll let you go, if that’s what you want. You don’t owe me anything.”

But something in me does.

The bond pulses—tender, confused, alive. What I want is suddenly hard to define.

“I want to go home,” I whisper.

He nods once. “I’ll take you. You can stay here until you’re strong enough to travel.”

“And the fever?”

“Should break in a few days.” He hesitates. “Try to rest. The change can be hard, but you’ll survive. You’re stronger than most.”

My eyes flick to a narrow door in the corner. “Is that a bathroom?”

“Yes.”

I pull the blanket tighter and rise to my feet.

My knees wobble, and he instinctively steps forward to steady me, his hands grasping my arms. The second he touches me, my skin ignites, drawing an involuntary whimper of need from my throat.

Tiny sparks skitter through my veins like lightning searching for ground.

My nipples harden under the blanket, and I squeeze my thighs against the sudden, urgent throb.

Reid releases me instantly, jerking away like he’s been burned. “Sorry.”

But it’s too late. His pupils blow wide, then narrow as he wrestles with the same need, the same hunger.

Is this the bond? This fevered magic threading us together? But if it’s only the bond, why did I ache for him in my dreams before I knew his name? Why is my body so attuned to him even as my mind shouts caution?

“I-It’s fine,” I lie. Because it isn’t. It’s terrifying. Glorious.

I flee for the door on shaky legs, clutching the blanket like armor. I don’t look over my shoulder because if I do, I’m afraid I’ll ask him to touch me again to discover which part of this is fate… and which part is me.

The bathroom is small, clean, and mercifully cool. The stone floor of the shower cubicle is cold under my feet as water pinwheels from the showerhead, needling my skin. I twist the temperature knob to make the water colder. It doesn’t help.

The heat inside me. It’s him. It’s me. It’s this thing between us that neither of us asked for but now can’t escape.

I brace my forehead against the tile, my breath fogging the glass screen as wave after wave of lust rolls through my core.

I don’t know this man, yet I want him in a way I’ve never wanted anything in my life.

His hands, his mouth, his scent. The weight of him pressing me into the mattress as he thrusts inside me while the forest hums outside.

Gods, I’m losing it.

I shut off the tap when my fingers go numb, but the cold hasn’t touched the blaze inside me. The fever burns bright like the noon sun under my skin.

I quickly dry off and secure the towel around me, stumbling as I tug open the bathroom door.

“Scarlett?” Reid stands from the chair by the fire, his voice laced with concern.

“I’m fine,” I lie, because pride is ridiculous. The floor tilts. The room swims.

Strong hands catch me before the floor does. He’s all warmth and steadiness and clean soap as he guides me out. Every place he touches lights a fuse, sending want curling hot and helpless in my belly, even though his grip stays practical and respectful.

He eases me onto the bed and tucks the blanket tight around my hips. A moment later, a cool, wrung-out cloth kisses my forehead, then my throat, and I nearly moan at the relief.

“Easy,” he murmurs. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. Breathe with me. In on four, out on six.”

I do as he says. The cloth drifts to my temples, and the fire inside me settles from wildfire to controlled burn—still fierce, but survivable.

It’s the bond, this hunger. Maybe. Yet when my pulse follows his touch like a tide, I wonder if it’s only magic… or something more dangerous. Something mine.

Exhaustion drags me under, but peace doesn’t come. Instead, I dream of the forest.

The trees whisper. The ground cracks beneath my bare feet. Twigs snap and leaves crunch.

I turn, heart racing. The wolf stands behind me. But it’s not Reid.

It’s the gray wolf that attacked me. Red eyes, matted fur, mane tangled with thorns and… bones? He reeks of mold, old magic, and death.

“Ah…” he says, the words forming unnaturally around his snout and settling over me like an eerie breeze through a crypt. “My little Red Witch.”

My stomach turns to ice.

“You’re mine.”

I bolt upright in bed, soaked in sweat, my scream dying in my throat, the blankets tangled around my legs.

My throat is like sandpaper as I call for the man I instinctively know will keep me safe. “Reid!”