Page 7 of Scarlett’s Wicked Wolf (Filthy Fairy-tales #1)

Scarlett

The fever breaks like glass.

Not gone, just… different. The sharp edges stop sawing through me and settle into a hum that lives under my skin, bright and restless. Reid sits sentinel in the chair, forearms braced on his thighs, eyes steady on me like he can will the next breath into my body.

He hasn’t left. Not once.

Every time the waves hit, he counted me through. When my hands shook, he gave me something to push against that wasn’t him. When my throat went sand-dry, he tipped water to my lips like I was something precious.

My throat tightens. I don’t do helpless well. But I can recognize care when it’s dressed as practical kindness. He’s not hovering. He’s anchoring me. There’s a difference.

“Reid?” My voice is papery.

“Here.” He’s already leaning forward, offering the cup.

I sip greedily. The water has a strange metallic taste, as if my body is recognizing the separate elements of hydrogen and oxygen. His palm hovers near my temple, not touching, but I could tilt a millimeter and be under it. The urge to do exactly that is unhelpfully loud.

“Smell and taste are going to spike,” he warns softly. “Sound next. If it gets too bright, close your eyes and use my voice.”

“Bossy,” I whisper. “You’re a great doula.”

One corner of his mouth lifts.

Then the world tilts.

The change doesn’t ask; it takes—a new center clicking into place as my joints loosen and the seams of me…

slip. The air contains a thousand scents: smoke and iron and pine sap and the salt of his skin.

The crackle of the fire is too loud. The cloth against my forehead becomes a boulder. My breath stutters, then races.

“It’s okay.” Reid’s voice threads through the noise. “You’re safe. In for four—”

“Out for six,” I gasp, but the numbers break apart as my bones light with white heat. Something in me rears—terrified and wild—while something older opens like a door.

The wolf steps through.

It starts in my spine, my vertebrae shifting like beads on a string, then sweeps out along my ribs and wrists and the fragile hinges of my fingers.

Pain, yes, but sharp and clean, the kind that announces newness rather than ending.

My hair prickles, pours over my shoulders, and multiplies.

Then I’m all senses: the taste of the air, the clockwork thud of his heart, the low song of the wards thrumming in the walls.

“Scarlett,” Reid says, voice close, careful. “You’re doing it. You’re beautiful. Breathe.”

Beautiful. The word lands like a balm. He thinks I’m beautiful.

My skin isn’t big enough—then it is, and it’s different. Fur ripples along my arms and across my back, a red-gold rush like autumn leaves. My hands—no, not hands, paws—hit the wooden floorboards as I tumble from the bed onto all fours. The enhanced sensation under my pads is a revelation.

I blink, and the room blooms into scent and sound more than sight. Reid smells like everything I’ve ever wanted—cedar and musk and the specific heat that is him.

The ache splits me open.

There’s no more room for breath or thought or human noise.

The magic I’ve been holding back—my old magic—snaps its tether and floods me, not to stop the change, but to meet it.

To merge. My wolf doesn’t force her way through meShe It rises, like something I’ve always been meant to wear but never dared to touch.

My fingers curl, bones reshaping, body bending, cracking—not in pain but in rightness.

A low growl escapes me. It doesn’t sound human. It isn’t.

I meet Reid’s gaze—wolf to wolf, soul to soul—and the bond between us sings a rhapsody.

Then something else pulls.

The forest.

A pulse from deep in the trees. A whisper in the roots. A promise of freedom, wind, and earth that remembers my name before I ever knew it.

The pull isn’t cruel. It’s necessary.

Fear punches up from my belly, not human logic but raw, animal alarm. The door is a mouth. The forest is a promise. The promise wins.

My legs move before I realize it. The wards shiver, and the wood complains as I shoulder the door. It gives. Cold air slaps my face, and I launch into it because out is the only word that makes sense.

My muscles stretch, and my paws hit loam.

I run.

Through the trees.

Through the dark.

Into the wild that wants me.

“Scarlett!” Reid’s shout follows me, human first, then—breaking bones, tearing seams—not human. He’s behind me, heavier, faster, an obsidian shadow cutting through the silvered path of dawn.

I run until the forest opens. Leaves part.

Needles spring. Earth drums under my paws, and the world clarifies into a thousand tiny truths: dew thawing on moss, vole heartbeats under soil, the exact place a fox passed this way at moonrise.

Wind pours over my snout, and my scent braids with his, amber-hot, strange yet familiar.

He pulls up alongside me, huge and black. Every hair on my body erupts with a mix of joy and terror. I bare my teeth without quite meaning to. He doesn’t answer with teeth. He brushes his shoulder into mine—solid and deliberate—and the contact is a sentence my wolf understands: here, with you.

I stumble and stop, chest heaving, legs shaking with too much of everything. The silence of the forest roars around us, waiting.

Reid lowers his massive head, amber eyes on mine, and lets out a sound that isn’t a growl or a bark. It’s a question. A reassurance. Stay.

I’m shaking so hard that my paws slip on the loam. Panic pings around my skull like a trapped bird. I don’t know this body. I don’t know these rules. I don’t know—

He steps closer. Not crowding. Encircling. His chest touches mine. His heat is an anchor as his breath mists my muzzle. He paces a slow half-circle, shoulder skimming my side, then stops where I can lean if I want.

Everything in me wants. I press into him, and a tiny whine breaks free of my throat, humiliating and helpless and true.

With me, his presence says. Or maybe the bond says it. Or maybe I do.

He angles his head, nose skimming my cheek, and the terror loosens one notch. I try a breath. Then another. My claws flex into the soil, and the earth holds.

Good, the feeling comes. It’s not a word but a warm place offered.

When the next wave of too-bright hits, I don’t bolt. I push my forehead into his ruff and breathe his scent like medicine. He threads his neck over mine, a blackout curtain against the sky.

The wrong scent of thorns and rot and bones rustles the ferns thirty yards off. My wolf snarls, the sound ripping from my chest like a saw through wood.

Reid steps in front of me, shoulders high, a low warning rolling through his chest. His snarl vibrates like a vow, a promise: she’s mine.

The knowledge slots into place like a key sliding into a well-worn keyhole—I am his. And he’s mine.

A flicker of gray fur, spiked with burrs and briar in the shadows. Watching us. Close. Deliberate. He doesn’t lunge. He waits.

A pause…

Then the gray wolf retreats, leaving only the taint of rot behind.

But I know he’s not gone. He was delivering a message. I’m still here. You can’t run forever.

What does he want? Why did he attack me?

The panic ebbs. I shake—ears, fur, the whole of me—then look down at my legs like a toddler discovering knees.

Red fur gleams in the new light, the color of foxglove and fallen leaves.

My tail flicks and I startle myself, then huff, transfixed by the appendage.

Reid chuffs—wolf for laughter—and if wolves could smile, he would be.

Okay. Fine. I am ridiculous. And a little bit glorious.

I try a step. Two. It feels like learning to walk again. He shadows me patiently. When my paw catches a root, he nudges me steady. When my head swings toward the not-right scent again, he stations himself between me and the dark until my hackles lie flat.

We move like that until the edge of the sky lifts from ink to slate to pearl. The cabin’s wards hum to us from the clearing, a low thrumming welcome.

He doesn’t force me back. He lets me decide, then lets me decide again when I hesitate on the threshold. When I lift my nose to the crack of the open door, he goes first—if there’s danger, I face it first—then waits so I can choose to follow.

I do.

Warmth hits like a blanket fresh from the line. The hearth purrs. The bowl on the table smells faintly of walnuts—crow tax. I huff, amused and human for a second, and then my wolf recedes so quickly that the world swims.

The world lurches sideways as skin replaces fur. Joints realign with a crackling shudder. The shift back steals my knees before I even know I’m falling. I collapse onto the rug, breath stuttering as my body narrows back into its old dimensions—too thin, too bright, too bare.

“Easy.”

Reid’s voice reaches me through the blur, rough from his shift back to human.

I register two things at once: we’re both naked, and he’s not looking at me. His jaw flexes, but his eyes stay averted as he drapes a blanket around my shoulders and pulls me gently into his arms. His hands are warm. His touch is careful and respectful.

And just like that, the fear I’ve carried—silent and crouched behind my ribs ever since he bit me—finally exhales.

“You won’t hurt me.” It’s not a question.

“I won’t,” he says, quiet but unshakable.

It’s not a new promise, but a truth he’s been living since that first night.

Trust lands with a soft, irrevocable click.

The bond surges—hot and honest. It hums, yes, but under it is something stubbornly mine: want blooming wide open. Fate may have delivered him, but I am the one reaching for him.

“You never left,” I whisper. My voice is ragged but sure. “You saw me through the shift. You came after me into the forest.” I tilt my head and meet his eyes. “You stayed.”

His amber eyes kindle. “Of course I did.”

“Not because you had to,” I murmur. “Because you chose to.”

His throat works as he swallows. Slowly, he lifts his gaze to mine, and it’s raw. Tender. A little tormented. His desire is barely leashed. But his restraint is louder.

“Reid,” I whisper. “I-I need you.”

“Scarlett…” My name breaks on his tongue. “You’re weak. You just shifted. I won’t take advantage. Not again. Not ever.”

Heat licks up my throat, equal parts frustration and need. I catch his wrist, then his jaw, make him see me. “I’m not asking for fate. I’m asking for you. For now.” The fire inside me snaps and coalesces into a bright, precise hunger. “Please.”

He swallows. I feel it under my palm. He is a wall built to keep storms out, and right now, the door in that wall swings inward on its hinges.

“I won’t take you,” he says, voice low and sure, like a vow. “Not tonight. But I can… ease you. If you want.”

“I want.” No hesitation. The words feel like stepping into warm, soothing water. “I want you.”

Something like relief breaks his face open. “Wait here.”

He’s back before I can miss him, stripping the bed and remaking it with fresh sheets. Something about that thoughtfulness causes a lump to form in my throat. He’s made my comfort a priority from the beginning.

Returning, he scoops me up, his arms a cradle that feels like choice and safety, and carries me the few steps to the bed. The sheets are crisp and cool against my skin.

His mouth is warm against my temple. “Tell me if anything doesn’t feel right,” he murmurs. Not feel right? Nothing has ever felt so right. “You say stop, I stop.”

“I know,” I breathe, and do, down in the newly forged place inside me that knows his scent from a mile away, his heartbeat in a room, and the shape of his gentleness.

Fate may have lit the match.

But this heat, this yes, this choosing, is ours.