The wolf underneath, p.1
The Wolf Underneath, page 1
THE BEASTS OF SHADOW
THE WOLF UNDERNEATH
N. M. LAMBERT
Green Tree Press Edition, 2024
THE WOLF UNDERNEATH
Text copyright © 2024 by Nicole Lambert
Cover and interior design © 2024 by Nicole Lambert
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Green Tree Press, LLC
522 N. Central Ave #831 SMB #11019
Phoenix, AZ 85004
www.greentreepublications.org
Published in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-963062-03-8
ASIN: B0BSWHR5CN
BOOKS BY N. M. LAMBERT
The Threatening Souls series
Threatening Souls
Bleeding Misery
Twisted Ignorance
Immortal Injustice
The Days of Darkness series
Days of Darkness
The Beasts of Shadow trilogy
The Wolf Underneath
To the fellow ace girlies and fem-presenting individuals who crave a wolf shifter book with more plot and less spice.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
This book is very different from my previous books. It is lighter than my other ones, but it still deals very heavily with the topic of grief. Though there are happier moments, the overarching theme of grief is still very present. There is also gore in this story, though it is very minor, as well as anxiety and panic attacks and a brief mention of twin loss. If you prefer happier stories, I understand, but if you’re still here despite knowing this, then I’m excited to share with you the beginning of Savannah and Callum’s story.
PROLOGUE
SAVANNAH
When I was six, I saw my first dead body.
The alarm sounded in our small village of Ebonrowe, like it did every day after the full moon. I didn’t realize what the alarm meant at the time, but my parents always told my brother and I it was something bad and to stay indoors.
I was the oldest, so it was always my job to make sure my brother and I stayed put. But I was also a curious person who craved adventure, and rules were never my strong suit.
So, as soon as my parents left, I buttoned up my wool coat and laced up my leather boots before stomping towards the front door of our small, two-story cabin.
I barely made it to the front door when I heard shuffling behind me. Tentatively, I turned around, and there was my brother, Mathias, staring at me with wide, fearful eyes. His skin was too pale, like he had seen a ghost. And perhaps in that moment, he did as I was about to break the biggest rule in our household.
“Where are you going?” he asked curiously, in the way four-year-olds often did.
“Out,” I replied. My answer was clipped and short, devoid of the usual warmth I held when talking to him. Mathias and I weren’t like typical siblings. We rarely bickered and did everything together. Because of our parents’ coal mining occupations, we were considered outcasts by the other kids in the village, so we had to become our own best friends.
But this was something I had to do alone. I knew I would never hear the end of it if I somehow got my brother killed with my recklessness, and I would never forgive myself if something happened to him. So, I had to be cold in order to protect him as much as myself.
“But Mommy and Daddy said—”
“I won’t be gone long,” I said as my expression softened. It was the truth, something that would only take mere seconds. I would slip out, see what all the commotion was about, and then slip back in before anyone was the wiser.
Except my brother would know, and I would essentially be asking him to lie to Mom and Dad.
“You won’t tell,” I said quietly, “will you?”
There was a pause, and I could see the gears turning in Mathias’s head. He hated doing anything wrong, which admittedly had gotten him into more trouble than I’d like to admit with the other village kids. A goody-two-shoes, they’d call him. If it wasn’t for me ready to whip their asses if any of them laid a hand on Mathias, I was sure he would be the subject of regular beatings.
After what felt like minutes on end, Mathias shook his head, and I exhaled the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. He wouldn’t tell. I knew this would kill him in the long run, but I was grateful for his silence.
“I’ll give you an extra big slice of chocolate cake for dessert today,” I promised him, which seemed to light up his features. And then, I was gone, snow crunching beneath my boots as I made my way to the village square.
The shops I passed remained closed, curtains carefully drawn over the windows. And there was absolutely no one out and about, as if I were walking through some sort of ghost town. Such a sight should’ve unnerved me, but it only piqued my curiosity even more. It was a mystery I had yet to solve, an enigma I needed to conquer.
And then, I finally stumbled upon the village square, and why there was a lack-of people started to make sense. It seemed the entire village, minus the children, were huddled together in a circle, surrounding something I couldn’t make out. I dared to creep as close as I could without alerting anyone, using one of the nearby shops as a cover.
As if by some miracle, the people nearest to me parted, and that was when I finally saw what had everyone up in knots. There was a body on the ground with skin as pale as the snow. Deep slashes marred the flesh, dried blood caked over the wounds. And where the stomach should’ve been, there was a messily cut hole, as if whoever did this dug into the body as if they were just digging through dirt. Intestines spilled out of the gaping hole, mixing with the blood that pooled on the ground.
But the scariest part wasn’t what I saw but the fact I knew the person. It was Mrs. Harlow, the village baker, who just yesterday blessed my family with a fresh, steaming loaf of white bread and a tall, decadent chocolate cake, the same one I promised extra to my brother. And now, she was dead as the rest of the village crowded around her.
I wanted to throw up, and so, I did as silently as I could. Now, it was beginning to make sense why my parents were so adamant we didn’t leave the house when the alarm went off.
This was something no one should see, let alone a child who had an imagination the size of the entire universe.
But I couldn’t unsee it now, and so, I straightened my back and wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve as I listened to the conversations going on around me.
“It was the beast,” a man off to my left said to his wife. “It struck again.”
“What do you mean?” his wife, who was trembling beside him, asked.
The man gave an exasperated sigh, as if his wife should already know the answer. “The one that kills every full moon.”
Chills skirted down my spine right when another conversation to my right caught my interest.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god!” a girl who looked no older than sixteen wailed as she sobbed into her friend’s shoulder.
“It’s okay,” her friend said, lightly patting her back. “The beast is gone now.”
The girl soon shot up as anger burst forth. “Until the next full moon!” she spat. “It’ll be okay once we’re all dead!”
I backed away slowly, my curiosity now long gone, replaced by fear. Words played over and over again in my mind. Beast. Full moon. Death. With the way they were talking, I was sure some sort of animal did this, but as to whether or not the animal was ordinary, I wasn’t so sure.
I ran home as fast as my legs could go and flung open the door. My parents weren’t back yet, which I took as a good sign, and my brother gazed at me curiously.
“What was it?”
And because no six-year-old should’ve witnessed that, let alone her four-year-old brother, I lied and said, “Someone stole something from Mrs. Harlow.”
In a sense, that was the truth. Something had been stolen from Mrs. Harlow, but it wasn’t a material good.
Mathias nodded, accepting my answer as truth, and we went upstairs to play with some of my dolls. Neither of us spoke further about the incident.
Every month after that up until I was twelve, I had to pretend I didn’t know why the alarms rang the morning after a full moon or why people kept disappearing. That was when my parents sat me down and told me our village was cursed, that a beast shrouded in night killed every full moon. They made me promise not to tell Mathias, that they would tell him themselves in a couple years, when they deemed he was ready for the truth.
Mathias never made it to his twelfth birthday. The night before, a night that so happened to also be a full moon, he snuck out to meet with some buddies he made within the past year for a pre-birthday celebration. He never made it back home.
Instead, my parents and I were met with his lifeless corpse in the center of the village square, along with the bodies of his buddies.
I became the Huntress a month after my brother’s death, at the ripe age of fourteen, making it my personal mission to hunt the beast that ripped my best friend away from me. I grew colder and more distant from my parents and anyone else who tried to talk to me, only speaking in clipped, one-word phrases. Every
I took up archery and let everyone believe it was a hobby to help me cope with my trauma. During the day, I would practice, but during the night, I would explore the woods that surrounded our village, hoping to catch the beast unaware.
Hunting the beast was the only thing that gave me purpose. Perhaps if I finally brought down the thing that had been terrorizing my village since before I was born, I could finally mourn my brother properly.
But I never saw the beast, not even on the night of a full moon, as if it were somehow evading me. Meanwhile, more innocent people were dying, and I felt powerless to stop it.
But I refused to give up, and so, I would strap my bow to my waist and a plethora of arrows to my back and continue the journey I had laid out for myself.
CHAPTER ONE
SAVANNAH
Ihated birthdays, and my eighteenth one was no different. It was just another painful reminder of something Mathias would never get to experience again.
“Surprise!” my mother and father both yelled as a colossal vanilla cake was set down in front of me. White frosting covered the surface of the cake as strawberries lined the top. In blue cursive were the words, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SAVANNAH”.
My stomach churned, but I plastered on a fake smile and blew out the candles. I stopped believing in wishes when they never came true, but in that moment, I found myself wishing for the beast to hand themselves to me on a silver platter.
I was the only child my parents had left, so everything they did for me had to be some huge spectacle. Holidays, birthdays, it didn’t matter—I was showered with gifts and affection, as if they were afraid I would be ripped away from them too. And I couldn’t bring myself to tell them I didn’t need all this. What I really needed was my brother.
My father started slicing the cake into thick, even slices and distributed them onto three plates. Three scoops of vanilla ice cream accompanied the slices before the plates were passed out to each of us.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” my mother asked me as she sat down to enjoy her dessert.
I shoved a piece of cake into my mouth and nodded. I didn’t just take up archery in order to slay the beast. It was also something safe I could do that no one would question. Archery was a big deal in my village, the sport everyone seemed the most excited for, and every year, there was an annual archery competition. This year was the first year I was actually eligible to compete, and I was one of twenty people competing for the grand cash prize.
I was excited, but I was also extremely nervous.
“I hear the butcher’s daughter, Matilda Brant, is bragging to everyone how she’s the best and is going to win,” my father said before flashing me a smile. “She has nothing on you, kiddo.”
I bristled. Matilda Brant was only a year older than me, and she was perhaps the brattiest person I had ever known. Not a day went by where she wouldn’t gallivant around town as if she owned the place with her posse of bitches, barely giving anyone else the time of day. There was once a time where she would shower me with fake sympathy shortly after my brother died, but I always shot her down.
Now, she doesn’t like me as much as I don’t like her, which doesn’t bother me in the slightest. That bitch can shove her ego where the sun doesn’t shine.
“Isn’t Trevor Browning also competing this year?” my mother asked.
I flinched at the mention of my ex’s name. Trevor and I briefly dated last year, and since neither of us knew what we were doing, it was really awkward. We broke up after about two months, and even though it was mutual, the two of us have avoided each other ever since.
“Mom!” I groaned as embarrassment coated my features. Honestly, I didn’t know what past me saw in him. All I remembered from that relationship was how bad of a kisser he was.
Slob. Everywhere.
“Sorry, honey!” my mother said apologetically before returning to her cake. But the small smile she gave told me she wasn’t sorry at all. She had always liked Trevor and was sad when we broke up. Since then, she always tried to find reasons to bring him up in front of me, as if just by her mentioning his name would cause us to magically get back together.
Fat chance, Mom.
My parents both started talking about something else that I wasn’t really paying attention to. I shoveled my dessert into my mouth as quickly as possible before shoving myself up from the table. “Can I be excused?”
My parents blinked at me in surprise. “But we haven’t even opened presents yet,” my mom said.
“Later, Mom. I’m really tired,” I said with a yawn, stretching for good measure.
“Let her go,” my dad said, waving me off. “Kid has a big day tomorrow.”
I’m not a kid! I wanted to scream but bit my tongue instead. I hadn’t felt like a kid in years, not since my brother’s death. “Thanks, Dad,” I said again, giving him a hug. “And thank you both for the cake. I’ll open presents tomorrow. I promise.”
And then, I was out of there as fast as I could. I had another hunt scheduled for tonight, and I needed all the rest I could get in the few hours of daylight left.
Sleep came easily to me the moment my head hit my pillow, and my mind gave way to the endless nightmares that had plagued me since my brother’s death. They were all the same, my eleven-year-old brother fruitlessly fighting against what my mind presumed was the beast while I helplessly watched behind an impenetrable sheet of glass. Night after night, I would watch his death over and over again until I woke up screaming, drenched in sweat.
When the nightmares first began, my parents would come running whenever they would hear me scream. My mother would hold me as I sobbed while my father went into the kitchen to grab me a warm glass of milk. Now, however, my nightmares have become so commonplace that my parents became immune to the noise of my screams. It was better this way anyway. They already do so much for me, too much at times, that I would just feel more guilty every time they came running at the sound of my demons.
My brother would’ve been sixteen now, and I think that was the part that tortured me the most. I should’ve prevented him from going out that night. After all, we both knew the risks. But instead, I sat back and told him to have fun on his birthday eve.
I told him to have fun.
Fun was a luxury no one in my family could afford to have ever again, least of all me. Not while the beast that killed my brother was still out there.
After my heart calmed down from watching my brother’s death for what seemed like the millionth time, I rolled onto my side towards my window. A blanket of stars filled the night sky, accompanied by the bright, shining moon. It was a waxing gibbous tonight. In just a few short days, the moon would be full again, and the beast would return.
I had to make sure it was dead before that happened.
I shot out of bed and immediately pulled on my boots and slid on my coat. The house was dark and quiet, suggesting my parents had gone to bed, which made it easier for me to sneak out. No one knew I slept at most five hours each night and then went out to hunt until sunrise.
After grabbing my bow and some arrows, I headed out of the house.
The air was cold and brisk, slapping me against my face, my boots loudly stomping against the dirt as I ran towards the forest. The trees swallowed me up, enveloping me in a blanket of darkness as I scanned through the trunks for any sudden movement.
The rustle of bushes to my left snapped my head in that direction, and I narrowed my eyes at what was presumably a rabbit or even a squirrel. A creature so small, it couldn’t possibly have caused the amount of damage there was to my brother’s body. And sure enough, a plump, brown rabbit, skirted out of the bushes, weaving between the trees and darting into the darkness until it was completely out of sight.
I let out a sigh. Occasionally on the nights of the full moon, I would see random animal carcasses strewn about despite not seeing or hearing the beast myself. It was as if it knew I was looking for it and therefore avoided me.
As if it were scared of my meager bow and arrows.
