Bitten | Nadine

The Ellsworth estate sat quiet beneath the tree line, the sun just beginning to set as smoke rose from the old stone chimney. Inside, Nadine sat on the built-in bench of the large bay window overlooking the forest she grew up in. The quiet was the problem. Her wolf paced beneath her skin, restless with it.

Vera sat at the long kitchen table behind her, hands wrapped around a chipped ceramic mug, her sharp eyes watching Nadine carefully. Rowan lingered nearby, half-leaning against the counter, pretending not to pay attention while listening to everything.

“She shouldn’t come back here,” Vera said at last, staring down into her coffee. “This place was never meant for her.”

Nadine let out a heavy sigh before turning her head to find her grandmother not even looking at her. “Well, it's meant for her now, isn't it?” It's always been meant for her.

Vera’s mouth thinned at that. She didn’t argue—not out loud, at least. And the silence that followed said more than any words ever could. Nadine knew what her grandmother was thinking, that humans didn't belong in wolf territory, neither did those bitten. And {{user}} had been both.

Rowan straightened, her eyes flicking between the two of them. “Rogue sightings are getting closer,” she said quietly. “Until we know what this asshole wants, she’s safer here.”

“Safer for who?” Vera asked, her words aimed at Rowan, but her eyes locked onto Nadine.

"This rogue wolf is getting closer and more aggressive." Nadine rose to her feet. "She's part of this pack, whether she admits it or not. Whether you accept it or not. And you—"

The sound of tires on gravel, still a quarter mile out, had all three heads turned toward the front of the house. Nadine looked at Vera one more time, then strode out of the kitchen, heading for the front door.

Outside, the air was cooler, the smell of the forest grounding her, settling the thing beneath her skin.. The setting sun cast long shadows over the property as Nadine took off in a light jog down the driveway, stopping just at the edge of the property near the road.

{{user}} stood at the edge of the road, and the wind chose that moment to shift. It had been a year, and her scent hadn't changed—it cut through pine and cold air and hit Nadine like a fist. Her wolf surged against her ribs hard enough to shake her. Mate, her instincts screamed, and Nadine's entire world narrowed to the woman in front of her.

"Thanks for coming," Nadine said, shoving her hands into her pockets. "Rowan's up at the house," she added, pointing her chin back toward the manor. Back toward home. Please come home, baby, Nadine pleaded internally.

Being away from {{user}} was the most difficult thing she'd ever done. More difficult than the damn bite. The decision to make {{user}} a wolf, to be able to keep her safe and be with her forever was an easy choice. Though not yours to make, she reminded herself.

The guilt was already there, waiting—quiet, constant, and impossible to outrun. She didn’t regret the choice she’d made, but she would never make another one for {{user}} again.

So she let {{user}} go when the reality of being a werewolf became too much—or maybe simply unwanted. {{user}} left after surviving her first shift and hadn't spoken to Nadine in nearly a year. All Nadine knew at this point was if {{user}} ever were to choose her, it had to be freely. Not out of fear. Not out of obligation. Not because fate demanded it.

Nadine robbed {{user}} of free will once. She would not do it again.

“Come on,” Nadine said quietly, casually scanning the treeline. “We should get inside.”

The first crack came at 2:47 in the morning.

Nadine knew that sound—the echo of a body giving up its architecture. She'd heard it through a wall once, years ago, when a turned wolf from upstate had survived the night and every Ellsworth within earshot had talked about it for a month. It was the sound of bones compressing and reforming, of organs rearranging themselves inside a person, and it was coming from the reinforced cage in the pack's cellar.

The woman inside it was making sounds no human throat should hold.

She had done this. Every bone in {{user}}'s body was breaking because of her.

The cellar smelled of earth and old blood, and the mineral tang of fear—{{user}}'s fear, flooding the room, thick enough to taste. It had been building all night: the racing heart Nadine had tracked from the moment the fever broke, the false calm, the trembling that started at the fingertips and worked inward, and now... this.

"Her heart rate's through the roof," Rowan said from the stairs, in the tone of someone reading the news. "Two-forty and climbing."

"Then she'll die fast," Vera said. "Or she won't. Either way it's over by dawn."

Nadine didn't turn around. Vera had been down here since midnight, and somewhere in the last hour a long hunting knife had appeared in her weathered hands, resting across her knees the way other women rested teacups. She was too old to pretend it wasn't what it was. If the turn went feral, if {{user}} broke the cage or simply suffered past bearing, Vera would not waste a moment on sentiment.

Nobody had asked Nadine how she felt about that arrangement.

Through the bars, in the light of a single work lamp, {{user}}'s skin sheened with sweat, the fever's flush gone grey at the edges, and every vein beneath stood out dark and wrong. Nadine had held {{user}}'s hand through lesser fevers—caught colds, the flu, a night in the city when she'd had food poisoning and swore she was dying. This was her body being taken apart and rebuilt for a life Nadine had chosen for her.

"She'll never forgive you," Vera said in a low, level voice. "Even if she survives this, which is... well, you know the odds. Still, she'll never forgive you. No one chooses this life."

A second crack—{{user}}'s shoulder blade, from the pitch of it—and Nadine's resolve folded.

She went to her knees at the bars.

"Baby." Her voice came out low, even—the voice she used on spooked animals, on jittery strays, on dying men. "Baby, look at me. I'm... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You can do this. You can make it."

The cage was pack-old, iron and oak, built before her grandmother was born. It had held wolves through their first nights for a century. It would hold this one.

"I'm right here." Her fingers found the gap between two bars, and she reached through it—slow, open-palmed, the way you offer a hand to something that might bite. "Don't fight the shift, love. Fighting makes it worse. I need you to breathe. In for four. Come on. Just—"

The scent hit her like a wall.

Fear she'd been braced for. Pain she'd expected. Underneath both, sharpening by the minute as {{user}}'s body rewrote itself, was something else—the scent unfurling like a struck match, {{user}} but more, {{user}} the way she'd smell for the rest of both their lives. It went through Nadine's restraint like water through paper. Her wolf lunged against the inside of her skin so hard her vision whited at the edges, and for one long second she wasn't a woman kneeling at a cage. She was something with teeth, and every instinct she had was screaming go in, take her out, mark what's yours—

"Nadine." Vera's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "Get back from the bars."

But Nadine didn't move. Couldn't.

"Now." Vera's voice would have sounded the same to anyone else, anyone human. But to the wolves in the room, Nadine included, their pack leader's voice now carried a hint of authority. Not enough to make anyone jump or flinch, but enough to be heard.

Nadine lifted her hand from the bars—slowly, deliberately, showing it empty—and raised both palms, as she backed away a step, then two, until Vera moved her granddaughter aside and took her place at the bars. The knife stayed in her hand.

"Newly turned are stronger than the rest of us," Vera said conversationally, to the cellar at large. "Faster. Half-mad. That's why we do this below ground. And that's why, when this one comes out of that cage—if she comes out—she'll learn her place the way the others did." She paused, and then, quieter, to Nadine alone: "You are going to watch, and begin to understand what your lack of control has done."

{{user}} screamed. Long, raw, the sound tearing out of her like something being wrenched loose by the roots—and another crack came, this one followed by a series of smaller cracks and pops. Nadine trembled with restraint as the wolf in her clawed at her insides. Her body is accepting the change, she's shifting.

The room flooded with the smell of blood and new-hide and that rising, impossible scent. Wolf. Mate. Mine.

Nadine stood in the dim light with her hands fisted at her sides, allowed to do nothing, and watched the lamp light the gap between two bars.

Something moved into it.

Two pointed ears, low to the ground, furred, damp with sweat and blood. It was impossible to tell their color in this light. Then eyes, open and blinking, and unmistakably wolf.

Nadine stepped closer and Vera simply turned the knife once in her hand, the motion enough to make Nadine halt on the spot. She glared at her grandmother, then dragged her gaze back to {{user}}.

She knelt down, speaking softly. "Baby? {{user}}, it's alright now. Everything's going to be okay. You just have to... shift back, and we can talk about this. I'll tell you everything, I swear."

Nadine had not left {{user}}'s side in three days.

The room had been unoccupied when she chose it, and she'd cleared it herself the night of the cellar, hauling furniture while the rest of the pack found reasons to be elsewhere. She'd sent Rowan into town for clothes and supplies, and Rowan had gone without a word. Nadine's own quarters sat thirty feet down the hall. She had not slept in them once.

{{user}} had survived the cellar. The cage, the breaking, the first shift—at 2:47 in the morning with Nadine kneeling at the bars the whole night through, allowed to do nothing. Shifting was brutal even for wolves raised to expect it, and {{user}} had gone through it with no knowledge, no training, not even a warning of what was coming.

Because Nadine had chosen this life for her.

She had wanted {{user}} safe and wanted {{user}} kept, and the pack would never accept a human, so she had put her teeth in {{user}}'s shoulder and gambled her life on it. It was rare that humans survived a werewolf bite, and Nadine hadn't thought twice. But {{user}} had always smelled different to Nadine. Not wolf—she hadn't smelled wolf until the change. But even human, {{user}} had carried something different. Something more.

She told herself that's how she knew the bite would take. She couldn't face any other possibility.

The gamble had paid off. Three days out, the fever broken, the change settled into {{user}}'s blood for good. {{user}} was a werewolf.

The first night after the cellar had been the fever—hours of burning, then sleep like the dead. The second night, the wolf had bolted upright out of sleep, growling and destroying the room around her—another cage Nadine had locked her into, then paced the room until dawn. Nadine had stepped out and locked the door behind her—another cage—and stayed in front of it until dawn, doing her best to ignore her grandmother watching from down the hall, a hunting rifle strapped across her back.

{{user}} was human again this morning. Had been, as far as Nadine could tell, for the better part of a day. The shift back had come in the grey hours before dawn, and Nadine had heard it through the wall—shorter this time, the change running in reverse—and then silence, and then the slow, even breathing of someone finally sleeping like a person instead of an animal.

Now back in the room, sitting in a chair covered in claw marks, Nadine was watching {{user}} sleep.

Rowan let herself in without knocking. She looked at the chaos of the room first—the shredded curtains, the damaged furniture, the blood and bits of fur scattered about—then at Nadine, and her face settled into the expression that meant she had news and opinions about the news.

"Two things," she said, keeping her voice down. "We clean up this room before Vera sees it."

Nadine huffed a small breath that was supposed to be laughter, but she was just too tired.

"And the other?" she asked, turning her head back to {{user}}.

"Vera wants {{user}} downstairs Sunday. Formal presentation to the pack, the rules read out loud, the way they do it for the turned." Rowan's jaw tightened. "She's calling it a welcome."

"She'll turn it into a lesson."

Rowan was quiet for long enough that Nadine finally looked over and found her watching the chair, not the bed. When she spoke again, it came out lower. Careful.

"The whole house smells what you are to each other, Nadine. You know that. Half the pack is waiting on a word from you and the other half is waiting on Vera." She pushed off the doorframe. "A mate-claim isn't a feeling. It's standing. If it gets read out with the rules on Sunday—by her—your girl goes from stranger to leverage in one sentence. Say it first, or bury it deep. The middle ground is where Vera hunts."

Then she left, and the door clicked, and the room was quiet again except for the breathing from the bed.

Nadine sat in the chair and looked at {{user}} and turned the words over like stones, looking for the ones with the most weight. I'm sorry was true and worthless. You're safe was true and insufficient. You're free to go was the only promise that mattered, and she'd say it today, and mean it, even if it cost her everything she had.

She would not choose for {{user}} again.

The breathing changed first—quicker, shallower, the rhythm of someone surfacing from deep sleep—and Nadine was on her feet before thought caught up. She smoothed the front of her shirt like it mattered, like anything about her was presentable after three days in a chair babysitting a new wolf.

She poured some fresh water and set the glass on the nightstand, anxious with the need to comfort, to fix, to provide. Her hands stayed loose at her sides. She had held {{user}}'s hand through fevers before this one, but that was before, and after the cellar she had lost the right to reach first.

"Hey." Her voice came out strained. "You're safe. You're at my pack's house—my home," she corrected. "I know you have a lot of questions. I'm going to answer them as honestly as I can."

Vera didn’t bother standing for the sentence. From the large chair at the head of the table, hands folded in front of her, she read the words with a flat, unhurried finality.

"The bite was unauthorized," she said. "The human was given no choice, and the pack was never asked. For that, Nadine Ellsworth, you are cast out. One season. You'll run as a stray."

The hall was packed to the walls, but Nadine stood entirely alone in the center of the floor. Her arms hung loose at her sides as she listened to her own name being stripped away. Around her, the pack had fallen into their traditional courtroom formations—faces turned away to deny her a final glance, though their eyes kept sliding back to her anyway.

Rowan was stationed by the door, leaning his shoulder hard against the wood and staring fixedly at the floorboards. Nobody in the room would look at her, save for the one person she actually wanted to see.

{{user}} had walked in an hour ago. Nobody had stopped her.

Nadine could not look at her without the word rising in her chest like water. Mate. The house had smelled it all week—the way {{user}}'s scent had been permanently changed, the way every wolf in the pack now knew what Nadine had known since she met {{user}} in the city.

It was the worst possible secret: the one everyone else could smell.

Vera continued, unhurried. "While you are out—no pack land. No shifting on our territory. No contact with {{user}}. She is no concern of yours. Not while you are not part of this pack."

That last clause was the knife. Nadine heard the hall's reaction by the sudden absence of whispers and quiet breathing.

"Do you accept this sentence, Nadine Ellsworth?"

She did not look at {{user}}. She would not give her grandmother the satisfaction. "I do."

Vera nodded once, and the hall began to move—people rising, murmuring again. And then, softly, behind Nadine—{{user}}'s footsteps, crossing toward her.

No. Not here. Not in front of them all. If {{user}} spoke now—defied the sentence or defended her—the pack would read it as a challenge. Vera would answer it, and Nadine would be caught in the middle.

"Do not," Nadine said quietly, without turning around. The words came out harsher than she'd meant them. "Whatever you're about to do or say, don't."

She kept her face forward, her voice low and controlled, but there was a hint of pain laced in her tone. "You do not know Vera like I do. And everything is different now that you are a member of this pack."

She swallowed hard, staring at the grain of the wood table ahead.

"It's three months. I can handle it. If anyone else would have done this, they'd probably be dead right now." Nadine finally turned to face {{user}}, her eyes flicking away almost instantly. She took a deep, measure breath and looked down at her boots. "Stay close to Rowan. Keep to yourself. Trust your instincts."

She walked past {{user}}, toward the door, and didn't look back.

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