The farmhouse was a red stain on the cream linen of wheat fields and early morning sky. It cast a long shadow as the sun rose, and Taron's squadron waited for the werewolves to return home. It was the morning after the full moon, and soon the pack would meander back, naked and exhausted.

The hide Taron's team had built in the cornfield across the road was perfectly camouflaged, but it was not the threat of being seen that worried him most. It was being smelled. To this end, a generous amount of manure had been rubbed into their clothes, boots and onto the hide itself. In the oppressive summer heat, the smell was rank.

Effective, but rank.

"I can't wait to get back to base," Edrik, Taron's second in command, griped under his breath. "The second we're back, I'm having a shower. I'll riot if there's no shower free."

Taron wiped a broad hand across the sweat on his brow. "You sure it's not an improvement from your usual?"

This earned a sidelong look from Benny, their new recruit. Edrik, usually so clean-cut and well put together when not smeared in cow poo, just smirked at Taron.

"Hilarious."

Taron knew there was more he would have said if Benny hadn't been there. As things stood, jokes like 'you seemed to like the smell of me just fine last night,' would qualify as 'too much information' for their newest teammate.

Taron liked Benny okay. The trouble was that Benny took himself very seriously and expected everyone else to do the same. Taron and Edrik—who'd known, worked and slept with each other for years—pretended to take nothing seriously and liked it that way.

Even missions involving the capture of dangerous monsters.

Though nerves crackled through him as they always did before a raid, Taron's six years of experience capturing werewolves served him well. The Fens suffered from high turnover rates. New recruits often left after their first missions—if they survived them at all. Taron had never gotten used to their dwindling numbers. His squadron used to be two dozen strong. Now, it was only the three of them. Thankfully, that was enough for a pack this size.

"I don't mind the stink, so long as we get to see some action," Benny said with his eyes glued to the farmhouse and surrounding horizon. "How long does it usually take?"

"Five minutes. Five hours. Depends how far they roamed in the night," said Edrik.

Taron flashed his crooked grin. "Bet you ten bucks it'll be three hours. Given how much space they have out here before reaching city limits."

"Three and a half," said Edrik.

Benny looked at his watch. It had been two hours and forty-three minutes exactly. Taron saw a vein in his neck jump.

"You want in on the bet?"

"Isn't gambling—" Benny started to say. He paused and thought a while. "I'll bet twenty bucks if you tell us about the raid on the Graveyard Pack, Taron."

Taron rolled his eyes, and Edrik gave him a sympathetic look. "You could look that up anywhere."

"Yeah, but you were there. Stories like that have to be better firsthand."

"If Taron had two brain cells to tell a half-decent story with," Edrik put in with a congenial elbow to Taron's ribs.

"It's gone 0600 hours and I've got three fully functioning brain cells, thank you very much," Taron said. "So name your time, Benny."

"Three hours and five minutes," Benny said. After a pause, he added, "Were there really over a hundred wolves in the Graveyard Pack?"

"You haven't won yet," Taron said, looking at his watch.

"Nor will he." Edrik lowered his voice. "Got visual at one o'clock."

They turned to follow his gaze. At first, it only looked like a sliver of shadow skimming the tops of the wheat, flowing with the ripples from the wind. Then it crested the hill and it was much much taller than the wheat. Its hulking shoulders, jagged hackles, and sloped back gave it the unmistakable profile of a monster, if its size did not. It looked like an angry spatter of black paint that absorbed light around it and reflected none back, except for its poisonous yellow eyes. The werewolf lumbered slowly past the abandoned barn and towards the red farmhouse. As it did, more followed—five more—emerging from the fields like dawn-lit nightmares.

Taron heard Benny let out a breath he'd been holding. For the dozenth time, he checked that his gun was loaded with the appropriate ammunition. A cocktail of opium-based sedatives combined with a synthetic drug called siinca would tranquilize and suppress the transformations of werewolves. Seconds after being shot, they'd be sleeping and harmless .

The wolf at the fore, as it climbed the steps to the porch, started to shrink. Its fur receded. Its Glasgow grin closed. Until a naked man, thin and indistinguishable from any other man, stumbled the rest of the way into the house. The others followed suit, pink skin smeared with dirt. The screen door banged shut behind them.

That was the last of them. Taron had watched late into the night and through the dawn until the entire pack returned. Now they were all in one place, exhausted from the strain of last night's full moon, ready for sleep.

Taron said, "We'll wait another half hour." It would not do if their targets saw their approach and he, rightly, assumed that they would be scarfing down any food left in the house before falling into bed. He glanced at his watch, which was ticking its way towards the third hour now. "But you all owe me ten bucks."

"Twenty," Benny said sullenly.

Taron tucked a stray curl of hair up into his helmet and double-checked his gear. His rifle and spare pistol were loaded with several rounds of siinca. At his belt, he'd attached a number of lethal silver rounds for emergencies, and a few pairs of silver inhibitor cuffs. All the gear necessary for subduing werewolves.

They watched, hyper vigilant, for anybody to appear or leave the farmhouse. Aside from a flicker of movement in the window, nothing happened. 

In the tense but companionable silence, Benny whispered, "Will you tell us about the Graveyard Pack anyway?"

"Maybe," Taron said with a grin. "Do well today and we'll see."

They waited for any sign the werewolves were still awake. Edrik peeled blades of grass into pieces. Benny's knee jiggled nervously. After half-an-hour, Taron felt fairly certain their fatigued quarry were deep asleep.

"Move in."

They emerged from the hide in the cornfield, crouched and hurrying as quietly as possible across the gravel road and into the wheat beyond. Keeping low, they approached the farmhouse in a fanning formation. At Taron's direction, Edrik split from the group, hedging around to the back in order to cover the rear exit.

Taron knew the floor plan from his reconnaissance missions, and there was nothing straightforward about the location aside from its distance from the city and low risk of civilian involvement. The house had two stories. The main level would be most tricky to do quietly—it had many windows, two large rooms, and a kitchen. They ran the risk of shooting out a window and alerting anyone on the upper floor to their presence.

Taron mounted the porch, Benny at his right elbow. Ghostly movement to his right had him whirling at the top step, but it was just curtains billowing out in the breeze. The windows were open to combat the summer heat—a convenience they hadn't anticipated. Taron went to investigate.

White lace drapes drifted out of the house like lazy bridal shrouds, and as he got closer Taron prayed the werewolves were fast asleep. Approaching with slow, steady paces, he nudged the curtain with the barrel of his rifle and pointed it at the sleeping monsters within.

In the filtered light slept two forms, an older woman and a young man, backs rising evenly with each breath. Beside Taron, Benny raised his gun to level at the woman laying in a loveseat on the other side of the room next to a vintage television. The boy lay sprawled across the sofa, just under the windowsill Taron stood at.

From the back of the house, they heard the telltale pops of silenced gunfire. So Edrik had found and dealt with some of the werewolves already.

Taron aimed for the sleeping boy, his ruddy cheeks smeared dark with dirt and—Taron pursed his lips into a grim line—blood. The boy's arms were stained up to his elbows with it. Taron hoped it was animal blood. He leveled his weapon at the boy's throat and, on a slow exhale, squeezed the trigger. The shots fired only slightly out of sync—silenced pops like sharp releases of air and not ammunition. The young boy's eyes snapped open, brown irises suddenly eclipsed by gold, pupil squeezing into a narrow slit, then darkening again as his eyelids drooped shut. The older woman barely stirred, as if bit by a mosquito.

Taron waited a beat, listening for the sound of movement in case the silencers hadn't been enough. To a werewolf's keen senses, they wouldn't normally be, but after a full moon they were too exhausted to wake. The house was quiet.

Taron returned to the front door and tried the handle. In the truly miraculous fashion of country folk who didn't believe in locking their doors, it clicked open without a fuss.

First, they entered the living area to their left, where the tranquilized boy and older woman lay. The wounds from the tranquilizer bullets were dry and scabbed over now. Taron unhooked a pair of inhibitor cuffs from his belt and latched them around the sleeping boy's wrists. The reaction was immediate. The veins under the boy's skin turned black, fading up to the crease in his elbow, and his body seemed to deflate a little from the loss of strength. The cuffs would keep him human, even if he woke, but by then he'd be in an armored vehicle bound for quarantine miles away from here.

Benny cuffed the older woman too then rejoined him. In the entryway, Edrik waited. Silently, he held up two fingers. Taron gave him the thumbs up and did the same. Four down, two to go. They only had the kitchen and upper level to search now.

As they made their way down the hall, Taron paused, tilting his head to listen better. He thought he'd heard something. Behind him, the others stopped too, and ahead the quiet thwp thwp of bare feet on linoleum issued from the kitchen. Taron swore internally. Had one of the werewolves still been up snacking? That seemed unlikely given how long they'd waited, and the lack of response to their intrusion thus far.

Everyone raised their rifles anyway, ready to subdue the culprit before it noticed them or had time to alert the others. A long shadow stretched across the threshold into the kitchen.

And a goose waddled into the doorway.

A goose.

During none of Taron's reconnaissance had he seen a goose.

The goose stopped in the doorway. It stared at him. Taron stared back. In that moment, he didn't question that these animals had once been dinosaurs. It lowered its head, stretched out its long neck, and let out a bugling honk honk honk like the world's most ill-timed alarm clock.

From upstairs, a crash of thundering footsteps. The smack of someone hitting a wall. The goose spread its wings and charged them like a deranged bull. Taron ran for the staircase, the goose still trumpeting after him. He ignored it.

By then, the footsteps and crashing from upstairs had gone quiet, so the only noise filling his ears was his own heartbeat and the goose's relentless honks. Out of his periphery, he saw Benny aim a kick at it. It pecked his pant leg.

Taron whispered, "One room at a time, let's go," and headed up the stairs. The goose didn't follow. It remained at the foot of the staircase, honking after them balefully.

Taron heard Benny hiss, "Why didn't we just shoot it?"

Because none of us expected a goose to blow our cover, Taron thought.

No time to reassess with two more werewolves unaccounted for. They strode up the stairs—too narrow for anything but single file—guns readied. Taron's heart pounded as they reached the top where a long hall of closed doors greeted them. Morning sunlight poured in through the open windows. Taron looked out one of them to see if any werewolves had escaped outside, but the fields and the ground immediately below were empty.

Now, the rooms. Taron didn't waste time with silence this time, kicking in the door to the first room on his left. It slammed inward and shattered into splinters when it met with the werewolf hiding on the other side.

A great hulking thing, it seemed too large for the room, more grizzly bear than canine. Thick fur stood up along its spine like porcupine quills. Taron had seen so many, but every time he was struck by how large, how monstrous they were. Its slavering jaws yawned open with a roar, and it lurched towards them with unerring speed. Taron pulled the trigger on his rifle. The bullets struck the werewolf in the chest with bursts of bright blood and blue siinca. Taron darted out of the doorway just as the werewolf crashed through it. Slumping into the hallway on its belly, it shrunk back into the shape of a man as it went. Slowly, the werewolf's eyelids drooped closed in sleep. He'd left a scarlet smear behind him, but already the pump of blood from the wound had decreased to a trickle. Benny stared at it with the wide-eyed horror new Fens always wore.

The photos, the videos, they were never quite like the real thing.

Taron stepped over the body to investigate the room but found it empty.

The next room was empty too. And the bathroom. Taron's pulse escalated with every new vacant area, one werewolf still unaccounted for. The final room they burst into with the same zeal, checking behind the door, Benny wrenching open the built-in closet. Nothing. Just an empty nursery.

Swearing under his breath, Taron said, "We're going to have to do a perimeter sweep."

"Pointless," said Edrik. He was right. At this point, it was a formality. The last wolf could easily outpace them.

Benny stalked into the hall and looked out the open window for any sign of it. The room, with its freshly painted buttercup yellow walls, felt too bright and sunny, incongruous with the threat of a lone wolf now on the run. Pulling the GPS tracker off the belt at his hip, Taron punched in the data needed: one wolf, their current location. The device buzzed as it calculated the average speed of a werewolf, likely routes, areas of highest risk, spitting the necessary perimeter to contain it.

There were too many possible escape routes. It was an area too large for just the three of them. They would have to call in for backup.

Taron brought his phone up but it never reached his ear. A scuffling, soft noise above him stopped the motion halfway. Like rats in the attic, but larger. It set Taron's pulse racing.

Quiet, muffled footfalls on the rooftop.

Taron shouted, "The roof!"

Benny whirled around, stood with his back to the open window just as a dark shape swung down and blotted out the light. Taron raised his gun too late. An arm, covered in coarse hair, reached round Benny's throat with claws like sickles and cut him open from ear to ear.

"No!" Edrik bellowed.

Benny slumped forward, limbs gone limp and heavy as he hit the floor. Gouts of blood spat from the mess of his neck. Taron opened fire on the form, but it hurled itself away from the window and disappeared, leaving behind a scarlet stain spreading around their fallen comrade. Edrik ran to Benny's side, but there was no hope for him. His head hung by little more than threads, the wound so deep it had nearly decapitated him.

The footsteps pounded on the rooftop again, like the most bone-chilling rain from a violent storm.

"We've gotta get out of here," he said.

They bolted for the door, but the window behind Taron exploded in glittering shards before they could take two steps. Spinning, rifle at the ready, Taron fired wildly at the hulking figure, but it batted the gun away and caught him in the chest with its paw. The claws bore through Taron's kevlar like butter. Only sheer luck and the thick layers of protective clothing prevented the wound from going deeper. Pain lanced through him from the shallow cuts all the same, but even then the fear hadn't sunk in because Edrik was still armed, still standing at the ready.

Only Taron stood in the way. Before he could move, a paw, warping into something hand-like but still clawed and monstrous, gripped him by the throat. It reeled him in, its rank body pressed against his back.

Edrik watched with gun raised and eyes wide. The werewolf held Taron close, cradling him in the pose of a lover without an ounce of the affection. A human shield. Taron opened his mouth to tell Edrik to run, but as he did the claws, which moments ago had ripped Benny's throat open and were still polished with his blood, poised against Taron's jumping pulse. He sucked in his breath and held it.

The werewolf said, "Drop the weapon." It—she, Taron noted—didn't have to add a threat. Her claws were enough. Her voice, mutated and barely human, issued into his ear like the buzz of flies. Half-transformed, not fully a wolf nor fully human, she made Taron's skin crawl.

Edrik put the rifle down slowly, followed by his pistol. He stepped back, hands in the air.

"Your ammunition and the cuffs too."

Edrik followed her orders. His eyes were trained on Taron the whole time. He knew what Edrik expected to see. Any moment, what happened to Benny all over again, but with Taron this time.

The werewolf unclipped the one remaining pair of cuffs from Taron's belt too, throwing it behind her with his weapons. Out of reach. Useless to him.

"Now, leave," the werewolf hissed.

Edrik froze. This time, he didn't obey.

"Leave!" Her voice rose in pitch and insistence. "Leave my pack and consider yourself lucky."

"Listen to her," Taron ordered.

Edrik growled. "I can't do that."

In Taron's periphery, the werewolf leaned over his shoulder. Her face was human in only the most superficial sense. Slightly too large, her nose and lips protruding, almost a muzzle but not quite. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in an approximation of a smile. "You don't have a choice," she said.

"You've already killed one of us. Let him go and we'll leave you alone," Edrik said.

She laughed. A horrible, croaking rattle that set Taron's skin out in gooseflesh. Her grin widened, more than a human face should, all gum and white teeth and the wet insides of her cheek. Humid breath fanned against Taron's neck. "You're a Fen. Your word is worth less than mine," she argued.

A trickle of sweat slid down Taron's spine. "Just go, Edrik."

Edrik ignored him. "No one else has to get hurt! You can come quietly. It will be safer for you in quarantine—"

"Safer," laughed the werewolf. "Safer!"

"Yes, for humans and werewolves," Edrik insisted.

"Safer." She shook her head and Taron tried not to shudder as the bristles on her cheek brushed his skin. "Quarantine is a death sentence."

"No one's going to hurt you, if you just let him go," Edrik tried.

"Leave!" Her voice warped as anger overwhelmed her. Taron had heard that break in tone before. He had only a second to act. With as much force as he could muster he smashed his head back against her own. Taken off guard, she nearly released him.

Nearly.

The face next to his was no longer close to human. He twisted out of her grip, tried to back away. He glimpsed a distorted, elongated mouth, a flash of curved teeth. He raised his hands to shove her back and those teeth sank gum-deep into flesh, his arm engulfed in the vice of her jaws. Searing pain burned its way through his wrist, up his elbow, his shoulder. White hot agony turned his blood molten, making it impossible to think or react.

She spoke around his arm, crowing in a facsimile of triumph. "He's coming with me now!" 

A crack of gunfire silenced her. Edrik's shot slammed through her temple and came out the other side in a firework of scarlet and siinca blue. Her jaw slackened, releasing Taron's arm. He scrambled away, vision blurred together like watercolours, and a fever burning up his arm, spreading through him, consuming him.

Edrik knelt beside him. Edrik's arm around him. Saying something indistinct. Taron was pretty sure he was screaming. Clutching his arm. A wet patch had soaked through his camo where he'd pressed it to his chest.

"Hold on, we'll get you out of here. We can bandage you up." Edrik's voice got further and further away while the pain vanquished all else. Spots of black winked and spread across Taron's vision until he couldn't see. Couldn't hear either.

One thought penetrated the fog before he passed out.

Either I'm dying, or I'm infected. 

------

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! Wolf Teeth is my next upcoming novel, the first of a slow burn enemies-to-lovers trilogy. I'll start posting regular updates April 14th, 2021. In the mean time, I hope you enjoyed the teaser. If you did, remember to add it to your library so you can get notifications when new chapters are posted. Thanks so much for reading!