So she tried to keep her voice light. “You’re poaching naked in a rainstorm? I think you need to get better hobbies.”
The werewolf tilted his head. “You’re scared.”
“No. I’m used to the woods. I’ve seen scarier things than you.”
“Is that so? Like what?”
She said the first thing she could think of. “Centipedes.”
“Centipedes?”
“I hate them. Too many legs.”
“You’re scared,” the werewolf repeated. His smile seemed to savor her. “You don’t want to show it, but I can smell it on you.”
He was sniffing at her, his nostrils flared. He looked at her camera bag.
“What’s that?”
Aria tightened her hand on the strap. “It’s my camera.”
The werewolf’s lips actually wrinkled back as he growled. “Give it to me!”
His breath smelled like blood and meat.
“I didn’t see anything!” Aria said, her panic getting the better of her. “All I took pictures of were the wolves!”
She realized immediately, with a freezing cold dart of fear down her spine, that she had just messed up. He hadn’t known that she had seen him change. He might have been satisfied with just breaking her camera.
But now he knew for sure.
She stayed quiet now, keeping her eyes on his hands. She was used to watching animals’ body language. It couldn’t be that different with humans. She just had to pay attention to the way he moved.
“You shouldn’t have come into my territory,” the werewolf said, his voice a low rumble.
His smile wasn’t a smile after all, Aria realized. His teeth were bared. He wasn’t smiling, he was snarling.
And his mouth was changing. It was elongating into a snout.
Couldn’t get much clearer body language than that.
Aria put all of her strength into her arm and swung her camera bag towards him.
It hit his head with a hard clunk that was immediately drowned out by him howling in pain.
Aria didn’t stick around to hear about how much it had hurt. She took off running as fast as she could, tearing through the trees and ignoring the branches snapping against her face. She skidded in the mud, her arms pinwheeling as she tried to keep her balance. Falling could cost her her life.
There was a burning stitch in her side. She was panting like crazy.
And he was gaining on her. She could hear the soft gallop of wolf paws on the forest floor. She had delayed him and maybe dizzied him, but he was still faster than she was, and he was getting closer and closer by the second.
One of her feet smashed into a rock, and she went careening forward, falling face-first onto the damp ground. She caught herself just in time to keep from smashing her head on a log. She tried to stand, but her feet kept slip-sliding in the mud. She was still in a half-crouch when the wolf barreled into her from behind.
Aria rolled over. She looked deep into the wolf’s sickly yellow eyes.
She couldn’t see anything human there at all.
She knew there was no point to begging for her life. He wouldn’t listen. He wasn’t hesitating now, he was just savoring the moment, drinking in her smell and the sensation of having her pinned to the ground. He was just gloating over his fallen prey.