"He calls himself "the wolf". I heard he wears a real wolf pelt when he attacks." I hear my dad telling my mother. They speak in hushed tones, hoping not to be overheard.
"Is he a threat to us?" My mother asks.
"I... I don't know. I think he is looking for more wealthy folk than us, but you never know, with people like that. He could be out of his mind."
"Dad!" My brother bursts through the door, carrying a flyer that he puts straight into dad's hand. My dad looks it over, then crumples it up and tosses it at the fire. It just misses, and lands behind the woodpile.
"Get to bed, Thomas. We're all going to bed. It's going to be a long trip."
The three of them head toward the stairs and I scramble to my bed, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping.
The next morning we pack up and head out with the sunrise. Everything we own is packed into the wagon, the draft horse is hitched, and we leave this place that's been my home for my whole life. 21 years, and now it's been taken for failure to pay land taxes.
Dad has an uncle who offered us a home on his property. That's where we're going. Straight through Brackenwood forest. Brackenwood is notorious for hiding all the unsavory, dangerous, criminal types. Although recently word is that a new sort of law has come to Brackenwood. Supposedly he has all the rough crowd there under his thumb, and they have become a much more organized, much more effective group of bandits.
I doze off on the back of the wagon around midmorning. I dream about an animal, one with long teeth and sharp claws, following us as we enter the woods.
(Hoping for a bit of a dark fantasy here, maybe some kink, definitely some non-con, or at least Dub-con.)
