His fingers grazed the velvety material of her white blouse, tracing the brownish blood stains splattered across the sides, before enveloping her into a loving back hug and resting his chin onto her shoulder. The safety of his embrace was sufficient for her to completely ignore her current surroundings and just relax into his warmth. “I love you,” Kai murmured into her right ear with his husky voice. He always managed to make her heart soar every time he said that, and she softly muttered back, “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

They stayed there for a long while, until she began to feel a wet patch on her shoulder blade and the tightening of his arms around her waist. Turning around to face him, her heart ached when the shimmering tears slipped from his hazel brown eyes and rolled onto his cheeks. She reached out to gently wipe his tears away, and he pulled her back in for a bone-crushing hug, refusing to let go. Something sharp was poking at her left cheek, and I pulled back to see the pink angel necklace she had gifted him on his birthday glimmering under the moonlight in the gloomy room. She reached out to grasp it, but a deafening gunshot reverberated through the air, followed by an ear-splitting howl not too far away.

Instantly she shrank back into his arms, petrified at the sudden turn of events. She felt calloused fingers gently tilt her face up, and a pair of plump lips caressed her own. Its movement projected his desperation to her and he quickly pulled away, holding her shoulders firmly and locked gazes with her. “Whatever happens, run away if you see a wolf. Don’t worry about me. I promise to find you again,” he said firmly and she hesitantly nodded.

She was yanked to a safer hiding place behind a wooden cupboard that was falling apart and he turned to go, yet was held back when she tugged on the sleeve of his black fleece sweater. She searched his eyes for reassurance and finally let him go. He dashed out of the front door of the dilapidated cottage and she was left alone in the eerie darkness of the living room. Creak. Howl. She nearly jumped out of her skin in fright when the door to the kitchen swung closed, followed by the howling of a wolf.

Alarmed, she inched her way closer to the broken glass window behind her to take a look outside. In the distance, she noticed the figure of a snow white wolf howling at the pitch dark forests towards the north-west of the cottage she was in. A second howl pierced through the silence of the night and from the eerie forest emerged the figure of a man holding a rifle and right behind him was another wolf, this one a gorgeous golden brown colour. From her position in the small house, it looked like the two wolves were cornering the man, slowly advancing until he had nowhere to back off to. A flash of panic struck her. Was it him?

The man was stuck in a dead end, surrounded by walls with nowhere to escape. He held his rifle up in front of him as if to defend himself, yet it was proven useless when all of a sudden, the two wolves pounced. A hoarse scream echoed in her ears. She saw his death right in front of her own eyes. The claws. The canines. The howling of the wolves. She let out a whimper out of fright. As though they noticed her, the wolves stopped howling and turned around, their electric blue eyes boring into her own. It sent chills down her spine and she instantly shrank back behind the cupboard.

It was quiet. She thought it was over. The hinges on the front door creaked as it opened, and she hurriedly peeked out of her hiding place. Instead of the loving gaze of the person she desperately wanted to see, she was greeted by the snow white wolf baring its bloody canines and growling softly. As it padded closer and closer to where she was, its shadows loomed over me and she was stuck in the corner. An image of the man’s death flashed before her eyes. A paw shot towards her and clawed at her arms, blood trickling down and staining her baby blue shorts. She screamed. It stopped. She looked back up and the moonlight shone on the neck of the wolf. A pink angel necklace hung around its neck.