A strong odor had caused Mira to rise from an unusually fitful sleep.

Something very close was burning, that much was immediately obvious.

“Had another building been set ablaze? How many did that make, was it 4? ” she wondered aloud, slowly sitting up in bed, lazily placing her spectacles on. As she slid into her slippers she thought that she could hear voices outside, and they sounded panicked and wild. She yawned and pushed gently on her bedroom door, creeping down the narrow hall as stealthily as possible.

She could hear her father snoring loudly and knew that despite the frequent late night disturbances which had recently woken her, and nearly every other villager up without fail, they had little effect on her hard slumbering father. She smiled, pulled on her blackest cloak and moved towards the front door. “Just a little peek,” she thought and stuck her head out, looking around cautiously before slipping through the garden toward the thoroughfare.

Mira turned toward the direction of the smoke. Finding the origin was simple enough, the flames assaulting the sky were so ferocious that they appeared to be the moon hungrily. There had been a curfew in the village since the werewolves had returned.  Women and children caught out of their homes after dark would be severely punished. However, with the current commotion, no one was likely to notice her presence for at least a moment or two even if she was careless.

Several young women had gone missing in the previous weeks, their bodies discovered in the charred and skeletal remains of what were once homes and businesses, leaving nothing but badly burned husks, and Mira knew every single one of them. She thought about them then, their still familiar smiling faces, closing her eyes as she crouched down and covered her ears to the din of the church bells. They were getting more use in emergency situations in the past few months than Mira could remember in her lifetime. Had her father once said something about similar incidents happening in Cholerny before her birth? 

Lost in her own troubled thoughts, she was caught off guard by three men sprinting past her. They appeared to be searching for something, calling to each other and waving their torches around frantically. “Ah, the werewolves are still here,” she whispered to herself. Unsure if he’d heard a noise, one of the men tilted his head slightly, and began walking quickly in her direction. “Damn,” she thought, quietly moving backwards into a grouping of large trees that shaded her home, sitting just outside of her large bedroom windows.

If the situation became desperate, she thought that perhaps she could evade her pursuers by climbing into her room that way, if she were quiet enough.  Presently, however, the man turned toward the direction of another villager who was waving his torch around and gesturing for the others to follow him quickly. Perhaps they’d found the wolves. No; they were far too quick to be caught by the hopelessly unprepared villagers. They’d never had to deal with violence of this caliber in her lifetime, and were all but useless under the present circumstances.

 She backed into the nearest tree and let out a sigh of relief, not realizing how long she’d been holding her breath. If she were caught, it would mean being lashed in the town square for the entire village to see, and that was not an experience she relished. The village Kaplan, a self-proclaimed holy man who believed himself too pious for this world, had generously doled out the punishments since his arrival in the village.  He had captivated his flock, much more so than his meek predecessor, and they could scarcely remember how they’d gotten along before his arrival. Mira, however, had suspicions about the man and avoided him whenever possible. Suddenly, she heard more footsteps and quickly pressed herself closely to the tree behind her. 

“Where is Chanyeol?”

 “He was right here a moment ago!”

There were several unfamiliar men headed almost directly to her hiding spot. They seemed to be taking cover in the trees just as she had, speaking quietly but urgently, and try as she might, she did not recognize them as being from Cholerny. 

“Damn that fool!”

“Suho, we cannot leave him. I will not leave him here.” 

“We must put the safety of the pack before that of the individual. I'm sorry, Baekhyun, but that's how it must be.”

Mira’s heart was racing. She had never seen a werewolf, not in person. Yes, she’d seen illustrations in many of her illuminated texts, but these men were nothing like the creatures represented in them. In fact, they didn’t look like monsters at all. Where were their fangs, the hair sprouting wildly through their clothing, the vicious red eyes? They looked like normal men, with the notable exception that several of them were gently