Big and Bad ch. 4 (Patreon)

Big and Bad ch. 4 - Bride of the Wolf

Once upon a time, on the morning of her nineteenth birthday, the sky tore itself apart and fire rained down on the only home Goldilocks had ever known for the last thirteen years.

She had been dreaming when it started. In the dream, she was six years old again, riding on the back of an enormous wolf while the trees blurred past her like watercolors left out in the rain. The wolf’s fur was soft against her cheek, and his voice rumbled through her like a lullaby. Hold on tight, little cub. If you fall off, I’ll eat you up.

She had had some version of this dream every single night since the day they parted.

But that night was different. That night, the thunder came, and she woke to screaming.

The convent was burning. She knew it before she even opened her eyes, knew it from the way the air tasted like smoke and how the floor was shaking beneath her cot. She had fantasized about this moment for years, seen it play out in fragments and flashes every time she closed her eyes, and so when she threw off her blankets and ran for the door, she felt no fear at all.

She felt only joy.

The hallway was a grim and apocalyptic scene. Sisters in white nightgowns fled in every direction, their habits abandoned and feet slapping against hard floors that were already hot to the touch. Lightning struck the bell tower and sent it crashing down into the courtyard, crushing three novices who had been trying to reach the well. Goldilocks saw it happen and kept running. There was nothing she could do for them now—this was their dark fate. Goldilocks’s destiny, however, was much, much brighter.

Sister Margaret grabbed her arm as she passed. The old woman’s face was streaked with soot, her eyes frantic with terror. “Sister Clementine! Where are you going? We need to get to the cellar!”

Goldilocks smiled giddily to hear her false name spoken one final time. She licked her lips and stepped backwards, still grinning as she said, “The cellar won’t save you.” Goldilocks pulled free of her grip, ripping her wrist away. “Nothing will. This storm is here to set me free, Sister Margaret.”

“What are you talking about? Child, you’re not making any sense!”

But Goldilocks was already gone, sprinting down the corridor back toward her cell. She had packed a bag three years ago and hidden it beneath the loose floorboard under her bed. Inside was everything she would need: a hunting knife she had bartered for from a traveling merchant, a length of rope, a tinderbox, dried meat and hardtack that she replaced every few months, and a small leather pouch containing every coin she had ever earned doing odd jobs for the local village.

She grabbed the bag and ran for the eastern gate.

Behind her, the convent collapsed.

The sound was tremendous, a roaring crash that shook the earth and sent a plume of dust and debris billowing into the storm-dark sky. Goldilocks didn’t look back, though the smell of the rubble would haunt her for half a mile. She had said her goodbyes to Sister Agatha and Sister Therese and all the others in her heart, in her dreams, months and years ago. They had been kind to her. Some of them had even loved her. But they were never her family, and the convent was never her home.

Her home was waiting for her in the Darkwood with handsome paws, a massive, muscular body full of pitch-black fur, and stark white teeth so sharp they could bite a tree in half.

She ran until the burning ruins were just a glow on the horizon, and then she kept running. The storm followed her for a while, lightning striking the ground in her wake like the fingers of an angry god trying to squash a particularly persistent bug. But eventually even the storm seemed to give up the chase, and by the time the sun rose over the treetops, the sky was clear and blue and almost mockingly peaceful.

Goldilocks stopped at a stream to catch her breath. Her lungs burned and her legs ached, but there was a smile on her face that she couldn’t quite suppress.

Thirteen years. Thirteen whole years she had waited for this day, and now it was finally here.

She was going to find him. Her wolf. Her love. Her furry prince.

That final title made her giggle every time she thought about it, which was often. She had first heard him called the Prince of Beasts in one of the holy texts Sister Margaret used for their lessons on the dangers of the Darkwood and the monsters that dwelt within. The passage had been meant as a warning, a cautionary tale about the wickedness of magical creatures and the importance of staying on the righteous path. But Goldilocks had read it differently. She had seen the word “prince” and felt her heart flutter in her chest like a caged bird, and she had known with absolute certainty that someday she would find him again.

Now that someday was today.

She splashed water on her face and took stock of her supplies. The bag was lighter than she remembered, and she realized with a start that some of her dried meat must have gone bad without her noticing. No matter. She had survived four days in the Darkwood as a starving six-year-old. She could certainly survive a few weeks as a healthy young woman with actual provisions.

Besides, she was not the helpless child she had been back then. Sister Therese had seen to that.

Sister Therese had arrived at the convent when Goldilocks was eleven, a former circus acrobat who had been shipped off by her wealthy father after she tried to elope with a minstrel. She was bitter and angry and completely uninterested in prayer or piety, but she had taken one look at the skinny blonde girl with the haunted eyes and decided to make her a project. For eight years, she had trained Goldilocks in everything she knew: how to climb, how to tumble, how to fall without breaking anything important, and how to move through the world with grace and precision and absolute confidence in her own body.

Sister Helene was the one who taught her fencing, passing down techniques from a noble lineage she had abandoned when she took her vows. Sister Catherine, who had grown up hunting with her brothers in the northern mountains, had shown her how to shoot a bow, set snares, start fires, and read the weather in the sky. Sister Samantha had taught her to fight with her fists and feet when blades weren’t available.

All of them were dead now, she was sure. Every last one.

Goldilocks felt the grief flicker through her like a candle flame, brief and hot, and then she tucked it away in the same place she kept all her other sorrows. She would mourn them properly later. Right now, she had a wolf to find.

***

The Darkwood swallowed her whole, and Goldilocks went willingly.

She remembered this feeling from her childhood—the way the trees seemed to lean in close as if curious about the little mortal who had wandered into their domain. The shadows were deeper here, and the air so much thicker. Even the sounds strange and alien. Birds called to each other in languages that were almost but not quite words, and small things skittered through the underbrush, always just out of sight.

But Goldilocks was not afraid. She had never been afraid of the Darkwood. It was the world outside the forest that had hurt her, the world of famines and villages that burned while children screamed. The Darkwood had only ever shown her kindness. The three bears had been less than hospitable, but they were an exception to the rule.

She walked for hours, following no particular path, simply heading deeper and deeper into the heart of the forest. She knew she should be more strategic about this. She knew she should be tracking, looking for signs, doing all the clever things that hunters did when they were searching for their quarry. But tracking was the one skill she had never learned all that well. None of the sisters had been hunters to that level, and the few books she had read on the subject had been theoretical at best.

So without something clever to do, she did something stupid.

“Wolf!” she called out, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Big Bad Wolf! Where are you? It’s me! It’s your Goldilocks!”

Her voice echoed through the trees, startling a flock of crows into flight. Nothing else responded.

She tried again. “I know you’re out here somewhere! I’ve come to find you! Please, let me find you!”

Still nothing.

She was about to try a third time when a voice spoke from the bushes to her left. “Are you mad, girl? Completely and utterly mad?”

Goldilocks spun around and dropped her hand to the knife at her belt. A small red fox emerged from the undergrowth. It had fur patchy with age and eyes bright with confusion or concern or perhaps even contempt. Probably all three at once.

“I’m not mad,” she said, taking a confident posture. “I’m in quite a good mood, actually, and well about my wits. I’m looking for someone.”

“Someone indeed.” The fox sat back on its haunches and regarded her with obvious disbelief. “You’re standing in the middle of the most dangerous forest in the land, screaming for the Big Bad Wolf, and you expect me to believe you’re not mad?”

“The Wolf is my dearest friend. My only living friend in this world, in fact. I need to find him or I’ll likely die in these woods.”

The fox let out a barking laugh. “Better to die in these woods by any other means than by finding your ‘friend,’ little fool. Do you have any idea what that creature does to the things it catches? Do you know how many bones are buried beneath these trees because something was foolish enough to draw his attention?”

“I know exactly what he is.” Goldilocks knelt down so she was closer to the fox’s eye level. “He saved my life when I was a child. He carried me on his back and fed me berries and brought me to the convent where I grew up. He’s the first one who ever showed me real kindness.”

The fox stared at her for a long moment. Its ears twitched. “You’re serious.”

“Completely.”

“Then you’re definitely mad.” The fox shook its head, but something in its eyes had softened. Or perhaps Goldilocks was imagining things. “Fine. If you’re determined to get yourself eaten, who am I to stop you? Not even one day ago, an owl down the Dark and Narrow spotted him. Big as a house and black as midnight, moving through the trees like death itself. If you want to find your ‘friend,’ you should see the owl.”

“The Dark and Narrow?”

“That way.” The fox jerked its snout toward a path that Goldilocks hadn’t noticed before, a thin trail cutting through the densest part of the undergrowth. “Follow it until you can’t follow it anymore, and then follow it a bit further. The owl lives in the old dead oak at the end. Can’t miss him. Big ugly bird with a know-it-all attitude.”

“Thank you.” Goldilocks rose to her feet. “I won’t forget this.”

“I’m sure you won’t. I bet this moment will come right back to you when you’re being digested.” The fox turned and vanished back into the bushes. “Fare thee well, mad girl. Try not to scream too loudly when he comes for you. It disturbs the neighbors.”

***

The Dark and Narrow earned its name.

The path wound through a part of the forest so thick with growth that the sun barely penetrated the canopy. Goldilocks had to push through brambles and crawl under fallen logs, and more than once she had to backtrack when the trail seemingly disappeared into a wall of thorns until she was able to find where she went wrong. Her nun’s robes caught on everything, tearing and snagging until they hung from her body in tatters. Her white habit was long gone, sacrificed to a particularly aggressive thorn bush that had seemed personally put off by her very existence.

Her boots fared even worse. They had been good boots once, sturdy leather with thick soles, a gift from a grateful farmer whose fence she had helped repair. But they were not made for this kind of terrain, and by the second day they were soaked through and squelching and falling apart.

That was before the snapping turtle.

It was hiding in a creek she was trying to cross, with its shell disguised as just another mossy rock. She had been stepping carefully from stone to stone when it lunged, and its beak clamped down on her boot with a force that nearly yanked her off her feet. She screamed and kicked, but the turtle held fast, and when she finally managed to wrench her foot free, the boot stayed behind in its jaws.

“You miserable little monster!”

The turtle regarded her with ancient, unimpressed eyes. It looked almost smug.

Goldilocks grabbed her remaining boot and hurled it at the creature as hard as she could. It bounced off the shell with a hollow thunk and splashed into the water, and the turtle retreated beneath the surface with its prize, leaving her barefoot and furious on the bank.

She stood there for a moment, bosom heaving, and then she started to laugh. She laughed until tears streamed down her face and her stomach ached and her throat was raw. She laughed at the turtle and at herself and at the absurdity of her reality, a nineteen-year-old runaway nun with no shoes and torn robes, chasing a bloodthirsty monster through the most dangerous forest in the world because she was convinced it loved her.

But it did love her. She knew it.

When she finally stopped laughing, she looked down at her bare feet. The old scars were still there as pale lines crisscrossing her soles from where she had walked for four days as a starving child. She remembered how much they had hurt back then, and every step had been agony. She had been so certain she was going to die.

She smiled.

Those scars were proof that she had survived and that she was stronger than she seemed. Even as a little whelp, she could endure anything the Darkwood threw at her and come out the other side.

She kept walking.

***

The owl was exactly where the fox had said it would be, perched on a branch of a massive dead oak at the end of the Dark and Narrow. It was deep in conversation with a bat that hung upside down from a nearby branch, the two of them talking about something in low, irritated voices.

“I’m simply saying that nocturnal superiority is self-evident,” the owl was hooting. “We see in the dark. We hunt in the dark. We are creatures of the night, and the night is when all the interesting things happen.”

“And I’m simply saying that you’re preaching to the choir.” The bat’s voice was surprisingly deep for such a small creature.

“Excuse me,” Goldilocks called up to them. Both creatures went silent and turned to look at her. The owl’s eyes were enormous, round and yellow as twin moons, and they blinked at her with obvious surprise.

“Well,” the owl said after a moment. “This is unexpected.” It tilted its head. “Are you quite lost? It’s not often we get many pretty human girls around here, no sir.”

“I’m looking for the Big Bad Wolf.” Goldilocks had given up on preamble at this point, but she still cringed at the faces they made when she brought up the name. “A red fox told me you saw him recently.”

The bat let out a rumbling guffaw. “Oh, this is rich. This is absolutely priceless. Did you hear that? She’s looking for the Big Bad Wolf.”

“I heard.” The owl’s expression had gone from surprise to the sort of sad look you see at a funeral. “Tell me, girl, are you actively trying to die terribly, or is this simply the most elaborate suicide method I’ve ever encountered?”

“I’m not trying to die. I’m trying to find my friend.”

“Your friend.” The owl’s voice was flat with disbelief. “The Big Bad Wolf. Is your friend.”

“Yes.”

“The same Big Bad Wolf who ate an entire village last spring because someone looked at him funny?”

She shrugged. “He probably had a good reason.”

“The reason was that someone looked at him funny!” The owl ruffled its feathers in agitation. “Child, I have lived in these woods for forty-seven years, and in all that time, I have never met anyone foolish enough to actively seek out that monster. What possible reason could you have for wanting to find him?”

Goldilocks thought about it for a moment. How could she explain the way her heart raced every time she remembered his golden eyes? How could she describe the feeling of safety she had felt curled up against his belly as a child, surrounded by fur and warmth and the steady rhythm of his breathing? How could she make this owl understand that the Big Bad Wolf was the first creature in the entire world who had ever shown her unconditional kindness?

She couldn’t. So she didn’t try.

“He saved my life once,” she said simply. “I’ve been waiting thirteen years to see him again. Please. Just tell me where he is. It’s my life to throw away if I wish to.”

The owl and the bat exchanged a look. Something passed between them, some silent communication that Goldilocks couldn’t interpret.

“Fine,” the owl said finally. “If you’re determined to throw your life away, who am I to stop you? The wolf passed through here again just yesterday, heading east toward the Sanctuary Tree. If you want to spot him, your best bet would be to climb up the tree and look for movement in the canopy. A creature that size can’t move through the forest without disturbing the treetops.”

“The Sanctuary Tree? How do I get there?”

The owl gave her directions in the tone of someone explaining how to tie a noose. Goldilocks thanked it and started walking before it could say a grim goodbye.

***

The Sanctuary Tree was impossible to miss.

It rose above the forest like a giant surveying its domain, its trunk so wide that it would have taken a dozen people holding hands to encircle it. Its branches spread across half the sky, ancient and twisted and heavy with teardrop-shaped leaves with pointed tips. Goldilocks had never seen anything so magnificent in her entire life.

At the base of the tree sat a ruined cottage.

The walls had collapsed long ago, leaving nothing but a foundation and a few rotting timbers. Vines had grown over everything, reclaiming the structure for the forest. Beside the ruins, half-hidden by a tangle of wildflowers, stood a small headstone. The name carved into it had been worn away by time and weather, but Goldilocks could still make out a few letters. Something-AUSS. It was hard to tell.

She felt a pang of sadness for whoever had lived here, whoever had died here. But she didn’t have time to mourn strangers. She had a wolf to find.

She approached the Sanctuary Tree and looked up. The lowest branches were still far above her head, but there were knots and bumps in the bark that looked climbable enough. She stretched her fingers, rolled her shoulders, cracked her neck, and smiled.

Sister Therese had been right. All those years of training were about to pay off.

She climbed.

It was easier than she had expected. The bark was rough and full of handholds, and her body moved almost without conscious thought, muscle memory taking over as she pulled herself higher and higher. Within minutes, she had passed the first major branch. Within ten minutes, she was higher than she had ever climbed in her life.

A squirrel appeared on a branch beside her, twitching its tail playfully. “Well, well. A human who can climb. That’s a new one.”

“Thank you,” Goldilocks said, not slowing down. “I had a good teacher.”

“Must have been some teacher indeed.” The squirrel scampered along beside her, easily keeping pace. “Most humans can barely manage a ladder. You’re moving like you’ve got tree-blood in your veins, girl.”

Another squirrel appeared, and then another. By the time Goldilocks reached the upper branches, she had a small entourage of the creatures following her, all of them chattering with amazement and admiration.

“Look at her go!”

“Beautiful form!”

“My grandmother always said humans were clumsy oafs, but this one’s got talent!”

Goldilocks felt invigorated by the attention of the magical little beasts. She laughed and kept climbing until the branches grew too thin to support her weight. Then she stopped, wrapped her arms around the trunk, and looked out over the forest.

The view was breathtaking. The Darkwood stretched out below her in every direction, an endless sea of green and brown and shadow. She could see for miles. She could see the curves of distant hills and the glint of streams and the dark shapes of other great trees rising above the canopy.

And there. To the east. There was a… disturbance in the treetops. Something massive was moving through the forest, something so large that it made the trees themselves sway and shudder in its wake.

Her wolf.

Euphoria hit her like a gust of icy northern wind. Her vision blurred. Her head swam. For one terrifying moment, she thought she might actually faint and tumble out of the tree. She squeezed the trunk harder and forced herself to breathe, in and out, in and out, until her heartbeat steadied and her vision cleared.

“Are you all right?” one of the squirrels asked. “You went all pale there for a second.”

“I’m fine.” Goldilocks smiled so wide it hurt. “I’m better than fine. I found my love at last.”

She climbed down twice as fast as she had climbed up, ignoring the squirrels’ worried chirps and the scrape of bark against her already-torn robes. When her feet hit the ground, she immediately started running east, toward the movement, toward her wolf.

“Wolf!” she called as she ran. “Big Bad Wolf! It’s me! It’s Goldilocks! I’ve come for you!”

***

The next day was the hardest of her life.

She ran until she couldn’t run anymore, then walked, then crawled when her legs gave out completely. The forest threw everything it had at her: ravines she had to scramble down and climb back up, streams swollen with recent rain, thickets of thorns that tore at her flesh and the scant remains of her nun’s robes. By midday, her clothes were hanging from her body in strips, and her bare feet left bloody prints on the forest floor.

Something bit off the tip of her left pinky toe around sunset. She didn’t even see what it was, just felt the sudden sharp pain and looked down to find a small furry creature disappearing into the underbrush with a piece of her in its mouth. She screamed more from surprise than pain but kept walking. What was one toe, more or less? She had nine more.

Night fell. She didn’t stop, nor could she. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the movement in the treetops, the shadow of something massive, dark, and wonderful. He was close. He had to be close.

“Wolf!” Her voice was a ragged croak now, barely louder than a whisper. “Please! I know you can hear me! I know you’re out there!”

Dawn came and went. The sun climbed higher, and still she walked, stumbling through the undergrowth like a woman possessed. Because she was possessed, in a way. Possessed by hope. Possessed by love. Possessed by the memory of a six-year-old girl crying against a wolf’s fur while he carried her to safety.

And then the ground began to shake.

Goldilocks stopped walking the moment she felt it as certainty filled her every vein. Her heart stopped beating. In fact, everything stopped, like the whole world was holding its breath, as the trees in front of her bent and swayed and parted like curtains before a king.

The Big Bad Wolf stepped into the clearing.

He was every bit as magnificent as she remembered. Bigger, even, though that might have been her imagination filling in the gaps left by childhood memory. His fur was black as midnight, his eyes golden as the sun, and when he opened his mouth she could see teeth the size of short swords gleaming in the shadows of his maw.

He looked at her. She looked at him. Neither of them moved.

“Well, well, well,” the wolf said finally. A shudder of pleasure coursed through her body at the sound of his voice. It was exactly as she remembered it, deep and rumbling like a gentle storm. “What do we have here? A lost little nun in torn robes and bare bloody feet, wandering alone in the most dangerous forest in all the land.” He lowered his head until his nose was almost touching her face, and she could feel the heat of his breath on her skin. “Tell me, little morsel: are you stupid, or are you brave? Because those are the only two explanations I can think of for why you would be screaming my name through my forest.”

“You don’t… remember me?” The words came out small and hurt, not much like the confident declaration she had practiced in her head for thirteen years. “It’s me. Your Goldilocks. You saved me when I was a six year old girl, rescuing me from a family of bears. You carried me on your back and fed me berries and brought me to a nunnery at the edge of the woods.”

The wolf’s golden eyes widened with surprise, but then narrowed. He sniffed her, long and deep, his nostrils flaring, so strong that her blonde curls flung themselves toward his nostrils. “Goldilocks. Goldilocks.” He repeated the name like he was tasting it. And then he lied. “No, I don’t think I know anyone by that name. You must have me confused with some other giant wolf—one who saves little girls. Perhaps there’s more than one of us running around. Have you checked the other forests?”

Her lip trembled, and she stepped forward, refusing to back down. “I’m not confused. I know it was you.” She was so close, close enough to lean over and kiss him on the snout if she wanted to—and she did want to. “You called me ‘little cub.’ You threatened to eat me if I fell off your back. You said I was too scrawny to be worth digesting but you might fatten me up and eat me later.”

The wolf tilted his head, smirking impishly. “That does sound like something I’d say.”

“I need you.” Her voice cracked, and tears filled her eyes, but she pressed on. “My village burned down in a magical storm, and then my parents died. I wandered for days until the three bears tried to kill me, and then you appeared and saved me and carried me to safety. Please, no more games. Please tell me you remember. I need you to remember!”

Something flickered in the wolf’s eyes when she mentioned the storm. A spark of recognition, quickly hidden. But he just shook his massive head. “I’m sorry, little nun. I eat a lot of people, and I save exactly none. You must have me confused with someone else.”

He turned to leave.

“Wait!”

Goldilocks lunged forward before she could stop herself. Her hand came up and pressed against his nose, just like it had thirteen years ago when she was a little girl saying goodbye. His fur was just as soft as she remembered, warm and thick beneath her palm.

“You can’t abandon me because… I love you,” she said.

The wolf went very, very still.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. Goldilocks kept her hand on his nose, feeling the slow rhythm of his breathing, the warmth of his fur, and the slight twitch of his nostrils as he inhaled her scent. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest as tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. The weight of thirteen years of waiting pressed down on her shoulders, and she knew that if he really did abandon her now, it would crush her. She would die.

Then the wolf pulled back, and his expression shifted into something performatively nonchalant.

“Ahh yes,” he said. “Now I do recall you. The girl with the golden curls, hunted by three bears.” He tilted his head. “Didn’t I eat you?”

“Of course not!” Goldilocks felt a sudden surge of indignation that temporarily overwhelmed her joy. “How could you joke about that at a moment like this?”

“A moment like what?”

“The moment where I pledge myself to you as your wife!”

The wolf stared at her.

And then he started to laugh.

It was a terrible, wonderful sound, deep and rumbling and completely without warmth. He laughed until the trees shook and the birds fled and Goldilocks was forced to cover her ears against the noise. When he finally stopped, his eyes were gleaming with amusement.

“My wife,” he repeated. “You want to be my wife?”

“Yes.”

“You. A human woman. Want to marry me. A giant wolf who eats people.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve thought this through, have you?”

“I’ve thought of nothing else for thirteen years.” Goldilocks lifted her chin. “I know what you are. I know what you’ve done. I don’t care. You’re the only one who ever made me feel safe and cared for. I don’t mind it if you’re a monster. I don’t care if you’ve eaten a thousand people. I’ll happily watch you eat a thousand more. I love you, I love you, I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life at your side.”

The wolf was silent for the better part of a minute, which Goldilocks took for a good sign. His golden eyes studied her with an intensity that gave her goosebumps.

“You’re sure,” he said finally. “You’re completely, utterly serious about this.”

“I am.”

“This is the most absurd thing that has ever happened to me, and I once ate a witch who turned into a cactus in my stomach.” The wolf lay down on his belly, bringing his head closer to her level. “Fine. Let’s say for a moment that I entertain this lunacy. What exactly would being my ‘wife’ entail? Would you travel with me? Would you ride on my back like you did when you were a child?”

“Yes. We would travel together from now on. Forever.”

“I can think of few things less appealing than having a human woman riding my back all day, telling me what to do and who to eat.”

“I wouldn’t tell you who to eat,” Goldilocks said. “I don’t care about any of that, I already told you. I just want to be with you.”

The wolf blinked. “You don’t care who I eat.”

“No.”

“Not even if I eat children?”

“Do you eat children?”

“Sometimes. When they’re particularly annoying—or juicy.”

“Then they probably deserved it.”

The wolf stared at her for another long moment. Something shifted in his expression, something she couldn’t quite read. “There is something very strange about you, girl. Something I can’t quite sniff out. I don’t know why, but you... interest me.”

Goldilocks felt hope bloom in her chest. “Does that mean you’ll let me come with you?”

“It means I won’t eat you immediately.” The wolf rose to his feet, towering over her once more. “Fine. Climb on my back, little cub. We’ll see how long this arrangement lasts. But I warn you: if you become a burden, I’ll devour you. If you annoy me, I’ll devour you. If you do anything at all that displeases me, I’ll—”

“Eat me up.” Goldilocks was already walking toward his side, already looking for a good spot to climb. “I know. I’ve heard that lie before, darling.”

The wolf blinked again. His massive head turned to look at her, and for just a moment, she could have sworn she saw surprise in his golden eyes.

“Oh,” he said slowly. “I don’t know if I like this dynamic.”

Goldilocks just smiled and started climbing.

***

The months that followed were the happiest of Goldilocks’s life.

They traveled together through the Darkwood and beyond, moving from forest to forest, from mountain to valley, from one end of the land to the other. The wolf walked and Goldilocks rode, her fingers buried in his thick black fur, her cheek pressed against his warm body, the wind whipping her curly golden hair behind her like a banner.

He threatened to eat her every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. It was his way of professing his affection, she realized soon enough. She learned to recognize the different flavors of his threats, too—the way his voice changed depending on his mood. When he was genuinely annoyed, his threats were short and clipped. When he was amused, they were elaborate and creative. When he was tired, he barely bothered to finish them before trailing off into a yawn.

She also learned that he never meant them. Not the ones directed at her, anyway.

His actions betrayed him constantly. When she was cold, he would curl around her so tightly that she was completely surrounded by fur and warmth. When she was hungry, he would hunt for her, bringing back rabbits and deer and once, memorably, an entire wild boar that he dropped at her feet like a cat presenting a mouse. When she was tired, he would find the softest patch of ground in the area and dig out a nest for her with his massive paws.

“You’re sweet,” she told him once, and he growled so loudly that she felt it in her teeth.

“I am not sweet. I am the Big Bad Wolf. I am terror incarnate. I am the monster that mothers warn their children about.”

“Yes, to others. But you’re sweet to me. And I love you.”

“Stop saying that or I’ll eat you.”

But he didn’t eat her. He never ate her. And sometimes, when he thought she wasn’t looking, she would catch him watching her with an expression that was unmistakably tender.

At night, they slept together.

Not in the way that married couples slept together. Goldilocks had spent almost her entire life in a convent, and her understanding of such matters was limited to whispered conversations she had overheard between older sisters and immediately forgotten. She knew that men and women did something together in the dark, something that involved taking off their clothes and making strange noises, but the specifics escaped her and she had never felt any particular desire to learn more.

Though she was growing a little curious.

What she wanted for now was simpler. She wanted to be close to him. She wanted to feel his heartbeat against her back and his breath in her hair. She wanted to know that when she opened her eyes in the morning, he would be there.

So every night, she would curl up against his belly, pressing herself into the warmth of his fur, and he would drape one enormous paw over her body like a living blanket. She fit perfectly in the curve of his form, like she had been designed for this purpose and no other. Like this was exactly where she was always meant to be.

“If you smother in your sleep, I’m not responsible,” he told her the first time she did it.

“I won’t smother.”

“You might. I’m very large.”

“I’ll take my chances, darling.”

He grumbled something under his breath, but he didn’t push her away. He never pushed her away. And in the morning, when she woke to find his golden eyes watching her with that strange, enigmatic expression, she would smile and press her face deeper into his fur and pretend she couldn’t see the way his whole body relaxed at her touch.

She never called him out. She knew he had his pride. He would never say the words back—“I love you, Goldilocks”—but he didn’t have to. She could hear them in her heart.