Freya's Howl Ch. 01 - Fall

Lucy Welsh hadn't asked to be spiritually yeeted across dimensions on her walk home from the late shift at the warehouse.

Nor had she asked for the freezing Melbourne rain that soaked her high-vis shirt so thoroughly she could see the black singlet underneath it. Nor had she asked for the customer returns she'd spent the entire evening unpacking -- three of which contained adult toys that were clearly unwashed, or to have her knee slammed into three years ago by a guy twice her size during a friendly game of footy on base that resulted in a full reco and a medical discharge from the Army and landed her in that job in the first place.

And she'd definitely not asked for the gut-deep pull she felt the moment she'd stepped off the curb near the Mcdonald's on Leakes Road.

One minute she was catching up on her group discord chat discussing that weekend's session of Storm King's Thunder with Parkway Drive screaming through her earbuds, the next, there was no ground beneath her, and her wet phone slipped from her hand as she braced for her leg to twist into the bottom of a foot-deep pothole full of water.

Her breath whooshed out of her as she landed not on the road, but something damp and springy. No puddles, no asphalt, not even gravel. This was grass and mulch and rotting leaves.

She sat up, gasping. Her earbuds were still in her ears, but the heavy guitarline of In Glitch was no longer playing. Instead, they chimed a cold little no connection tone that somehow made everything seem worse.

Her hands scrambled through the wet leaves, searching. Phone. Phone. Where the fuck was it?

"Fuck," she muttered, desperately, "fuck fuck fuck."

It wasn't anywhere nearby. Her lifeline, her music, her connection to the world, her outlet for all of the frustration she was feeling, hell even just to reconnect and stop this infernal tone in her ears!

"God Fuckin' Damnit!" she yanked the earbuds out and threw them into the dark. Her brother would have laughed at her: aaand there goes the baby with the bathwater.

Her hands were shaking now, and mud streaked the reflective strips on her pants and the front of her shirt.

She blinked, looking around.

No lights. No road.

No Macca's.

This wasn't Leakes Road. This wasn't even Tarneit.

"What the fuck," she whispered.

She turned, expecting to see the glow of traffic lights, the golden arches promising her comfort food. Nothing. Just trees. Dark, old trees, clawing up at a sky that looked... wrong.

Lucy was in the middle of a forest that looked like The Witcher had fucked Skyrim and left her in the wet patch. She looked up. Moments ago, the moon had been hidden behind a thick curtain of fast-moving clouds. Now, two moons stared down at her from a clear sky one slightly green, the other much, much larger than what she remembered.

Her throat tightened. She was one step away from crying. She'd lost her phone. And now she'd apparently lost Melbourne.

"No." Her voice cracked. "No, no, no--"

She scrambled to her feet.

A low sound stopped her. It sounded like the purring growl of a big cat. It wasn't as much a growl as it was just a vibration that she felt in the marrow of her bones; low and ominous.

Then another. Deeper, almost like a chittering. That one sounded like the Predator. And another. And another.

Her breath hitched. She spun, looking for headlights, for anything human, but the sound came again, longer this time. Not from one place, but everywhere.

"What..."

Shadows detached from the trees. Towering, unnatural, joints bending the wrong way, limbs too long, too dense, gleaming eyes.

Lucy didn't think. She didn't stay around to see what those shadows became in the moonlight.

She ran.

---

Lucy didn't run for her life. That would imply she had a handle on what the fuck was happening. No. This felt more like running because every nerve in her body was screaming that stopping meant she'd never run again.

All she'd wanted was mustard-drenched deep-fried chicken and some sugar to cry into while yelling at the TV. And instead? She was running through a nightmare forest in a high-vis shirt that made her look like a fluorescent Happy Meal toy for whatever the fuck was chasing her.

Something howled. It wasn't a dog. Not a lion either. Something bigger. Meaner. And definitely carnivorous.

"Fuck's sake," she wheezed, ducking under a branch that clawed at her face. "What is this? Hunger Games: Jurassic Park Edition?"

Her boots weren't designed for this. They were made for cement floors and rogue pallet jacks, not forest loam that sucked her steps down like quicksand. Every stride jarred her knee, sparking white-hot pain up her leg, but she couldn't stop. If she stopped, she was done.

Behind her, something snapped. A branch, maybe, or her sanity. She glanced over her shoulder just long enough to see glowing eyes, low to the ground. More than one set. It sounded like she was being pursued by a pack of brumbies. Only, these were not the wild horses of Banjo Patterson's Australia breathing down her neck.

Of course, she thought to herself, I survive ten-hour shifts with Todd the Forklift Wanker, only to get eaten by... fuck-knows-what. Great. Awesome. Love that for me.

A shape lunged from the side. She veered, almost face-planting, heart hammering so loud she couldn't hear the animals huffing anymore. Her breath came ragged, half-sobs, half-laughter, the hysterical kind you only get when you're either drunk, high, or about to die.

Something hit her from the side like a bloody truck.

"FUCK!"

The air whooshed out of her lungs as her boots left the ground. She barely had time to register the blur of fur, before she was yanked upright, feet dangling.

Every expletive she knew came tumbling out of her mouth in a half-scream, half-sob as she started swinging, smacking at anything she could reach. Elbows, knees, steel-toe kicks, but none of it mattered. Whatever had her was built like a damn brick wall, body hot and solid against her back, limbs like steel bands locked around her ribs.

"LET ME GO, YOU FURRY FUCK! I AM NOT YOUR DINNER!"

The thing growled in response, low and deep. So deep it rattled in her bones. She shrieked, twisting, but another set of hands caught her ankles.

Hands?

"I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL BITE YOU!"

"Settle down!"

The voice was human. Rough. Close to her ear.

Lucy froze for half a second, blinking in confusion.

"What... what the fuck?"

"Stop thrashing," the voice said, low and firm, like they were scolding a misbehaving dog. "You're making it worse."

She kicked harder.

There was another growl, this time more like a rumble of warning than a threat.

Then she saw him. The one holding her ankles ducked into her line of sight. Tall, broad-shouldered, glowing eyes and teeth too sharp to be anything safe.

"Wha-" She sucked in a breath, panic clawing up her throat. "What the fuck are you?!"

"Trying to help," the voice by her ear snapped.

"HELP?!" she screeched, still kicking. "THIS FEELS A LOT LIKE MURDER!"

A different sound rolled across the forest. Like metal screaming underwater, an industrial fan chewing bone. It thrummed through the ground, through her ribs, through her teeth.

Lucy Froze. The talking, glowing-eyed creatures surrounding her stiffened.

Lucy felt the world blur. One of the men, no, the things hoisted her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and sprinted, silent except for the hard, rhythmic pounding of feet on wet earth. Her breath punched out of her lungs with every stride.

"Wait, No, Wha... what is that?" she hissed.

No answer. Only faster running.

The sound came again, louder this time. Closer. It wasn't a howl. It wasn't anything natural. It sounded like the forest itself was dying.

Lucy's voice cracked, ragged. "Seriously! WHAT -"

The man carrying her snarled, not at her, but at the night, and snapped, "Be quiet."

Something in his tone silenced her. Not fear of him, but fear of whatever the hell had just made even these things flinch. If they were running from that, she didn't even want to know what it was.

She shut her fucking mouth.

Her pulse thudded against her throat as branches whipped past her face. She clamped her hands onto hot, corded muscle, and forced herself to hold on. Whatever she'd fallen into, this was not the time to be asking questions.

She was nothing but dead weight, bouncing hard enough to knock the wind out of her with every stride. The creature's shoulder dug into her stomach like a battering ram, and her boots kicked uselessly at the air.

She tried to look around, twisting her neck to get her bearings, but it was dark, and all she saw were eyes. Dozens of them. Some low, some high, flickering gold and green like feral headlights in the night.

And the breathing. God. The breathing.

It wasn't like wolves or dogs. It was heavier. Bigger. The kind of sound you get from a horse after a hard run, deep, snorting, but with a guttural growl coiled under it.

"What the fuck is going on?" she whispered to herself, voice catching on the jolt of each step. Her hands were fisted in the back of the creature now, not because she trusted it, but because it was that or fall.

Her brain screamed in circles:

Where the fuck am I?

What the fuck are these things?

Why, oh fucking why, is this happening to me?

She'd had a bad day. A bad week. Being fired was one thing. Losing her phone was another. But now she was being carted through a forest that looked like something Tim Burton had dreamed up.

She wanted nuggets. A shower. Maybe a mild breakdown with wine and angry music. Not... this.

"Let me go," she tried again, though it sounded more like a plea than a demand this time.

No response.

The world blurred past in streaks of shadow and flickering starlight. Every time she thought they'd stop, the sound came again, distant, low, that metallic screech, and the whole pack surged forward like a flock of startled birds.

Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. Her sense of time stretched like chewing gum, all sticky panic and jarring pain with every bounce of his shoulder under her ribs. She'd lost track somewhere after the tenth time she thought, Okay, they have to slow down now, right?

Nope. These fuckers had cardio for days.

By the thirty-minute mark, Lucy wasn't sure if she was shaking from fear or because her organs were rearranging themselves like cheap lego.

And then the trees began to thin.

The endless press of shadow and bark gave way to open space, and for the first time she felt the pace change. It wasn't slow, still faster than she'd ever managed on a treadmill, but it wasn't the same desperate, ground-pounding sprint. The others fanned out slightly, their footfalls less like stampeding gorillas and more like... runners?

She hadn't noticed until now, but the body under her had shifted. Not dramatically, but different. The heat and bulk that had felt almost inhuman softened and restructured. Her fingers, still white-knuckled against its back, felt muscle and warm flesh instead of fur. Smooth skin. Warm, solid muscle.

"Ummm, what the hell?" she whispered to no one, too tired to scream anymore.

He wasn't a thing anymore. He was a man. A topless, broad, human-shaped man.

"What," she croaked, "the actual fuck."

Before she could process further, they stepped up onto something hard and flat and sounded like wood. She heard the hollow knock of bare feet on planks, the creak of boards under weight.

And then light.

Warm, golden, fire-like light spilling through the clearing. A porch. A roof.

There was a clink of metal in the breeze. A wind chime.

The man carrying her didn't set her down so much as dump her onto something soft. She hit cushions with a graceless oof and sprawled, staring at the ceiling beams overhead like they might offer some clue as to what dimension she'd just landed in.

A couch. Not a slab of stone or a bed of pelts like a Viking fever dream. A proper couch. Well, mostly proper, more roughspun wool and wood than IKEA chic, but still.

She blinked and looked around the room.

Six men.

Six shirtless men.

Six stupidly handsome, scarred, strong and utterly unreal men. All standing around the room like she'd been plucked off Leakes Road and deposited into the new season of The Bachelor.

And their eyes were all fixed on her.

No panting, no chest-heaving, no indication they'd just sprinted through a horror-movie forest, like they'd gone out for a casual bushwalk, seen her face-plant into the ground, and collectively decided: Hey, that cool stick looks like a wizard staff. Let's take it home.

"Are you..." She sat up, then immediately regretted it, as her ribs protested, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

Five pairs of eyes blinked back at her. Gold, brown, hazel, blue, every shade looked unnervingly intense in the firelight.

The one closest to her, dark hair, with a sharp jaw and the kind of smirk that said I roast people as a love language, let out a low chuckle. He looked like an off-duty barista.

"Well," he said, voice like trouble, "she's got a mouth, I'll give her that."

Another one, Pedro Pascal's middle-eastern cousin standing by the fireplace, tilted his head in that slow, curious way dogs do when they hear something strange. "She's... smaller than I thought she would be."

His voice had an almost purring cadence, and a thick accent, every word drawn out like he was tasting it.

Lucy squinted at them petulantly, "You know, I'm right here."

A tall, dark skinned man stood between Lucy and the door. He looked like he could be a cop. He tilted his head, studying her like she was an interesting second-hand car he wasn't sure was worth the price tag. His gaze wasn't cruel, just... assessing. Calculating.

She sneered.

Finally, the guy who'd carried her shifted his weight. He had sandy-brown hair, scruffy stubble, and he looked like he chopped wood for a living. He didn't look smug like the others, more like this was just a Tuesday for him. He shrugged.

"You were in danger." His voice was matter-of-fact.

Lucy blinked. "What, so you decided to drag me back to your weird LARPing cabin like a sack of potatoes instead of, I don't know, warning me?!"

Barista grinned wider. "Potatoes don't scream quite as much, love."

Her gaze snapped to the blonde one sitting quietly in the armchair. He hadn't said a word. He didn't have to. He just watched, all lean lines and amber eyes, like the leader of some cult of beautiful bastards.

"I suppose this was all your idea, huh? Chase me halfway through the bush, wear me out, and then drag me back to your off-grid hunting lodge? What even is this place? Seymour? DId I trip into a sex cult in the Macedon Ranges?"

The cop spoke up, "We are not a cult."

The middle eastern one folded his arms and gave her a slow, feline glance. "She's very strange, Aedarch. Are you sure she's..."

The blonde's gaze didn't waver. "You feel it, don't you?"

"Of course. But..."

Lucy sat up straight, narrowing her eyes. "Are you sure I'm what?"

Her voice cracked, high and sharp, like the snap of a rubber band.

Barista leaned against the stone mantle with a grin, his tone pure mockery. "She's got bite. I like her."

"Bite this," Lucy muttered, flipping him a not-so-subtle middle finger.

She whipped back to the blonde. Nothing. Just that calm, steady stare.

"What the actual fuck is this place?" she snapped, "And what the fuck was that outside?"

"We aren't going to murder you." the blonde in the chair spoke at last. Hie voice was soft, deep, and held a slight accent. Not exactly English, the vowels felt wrong, "You were running straight toward a Beholder our town guard has been tracking for weeks."

She stared back at him with her mouth open, completely incredulous, "Beholder. Really."

"Yes." He said simply, like it was an absolute fact.

A humourless laugh burst from Lucy, "Righto, DM. Sorry, I left my Monster Manual and dice in my other bag. What's next? You gonna tell me my hit points are low, I'm out of level five spells, and I could have been disintegrated or sent to the void?"

The room fell oddly silent.

"That's exactly what could have happened." The blonde man said calmly.

Lucy spun on him, "Don't fuck with me, Hannibal."

He blinked, "I'm not."

The quiet redheaded man who looked like he had walked right out of Highlander spoke for the first time, "Saw it happen to a trader once. Eyestalks lit up like solstice fire. Man vanished in a flash."

"Poof." Barista said, popping his lips and expanding his fingers.

She opened her mouth, closed it again, and finally said, "You guys are insane."

"You're the one who ran into its territory without a weapon," said the middle-eastern guy.

"Or sensible clothes." Said Barista, eyeing her reflective strips with a squint.

"Or any idea what you were doing?" The redhead leaning against the wall offered, grinning.

Lucy folded her arms and glared at the blonde man seated in the armchair, "So are you in charge of this insanity?"

"I am the Aedarch, yes," he said as he reclined in the chair, "You're in my territory, under my protection."

"So I'm your prisoner." She nearly spat it.

"Would we have stopped you from ending your life out there if we meant to harm you?"

"Maybe you saw pussy and decided you didn't want it wasted."

She regretted saying it as soon as it left her mouth.

Fuck. Tickets on yourself, Welsh?

She put her hands over her eyes, "I didn't mean..."

Thankfully, she didn't have to dig herself out of this one, as soft footfalls padded towards the door and a voice drifted in, "Did someone burn the bread again?"

He shuffled into view in loose sleep trousers and an oversized linen tunic falling off one shoulder. He couldn't have been more than 18 or 19. Smaller than the others and far more petite, his curly hair was flattened on one side, and he was rubbing at his face with the heel of one hand, blinking at the light.

When he saw Lucy in all her high-vis, wild hair and bad attitude glory, he stopped and his hands fell to his sides, his mouth opened.

For a moment, all Lucy could think of was God, he's so pretty, like someone had crossed a fairy prince with a skittish deer and dipped the result in moonlight.

The boy's face went pale, then bright pink.

"Oh," he said softly.

The blonde in the armchair stood and took a single step forward, his voice low.

"Joss."

Joss didn't look at him. His eyes were locked on Lucy.

"I thought I was dreaming," he said, dazed. He stumbled forward half a step, then stopped again, visibly trembling.

"I-I was sleeping. I didn't know." He nearly fell to his knees like something had cracked open inside him. Like she was the moon and he was the tide, pulled completely beyond his control.

Lucy frowned, "Mate, are you okay?"

Joss made a small noise, halfway between a gasp and a whimper, "She's real."

The blonde man stepped in between Lucy and Joss and placed his hand gently on the boy's shoulder.

"Yes," he said, softly, "She's Freya."

Nobody spoke.

"Okay," Lucy threw up her arms, "what the fuck is going on?"

The blonde man didn't smile.

"You're not from here," he said.

"Gee. You think?"

"You're not from anywhere in this world."

What?!

"Okay..."

"You were pulled here."

"By what?"

He shook his head, "I don't know."

She narrowed her eyes. "Right. Okay. So... this is an isekai, isn't it?"

"I don't' know what that is." His voice was quiet.

"Isekai," she repeated. "You know, hot weirdos in a fantasy world, tragic backstory, some poor girl from the modern world gets thrown into a nightmare and somehow ends up with a reverse harem of guys way too attractive to be real? Like every anime ever?"

Silence.

She waved a hand at them, exasperated.

"Look at you lot. You're all stupidly good-looking. You, with the scar like a Calvin Klein ad gone wrong. You," she pointed at Joss, who blinked, startled, "you look like the shy boy from Farmer Wants a Wife. And don't even try to tell me you don't know what that is."

Joss, of course, had no idea what she was on about. His big-eyed confusion only made her groan.

"God. You're too hot to be real. I'm dreaming. I have to be dreaming. Because there is no way I just landed in... whatever this is without so much as a pack of mcnuggets to show for it."

She slumped forward, elbows on her knees.

"I assure you, this is no dream, Freya" said the leader.

"You keep calling me that. My name's Lucy. Not Freya."

Cop said, "It's a title."

"What, like Khaleesi?" Lucy laughed.

"It means you're sacred. You belong to us."

"Ew!" Lucy recoiled, pulling her knees up instinctively. "So I'm like your pet now?"

Barista laughed. Woodchopper chuckled through his nose. Cop looked at her like he wished he hadn't spoken at all.

The blonde, of course, didn't flinch.

"You're not a pet," he said. "You're not property. You're the flame."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Great. That clears it right up."

"It means," he said evenly, "you're the heart of the pack."

Lucy stopped and blinked. "Come again?"

"Our strength forms around you. We hunt better. Heal faster. We don't fight amongst ourselves. You stabilise us."

"And what do I get out of this arrangement?" she tilted her head. "Besides emotional whiplash and a front-row seat to someone's furry fever dream?"

"Belonging."

Lucy's throat tightened, but her voice stayed cool. "Yeah, well. I've belonged to a lot of people who said the same thing. Didn't work out so great then, either."

He didn't answer right away. But when he did, his voice was softer.

"This isn't ownership. It's gravity."

"I call bullshit."

The entire room stilled. Even the fire seemed afraid to make any noise. The redhead blinked. Cop looked like she'd slapped him. Joss made a tiny sound in his throat, like a puppy who'd witnessed a thunderclap. The blonde didn't move.

Lucy leaned forward, hands braced on her knees.

"You expect me to believe that I, a thirty-year-old neurodivergent warehouse casual with a dependency on KFC and more smutty books in my Kindle than the complete works of Stephen King, am some kind of sacred fire beacon that holds your hot-boy wolf cult together?"

No one spoke.

She pointed a finger.

"You lot chased me through a nightmare forest, tackled me to the ground, carried me to your LARP HQ, and now you're telling me I'm the pack's cosmic glue stick? Come on!"

The blonde just watched her.

"This is some top-tier male fantasy bullshit. 'You stabilise us,'" she mimicked, deepening her voice. "'You're the flame.' Mate, I've known too many men to try this shit on, and it's as cheesy now as it was then, and I'm not falling for it."

She stood up abruptly, started pacing. "You know what this is?" she snapped. "This is a stress dream. That's what this is."

"Freya--"

"No!" She shouted, "I've read plenty of fanfic, okay? This is textbook 'hit by a car and dying or in a coma' dreamscape bullshit. This is definitely a dream. I mean, like, my brain is scraping every erotic reverse harem story I've ever read and blended it with a Narnia werewolf fantasy and I'm going to be expected to go on some quest or marry one of you or be some kind of mystical sex queen popping out all your babies."

The leader frowned.

Barista smiled wickedly, "When you put it like that..."

"Maddox!" Cop snapped at him.

Lucy sighed, "Fine. This isn't real anyway. You want me to be your sacred sex flame or whatever? Sure. Fine. Sign me up. Let's see where this all takes me. Guess it can't hurt since none of it's real anyway."

She threw her arms out dramatically.

"But if this is my dream, can I at least not be dressed like Princess Leia this time? Because I am so done with the whole half-naked-chained-to-an-alien thing, and no lovable rogue with a space bear is coming to rescue me"

The blonde blinked again. Cautious now. "Princess who?"

She dropped back onto the couch with a huff. "You know what I'd prefer? Carbonite. Deep freeze me. Shove me in some dusty archive warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant and leave me there until I wake up."

She paused, before muttering, mostly to herself: "Two Harrison Ford references in one breakdown. Not bad."

He watched her for a moment longer before saying quietly, "You're not dreaming."

She threw her head back and groaned at the ceiling. "Fuckin' of course I'm not."

"We don't know how the bond works. Only that it's real. When a Freya appears, everything changes. The pack reforms around her. Order, balance, strength--it comes from you."

"I am not your magical keystone." Lucy shook her head before groaning into her hands. "Jesus Christ. I'm so fucking tired."

The blonde sighed, "It's late."

"Yeah, no shit. I think I've been up for like, twenty-five hours."

"There is a room you can rest in."

Lucy eyed him suspiciously, "You'd better not try to fucking grope me."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Maddox, smirked.

"Fuck off," she snapped at him and turned back to the Blonde, "I'm too fucking wrecked for this. Show me where I can get a decent sleep. If I wake up in my own bed in the morning, I promise to upload this whole bullshit mess to literotica with some artistic licence. If not, then we'll fucking deal with..."

She wriggled her fingers exasperatedly at everyone else in the room as the sentence fell away and stood to follow the blonde man through the house to a clean, sparsely furnished bedroom.

The fire was burning in the hearth, and it was warmer than her own bedroom would have been when she got home tonight. She normally tried to avoid using the heater during winter since electricity prices had skyrocketed again.

Without ceremony, she stepped inside, shut the door in his face, and exhaled.

There was a heavy latch on the inside. Thank fuck.

She latched the door, turned around, peeled off her shirt and pants, still-wet boots and socks, and flopped on the bed in her singlet, sports bra, and leggings.

"Huh," she mumbled sleepily to herself, "Guess I'm not in Oz anymore, Toto."

And sleep finally took her.