The Wolf Sacrifice by Rosa Steel Page A

and it seemed as if she could feel a huge bulk crushing
her, and hard callused hands sliding over her hips. When his
fingers slid into her mouth she cried out, and was muffled by his
hot hand.
    The third stranger was stronger than the
others, and harder to her. His pain was doled out equally with
pleasure, yet still she rocked and trembled, filled with a building
cyclone of ecstasy. It felt like all three of them were probing
inside her and filling her up. Dasha couldn’t endure it any longer.
She rolled over because she knew she would cry out, and screamed
into the pillow as she erupted, feeling a warm liquid spreading
between her thighs. The wolf-men were grinning, and watching her
with their golden eyes as she lay trembling and sated, twisted in
her sheets.
    When she finally opened her eyes, the room
was empty.
     
     
    They came for her as the moon rose, as was
tradition -- Four elders of the village with their torches. The two
elder women took her back into the cold hall, and one of them
probed her with a cold and gnarled finger. Dasha couldn’t help but
wince, but she stayed still and steady.
    “I am sorry, little Dasha,” whispered
Svetlana, the old crone who probed her. They had known each other
since Dasha had been born.
    Dasha couldn’t find the words, but only
nodded sadly. It was hard not to complain, to beg for mercy, but
she refused to abandon her duty.
    “You are a virgin.” Svetlana said.
    Dasha’s body was washed in rose water, and
she was given a rose-tasting candy to eat so that she would be
sweet for the Wolf Gods. They trimmed away the delicate blonde
curls of her sex and washed her hair, and then brushed it until it
gleamed like spun gold. The old women were tender to her, and tried
to comfort her, but Dasha barely heard their kind words. She was
thinking of three men with golden eyes, and the scent of smoke and
musk.
    They placed on her head the Wolf Queen’s
crown (which was her official title). It made her feel like
laughing. When she was consumed, the elders would retrieve the
crown and store it away for the next sacrifice, the next unlucky
‘Wolf Queen’.
    The crown was lighter than she expected,
being wrought of very finely spun silver and set with moonstones –
also called wolfstone. The crown took the shape of three wolves
crouched in bursts of silver leaves, and their eyes were bright
yellow stones that she didn’t know the name of. She’d never seen
anything like it. When it was nestled on her golden hair she had a
fierce urge to tear it off and fling it away.
    When Dasha was finally clean enough and
prepared for the Wolf Gods, they wrapped her naked body in a heavy
sheepskin and took her out into the cold.
    The first snow had already fallen a few weeks
earlier, and her bare feet hurt at the contact with the icy dirt.
She didn’t complain. The virgin sacrifice had to be almost nude as
she walked to the peak – that too was tradition. Dasha took a deep
breath, and looked at her father. He was silent, but his face was
wet with tears.
    Though it hurt to look at him, Dasha forced
herself to smile. She wanted his last memory to be a good one.
    “Goodbye Papa,” she whispered.
    “Sweet Dasha, my Dasha…” He gritted his teeth
and buried his face in his hands. She heard his muffled sobs, and
her heart broke.
    It took all her strength not to run to him
and wrap her arms around him then, but the Dasha knew she must not
smell of human men when she went before the Wolf Gods. Instead she
shivered, and she bit her tongue, and started walking.
     
     
    It snowed as she walked up the mountain –
first tiny, dancing specs of white, then delicate flakes that
caught in her golden hair like dew in a spider’s web. The pain in
her feet was bearable at first, since she was strong and used to
the cold. Soon, though, it grew to a throbbing agony. Dasha cried
out at every step, and thought she might faint. After another hour
they were totally numb, which was even worse. If she did not know
she