This fic is based off a dream I had once. I will later indicate exactly which chapter the dream entails. And yes I know that I have a Star Trek reference in here. This is like Red Riding Hood meets an insanely dark version of Beauty and the Beast with Avengers characters. This might turn out to be the BATB story I promised earlier. Please Review!

Howl To the Blood Moon

Prequel:

The three men gazed in hope at the sleeping infant before them. She was unaware of the fate they had just planned for her, a fate that could either doom the village or bring them all salvation. She looked so innocent in sleep. One of the three men who was deemed to raise her cried at the notion of what would one day become of her. His companions had shot him a glare of warning to not wake the girl again as her vocals emitted loud screams. They parted ways under the cross in the center of the village nodding to each other to reassure their plan. The man carrying the infant thought back to what the others had said: He shall not kneel for a man... but what about a woman?

Nineteen Years Later

A blood-shivering scream pierced into her dreams and fiercely struck Darcy out of her comfortable sleep. The thin light just ever so fluttering through the window told her that the dawn was just beckoning the new day.

Still half asleep Darcy half-consciously sat up in her small bed, hearing only a stagnant silence creeping throughout the small cottage. Had she dreamt the scream?

That question was answered when the scream again echoed off the walls followed by loud sobbing and gruff male cursing. Curious, Darcy drug her weary body out of the single bed and followed the sounds outside. The floors were freezing against her bare feet and her thin white gown offered little protection against the chill of morning. She rubbed her arms against the breeze and shivered at the fog.

As she reached the doorway to the entrance of the humble home she saw her father, Pastor Coulson – a sweet and quiet man with an authoritative presence – cradling her older sister Jane, the village beauty, in his arms.

Darcy looked at her father and sister now. They were both crying though Darcy could hear the priest praying for all he was worth. The village leader, Nick Fury, a frightening dark man as tall and broad as a giant sporting a black eye patch to cover an old war wound, was glaring at the door with his piercing cold eye. Fury had a way of staring that could make Hell freeze over and the Devil tremble in fear.

The rest of the village was beginning to gather around their house and upon seeing the outside of the door had various reactions to whatever it was Darcy had not yet seen. Some of the older and more religious women crossed themselves and began to furiously pray. Fathers suddenly clutched their young daughters to them, fear clearly evident in their eyes as they tried to be brave as their wives cuddled the female children and threw themselves at their husbands in tears.

Jane's personal female friends broke from their families and ran to her weeping of both relief and sorrow. Several of the unmarried or widowed men without daughters paled and gave Coulson a sympathetic look or a firm hand on the shoulder, not really knowing what else to say or do.

Darcy in particular noticed the reaction of the young blacksmith, Thor. He looked terrified and enraged and sorrowed at the same time. The look he cast at Jane was one of longing and utter despair. The two were well-known to be sweet on each other though they hadn't exactly begun courting.

By all of the reactions Darcy gathered from the citizens of the village of Midgard, she didn't need to ask to know what the problem was. He had returned.

Darcy stepped out of the house and when Jane saw her she rushed to her baby sister in tears.

"Darcy! It's there! The eye!" she screamed.

Darcy, calm in situations of chaos, walked over to her father while Jane still clung to her embrace. She looked Coulson in the eye and saw the sorrow that was echoed within his soul. Darcy turned and looked upon the door. It was there, carved upon their door – the wolf's eye – his symbol.

For the first time in her life Darcy felt slightly faint.

No one knew exactly who or what he was, but they acknowledged him as the true enforcer and protector of the land. He protected the village of Midgard from outsiders and the dangers from within and beyond the mountains of Asgard where he was thought to live, but for all his good deeds he was a monster, known to the village as the Wolf King for none dared to speak his true name out of fear.

As the legend of the valley village goes, Midgard used to be peaceful until one day out of nowhere, an awful storm and earthquake shook the mountains of Asgard and cracked them open, releasing hundreds of the Devil's minions, all sorts of monstrous icy creatures of darkness that terrorized Midgard and many villagers and warriors fell as victims to the cold evils and all seemed lost as the village's numbers quickly dwindled to the brink of extinction. Any local or hired hunter brave enough to go out and stop the monsters were never heard from again, unless bits and pieces of body parts counted.

It seemed as if the terror would continue until the village was no more. That is until a century ago, in the same year the terror began on the night before the Blood Moon, when a dark stranger in black appeared on an eight legged horse and offered to rid the village of the creatures and protect them from the evils. Desperate, the villagers quickly agreed and signed a contract the stranger provided. The stranger had left without a word and entered the Bifrost Forest that separated the village from the mountains. Many had thought the stranger dead until two days later, on the night after the Blood Moon, and declared that the monsters had been vanquished. As proof he brought back the head of one of them.

Grateful to the stranger, the villagers of Midgard asked how they could repay him for his kindness. The stranger had replied in a cold voice: "You were made to be ruled. I seek to rule you, now kneel before me."

The villagers had refused and offered something else, but the stranger was adamant. Then the leader of Midgard at the time, Fury's anceastor, had insulted the stranger with words that suggested trickery on his heroism and refused to bow and instead had demanded the stranger bow to him. Angry, the stranger drew out the contract and placed a curse on it and the village. "Since you refuse to bow willingly, your village and your descendants shall suffer my rule and wrath forever more. None born of this village may pass the Asgard Mountains; neither you, your children or your childrens' children. If any so attempt they shall die.

"The next Blood Moon comes nigh a score and five years. For your insolence you shall sacrifice to me that which is most precious to you – a pure daughter of your village. She should be in every essence a woman save her virtue still be intact and her heart unattached to another. You shall offer such a daughter as I choose to me the night before every Blood Moon. If it be a girl other than whom I have chosen or the chosen one flees from you the village shall know my displeasure.

"This is my curse upon you, Midgard. Know that I shall observe you closely and any attempt to defy me is futile and perilous. I shall kneel to no man. Thus are the words of the one, Loki."

With his curse placed upon Midgard, the sorcerer stranger called Loki had departed for the mountains and built there the grand and terrifying Castle Asgard. The next Blood Moon he was true to his word and he returned and claimed a girl named Annie. Her name and the names of the girls that followed to be his victims were carved into a cross that stood in the center of the village as a symbol of prayer for their souls.

Many times Darcy had read their names: Annie, Germaine, and Bodicea… now it seemed as if the fourth victim would be her poor sister. Darcy shuddered to think that tomorrow she would take part in carving the name of the lost loved one on the cross. Darcy couldn't take that. She couldn't stand by and let her innocent sweet older sister fall victim to the Wolf King.

Coulson was approached by Nick Fury. "Father Coulson, may I have a word away from your daughters?"

Coulson faintly nodded and followed Fury behind the cottage, away from prying ears.

"What do we do, Fury?" Coulson pleaded to the leader.

"We stick to the plan we made nineteen years ago. This incident changes nothing. It was always the plan that she be chosen."

"My God, what do I tell them? Both are unmarried and pure," Coulson pointed out.

"Exactly, which is why this circumstance is so damn perfect. One house, two girls - the Wolf King could have meant either one of them."

"She would never agree to this. She's too much stubborn like her father," Coulson remarked.

"You underestimate her. She's damn stubborn, but that's exactly what will save them both – and the rest of the village as well."

Coulson sighed with a heavy heart. He knew that either way he was going to lose, but this wasn't about him alone, it was about the entire village and the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. "What should we do? I don't know how to tell her that she is being,"

"Tell them nothing yet. Leave everything to me, Coulson," Fury stated resolutely. "I have a plan. If you will now excuse me I have to go speak to the blacksmith. Go and spend what time you have left together as a family."

Coulson nodded and watched as Fury stalked off back around the house, no doubt looking for Thor, although what reason or plan that the leader had whirling in his head that included the blacksmith's involvement Coulson hadn't a clue.

Heavy in both heart and spirit, the priest followed Fury's path and returned to his daughters. Looking at the two sisters embracing each other for comfort he wondered if either would ever be able to forgive him for what they were going to do to his daughters.

God forgive them for their betrayal and sacrifice, but there was no other way. They had to end once and for all the reign of Loki.