The third time he met her, she was a Wolf.
It had taken every bit of self-control he had, but Sinding had kept his solitary vigil, away from towns and holds and even roads when he could help it. The quiet was terrible. He'd go weeks without hearing another person's voice, having only the birdsong and the wind through the trees for conversation. He'd see a soldier on the road, or a traveling company, and his heart would ache for companionship. He'd been tempted to go, to barter a merchant for his wares or request a song from a bard, but a brief flash of him in Falkreath, sticky with Lavinia's blood and clutching her ropey intestines in his hand, would send him scuttling back into the deep reaches of his grotto. It was for the best, he reassured himself, and that is how he kept himself sequestered until the mild autumn turned into a glorious, vicious Skyrim winter, which waned into a beautiful spring.
He had tried to keep the Beast contained until the full moon forced his hand every month, but it was wily and willful and sometimes got the best of him. Sinding would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy the Wolf's cavorting on occasion; running at pace with the winds that whipped fast and cold from the north, feasting on venison that steamed in the cool night air, answering the calls of the other children of Hircine who were equally at the whims of their Beasts. It was a brief taste of freedom, lived vicariously through the slitted amber eyes of the Wolf, that brought Sinding his greatest pleasures. At night, when the beast-blood roiled in his veins and refused to let him rest, he would wonder if he let the Beast go so often because of the joy it brought him. He'd never think about it for long.
It was on some spring morning-Sinding had long lost count of the days-that he had caught the whiff of something that was not welcome in the sanctity of the grotto. He was no stranger to intruders. Bandits often tried to make their hideaway in the rocky outcrops, unaware that a resident worse than any Hold guard waited for them. This one was different, though. Far from the unwashed, alcohol-breathed sting of bandits and vagabonds, this smelled simultaneously of a city and the wild, something familiar that flittered along his palate, but buried deep under the scent of wool blankets, traildust, and a pack of Wolves. Sinding bristled, the blunt fingernails of his hands clutching at the tree he had been harvesting berries from. It smelled like four wolves, perhaps more, a pack come to challenge him. His own Beast, heady and invigorated by a particularly long romp just the night before, bayed and howled and gnashed its teeth ferociously, fighting to be let out, wanting to meet the interlopers at war. Sinding wilted at the thought of challenging Wolves as himself, and saw no recourse, and gave himself over the searing heat of ripping tendons and a sprouting tail.
He saw not a pack, but a solitary woman, armored in iron and studded pelts, her pale blonde hair swept out of her face in numerous braids, stealing around the throat of the grotto cautiously. She carried the smell of Wolves on her, and now that he was in range he recognized the burning crackle of her fire. Perhaps she saw the movement as he perched the peak of a high boulder, for she whipped around the face him, staring up at him with smudged indigo paint around her eyes and cheekbones. Sinding was relieved to see her, but the Wolf, staring down at her from higher ground and thinking only of the tender meat that hid behind her armor, did not yield to him. It growled at the visitor, even as Sinding clamored for control.
"Sinding," she called up, voice light and warm. "It's just me. No need for this."
Sinding agreed, but the Wolf, too accustomed to having its way these past months, snapped its jaws at her and bared its teeth, ropey rivulets of saliva webbing its jowls as it began to stalk down the face of the boulder. Sinding, panicked now, began to scrap in earnest for control over his shared body.
"Sinding," the Dragonborn said forcefully, all light-heartedness gone from her tone. "Stop now." Her hand lingered on the hilt of her sword and the dancing crystals of ice magic began to swirl from her palm, though she took a few cautious steps back as the Beast continued its descent.
The Wolf dropped to the ground, standing hunched on its hind legs as its tail lashed behind it like an agitated cat.
"Enough, Sinding," she commanded, but the Wolf heeded neither her warning nor Sinding's futile attempts at regaining control. It had been so long since it had the sweet taste of manflesh in its mouth, and Sinding could feel its hunger and could do nothing to stop it. The Beast's heart beat an excited staccato in its chest and it leapt, claws extended and maw gaping, for its prey.
The Wolf was waylaid with neither iron sword nor ice magic. It was not rebuffed by the studded protection of armor, and it did not sink its teeth into the yielding pink flesh of a human. Instead, it was met by another set of claws as terrible and cutting as its own, thick wiry fur that cushioned the skin beneath it from the Beast's snapping jaws, and a snarl that held a deeper timbre than even the Thu'um. Startled and off-balance, the Wolf was thrown to the ground by its quarry. On its back, the Wolf stared up at the towering form of its kin. If not for the hastily shed armor puddled on the ground a few feet back, and the ragged scar that bisected the other Wolf's snarling face, Sinding might never know that it was the Dragonborn that stood before him.
Sinding seized the opportunity to regain control, wrenched his mind back as the Beast lay confused by the turn of events. The long muzzle began to recede, and the pointed ears, and soon the man lay surrounded by scattered piles of shed fur, his vision swimming and chest heaving as he tried to recover from the hard-won transformation. To his side, he heard the sharp gasps and keening whines as the Dragonborn returned to herself, until they both sat on the floor of the grotto, panting but otherwise silent.
"This was unexpected," Sinding finally said after they both had regained their faculties. He was not sure if he was referring to his inability to control his Wolf, or the Dragonborn's new secret.
"Agreed," she replied, rising from her nest of dark grey fur to slip her armor back on with shaking hands. "You'll have to give me some time to recover," she said after she was dressed, holding up her jittering hand. "I'm new to this, and the transformation still taxes me."
"How new?" he asked, rising up to his elbows to consider her.
The Dragonborn furrowed her brow, causing her scar to pucker and pull as she thought. "I'm not quite sure," she said finally. "Two months, perhaps more. I've been very busy of late, time has been passing in fits and spurts and it's getting harder to keep track of the days. I transform once a day if I can help it, and you know as well as any how your perceptions tend to skew when they're not truly your own."
Sinding swallowed past the lump in his throat and thought back to not minutes ago. "Yes, I'm quite familiar," he croaked before rising to his feet on steady legs. "Was this..." he faltered for a bit, watching as the Dragonborn struggled to buckle her pauldron. "Was this Hircine's punishment for not bringing him my hide?"
She looked up in surprise, took in his mournful eyes and nervous face, and shook her head, her blonde braids wagging furiously. "Not at all, my friend, neither you nor I have any quarrel with Hircine. He was...pleased with the outcome of our hunt. You don't need to worry about him anymore. My Wolf and I were paired on a very amicable basis, I assure you. Aela had-" she suddenly snapped her mouth shut with an audible clicking of teeth, wearing the face of a dog caught in the chicken coop. "I'm not sure I'm supposed to tell you these things," she admitted sheepishly.
"If you think I am so dull that I am unaware of the Wolves in Whiterun, you wound me to the quick," he said dryly. "I can smell that den at Jorrvaskr practically from here, and when those Companions pass on these trails on their way to some coin-grabbing job to rough up a dim-witted stableboy or some such rot, one might think someone loosed a brood of mead-soaked whelps onto the countryside."
Her face changed then, screwing up into a scowl with a glinting of teeth between her lips. Sinding had seen this look before, when they hunted together so many months ago, and to have it directed at him was instantly sobering. "That brood is my pack now," she said icily, "and I would sooner you hold your tongue than speak about them like that again. They are honorable warriors, and I am proud to share the beast-blood with them."
That explains the smell of so many Wolves on her, Sinding reasoned, though he could feel the knot of bitter jealousy forming in his chest. "I'm not sure why you would," he said with a derisive sniff, "but if you had wanted to be paired with a Wolf, you might have come to me. It's not as if I am hard to find."
Her eyes darted away from him. "I didn't know..." she paused to clear her throat, shifting her weight from foot to foot. "I didn't know it could be like this. I didn't know that mere mortals were capable of cooperation with a Beast. You were the first I met outside of a battle, and seeing how Hircine pulled your strings..."
His jaw went slack for a moment, but he regained himself in time to clack his mouth shut and turn his head away, irked at her insinuation. She didn't need to say why she didn't take the Blood from him, why she hadn't found it appealing until she met the Companions; with him, she saw the shredded remnants of a woodcutter's young daughter, saw him impotent and begging for help against a Hunt his master had called for his punishment, saw him constantly at odds and struggling for control against a brutal and unpredictable predator. And then she met the Companions, the Circle and their beast-blood, saw how they controlled their wolves, lived peaceably with them and harnessed their power, able to teach her how to control her's too, and suddenly he knew why she didn't come to him for the blood.
"-so important, it was so hard at first, and just being surrounded by your pack makes it easier," he heard her saying, and he shook off the fog of his reverie to find her talking. "They help, with everything, with the transformations and controlling your urges, with accepting the Blood. Please, Sinding, I know you think solitude is your answer, but maybe if you found others like us, they could help you."
"You came all this way to tell me to find a pack," he deadpanned.
"Yes, Sinding, because I know you struggle. Our Wolves are pack animals, and so are Men, so you being out here by yourself for months...it's only hurting you. If you satiated your needs, perhaps you'd find peace with your Wolf. Aela and Skjor say that's how to gain precise control of it, by embracing its nature. "
He briefly thought back to their reunion not an hour ago, when she had transformed to a Beast and back again in a flurry of moments, while to this day he struggled to dictate the terms of his own transformation. Her relationship with her Wolf was so new, and yet she had the iron precision that he knew could only come from the Wolf's full cooperation with its human. Control would be nice, after so many years of fear and panic and fighting. He thought of what he could do, of all the things he missed in his self-imposed exile; being able to walk in crowded town squares, sit in the firelight of a busy inn, haggle for goods at the market. He felt the rumble of the Wolf at the base of his skull and unbidden memories of Lavinia sprung to his mind and grasped his rapidly beating heart in the icy grip of panic. The Beast in crowded town squares, the Beast at a busy inn, the Beast set loose on the patrons of the market. As he saw his hopes dashed, however brief and fleeting they were, he became angry with the Dragonborn for making him think he could have any of it.
"You seem to know an awful lot for a whelp of a few months," he growled, feeling like he could spit acid and letting the venomous lance of fury buoy him as he pointed an accusing finger. "There is no controlling these Beasts, we are but the blood-hungry puppets of Hircine, and any semblance of control you may scrabble to grasp is just a game by the Huntsman. He will wrench it from your grip as soon as it pleases him, and you'll be left with someone else's blood on your hands, someone whose death you can't justify because they weren't a bandit or a necromancer or a savage, they were just a sweet, innocent girl sitting on a bench. The sooner you and your pack of drunken pups realize that we are cursed, not blessed, the sooner you can help yourselves and others by locking yourselves away like I have. I am not the dangerous one for denying my own nature, it is you who is dangerous for embracing it."
He saw the shadow of that snarl again, but it lacked the power behind it because her eyes were wide and wounded, as if she had been struck in the chest with an arrow. Her hands had balled into fists and still shook with faint tremors, though somehow Sinding knew it wasn't from the exertion of her earlier transformation. A long silence stretched between them as they stood staring at each other, nothing but the twittering birdsong and their breathing filling the space.
"I was a fool for thinking I might persuade you," she finally said, her voice strained with the exertion of staying her anger. "I hope that you will understand someday, before it's too late. I will take my leave before that precocious Wolf of yours gains the upper hand again, as you are wont for it to do." She turned away from him and began to pick her way back up to the mouth of the grotto. Before disappearing back into the open countryside of Falkreath, she turned back to him. "Until next time, friend," she said, her tone sweet but the bow and flourish she made with her frost-bitten hand was stilted. He grunted his reply and then she was gone, leaving only the echo of her footsteps.