If there is anything confusing about this chapter, please let me know. I have altered it so many times, I lost count, and I'm still not super happy with it, but I felt I should post it as is at this point. Have questions about anything? Please ask! I'd be more than happy to try to answer. Please enjoy.
As Thorin felt the whip's blow upon his back, he cried out involuntarily at the impact. He snarled, regaining his feet, and turned to face his attacker, only to be brought up short at the blur before his eyes. Something small and dark moved, faster than his sight could follow, and slammed into the goblin. The dwarf king blinked, and the blur was gone, leaving the goblin's corpse laying upon the ground, it's throat missing. He turned, as quickly as he could, to where his nephews tried to fight, side by side, but the whips of the goblins were vicious and swift. Then, the blur came again. One moment, the brothers were staggering under the blows, and the next, they looked around themselves in confusion when their attackers suddenly vanished, leaving a slight pool of blood where they had stood only a second before.
The dwarf king was distracted when he felt three more goblins slam into him, pinning him to the ground despite his struggles, and a fourth held a knife above his head. The Goblin King was shouting, commanding his troops to attack, to cut off his head, and Thorin glared in defiance at what he believed to be his death. Then the blur came again, and the goblin was knocked off of him with such a force that the others who had been holding him down were bowled over as well.
He struggled to sit up, and managed to look in time to see what appeared to be the human girl crouched over the body of the goblin that had nearly killed him, before a bright, blinding light shone over the cavern in a burst, blinding all in the vicinity. The one responsible stepped forward, and Thorin sagged, just a fraction, in relief. Tharkûn had returned.
In the resulting chaos, with the wizard crying, "Take up arms. Fight. Fight!" and the dwarves struggling to get to their feet and away from the mass of goblins, no attention was paid to the missing hobbit, or the strange behavior of the human. The dwarves took heart at the fear in the Goblin King's voice as he cried out, "He wields the Foehammer! The Beater! Bright as daylight!", and they fought all the more viciously.
In and out, different dwarves caught a bare glimpse of a dark blur, before whatever opponent they had been fighting was slain, but none could get a clear look at their savior. None, save one. But they were all too engaged in the fighting to pay much attention to details, and as they fought their way out, they focused only on following Gandalf as he led the way.
The blur disappeared then, and the human girl stood behind them once more, running in the very back, not speaking, and not lifting her eyes from the floor in front of her. When they reached a portion of bridge that swung back and forth, suspended from ropes high above, she leapt onto it with the rest, and waited until the second swing to jump, throwing off two of the goblins that had jumped on at the recoil, but none paid it any mind.
When they were stopped, as the Goblin King returned, bursting up before the Company from the middle of the bridge they stood upon, the girl stopped too, her hands fisted and her eyes hidden beneath her hair, expression blank. As Gandalf slayed the Goblin King, the dwarves tensed, ready for the fighting to continue, but the human didn't even twitch. When the bridge fell out beneath them, they cried out, but surprisingly landed without harm.
Bofur spoke then, ever the optimist, "Well, that could have been worse." It was then that the body of the Goblin King fell upon them. Dwalin was not pleased, to say the least. They ran at Gandalf's suggestion of daylight, sprinting with a speed only dwarves could procure, at least short-distance, and made it to the exit without further complications. They were safe.
The wolf was angry. She had felt pain before, hunger, thirst, sorrow even, but never this blinding, red rage that consumed her. Dimly, she realized that her body felt wrong, that her claws were shorter than they should have been, that her fangs, while still sharp, were blunter than normal, but those were petty matters. The filth she hunted had dared. Had dared lay claw upon the alpha, and she did not realize that she was not, in fact, a wolf. All that mattered was that these who thought themselves predators of her pack were now her prey.
She tore through many, killing each quickly, but where normally she would revel in the gore and bloodshed, now she felt only a grim satisfaction at each corpse she left behind. Her pack was hurt, bleeding, and terrified, and she had failed them. The human had held her back too long. Now the human was broken. The wolf vaguely wondered when the human would heal enough to return. Then she turned her attention back to her pack. The strange man-not-man was back, and he held the sun in his hand, and burned her eyes. She snarled, but it had also burned the eyes of the prey, so she did not attack him.
When he moved, the alpha followed, as did the pack, so the wolf followed the pack, keeping her gaze away. Although the human was farther away than the wolf had ever known, distantly, the wolf could hear the human urging her to conceal her claws, fangs, and eyes from the pack. They reached a hole in the mountain, and her pack exited quickly, but the wolf paused. Bilba was gone. Where was small-soft-pack mate? As she was about to exit, she sniffed, and she could detect the hobbit's scent, strong once again, and she relaxed, knowing now that her pack and the hobbit were safe. She relinquished control, expecting the human to take over again. Asta's body collapsed lifelessly to the ground just outside the exit of the mountain.
Blurry, angry voices jarred the human awake, and she tried to sit up, only to moan in pain at the pounding in her head. Dwalin's rough voice came from behind her, and she rolled over and managed to lift her head just enough to see her pack assembled, speaking of a halfling. Bilba? What about Bilba? What on Arda happened to me?
Gloin spoke, "I thought she was with Dori!" to which the dwarf in question responded angrily, "Don't blame me!" Gandalf asked, "Well, where did you last see her?" Asta groaned, forcing herself to her feet despite the pain in her head, only to freeze at the sight of the blood covering her hands. Though there was a great deal of goblin blood there, there were four tell-tale marks on each palm that indicated her claws had come out, completely, despite attempts to keep it under control. She had shifted, and bore no memory of it. No...
Nori's voice reached her, as he said, "I think I saw her slip away when they first collared us." Focus, Asta. None of your pack is dead or missing, save Bilba, and her scent is strong. She is nearby. You must find her! They can't know, or they wouldn't have left you alive. Gandalf asked the master thief, "And what happened, exactly? Tell me!"
The werewolf stumbled closer to her pack, only to freeze when the alpha spoke, rage and resignation warring in his voice. "I'll tell you what happened. Miss Baggins saw her chance and she took it. She has thought of nothing but her soft bed and her warm hearth" and here the alpha's voice faltered, just a space, and the girl knew it meant something, but there was far too much going on for her to determine what. "Since first she stepped out of her door. We will not be seeing our hobbit again. She is long gone."
Asta stood still, in shock that the alpha would speak so of Bilba. She had been able to smell the attraction between the two, since first Thorin had followed Bilba to 'protect' her from Asta herself. Even if the desire was only physical, she could sense that Thorin had feelings for the hobbit. Why would he speak so of someone he desired as mate? And Bilba was not long gone, far from it, for by her scent, it was as though she stood among them. Did Asta's nose betray her?
"No. She isn't." Bilba's warm, though slightly strained at the time, voice came then, from behind Asta, and she startled, jerking around in surprise. How had the hobbit done it? Her heartbeat had been present, but muted somehow, then all of a sudden, it had been loud and clear again, and Bilba was visible. What strange magic was this? Asta decided it had been far too strange a day to question it too thoroughly, and was only glad that Bilba was back with the pack, safe as could be.
The werewolf ducked her head and stepped aside, watching the following confrontation with concern at first, which quickly turned to joy at the relief in the dwarves' and Gandalf's voices as they welcomed her back. The werewolf suppressed a chuckle and looked on with no small amount of amusement, when Thorin said, "It matters. I want to know, why did you come back?" The attraction, and dare she say, blossoming love, between the two was so blindingly obvious that even the other dwarves, with senses as blunt as they had, should have been able to pick up on it.
She couldn't help a smile, when Bilba said in all earnestness, "Look, I know you doubt me. I know you always have. And you're right, I often think of Bag-End. I miss my books. And my armchair, and my garden. See, that's where I belong. That's home. And that's why I came back. Because... you don't have one. A home. It was taken from you. But I will help you take it back, if I can."
Throughout this speech, as the hobbit and alpha dwarf gazed intensely into each others' eyes, Asta marveled at the obvious love in the hobbit's words, and in both their gazes. How did they not realize the attraction between them? Were they truly so blind? She was grateful for their astonishing obliviousness when it came to her, but in this case, it was really too bad. The fiery little hobbit and the fierce dwarf were well suited to each other. Bilba could stand up to Thorin when all others were unwilling, and if that wasn't a sign of a suitable mate, then she didn't turn into a wolf three times a month.
Perhaps, by this journey's end, Asta would have both an Alpha Male, and an Alpha Female, to answer to as Pack Leaders. Then, of course, she remembered the Goblin King's words, and she froze in her tracks, as fear overtook her once more. Thorin was a King, not just an alpha to this pack. She must never allow any of the dwarves to discover what she was, or there would be no banishment for her. Only death.