A/N: Thank you all for the lovely reviews and messages! This is my first fic I've written in a long while so I apologise if I'm a little rusty. To answer various questions, this fic is set at the beginning of Season 1, and I'm going to work around/through Graham's death. And yes, there will be a lot of smut eventually. The chapters will go in order of Ruby, Huntsman, Red, Graham until the plot thickens and I might need to just stick with Ruby and Graham. Your patience is appreciated! c: ~Georgia
ps. If you want to listen to a little inspirational music, I was listening to The Wolf by Fever Ray while writing this.
Disclaimer: If I owned OUAT do you think Graham would be dead? Nope. This is not mine.
The other soldiers laughed at him, he knew, both behind his back and in his face, yet the Huntsman gave no care on the outside. On the inside he was hollow, but he needed no heart to feel shame. Shame because the Queen ordered him to her bed, not the other way around. Embarrassment because she had him on a tight leash, and each time she let him wander she'd tug back with a vicious grip and venomous laugh. The Huntsman had made love to other women before the Queen, of course, but this was not making love. It was mechanical, automatic, and as repetitive as his duty as a soldier. And he hated it. He hated her.
It was the day before the King's Moon when she called him to her chambers again, and almost automatically he began to unlace his breeches and shrug off his shirt. Regina was laid upon her sprawling bed, like a spider waiting for prey, and watched him with trained eyes.
"Huntsman, what do you think you're doing?" She asked with that hypocritical smile and ridiculing voice. He frowned, and tugged his shirt back on.
"I thought-"
"I know what you thought. Armour yourself, you're going hunting."
Just the idea of being in the woods once more sent a thrill through his skin, but never for hunting. He hunted only to feed himself, and it was a great sacrifice, not a sport to be held with such honour as it was in the villages. The Huntsman met her eyes before she spoke again.
"As I'm sure you know, the King's Moon is rising this week. There have been reports of a true Child of the Moon wandering the outskirts of a village in the North. None of the villagers know who the beast truly is, but under the King's Moon it's powers will increase tenfold." The Huntsman shivered at this. His true family, the real wolves, followed the Children of the Moon without question, but these days they were rare sightings, and the wolves of the wild had for all intents and purposes none to follow anymore. A rogue one in a small village before the King's Moon meant certain devastation.
"What would you have me do? I told you I would kill no wolves."
At this Regina leapt from her throne of pillows and like magic she was before him, fury made fire made flesh raw in her soulless eyes. The Huntsman stumbled back a pace before she spat her command.
"You will do as your are told, Huntsman, before I crush your broken heart and sprinkle the dust over my breakfast. Do I make myself clear?!" If she could have killed with a look, the Huntsman would have been long dead. He nodded obediently, swallowed back all the insults he wanted to scream at her face, and turned to leave.
Before he had even arrived, the Huntsman could hear the villager's horns and drums, fat, heavy, clumsy feet, and hearty boasts of killing the beast. He had opted to travel on foot rather than horse, but the journey had taken him all day; it must have been midnight by the time their drums and horns settled. The elders of the village chanted and played their hymns, while the children danced around the mounted head of a black wolf. Even the sight of it set him on edge, and in the small village, where summer had settled like a wet blanket of humidity, his brow sweated and skin tingled in the night air.
The Huntsman may have never had seen once of these Children of the Moon, but even he knew that was not the beast they searched for. It would have turned man once more following his untimely death. They had beheaded an innocent wolf for the sake of settling their people, and before he got carried away, the Huntsman wiped that stray tear from his cheek, and turned back to the woods.
The trails of the humans had torn through the forest floor, their litter and destruction lighting a path anyone could see even in the pitch black of night. On the outskirts of the village men and women were mourning their fallen, and word of a pack lead by the greatest she-beast anyone had seen passed through the camps and to his ears. He made no attempt to set up camp, and packed his things to track this she-beast.
He counted five fallen wolves by the time he found her den. All of them dead by the hand of man, not nature. Still the horns and drums from the village pounded away, but the Huntsman heard only the sounds of dying animals, and a blood-curdling howl to the south. He was on his feet then, arrow nocked and loaded for a moment's notice, flying through the woods as silent as the wolves he had grown up with. The cave was deep, and dark, ringing with the sound of an injured beast, and before he even stepped into it, he knew he'd never forget this cave for as long as he lived.
A wolf of unnatural size, twice the weight and height of any other he'd known, limped ahead of him, her tail sitting awkwardly, and right shoulder bleeding profusely. If she heard him she made no sign of it; in fact, it was like he wasn't there at all. Especially not when the wolf's fur shrunk away, and it's tail disappeared into it's spine. It's ears curved and maw formed a delicate mouth, but this only took a split second before the beast before him became... a girl. A naked girl, with her back turned to him, her hair caked with blood, and a gash to her bare shoulder that would have left a grown man crying.
The Huntsman shifted behind a rock shelf and cursed himself for staring for so long. Not only were his defences down, but it was indecent, especially when she was so wounded. He heard the shuffling sound of fabrics, but it was a whimper that brought him back around the corner. Her dress was gathered at her hip, for it seemed her shoulder wound left her unable to move her arm. Magic in this world always came at a price, and it appeared this girl paid for it dearly, but not even he as a great victim of sorcery could deny that the way her wounds healed was incredible. The girl had scooped her hair around her neck to look at the place where her injury once left her crippled, when her golden eyes caught his. The Huntsman's breath caught in his throat, before he could manage to spit out but three words.
"What are you?"