Author's Note: The first three chapters are pre-movie. After that you're getting into concurrent with the film and after. Please note that names I've used in here are as close to what I can find that would have been names used by the races at the time. Additionally, the characters I'm writing aren't always supposed to be likable. I've tried to make them as realistic as possible.

Warning: There are strong themes in this chapter. Mentions of rape and infanticide among them. I attempted to keep this vague, but I'm trying to keep this piece as realistic as possible, both the darkness and the light.

Wolf Moon

Chapter One - A She Wolf Born

Thunder rolled off of the Black Sea as it always did. Wind rocked the water up and crashed it down to the land as lightening struck the sky, sending an eerie glow about the small village beside the sea.

The world was agony. Inside a thatched hut, not fifty yards from where the waters churned, a girl was at war. Sixteen and still fairly small, she writhed on a birthing bed, teeth set firmly into her bottom lip to keep herself from crying out.

"Push girl," a midwife said from between her knees, as her eyes rolled back into her head as another wave of pain ripped through her. A fire had been lit, casting the thatch hut into a dull orange glow. One door stood opposite her, and she glared at it with as much vitriol as she could muster.

Her husband was outside that door, she knew, waiting for the cries of a child that she didn't want to force from between her legs, a child he had planted there while holding her down and covering her mouth to keep her from snarling at him.

"Push!" The midwife ordered, smacking her inner thigh hard, drawing her attention. "Ya don't push, girl, and the babe's going ta die inside ya." The girl smiled through the pain, teeth clenched hard together as she tried to keep her muscles from doing just as the woman demanded.

"I'll kill it," she hissed out between the crashing waves of pain, trying to draw her legs together and keep the damnable creature inside of her until it suffocated. "I'll kill it and let it rot inside me. It will stink and fester and in the end, when it kills me, he'll have the satisfaction of his dead son." She spat, biting viciously into her lip again when the pain came more fiercely.

She was a small woman still, not wide enough to bare a child, but Dnaestre hadn't considered that when he claimed her as spoils of a war her people lost and laid himself into her. The cursed thing in her belly was ripping her apart as it tried to leave her body.

"You'll kill it," the midwife said, voice harsh. She was of the girl's people, taken at the same time she had been but was far too old to be taken to bed. The woman was Tereis, a woman well known for her might on the battle field until her back had bent with age. "Anaxilea, you will kill the thing growing in you, and you will kill yourself. If this is your path, do it with honor." She demanded, standing from between the girl's knees with a growl and drawing a dagger from her waist.

"He will have no son from me," Anaxilea boasted, face contorting in pain as the child fought for freedom.

"Then give him a daughter," Tereis said, as firm as ever. "Push girl, see another Amazon born to the people, and prove to him that he's taken nothing from you." The dark haired girl glared up at the midwife for a long moment, the pain lining her face and drawing her lips up into a near snarl. Her dark eyes stared at the woman until finally, she nodded, and with all the strength left in her, she pushed.

No cry split the air as something slick forced its way from Anaxilea as she gave one last great push, collapsing as Tereis held up her child. The infant didn't cry out or scream, the only sign it still lived was the faint kicking in its legs and the odd way it clawed at its own neck. "The birthing cord," Tereis murmured, cutting the thing away with her dagger and urging the child to breath as its movements slowed and its face went blue.

"I've killed her," Anaxilea murmured as the pain and fatigue caught her up. "I killed that which he put in me." Tereis looked down sharply at the girl, but her eyes had slipped shut and her breathing had fallen into a labored rhythm.

"Breath, girl," Tereis urged, eyeing the redness around the child's neck and mouth where the umbilical cord had gotten caught, cutting off the movement of blood and air. The little thing had it up in it's mouth, toothless gums gnawing at it as if it could chew through the thing. "Born of storm and a warrior in the womb, you'll breath now, Hera take you!" Tereis yelled at the child, giving her a harsh shake and a smack on the back.

The child gurgled, and just as Tereis though she'd struck the child too hard, she drew breath and let a low growl. The midwife sat back on her old, aching haunches, and sighed. Anaxilea was a proud girl, born to be a queen of their people and forced into slavery. There would be a time though, Tereis was certain, there would be a time when the young queenly lioness of the Amazon people looked down at her daughter and saw her as more than the man that raped her.

AN: There are some darker themes in this piece, as was warned about above. I tried to keep them nondescript as possible, but these things happened and often in the warring worlds.