He hardly has time to prepare for it: the moonlight's caress on the awaiting hunters, their bodies exploding from their fleshy constraints into their real forms: towering beasts, their tongues lapping at their muzzles, their fur doing nothing to conceal the dense slabs of muscle that make up their wild bodies. The two largest are more like a stitcher's dream than any dog he's seen before, their chests like the kegs of beer he once brewed with his father, their arms thick as the trunk of the tree upon which he perches.

His throat closes.

"That rhyme," snarls the leader, "only applies to humans."

Klaus knows well when to run, when to flee, when to take to the skies like the falcons he so strives to emulate. He leaps from the branch. If he can change his form quickly enough—

But he can't.

Dogs, after all, can pluck anything out of the air if they put their minds to it.

Jaws crush his chest. He's on the ground before he knows what's happened, the wolves circling, looking down on him as if a two-hundred-year-old vampire is no more to them than a bag of meat.

"You can't do this to me," he stammers. "This isn't how it works. The night—"

"The night belongs to those who take it," says the leader just before his mouth changes to muzzle.

It is the last thing Klaus ever hears.

***

EPISODE 1: THE WITCH OF THE WOODS