Fear gripping her heart, Eowyn rose slowly, turning, expecting—at any moment—to feel the creature’s foul teeth ripping her flesh.

Instead, the thing spoke to her, its words rumbling deep in its chest: “Look at me…”

She raised her eyes, reluctantly—up its powerful, all too human body—to the wolven face, with its angry, yellow stare.

“Do you like what you see, woman?”

“Like?” she whispered. “What do you mean?”

But she knew exactly what it meant and, though she tried, she could not keep her horrified gaze from dropping back to its groin. “No! No!”

“Come,” growled the gaur, grasping her wrist with a clawed hand. “Receive my seed and, with it, my gift of power.”

Power? Eowyn struggled against the fog invading her mind.

Power to change, at will, into this form, whispered the gaur, inside her head, with all of its strength and speed and savage beauty; power to make others like yourself; power to live forever…

No, thought Eowyn, none of that means anything to me…

But, even as she rejected the gaur’s ‘gift’, something else—some terrible, primitive urge—was uncoiling, deep inside her.

“It is always so,” purred the gaur, drawing its claws lightly across her cheek, “with women.”

Eowyn shivered.

“Women want to be taken…” It pushed her against the tree trunk, and its hand dropped to her belly, and she heard the sudden rending of silk and leather, felt the chill of air upon her bare skin, and the sharp kiss of claw-tips raking her flesh. “Beau-ti-ful…” growled the gaur.

And the awakening animal in her leaned into its touch—keen and teasing—and shuddered with violent pleasure as it toyed with her.

“Beau-ti-ful…”

But that word—strangely familiar—seemed to awaken something else within her—something clean and pure that was nestling safely in her heart—and, whilst her primitive self responded to the rough caress, Eowyn searched for it, trying to make sense of the sadness its imminent loss aroused in her…

Gods!

The memory of Legolas filled her mind—his face, his smile, his voice.

His love.

“NO,” she screamed, and—still hanging in the gaur’s grip—she crouched, driving her free hand upwards, smashing her hard fist into its testicles.

The creature roared.

Branches fell, and leaves spun down in a smothering rain, but Eowyn gritted her teeth, and punched again, though a swipe of the gaur’s hand all but knocked her head from her shoulders, and its claws left livid trails across her cheek.

But the blow had set her free!

And, as the thing struggled to retain its wolven form, Eowyn rolled out from under it and scuttled away, crawling over tree roots and falling into hollows, searching for her sword…