Bite Me Tender

by Kate Lowell

  Levi snorted. “Yeah, you made a mess at the back of the bar. Looked like a typical Friday night to me.”

  McCourt laughed. “Just wanted you to know what your pack was gonna look like if you didn’t face facts and give up. We all know you ain’t got the balls to do what needs to be done. I hear your boyfriend back there has them tucked away nice and safe in his purse, though. I’m sure that’s a comfort to you when things get hairy.”

  Levi put a hand out to stop Glyn’s step forward and squeezed his hip warningly. He didn’t need any complications. Surprisingly, Glyn listened and moved back again, his energy an unexpectedly soothing heat along Levi’s back.

  “Very civilized of you,” Levi said drily.

  “You’re a funny man, there, Signer. Ain’t nothin’ civilized about what’s living inside us now. Just wild and survival of the fittest. I hear you ran old Zach almost six miles that night before he caught ya. Who’d a thought you’d turn into a pansy? I’d say you’re not fit for survival anymore.”

  Levi’s lips curled in a sneer. The other werewolf sounded like he’d taken lessons from an old movie villain. Except that McCourt wasn’t stupid like the old movie villains all were, so he was doing it on purpose. Levi’d have to watch himself, not let himself be taken in by that old-redneck manner.

  He snarled at McCourt, playing along with the game. “We’ll see about that. You need to pick out a couple of friends to help you?”

  The rest of the council were noticeably silent during the exchange. They’d need to have a talk after this, about so many things.

  McCourt slammed the car door and stepped into the clear area between the two packs. “I don’t think we need to get real complicated here. I kick your ass, you die or belly-up, and I take over. Hear you talked a real sweet piece into joining your crew. I’m not a big one for men, but a mouth’s a mouth, and I kinda like it while the heat’s still on them and they’ll do anything for it.”

  That was obvious. Levi could smell it on the other pack, the nervousness and desperation. McCourt had been changing them to bring his numbers up, but if he was using any kind of standard, Levi couldn’t see it. And he was changing them out for a new one as soon as the intensity wore off, not letting the new wolf wean itself properly. Hardly half the pack could be considered full-grown. He’d bet some of them couldn’t even change yet, they still smelled so human. If Levi won, he was going to have to either clean it up or fix it, in much the same manner that natural wolves fixed a herd of deer.

  When he won, he reminded himself. He couldn’t afford to lose. But the thought made him angry. Angry at McCourt for abusing these people for his own pleasure. Angry at the council for pushing Connor at him. Angry with himself for allowing the manipulation. His wolf yipped at him—it knew what to do to blow off steam. And that other wolf had challenged it.

  “The wolves are waiting to run,” Levi said, bared teeth no longer masquerading as a grin. He shucked his shirt. “Let’s get this done. I’ve got a craving for deer.”

  McCourt laughed. “I’m sure there’s lots in the Hunting Grounds.”

  Levi was about to snap something in return when he felt Glyn’s hands on his arm, sliding down to take the shirt from him. Levi unbuttoned his pants and slid them over his hips, then toed off his shoes and stepped out of the whole mess. He chuckled as Glyn scooped up the untidy pile to fold it, and then he walked a few paces to the side and called the wolf up.

  Glyn’s hand on his shoulder paused him, tugging him down so Glyn could put his lips to Levi’s ear. “Don’t die on me, Fido, or I’ll hunt you down and kill you again. Then stomp on the bits and give them to Gram.” He stepped away and nodded firmly at Levi before turning and heading for the edge of the drive.

  Levi and his wolf laughed at that. Then Levi set his wolf free.

  The transformation was never entirely comfortable. Muscle and bone didn’t like to change their shape, and they took their revenge in pain. But tonight, under the full moon, with all his fury and frustration looking for an outlet, Levi’s change came on him smooth as silk and cool as rain. It felt almost as if he disappeared and his wolf stepped out of nowhere. When the last of the wolf had glided into place, he shook out the kinks and sniffed the air.

  McCourt was still in the throes of his change—and not an easy one, from the groans and the snapping of ligaments Levi heard as the other man’s body twisted itself into wolf shape. Levi sat back on his haunches and waited, though he’d seen fights ended before when one wolf transformed faster than another. A faint, herbal smell prickled his nose, and he sneezed. Looking around, he spotted Gram perched on a low branch in the apple tree at the front of the house.

  Fuck off, bitch.

  She smiled back and drew her finger across her throat, pointing at McCourt.

  Yeah, I think I want him dead more than you do. He didn’t get why she was here, except for Glyn. And Glyn seemed to be looking after himself pretty well right now. He glanced behind him and found Glyn on the other side of the driveway, standing at the edge of Levi’s pack. Looking the other way, he noticed Connor almost directly opposite and snorted. What, were they back in middle school again?

  McCourt pulled himself to his feet, smoke gray and as lean in wolf form as he was in human. Levi let him catch his balance before he stepped forward. They eyed each other a moment, and then McCourt launched himself across the empty space between them.

  * * * *

  Glyn held his breath as the fight began. He knew Levi could fight, knew how much power there was in those corded muscles, but still he worried. McCourt was older, and they didn’t know much about him. It was safe to assume that he had more experience fighting than Levi did.

  There was no formal ceremony for a fight between packs—it all came down to who was the smartest or the strongest or just the luckiest. Levi had once told him that pack members had been known to interfere, helping or hindering depending on how they wanted the fight to turn out. With that in mind, Glyn kept a wary eye on the members of McCourt’s pack, just in case.

  Levi slipped to one side, snapping at McCourt’s shoulder as the other wolf slid past. McCourt’s hind leg made a tempting target, but the other wolf spun just as Levi was about to set his teeth into it.

  He’s faster than we realized.

  Levi backed off with a yelp as teeth came down on his haunch. Not a serious wound, but a concern this early in the fight. Glyn found himself worrying at the skin on the side of his thumb, picking at the flesh with his teeth, an old habit he thought he’d broken himself of in seventh grade. Furiously he forced his hand down and did his best to look unconcerned. He glanced over to see how Connor was handling it all. It was probably his first time seeing the wolves really being wolves. Glyn was a bit taken aback to notice that Connor looked like he was considering jumping in to help—his whole body leaning forward, his hands balled into fists, his eyes following every move of the fight.

  McCourt didn’t press his advantage, despite having drawn blood from Levi, and Glyn noticed that he seemed to be favoring one front leg. What did I miss? Levi had done something. The two wolves circled each other again, heads low. McCourt growled, and Levi huffed at him—almost a laugh, if wolves could laugh. McCourt growled louder and feinted a rush toward Levi. Glyn bit his thumb again as Levi faded back, giving way before the older wolf. The fight continued like this for what felt like an hour to Glyn but was really more like a minute, with McCourt attacking and Levi slipping away at the last instant. Neither wolf laid claw or fang on the other.

  What on earth is he doing?

  McCourt was obviously frustrated, his attacks becoming more aggressive. He began taking risks, advancing wildly and snapping at whatever part of Levi’s body was closest.

  When Levi’s attack came, it happened so fast it took Glyn’s breath away. Levi sprang to meet McCourt instead of retreating, the two wolves coming together in a snarling mass of teeth and claws. McCourt broke off, limping and bleeding, a flap of skin and fur hanging loose over his ribs. Even with
Glyn’s barely-more-than-human senses, he could see McCourt’s ribs heaving and smell the fear coming off him.

  Levi threw back his head and howled, then leaped onto McCourt’s back and drove him to the ground. They grappled briefly until McCourt managed to twist his head around and sink his teeth into Levi’s shoulder.

  Levi let out a bark of pain and bit the other wolf on the leg. Glyn could hear the bone snap from where he stood twenty feet away. McCourt made one last desperate effort to escape, hindquarters bunched beneath him as he attempted to slide out from under Levi’s bulk, but it was a fruitless effort. Levi pinned the other wolf against the ground and buried his teeth in its neck.

  McCourt howled, a long, painful sound that rose until it became a shriek, and then it was over. Levi’s pack was safe—or doubled, depending on what he wanted to do with McCourt’s followers. But that was a problem for later. Right now Glyn had a different problem. He could see Norris pushing a nervous-looking Connor in the direction of the snarling werewolf, who was still shredding the body of the loser. Glyn needed to act right now, while Levi was still wild with the heat of battle.

  He smelled Gram’s herbal scent beside him. “What do you suggest, Gram?”

  Gram smiled like a cat with canary feathers in its teeth. She undid the buttons on Glyn’s shirt and twitched it open, baring hard nipples and the goose bumps pebbling his skin. Then she placed a large, heavy rock in his hand and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

  “Now,” she said with vicious glee, “you get his attention.” She patted his jaw and smiled. “Don’t let him wimp out.” And she left.

  Glyn laughed, though there wasn’t much humor in it. Levi was dismembering the last bits of the wolf that had been McCourt, dragging limbs and pieces of intestine around the driveway. Glyn’s gaze drifted to Connor, and his witchsight flickered in and out briefly.

  That’s for later.

  Seeing his chance when the wolf settled down to chew on a leg bone, he hefted the rock a few times to judge the weight and then let fly.

  Change of Life

  Levi spun when the rock hit him.

  Less than ten feet from him, a knot of people yelled at the top of their voices. Levi saw Glyn arguing with Bryan, though in his blood-hazed state, the words were a meaningless jumble. The body language, on the other hand, was perfectly clear. Glyn stood defiantly between Connor and Levi, with one hand on Connor’s chest, holding him back. Levi watched angry tears trickle down Glyn’s cheeks. Until this week, he’d never seen the man cry. It hurt to know he’d done that to Glyn.

  A part of him, the human part trapped behind the wolf, wanted to go to his lover, lick away the salt, and promise him everything if only he would smile again. The wolf, though, roared up inside. It didn’t care about tears. It was still riding the adrenaline high of the fight, and the rock infuriated it. Something had to pay. Levi knew Glyn could see it too, when he looked over his shoulder at the wolf behind him. Anyone else would have cowered on the gravel of the driveway, but not Glyn.

  As Levi watched, the moon threw strange shadows across Glyn’s face, and Levi wondered what would happen now.

  With a last contemptuous shove against Connor’s chest, Glyn walked up to Levi’s wolf and looked him right in the eye. “I am not sharing you with that tart!”

  The wolf barked in surprise, then growled, its tail straight up and its hackles raised. This was a challenge, and from something that wasn’t much more than prey. Prey wasn’t dominant; it was eaten. So when Glyn followed his declaration with a roundhouse punch to its jaw, the wolf chased Levi back down into the recesses of his brain. Joyfully, it attacked, howling its confidence to the moon and all around them.

  Its prey didn’t run. The wolf was surprised and then annoyed. Still, this way was quicker. It wanted more blood, wanted it now, and hot flesh twitching a path down its throat. The wolf leaped, jaws wide, and lodged its teeth in the meat of a shoulder. Blood flowed into the wolf’s mouth. It bit down harder, knocking the prey to the ground, ignoring the human presence raging inside it. Full moon was the wolf’s time, and this moon it was doing what it wanted.

  The prey wrapped arms around it, holding it close. Strange behavior in prey, but the wolf didn’t let that confuse it. It shook its head from side to side, driving its teeth deeper, until they almost met in the mass of shredded tissue and broken bone. The prey shrieked death cries underneath the wolf’s fangs, and the wolf raised its head to howl its pleasure at the sound.

  Then something changed. The wolf cocked its head to one side, looking curiously at the prey. But not prey, either. It smelled…right, somehow. Not food. Curious, it shoved its nose back into the broken flesh, ignoring the moans. Its tongue flicked out, and it licked the ragged wound. A touch of…wolf? It was. Not prey. Pack. New pack.

  Mine.

  Levi surged back up to the forefront. Glyn. He’d bitten Glyn. Damn near killed him. He panicked. Wolf was thrown to one side, and Levi set his mind to change back. The wolf didn’t want to go, but Levi wasn’t taking no for an answer, not with Glyn bleeding to death on the ground in front of him. He beat at it with his will, like fists made of determination. With a last howl, it gave way. Levi’s body flowed and stretched back into its human form. This time the pain stole his breath, but he forced himself through it anyway.

  “Glyn? Glyn!” He gasped as the last of his body fell into place. He crawled over to the still form on the ground. Glyn’s eyes were open, staring at the stars above them. His chest rose and fell rapidly while blood flowed sluggishly out of the red mess of his right shoulder.

  “Hey,” came his lover’s voice, weak but steady.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Glyn turned his head, wincing as it pulled at his torn flesh. “Why? I wanted it. This is what we’ve been trying to make happen for a year now.”

  “God, you’re such a mess! I… Your shoulder!”

  Glyn twisted his head a little farther to look at it. “I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks. It doesn’t hurt much.”

  “Shock. You’ll feel it soon.”

  “I can feel you, you know. Like a touch on my skin, even where you aren’t touching.” Glyn’s voice was groggy and filled with wonder.

  Levi laid his lips against Glyn’s cheek. “That’s the wolf in you. The little bit that you have so far. It will get stronger.” He licked at the wound, doing his best to push his saliva into the holes. It tasted good, even in human shape, and it would help with the wolf, the more of himself he could leave inside Glyn.

  Glyn’s breath came on a painful gasp. Levi could feel the wolf growing inside him. Still weak and spending its energy on healing its new body. Glyn needed food, protein and calories, to fuel the creature growing inside him. This was happening out of order. Normally Levi hunted his prey, then hunted the human. They hadn’t made it out of the farmyard yet tonight—there was no flesh to feed the new wolf. No way was he feeding McCourt to Glyn.

  A solid thump behind him startled him. His head snapped around with a vicious growl. A large plastic cooler sat on the ground a few feet away. Glyn’s grandmother stood beside it.

  “Food for my grandson. Look after him well, wolf. If he dies, so do you and all yours.” She turned and disappeared into the dark, beyond even his wolf’s abilities to find. He shivered, and his wolf whined within him. But there was meat in the cooler; he could smell it now. Not good meat, fresh from something that had moments before been running in terror from him, but still meat. He flipped the top off and reached inside. Boneless tenderloin, sweet and soft in his hand. He shredded one of the medallions into small pieces and held it up to Glyn’s mouth.

  “Eat,” he urged. “Your wolf needs it.”

  Glyn looked at the meat dripping in Levi’s hand and wrinkled his nose. “Raw? Really, Levi?”

  Levi smiled at him. “Try it. It’ll surprise you. Think of it as steak tartare.”

  Glyn grimaced and opened his mouth. Levi popped a small piece in and watched as Glyn chewed it up and swallo
wed. He breathed a sigh of relief when Glyn looked at him in shock and said, “Oh, that was good! Is there more?”

  “As much as you want, love.” He dismissed the pack to hunt so he could stay by Glyn and feed him the meat that would keep him alive. “Wait until you try something fresh, from something you just hunted. You’ll never go back to this again.”

  Glyn accepted another piece of meat from him, then paused in thought. “What does this mean for date night at the steakhouse?”

  Levi laughed. “That’s still on. Cooked food still tastes good, just different now. You’ll see.”

  “Hmm,” Glyn said, licking the blood off Levi’s finger. “And the rest of it?”

  “As soon as your shoulder knits. So eat up.” He could hear the strength coming back in Glyn’s voice already. New-made wolves—the pack’s pups—normally took a day to recover from the initiating wounds. Glyn’s shoulder had already stopped bleeding. He could smell the flesh granulating from here as it tied together tissues that had been forcibly separated in the attack. It occurred to him that Glyn’s witchblood could have something to do with this rapid recovery, and a small part of him wondered how much faster Glyn’s transformation would be than normal.

  “Don’t pay any attention to Gram,” Glyn mumbled through a mouthful of steak.

  “Why, is she all talk? I didn’t think so.”

  “Oh no, not at all. We talked about this the other night. She’s just pulling your leg.” After an uncomfortable pause he added, “I think.”

  Levi leaned in and kissed him, tasting blood and meat and Glyn and wolf. “I don’t care.” Then he winked at Glyn. “This is all about me anyway. If you died, bed would be boring. So no dying.”

  Glyn chuckled and winced as he jarred his shoulder. “I promise. It doesn’t sound that interesting.”

  Levi fed him some more meat. “How’re you feeling?”

  Glyn looked up to the stars. “Better, I think. Weird. Weirder than usual.” He turned his eyes back on Levi. “I can smell you.”