by J. E.
“And he started to change, Nan? How?”
“It was with the moon,” she said airily, as if life was flowing out of her before Cera’s very eyes. “It waxed and waned with the cycles of the moon.”
“I love you, grandma. You know I always do,” she leaned in, kissing the old woman’s soft cheek. “I’m sorry to trouble you with all the past.”
The old woman’s eyelids drooped again, and she was slipping out of consciousness. “There weren’t no controllin’ him,” she said, “he’d have ruined us both... ruined you before long.”
The back of her hand grazed the old woman’s cheek, “Nan, you rest. I’ll get you some tea.” Cera stood to do just that, but all the while she wondered at the truth of it. Was it so? Would her own child be nothing but a monster?
That was the last time she spoke with her grandmother to any real degree. The old woman’s mind and voice betraying her from then on, leaving her to say little more than brief requests or gibberish. It was heartbreaking to see the strong lady who took care of her all her life fade so, but the growing life within her consumed more of her focus.
It was increasingly an impediment to her lifestyle, and when she went out one day for the supplies she knew would await her she found them at her very front step, sparing her any unnecessary trip with the heavy supplies.
Oddly though, the strange, clawed footprints in the almost entirely melted snow did not turn back to the woods. With preternatural silence he was behind her, shutting the door to her cottage and looming large. He didn’t say anything; he just looked to her with wide, insistent eyes. He was different, somehow. His eyebrows thicker, his breathing heavier, she could see tufts of dark hair poking through his leather.
She gasped, her balance almost lost. “You frightened me,” she said as her hand fluttered to her throat. “Why did you sneak up on me so?”
Stepping up to her, his dark, piercing eyes looked her over and he reached out. She saw his fingers, they seemed somehow longer, the nails sharper. Tufts of hair poked out from his hands as he grasped her shoulder and touched her belly. “I didn’t mean to,” he husked, and his voice was harsh and coarse. “But I’m running out of time.”
“When did this start happening?” she asked, watching him and shrinking away, trying to protect her simple blue dress from those wicked claws. Her white hair was pulled up once more, though now it was out of a sense of time saving rather than childish whimsy. “When do you first remember it happening?”
“I don’t know,” he said, pursuing her, refusing to let her get away as his hand gripped her shoulder tighter, the other sliding across her belly to her hip. “After I was cast out,” the look in his eyes a mix of panic, alarm and something more. Hunger.
He pressed himself to her, the hard swell of her belly against his body. “You have to help me so I can make things right,” he insisted.
“You’re frightening me,” she said, but still she didn’t scream out. Not for her Nan. Not for him. “Let me go and I will try!”
Pressing against her she felt his hard body and strong hands touch her form. He leaned in towards her and heard his sniffing at her. “I’ve been alone so long,” he lamented in his gravely, bestial voice. “Always alone,” and she felt his hand slip up from her hip and touch her engorged breast through her dress.
She was such a kind woman that it hurt her to hear him speak so, even as he took such liberties with her body. She bit in her lower lip and those lavender eyes stared at him, so wide and innocent against that pale flesh and white hair. “Please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded with him in a gentle tone. “Don’t hurt the baby.”
He was so powerful and so much bigger than her, he bent down, his head tilted, and she could sense a tremble go through him. It was as if a war raged inside him. Still he persisted, his masked face brushing against her pale white hair and ear, inhaling her scent as his hand squeezed at her milk engorged teat. “I don’t want to,” he said, as if the man inside him were speaking through the beast from across some chasm.
“So stop. Break the curse yourself. Fight it,” she pleaded, and water threatened the corners of her eyes. “That’s the key. To fight it, to make her wrong about you.”
With his great strength he pushed her down onto a patch of grass even as his hand still groped her through her dress. “I can’t,” he said in a quaking voice, “it doesn’t work.” He was so dominant, and she was so delicate and hobbled by her pregnancy as he pressed her to the ground. “I’ve missed your touch,” he said, his eyes creasing sorrowfully.
“You have to believe it will work,” she insisted, her heart pounding fast in her chest as tears sprang from her eyes. “You just have to keep fighting it until it works. I believe in you!”
With such a strong grip on her shoulder he pushed her onto her side on the ground, pinning her there. “I just need you so badly,” he groaned harshly, and she felt his hand on her breast pull up her dress and the slip beneath so that it bared her hip and rear. “I can’t think straight. It’s been so long,” he pleaded insistently in that bestial growl.
She thought she was going to pass out with how quickly she was breathing, and she made a soft mewl of disappointment. “Please,” she pleaded. “Please don’t let grandmother know you’re here.” She knew her Nan couldn’t take any more stress, and that far outweighed her own fear.
His harsh hand with those sharp claws rubbed over her milky white skin, across her hip and ass then went to his belt. As she heard him undoing it his face nuzzled into her neck and hair, “You’re all I have,” she heard him lament, the hot flesh of his manhood touching to her. “You’re the only one who can make me better,” and he began to press that hard, bulbous crown to her puffy, pregnant labia, so much darker and changed from when he stole her virginity.
It was hard to pick apart the sensations, to treat them independent of one another. Her compassion and empathy was always at the forefront, feeling such pain and anguish for not just him, but her Nan as well. Only as she felt him begin to thrust into her, that dangerous weapon so smooth and beguiling, did she feel pain for herself as well.
“Be careful,” she urged him, for she understood that something was wrong with him and it wasn’t his fault.
Bent over her form he forced that thick, veiny girth in and out of her with such needful urgency. He was so large, and his tip smacked into her depths deeper than it should’ve in his blind fury, “I’m trying,” he whined, and she felt his sharp fingertips dig into her breast through her dress as his dick pumped her so insistently, so ruthlessly.
It was such need that drove him, such animal desire without much temperance from humanity to take it easy on her delicate, pregnant form. It was just him fucking her, huffing over her as her tight hole clung to him.
She whimpered and shuddered against him, her reddened labia burning as the blood flooded her. Her body responded in ways she didn’t control, slickening her folds to allow him in, faster and faster as she shifted to try to stop him from going too deep. She didn’t desire this, yet something in her had snapped and made her wonder if it could be better. If only he were cured.
His rutting of her was not that of a man, or what she imagined a man to be. It was fast, hard; it was without the concerns of a conscience. He struck her too deep, too hard at times, despite their best efforts. The only relief she saw was when he began to shudder and quake, his groans becoming so pleasured as his release was impending.
He swelled within her, his claws dug into her engorged tit, and she knew he was nearly there.
Her body arched against him, yet she was so tired already. Too tired to fight him, not that she would have anyways. She was too innocent, even after twice being rutted into by that beast of the man, and she was too kind, knowing he was cursed. That it wasn’t his fault.
The sounds of his satisfaction filled the air as he bucked into her erratically, pumping his load of cum into her depths with each new thrust. He was so large, so thick and needy, and as he emptied his loins into her he be
nt over her form, clutching her in both arms, embracing her tightly.
“I’m sorry,” he husked, his voice harsh and wolfen, but more him than mere moments before. “Did I hurt you?” he asked with such concern. “I need a cure, I need it for your sake,” he pleaded, “and our child’s,” and he squeezed her in his two arms firmly.
She was hurt, but she didn’t answer verbally. Instead she nodded her head, trying to wipe away the tears that had streamed across her delicate, pale face. “I’ll try,” she conceded.
Pulling his manhood from her, he left her puffy dark labia gaping and empty, drooling his pearly white seed. “I didn’t mean to,” he said, tugging her dress back down, tidying her just barely in some minor act of contrition. “I’ll make it up to you someday,” he promised, as if his deeds could be wiped away, “as long as you can cure me.”
She let him help her to her feet, and she stared at him, looking so much smaller and dirtier than before. “You should go,” she said, her voice a bit hard and gravely from her rough breathing. “I’ll send you a message when I have something for you.”
He looked pained and wounded, as if the act he had committed upon her had injured him as well. “Please,” he pleaded again, “be quick.” He backed away slowly, those dark beast-like eyes upon her as he left her be again.
A lifetime of study under her grandmother had taught her much about alchemy. She could make potions for treating or curing most anything. But then even her grandmother hadn’t had a concoction for what troubled him, she knew.
Looking through her collection of ingredients for some inspiration she found it upon an old bottle, coated in dust at the back. Wolfsbane, she realized. It seemed so obvious, but the weed was used in nothing they ever made, it was something that she never had cause to mix with anything. For it was a harsh poison, too cruel to use even for exterminating rats.
As her mind raced through the possibilities she heard something then. It was the sound of her grandmother calling for her. Desperately.
It was the last she ever heard from her, and in the moment of that loss the anguish and stress took hold of her. Cera quaked and fell to the floor, and her child was born into the world in sadness and misery much as he was conceived.
Recuperating from her birth on her own, without any aid took time. Her grandmother had prepared her for how to treat such things in case of need, but she had never done so before, certainly not from such a first-hand perspective.
She experimented with her notion for a concoction, but all the while her mind worried on her new son. He looked healthy and strong. But it was too soon. Even she reckoned with her total lack of experience that it was far too soon to tell if he would be as like his father.
So she doted on him. Gave him love that she’d never known for another thing, not even her loving Nan. Her heart was warm and it didn’t matter how he was conceived, what happened to bring him into the world. All of the pain and anguish that the child could have represented was instead turned to love, and even at the high point of night when he cried for her, she soothed him eagerly.
She would save them both from this awful curse, and if love was not enough, then she would continue to search for more mystical means. It took all of her time, the child and the potion, but she worked diligently and with the supplies that he had brought her, she needn’t leave for much.
What she’d created could not cure him. Like her grandmother realized, she too accepted that his nature was part of him. He could not be cured. Could not be rid of this ‘curse’, for it was as much a part of him as anything. But, she hoped, her concoction could possibly suppress that part of him. Keep it at bay when the shifting of the moon came to claim his humanity in the name of the wolf.
She had buried her grandmother when the moon was full, and he had not shown, but his howl had pierced the silence of the moment just once.
When she left that bit of baby’s breath outside on her stoop, she knew she wouldn’t have to wait long. Not for him. Not for the man with nothing in his life but her and his hope of a cure. She had often thought how lonely things seemed without her Nan, but it was something different than his. He was an outcast, a child that was born of something not human, and she imagined the depths of his sorrow in the dead of night when she nursed his child.
Her child would never feel that anguish, she promised herself.
Shortly after she had put out that sign, he showed up, the knock coming to her door. When she opened it he stood in amazement at the sight of her with their child. It made him break down into tears and fall to his knees before her newly slender form. He couldn’t talk for the harsh sobs of joy and sadness.
She felt his anguish, as if something now threaded them together, and though she kept her babe in her arms, she stroked his head as he cried. It was a bonding, a cementing of what they had, and her eyes watered as well. She wanted to cure this man of his pain, but instead, she would simply dampen it and pray it to be enough.
When finally after weeping long and hard against her, with his arms about them both, he lifted his dark, bloodshot eyes to her, that inhuman fang-toothed mouth hidden from sight beneath his mask still. “Is there hope for a cure?” he asked meekly, for he knew her grandmother was dead. He saw the evidence for it himself.
“There may be something,” she said softly, though she could only hope it would work. “We won’t know until you try it.” She stepped back, offering him into her small cottage as she lay the child down into its makeshift bed.
It was with obvious hesitance that he followed after. Long fear of the witch--her grandmother--made him loath that place dearly, but his anxiousness to be human led him on despite it. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” he said in his harsh voice, somewhere between man and beast.
He looked about with wide eyes, as if to be merely inside a home again was some strange miracle. He had been too long cast out to the wilds.
She should fear him. He’d twice taken her, yet she felt no such anxiety as she went to the alchemy table and plucked up the vial. “It’s a poison,” she warned as she offered it to him. “And I’m uncertain of the dosage. Two drops should do, but you don’t want to take too much.”
He took her words with some surprise. “Poison?” he muttered, half in disbelief. Pulling his mask down he sniffed at it and the very scent of it set his nostrils flaring and the half-man to cringing.
It was, she hoped, something to keep his worst nature at bay. It would not be perfect, and dosages in tune with the cycle of the moon would be required.
She told him, her voice calm and quiet, almost matronly as she tried to soothe his anxiety away. She was still wearing black in mourning, and it made her look like a porcelain doll with her pale skin and white hair, those violet eyes looking even wider than usual.
It was daunting, but with shaky hands he took the two drops, and she saw it take effect immediately. The veins upon his pale skin bulged and turned almost black. They were swollen as if the blood pumping within them were warring inside him.
Clutching his stomach he fell to his knees again in silent agony. He couldn’t even seem to get out any words but looked up to her with wide, saucer like eyes as he fell forward onto the floor, face first.
It took some time for her to get over that, but with practice and care she managed.
Days later she sat beside the bed he occupied, tending him as he shook with something like a fever. She’d adjusted the concoction, and now it was closer to doing the trick as she intended.
He nearly died that first day, but now the careful administering of it merely left him weakened and--more than that--something closer to a normal man.
His eyes were not quite so dark, those fangs a little shorter as he gazed at her. “Thank you,” he said lightly, his voice a bit weak still.
She rubbed an herb scented cloth along his forehead, though they did nothing but invoke a sense of calm. She was doting on both him and her newborn son, yet even though she was exhausted, she’d never left his side. She was dedicated to him
in a way she didn’t understand, and the pain he was going through wrenched her heart. Perhaps it was loneliness, or perhaps it was that childhood bond, but she wanted him to be well again.
To be human.
Reaching his hand to her wrist, he took hold of it, bringing it to his face and kissing the backs of her knuckles gently. “I’ve loved you from afar for so long,” he said shakily. “Just... just to be near you like this is more than I dreamed,” and she felt his sincerity shine through so plainly.
She clutched the cloth as she stared at him, trying to make sense of it all before a soft smile came to her lips. “I understand it wasn’t you. You didn’t mean to hurt me. I could tell that when you got so upset at the prospect.”
Some tension gave away in him, relief at her believing him. She could read him so well, despite being such an isolated young woman herself. She could feel the pain of being an outcast in him, never trusted, and never believed. Ruled by some beast within him.
“I don’t ever want to see you hurt again,” and he clutched her hand with some desperate need of her closeness. “Yer the mother of my child,” he strained to say, “I want to make it all better.”
“I know,” she said, her voice so soft. He’d hurt her, and for a while she thought he’d harmed some important part of her, stripped her of her youth, but she knew it wasn’t true. He’d taken nothing from her, and instead only given her more. The child that slumbered a few feet away and this closeness she’d never had with another person. Him. A shared experience born out of something wicked that blossomed into something special.
Her child would not grow up thinking he’d been born of a terrible act, but he would know love and affection.
So it was over time she grew more accustomed to his dosages. On the waning of the moon he could be trusted to reign in his beast almost entirely on his own, and on those days he was at his hale and heartiest, and tended to their needs like a true father.