3: Fera - Pack City

by Weldon, Carys

  I hesitated, pretended like I was asking him silently. “Yeah. He’s not real happy with the bitches. They’re taking too much time. Kinda scattered.”

  “Man, I wish I could mind talk.” She bit her lip.

  Prodding her, I said, “Have I ever lied to you?”

  “No. But I can’t leave you alone.”

  “I’m fine. Remarkably, irritatingly, fine.”

  She turned her head to look at me. “It’s unnatural.”

  “What?”

  “The fact that you’re not even moody.”

  “Believe me, I’ve been pretty bitchy today. Feeling a little irritable with you. You need to go.”

  Still, she refused. “Let’s go back inside.”

  “You’re supposed to be an alpha female, Kayty. You’ll lose respect if you don’t get in on this.”

  “No.”

  “He’s calling for you again.”

  Her jaw worked overtime. “Tell him I can’t come.”

  That was funny. I said, “Bet that’s the first time he’s heard that one.”

  She snickered, too. Then said, “Your brain’s in the gutter, Fera.”

  “I kinda like this gutter.” I sat down, stretched, arched, looked up at the moon. The cloud covering had run off. “I wonder if that whole myth about mutants and full moons is true.”

  “Moon’s full. My bet is yeah.”

  I shrugged. I pretended not to really care, even though I was the one that had posed the question. Then, I pretended like I was going to pass out. “This night’s made me tired.” I closed my eyes. A few seconds later, I murmured, “He’s still asking for you, wondering where you are.”

  “Tell him I’m right where he told me to be.”

  I smiled. “He told you to take me to the other place.”

  “He didn’t mean that. It was a ruse, to confuse. We worked it out before what to do with you.”

  Rolling my back to her, I said, “Figures.”

  Not very much time passed while we were having that conversation, but it seemed like forever. Finally, she said, “Tell me you didn’t go to sleep out here.”

  I thought about ignoring her, but instead I said, “I would, if you’d stop talking. I’m not kidding, I feel like I’ve been through--”

  “Go inside. I’d feel better. I wasn’t supposed to let you out at all.”

  Sitting up, I said, “Look. I’m fine. He wants you.”

  She held her ground. “Go inside.”

  I didn’t wait for her to order me again. Old habits die hard. But it grated. I slink-crawled into the cave, and slumped against the wall, wracking my brain for a way to get past her.

  Hood showed up, demanding, “Where is she?”

  “Inside. Why?”

  “She didn’t answer.” He was breathing heavy. He peeked in on me, muttered, “Bitch,” before he saw me. But I don’t think he could believe his eyes. A minute later, he stood in front of me.

  I don’t care if he is my brother. In crinos, he’s fucking fantastic.

  Guess he didn’t think I looked so bad in my new form, either. He asked, “Do you hurt?”

  All I could do was shake my head.

  “I heard he came through here.”

  “Outside.” I shrugged. We both knew what had happened. The mind talk pretty much makes that kind of info easy to relay.

  “So, you were inside, didn’t see him?”

  I couldn’t lie about that. I just batted my eyes at him and smiled.

  Big Brother reached down and grabbed me by my arm, lifting me to my feet. Dragging me to the door, he told Kayty, “She needs locked up.”

  “Why?” Kayty wasn’t breaking her plan with Leer without an explanation.

  “Because--smell her.”

  My smile grew wider. I liked knowing that the scent of me was an aphrodisiac of the highest kind, that my brother was worried, protective.

  “I can’t believe the losers aren’t back.” Kayty said, “Something is definitely not right here.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. She’s got the scent.” He pointed with his free hand. “It’s running down her legs, she’s so ready. So tell me, where are they?”

  She told him, “They came through.”

  “I know.” He gritted his teeth, hauling me hard toward the lockup.

  Leer grumbled in mind talk. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Hood asked, What?

  The losers ran into the trap.

  Hood let loose with a few expletives, tossed me in the lockup, slammed the door, and said, “Losers fell in the trap. I gotta go and help Leer get them out. That trap’s no good now.”

  Sure enough, their howls were easy to hear.

  Kayty winced, “How could that happen?”

  I had a feeling. Call it intuition. I remembered the losers, sitting, talking politics--and the lurker not too far away. What if--they had brought him in? But why would they do that? Or ruin the trap? That was just stupid. Wasn’t it?

  Unless...the unnatural wasn’t defective. Maybe he’d marshaled them, like troops? Had them working on his side? Still, running into a trap to redirect attention seemed silly. To what purpose?

  I figured I’d have plenty of time to ponder it.

  Hood said, “Ran right into it, from the sounds of it.”

  “Should’ve told the rest of us where you were building that new trap.” I had my face to the door, growled through the slats.

  “Be quiet.” Hood’s patience was thin.

  Kayty said, “What does Leer want me to do?”

  “Stay put.”

  “But--” I guess my comments had Kayty feeling like maybe she should get out and help.

  “I gotta go.” Hood bounded off.

  Kayty checked the triple locks. Only Leer had the combinations. And then she said, “Fuck this.” She disappeared, too.

  So, there I was, sitting in my stupid cell, thinking horrid thoughts about all my relatives. Plotting murder, actually.

  And then I heard something. I moved back to the door, pressing my ear, then my nose, sniffing. It was him. How he’d managed to slip them all and circle back--after Kayty and Hood left--without them getting wind of him, I don’t know.

  The rattling of the locks was minute. I backed up, half afraid of what I’d see when the door opened. I mean, maybe I’d been dreaming earlier.

  And how did he get the locks off? Those were special locks. Expensive locks. Manufactured for werewolf containment.

  The door swung wide and we faced each other.

  Chapter Six

  Once again, I had the brief thought: Oh. My. Gaia.

  I had never seen anything so...unique. I wanted to explore him right there.

  Well, actually, I wanted to throw him down and straddle him right there, in the cell.

  His eyes glowed neon green. They dropped immediately to my pubic area, and I know he was thinking similar thoughts--fuck me fast on the spot.

  Liquid did run down my legs. I watched his nose wrinkle in appreciation. His eyes flashed.

  My nose lifted, taking in all that it could, the change in his own body chemistry when he smelled me up close for that first time. Definite reaction. Sweet sweat, I’d call it. A clean scent. For all the hide-and-seek he’d been playing, he had a remarkably fresh thing going on. Or maybe it just worked for me. It had a musk overlay that got stronger the longer he stood there. You can’t bottle that shit, werewolf pheromone.

  It seemed like the silence between us stretched. I waited for him to make a move. Honestly, I figured he’d go for the one fast fuck, despite the fact that he was likely to die in the progress of it. Creatures of instinct, and all that. Right?

  Now, it never occurred to me to turn him down. Back to that whole senseless thing. I might not have looked out of control, but I definitely had a reckless thing going on. I blinked at him, just once. A quiet way to say, it’s your move. Guaranteed not to tip Hood and Leer off that he’d circled back to the den. Nothing so noisy as a sound.

  But, only briefl
y, I wondered...if Leer came and saw this new wolf on top of me, would he claim me? Would he slit the intruder’s throat, and be forced to take me as the prize of the win?

  He cocked his head, listening. The bitches were coming back, from the sounds of it. Next thing I knew, he reached in, grabbed me by the hand and pulled me from the cell. We didn’t talk. We just moved. In sync, ya know?

  When he went to draw me to the left, I shook my head, took him another way. There was something just ‘right’ about it, if that makes any sense. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

  I didn’t want Leer forced into taking me. And I didn’t want to fight Kayty for the right to stay with him. I figured Gaia had her own plan for me and this was my destiny. So I led him out of Pack City.

  Through some caves, things we had to crawl through. That probably drove him crazy--what with me leading the way and him sniffing up my butt the whole time. He showed remarkable restraint, I thought. I mean, he could’ve yanked me at any time, thrown me down, and climbed on, but he didn’t. Or just got a hold on my legs and climbed up over my back, and fucked me doggy style. But, like I said, he didn’t. There’s no way in hell you can tell me he didn’t think about it, though. I damn sure did. And a few times, I paused with my legs spread, just so he could look up at and contemplate what he could be taking advantage of. Yeah. You could say I wanted him to suffer a little. For Gaia knows, I was freaking going nuts over the odd sensations rolling through my body.

  You see, I had no idea that my change was still going on. That I was metamorphosing as we moved. I thought I’d reached the end of my first shift. That I would have to learn to force a through-to-human change. There are exercises you can do, to get to the desired form. Painful sometimes, and involving hours of meditation and many more hours of prayer and supplication to Gaia. And there are things you can take into your diet that will help that, too. Fasting followed by--oh, never mind.

  The point is, I was still in the middle of shapeshifting, actually blipping a little--shifting a tad more human, and back again toward the more ‘wolfy.’ Hair came and went. My nails would extend, then retract. But I didn’t feel a thing. Except, maybe, that when I was more lupus, my urge to eat, to kill something, to get snippy-angry seemed to flash a bit more. And when my humanity rose up, I was more apologetic, and definitely coming around to stopping, rolling onto my back and saying, “For Gaia’s sake, just fuck me. Puhleeease just fuck me.”

  I thought of doing that--over and over again. But while we were in the vicinity of Pack City, within the perimeter, it wasn’t safe to indulge in sexual needs. By then, my urges had become a ‘gotta have’ more than a ‘want’. And I knew I needed more than a quick romping roll.

  And so did he. Maybe he could smell it? Or felt it in his bones?

  To me, it sure felt like it was all bone-deep. My pelvis literally ached. My thigh muscles convulsed from time to time. Now that they bulged more and rubbed against one another, I realized the full implication of friction fucking oneself. That drove me to the edge, let me tell you. Made me cream more in anticipation.

  Made him drop his tongue out. Once, he grabbed my ankle, said, “Hold up.”

  I went still. I had no idea what was going on, ya know? Could have been a bug or a rock or something he needed to move. Something I’d missed. We were crawling through a honeycomb underground labyrinth, remember?

  So, I hear him huff. I feel his other hand reach up to touch my other leg, near the thigh, just above the back of my knee. The space was too tight for me to turn around and see.

  A minute later, I felt his tongue.

  Holy shit.

  Teasing, tickling, damn fine, motherfucking tongue.

  Sliding up my inner thigh--while I’m pinned--reaching, stretching, tasting. Niggling at my cunt until my eyes rolled back in my head and I thought, in.

  Nothing more than that. Just...in.

  He definitely tasted me. I heard him slurp. I felt his head between my legs, and there I was on my belly, thinking, “Shit. Put it in.”

  But he growled, “Fuck. We need to get out of here. My cock’s getting downright painful.”

  That made me laugh. I crawled a lot damn faster after that.

  I guess we both knew that, to explore each other properly, we really had to get out of Pack City. Out of those damn caves.

  Honestly, we were leaving a trail of scent that a blind skunk could follow. The only reason we weren’t caught up with, I think, is that we really were moving at a fast pace. But even at that, it actually took hours to get to a point of safety.

  Hours of convoluted trail crisscrossing after we got out of the caves. Off and on, we heard the dogs, probably the whole pack, on our trail.

  Now there’s an adrenalin rush.

  I’ve been on the run ever since. I know, eventually, Hood will catch up with me, try to drag me back.

  But I can’t think about that. Not now. I’m too wrapped up in something I thought I’d never find.

  My crinos energy, enhanced by the whole first shift thing, was phenomenal, and he, too, felt that, I think. You could say we adventured that night, with a sense of destiny in our bones, driving our muscles to explore the limits of what they could do. Leaping boulders, making incredible jumps from cliffs. Sucking water greedily when we came to streams and lakes.

  It felt like we’d been together forever. I know that sounds crazy.

  But, we didn’t really think. And we didn’t talk that much. We didn’t want to take a chance that the pack would hear us.

  I certainly didn’t have time to meditate about the coming dawn, or what would happen if he shifted back--and if I didn’t. Or if I shifted back to lupus.

  In crinos, we were perfect for each other. I don’t think either of us wanted to delve beyond the moment.

  Somewhere, not too far before the sun came up, we stopped, got our breath. Friction filled the air around us, between us. Total expectancy. You’d think we’d be too worn out to fuck. We’d finally gotten ‘off the map’.

  I don’t think either of us had a clue where we were. Everything looked different. The rocks, boulders, canyon and caves had thinned out and then thickened up with woods, and finally, opened up into more and more clearings of huge size. We’d surely gone miles. Above us, the stars dotted the indigo sky with bold bits of light. No breeze wafted. And I just knew that it was the place where I would find my fulfillment.

  When I had my lungs full and had rested, I looked over at him. He, too, had taken in the change in scenery. His gaze dropped to the grass at our feet. High meadow.

  I know. You’re probably thinking, “What the hell’s his name?”

  Him. He. I was thinking the same thing. After all that adventure, and I still had no clue what to call him. And I wasn’t sure how to go about asking it without sounding stupid. After all, here I was, having run off with him, spent most of the night playing chase-and-escape. And now we were looking at each other blankly, not sure what to say, or how to say what we were thinking.