The Panther's Rival

by Emilia Hartley

  “Hey…” Kara stood at the door, her smile big, and her face more beautiful than ever.

  Merk stepped forward to hug her, his hands and arms, body, tingling with anticipation for just her touch, the feel of her body, those curvy hips that didn’t end. His arm was wrapping around her waist when he saw it… His heart sunk and his instincts flared: danger. Behind Kara, a little distance down the driveway, two pairs of glowing yellow eyes looked back at him. Wolves. Shifted. Even in the dark, he could see their grayish dark fur, sharp prickly sprigs that shot up from their skin. It was the two shifters from practice.

  “Come on in,” he said to Kara, gently pulling her to him and into the house, her body wrapping around his automatically, pressing hard.

  “Hmmm,” she purred.

  Merk pulled back some to look at her. Beautiful. He hated that their night was already being interrupted and by shifters no less.

  “Go grab yourself a glass of wine… It’s already open, did it an hour ago so it has breathed nicely. I ah – I didn’t check the mail box today and I’m expecting an important letter – just remembered.”

  Kara gave him a curious look and then forced a smile. But she did as he had suggested. He watched her as she walked towards the dining room, her ass was everything to him, the way it bounced, her hips the way they swayed. Merk bit his lip hard and then turned to go outside. He made sure to shut the door behind him.

  Chapter Six

  They were in wolf form. The shifters. They paced back and forth as Merk walked down the driveway towards them. He was ready. He had dealt with Wolf Shifters before and knew how to handle them. It was always the same thing with them, the initial intimidation, even their pacing and prowling was a fear tactic. Panthers were different. The aggression was stronger, raw, and when confronted with potential danger or conflict, there was little to no meandering; it was fight not flight. Merk eyed them as he got closer, ready to shift if necessary. He reached the end of the driveway. The wolves stopped in front of him, side by side, trying to intimidate him with their glowing yellow eyes with the black pupils. Merk stepped forward.

  “I’m assuming that we need to come to an understanding…” Merk started. “For one, I don’t appreciate you showing up at my house like this – feels kind of intrusive on a personal level.”

  The wolves began to pace back and forth again.

  “I let it go when you showed up at my practice, having already sunk your claws into my assistant coach…”

  Merk watched their gait, waiting for the slightest change, an indicator that they were going to attack. Nothing. Not yet. Their lack of doing anything annoyed Merk. He didn’t like mincing words.

  “So what is this? Is this Ratty? Is this his way of trying to tell me something? If so, I need you to speak up –”

  And then it happened: one of the wolves lunged at him, its claws outstretched. Merk dove to the side but the claws still got him in the face, slightly. He felt the warmth of the blood trickle down his cheek as he rolled on the ground and then sprung back onto his feet. He half expected the other wolf to be on top of him by now for the secondary attack. But the other one hadn’t moved. The one wolf that had clawed him was on the balls of its paws, back hunched, canines showing, in attack mode.

  Merk retracted. He felt the adrenaline swell up inside of him. He let loose: his skin tingled, the hairs stood on end, then smoothed down to his skin, a velvety feel, sweat running profusely, pouring out of his skin. The wolves saw what was happening and they didn’t wait for the shift to finish, the one wolf lunged forward again. Merk grabbed the wolf this time and slung him to the ground. Merck felt his back arch as his vertebrae bent and caved him to the ground on all fours. The second wolf jumped on him and tried to sink his teeth in. Merk shook hard and then rolled the second wolf off him. The wolf whimpered. Merk roared as his full panther body came forward, snapping and crackling bones as the human anatomy gave way to the panther’s.

  The wolves froze.

  Merk growled, making sure to show his teeth, sharp and ready to sink into either of the two wolves that challenged him first. His roar was a reverberation that pierced the night. Merk sprung forward, snapping at the wolf only a few feet away from him, just missing. The wolf clawed, but missed, and then Merk was on top of it, digging into the wolf’s underbelly, causing gashes from which, blood oozed freely.

  Merk knew that two wolves were no match for him, he had handled more before. He was about to bite into the neck of the wolf he had pinned down when the other one rammed into him, knocking him off its partner. Merk quickly bounced back onto his paws and reared back in a defensive stance. The wolves were running off, down the street. The taste of blood swirled on Merk’s tongue, he lapped up the metallic modicum of blood, savoring its flavor, and then Merk took off after the wolves.

  On all fours, Merk ran like the wind, his sense of smell picking up the wolves’ musky scent. He followed it blindly and with haste. The street was empty. The wolves streaked down the road unperturbed by any of the traffic. They veered off the road and leapt into the lawn of a neighbor. Merk followed, gaining, his bigger and stronger legs pushing him faster than the wolves. He was closing in. The wolves then dove into the forest behind one of the houses. They were trying to lose him, but Merk had decided that he was going to send a message to Ratty and his wolf pack. He too dove into the forest behind them.

  Brushes and branches shot at him as he coursed through the nebula of the forest. The moon’s light seemed to have dimmed and the stars faded behind the canopy of trees. Merk was coming to a clearing and… He skidded to a stop, the dirt and dust kicking up onto his paws and legs. The wolves’ scent had gotten stronger and more robust. There were more of them. It was a trap.

  ***

  The first wolf’s teeth sunk into the side of Merk’s panther body. It was deep and painful. He knew that something major had been hit, an organ or some of his rib cage. He wasn’t sure, but the pain was excruciating. Merk continued on though, parrying the other wolf advances and attacks – clawing, biting, and lunging. There seemed to be no end for it. He tried to muscle through it, using brute force and the strength of his panther body to eliminate as many of them as possible, but there were too many of them and in closed quarters.

  The way that they had boxed him in in the clearing gave them the advantage speed wise. Still, he gnashed at them, nicking a few, clawing and barely scraping any. Each time he went for one, another would lunge at him from a different angle. They ripped into his hind leg, then another was on his back, a vicious and sound bite into the back of his neck.

  Merk went to the ground hard and tried to roll the wolf off before it tore into his vertebrae. This went on for what seemed like an eternity until finally a wolf with an orange-like hue to it, bigger than all the rest, clobbered him with an open paw, tearing the flesh off of his face, coming close to piercing his eye. Merk’s head spun and his body fell. All the wolves leapt on him and pounced. All he could do was cower and wait for it all to be over, whimpering and whinnying as they tore into him and pounded him into the ground.

  ***

  Merk woke up to darkness. His head was swimming, muddy, it felt heavy and disconnected from him. It took him a few minutes to gather himself, to reboot and regain the memory of what had happened. It was a strange sensation: to be in a body, alive, and not connect to any identity for a few moments – in that brief lull, there’s a sensation of being nothing and in the weirdest way, strangely foreign and alien to what it means to be alive and earthbound, there’s a feeling of indescribable freedom.

  Merk felt it. Liked it. Yet there was an incessant pulling in him that moved him forward, pervading his inner self, until he came back to his identity – his memories, the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything that was in between that made up his life. Once that returned, he immediately wanted it gone. But that wasn’t living, not in this world, and so he accepted his return and the subsequent pain that came along with it.

  They had left him alive. Damn wolve
s. Always the warning first, marking their fucking territory. This had been a warning for Merk, he knew it, he’d dealt with packs like them before but none had gotten the better of him like these. At some point, Merk had shifted back into his human form. His memories were back but they were fuzzy, a cloud surrounded a lot of it, undoubtedly from the trauma that he had experienced. He knew that from past run-ins and injuries. The panther body didn’t heal very well, so once under duress and allowed a moment’s cessation, the shift back to human form took place so that healing abilities could begin. Merk was thankful for those abilities, especially after the ordeal and beating that he had been through. Trying to stand up on two legs, he saw how mangled his body was. It was ripped and torn; gashes and deep punctures were all over his body.

  Merk touched his face and the gooey thickness of blood pulled back with his fingers and hand, the flesh on his face was basically hanging off. Wolves, he thought. Savages. Wasn’t the first time he had dealt with them. But this was everything that he had wanted to escape from when he came to this small Floridian town and took the job of coaching at this high school. But fate or whatever the hell it was, had something else in mind. Once again, he was face to face with a bunch of shifters, another pack that was determined and bent on being bullies. It seemed to never end.

  ***

  Merk staggered out of the forest and brush. It was dark. The sky was nebulas. No clouds. No stars. Just pitch black sky. Kind of ominous. It made the walk home long and menacing as he fought against the night’s enveloping shroud. He was on his street. He could see Kara’s car parked on the side of the road. Lights from houses gave off a miniscule luminescence to the night and the road he was trying to drag his body down.

  His breathing was laborious, hard, and he wanted to just collapse onto the cold pavement of the road. He imagined that it would be soothing and refreshing. He longed for it, the rest. But he kept going. His body wasn’t healing fast enough – the injuries were too severe. Merk wondered how close he had been to dying. This beating felt worse than any he had ever had.

  “Merk – answer the fuckin’ phone! I’ve been calling –”

  Merk heard Kara’s voice in the distance. It was panicked. Hard. Cracking. She was upset and she had the right to be even though she didn’t know it. He didn’t want her to see him this way but it was unavoidable. He needed to get home, to rest and to heal. He wouldn’t heal without rest. Merk could only imagine the questions she was going to have when she saw him: he was completely naked, his body broken and scared, bloody, bruised, and beaten.

  He called out to her in a throaty spray of non-syllabic sounds; he put his fingers to his neck, finding deep gashes and puncture wounds that seeped coagulated blood. How was he even fuckin’ walking, less more breathing? He wasn’t that far from her.

  “Okay, Merk –! I’m leaving –”

  She saw him.

  “Oh my God!” Kara bellowed.

  Merk hadn’t realized how hard it was to see. It seemed like the more he pushed himself, the worse he became; his sight was fading and his heart had begun to pound, loud chest moving beats, as if his heart was close to exploding. Pain gripped him and he fell to his knees, clutching his chest.

  “Merk! Merk!”

  As Kara neared him, he could see his shredded clothes from his shift fall from her hands. She fell to the ground and wrapped herself around him, covering him as well as comforting him. Her touch was balm in itself, soothing the internal ache that he felt went beyond his physical injuries. The only thing left was the wounds and searing pain, emblazoned through his skin, flesh, organs, and bones. It was hell.

  He collapsed into her arms and held her tightly. Merk was a manly man, there was some machismo about him for sure, but the wolves had hurt him badly. He felt it and knew it. A part of him was unsure of just how bad his injuries were and if they would heal even with his shifter abilities. All he wanted was Kara. If these were to be his last moments, then in her arms, her holding him was solace enough. And Kara clung to him.

  “Wh – What happened, baby – ? Oh my God – you – you look…” her voice trailed off.

  Merk felt himself drifting. A different kind of darkness was coming over him. He was losing consciousness. His eyelids were heavy, his mind foggy and a blot of darkness dared and threatened to take him under. But it was too much. Everything needed to just go away, if only for a little while. And then it all went black.

  ***

  At some point during the night, Merk stirred. He awoke. Although, he wasn’t completely there, not fully present, there was something ethereal hovering above him, like a last remnant of his consciousness that still lingered. He could feel the force of Kara’s hands working hard on him. There were bandages and gauze – a lot of it – tweezers and antiseptics for his injuries. In the midst of the bandaging there were light pricks of a needle, incremental pain that amassed through the continuous tinge of pain from the constant sewing and stitching. The thin thread weaved in and out of his skin. Faintly, he could hear Kara talking to herself. It was through low and deep breaths:

  “Fuck you, Ratty! I know this was you… God, Merk! God – why? Why did you have to challenge him? No, I fucked up – I should have told you – said something to you – but I wanted that part of my life gone… They all are fuckin’ bullies. I hate them so much. If they take you away from me… I should have told you what they were but I didn’t know you were… [Sigh].”

  Her voice was so far away:

  “I wonder what kind you are… You’re not Wolf like them. I’m not mad that you didn’t tell me – I couldn’t be mad, I know what this life does to a person, I know… Fuck. We could have helped each other. If you make it through this we still can. There’s so much I have to tell you – Oh God! Merck…

  And then her voice was gone.

  ***

  Time didn’t exist. That’s what it felt like. All Merk knew was that he was alive. Or he thought he was. It felt like he had all his faculties. He could feel the cushion of his bed beneath him. Or it felt like his bed. The soft, smooth sheets felt familiar, cool and soothing. He stirred slightly anticipating some soreness. He remembered the attack. Had he survived it? The pack of wolves had really whipped his ass, beaten him, leaving gashes and lacerations. His flesh was torn off in so many places. But things were better. He felt a little better. And Merk didn’t like being beaten. Not like this especially.

  “Hey…” a voice in the darkness whispered to him, raspy from sleep.

  And then Kara’s hand fell on his chest. Again, he anticipated some pain, a modicum of it at least, but nothing. Merk accepted that he was healing, that he was getting well. It was one of the best things about being a Panther Shifter, exponential healing. Of course that didn’t mean that he could recover from anything, but the ability gave him a better chance of withstanding the worst.

  “How are you feeling?” she continued, her hand gently washing over him to check his wounds. “I was worried about you – didn’t know how you healed –”

  She cut herself off. She knew. Merk didn’t know how he felt about that. He knew that he cared for her, was falling hard for her, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready to let her in that world with him, the Shifter World.

  “You know…?” his voice was hard, felt like he was talking with nails in his throat.

  But she didn’t answer. Not with words anyway. He felt her hand slide down his chest to his abdomen then below, reaching deep down into the linen shorts that she had found and put on him. She grabbed a hand full and then lifted her body from her place on the bed next to him to look at him. There was no light. But as she looked at him and he looked at her, their eyes adjusted to the dark and a faint outline of each other became more evident, then silhouetted impressions.

  “Can I…? Does – Does it hurt anywhere or –? she started.

  “No – No, I’m – I’m fine. I think the major stuff has healed… That feels good,” he responded, his voice dipping down as she pulled on him more, her hands forming a kn
ot in his pants.

  “Good.”

  And then she vanished under the covers. Her mouth made moves he hadn’t felt in a long time. She was soothing and sweet, sexy and sultry in the way she freely pleasured him. He remembered how she had been there when he staggered out of the forest. She didn’t wilt, nor did she labor over what had happened. She took it all in her stride and she went with it, a willing participant who had been inducted involuntarily into something that had the potential to get dangerously worse.

  That was obviously the kind of woman Kara was, and this made Merk love her even more. He had never had someone that he could share all of who he was with, mostly because of the dangers that came along with being a shifter, specifically a Panther Shifter. He always felt as if he had to hide that part of himself from the people that he was involved with, but he didn’t have to with Kara. She knew. She understood. And she embraced. Boy, did she embrace.

  Merk couldn’t take it anymore. He felt himself getting too excited and he didn’t want to rush this moment with her. Everything about it was right. It was their first time together and everything that had happened from the late dinner that they were supposed to have, to the pack of wolves interrupting it, to him being attacked and almost killed, to coming out of the forest barely alive and naked and near dead, to his falling in her arms and somehow getting him into the house to take care of him, led to this moment.

  Kara was still taking care of him, pleasing him orally. It was all so very intimate and one of those moments in a new relationship that was lasting, a permanent fixture in whatever it was that the two of them were going to become. And because of that, Merk wanted it to last longer, for her to feel like he felt, to feel taken care of – and so he stopped her, gently pulling her up to him from under the covers.