“Very much so,” he replied. He grabbed her neck but did not squeeze, though his hand grew more and more tense as he brought her mouth closer to his, drawn to the smell of blood but reluctant nonetheless.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
He touched the tip of his tongue to the place where she had bitten herself. He groaned at the taste, and suddenly he swept his arm around her and held her tightly against him as he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, biting down again when the blood stopped coming. She wasn’t prey, but she felt consumed nonetheless.
Malcolm flipped them over so that his larger body pinned her down. He moved his hand from her neck to her breast. His rough palm stimulated her nipple, already hard from the cold she could barely feel and simply from being so turned on. Her piercing there pulled on her nipple even more. She ghosted her hands up his ribs and tried not to dig in, not yet, not when his grey eyes were serious within their shadow over her.
“What have you done to me?” he asked again, but it seemed less like an accusation this time. “Why am I doing this?”
“I just wanted to show you it isn’t all bad,” Kelly said. “Being a werewolf doesn’t have to be the end of the world. There are things that you can’t do anymore, but there are new things that you can enjoy. Pleasure you can no longer experience, but also pleasure you have never known before.”
“I want to go back,” Malcolm said.
But Kelly felt the renewal of his interest stirring against her thigh, and she reached for him. His cock was slick with her saliva and his cum. He caught his breath, briefly closing his eyes against her touch.
“You can’t go back,” Kelly said. “There is only ever forward. But it can be good. I promise. Can you honestly tell me that you don’t enjoy this?”
“Oh, this I enjoy,” Malcolm said, although his eyebrows drew together. He pinched his fingers over the piercing on her nipple and twisted, making her gasp and arch her back, filling his hand with her breast. “But it’s never been like this before.”
“No?” Kelly asked.
“No.” He did not elaborate, just kissed her again, too softly.
He was all tongue and she needed teeth. She bit her lip again to flood her mouth with her blood. When the taste reached him, he twisted her nipple again, this time until she moaned high into his kiss. The blood alone was enough to make him hard, his cock searching for her entrance every time she canted her hips up to meet his.
“Get inside, Malcolm,” Kelly said with a growl, “or I’ll rip that thing off you and do it myself.”
“Who am I to deny such a polite request?” Malcolm replied. He hissed as she wrapped her legs around him and scratched her toes—sharp-tipped with claws—down the backs of his thighs. The green glow in her eyes reflected in his as he positioned himself and thrust into her. There was no need to ease in, not when she was more than wet enough. She practically pulled him in with her inner muscles. He jerked, slamming in all the way to the base.
“Yessss,” Kelly hissed in encouragement.
He hooked one of her legs over his arm, almost bending her in half to give him room to brace himself and speed up. She pulled him down to kiss him again. When their sharpened teeth clicked against each other, this time it was not in battle. Their growls, lower and smoother, overlapped again, but not in anger. They tangled limbs and hair, melting the snow around them into steam almost like fog until grass and dead leaves were rough on her back. She was brought back again to her first time with a wolf. It seemed only appropriate and perhaps a little sad that she would pass on that experience to Malcolm now, even if she was not the one who had changed him. She sensed his pleasure, though, and feeling his pleasure compounded her own until she scratched bloody lines down his back to make him shout and bring him to his climax just as she felt her own reach its crest.
“Hard,” she said hoarsely. The wolf was upon her, but she wanted to finish as a woman.
As he came inside her, he bit the base of her neck. She felt the tingle of magic where the werewolf had already begun to heal her at the origin of the wound. A mighty, frigid wind swept through the clearing. It’s been a long time since that happened, Kelly thought blearily. It rocked them together, a counterpoint to the exquisite heat they made where they were connected. Her cunt tightened, drenching him as her own orgasm crashed through her.
Kelly’s grin was fierce. She shifted the leg he had hooked over his arm to wrap it around his neck. There were many benefits to being flexible.
“Run with me, Malcolm,” she said, the wolf harsh in her voice.
“I used to be tired after this,” he replied, looking somewhere to the side of her. His eyes were a little glazed, but his heartbeat raced in excitement against her chest.
“But you’re not now,” Kelly said.
“No. What else has changed?”
“Many things,” Kelly said, untangling herself from him.
When he slipped out of her, his seed dripped down her thighs to join the wetness of her own pleasure.
“But hopefully not in the ways that count,” Kelly added. She helped him to his feet. “Am I like Grant, Malcolm?”
“No. You’ve got some of the things that he had, but you’re not him. You’re not,” he replied, reassuring her.
“Then why do you suspect that that’s what you’ll become?” Kelly asked. “Grant was insane. Everyone’s a little nutty, but he was completely pecan pie. Yes, you’ll have some adjustments to make, but I’m here to help you. I’ve got the experience and control that you’ll learn in time. And I also know when to let experience and control fuck off and give the wolf room to stretch its legs.”
“I’m just so angry,” Malcolm said. “I’m furious at people I love. All the time.”
“The wolf makes it worse, but that kind of anger is normal,” Kelly said, stroking his black hair and running her claws over his scalp. “It’s called grief, honey, and it’s okay. It’s okay to miss what you were. But change is the only constant in life. As therianthrope and now lycanthrope, you should know that better than most.”
“I didn’t choose this,” Malcolm said, gesturing to his human body, but Kelly watched as fur began to climb up his torso like vines. He truly had a gift.
“Neither did I,” Kelly said. “Most werewolves don’t. But there’s nothing we can do about it. So let me show you the other thing that makes it worthwhile. Change and run with me.”
Kelly fell forward onto her front paws, creaking back into her wolf form. Malcolm joined her in wolf skin, and after some hesitation he followed her into the woods.
Chapter Three
The next morning found them curled together in wolf skin, for closeness rather than warmth.
Before Malcolm could wake up, Kelly transformed back into her human skin and tucked herself against the rise and fall of his chest. They had run until dawn tinged the horizon and each breath had been a cold, exhilarating knife in her lungs.
She stroked his wiry fur and slipped into his mind like a warm bath until he surfaced into early wakefulness. His dreams were that of a man, but his wakefulness was that of the werewolf, simpler and more straightforward. Hunger. To his wolf’s nose, though, she would smell like kin rather than prey. She might look like a woman, and she might call what she was human skin, but she wasn’t human anymore.
His eyes opened, abruptly focusing on her.
“Malcolm,” Kelly said. “I know you’re hungry. But if you hold yourself together and turn back into a man, we can have breakfast with the others. Do you think you can do that?”
Kelly eased closer as his body shrank underneath her. His emerging expression was pained. He let her lay against him, however, so his regret wasn’t necessarily for what he had done with her. Kelly knew from experience that the actions of a night could seem embarrassing at best in the morning.
“Do you feel any better?” Kelly asked, now running her fingers over the dark hair on his chest instead of his fur.
The whirl of his thoughts came through her
fingers like wisps of smoke. She needed him to answer out loud, because that made it truer than if he kept it inside. Inside, he could talk himself out of it. Inside, he could return to the moribund quicksand he had created for himself after his transformation. The hunger that no ordinary food could satisfy, the way his friends now smelt like enemies or food, the violence of his desires—these things only confirmed to him that he was a monster. And if he was a monster, then he deserved every bit of the dreadful loneliness that he’d believed he had left behind him once before.
And so the thoughts went around in circles, deeper and deeper and deeper. Kelly knew where the whirlpool would take him. As she’d told Ki, it would end in blood either way. Kelly didn’t think Malcolm would ever forgive himself if he hurt any of his pack, and they would never forgive themselves if he killed himself.
“Yes,” Malcolm finally admitted. “Not completely, though.”
“That will take time,” Kelly said. “But you’ve got something a lot of other werewolves don’t have.”
“Friends?” Malcolm said with all the dryness of a canned answer no one ever actually believed.
Kelly smiled. “No,” she said. “Werewolves usually have an abundance of those, although the pecking order can resemble that of a small-town high school. No, most werewolves were human to begin with. They knew nothing of transformative magic like you did. They truly were taken from their lives. Your friends know what we are and what they are, and they haven’t kicked us out yet.”
“Renee shot and stabbed Grant because of what he was,” Malcolm said.
“Well, damn, wouldn’t you?” Kelly asked.
“You didn’t,” Malcolm said. “None of your pack did.”
“No, I didn’t. But the pack kicked him out.”
“Why didn’t you kill him?” Malcolm asked.
“Sympathy for the devil,” she said. “I don’t know whether you noticed, but I’m not exactly the most normal werewolf myself.”
“Do they not like witches?” Malcolm asked, a little surprised.
“Haven’t you learned by now that most magical folk don’t particularly trust other magical folk?” Kelly said. “Since witches are usually human, werewolves are a little less leery of them than they are of shifters. But witches don’t like beasts and beasts don’t quite understand witches. I didn’t feel up to explaining things to them, and most of them didn’t bothering trying to understand me.”
Malcolm’s stomach growled. Kelly’s own let out a distress signal in reply.
“Ready to make your way back?” Kelly asked. “If we walk, we’ll probably get there in time for breakfast. I’ve trained Ki to make extra meat by now.”
“I can’t be around them,” Malcolm said, although Malcolm’s stomach let them both know that it thought that was a fine idea indeed.
Kelly stood up. “You can.”
“I outran my anger last night, but it’s not gone,” Malcolm said. “Doesn’t matter how deeply I try to bury it, it always surfaces again. And part of it is from being around them. It’s even worse at the house, because I see Renee, and…”
Malcolm covered his eyes with his hand, as though he were afraid that if she could see them, she would know his sins. Somehow she had to make him understand she knew all his sins already and that hers were worse.
She crouched down, not even teetering to keep her balance.
“Malcolm, listen to me. Right now, you have two good choices. You have a number of other not so good ones, of course, but let’s set those aside for right now. Your first choice is that you can leave the sanctuary and find a pack. I can’t go with you unless you want to go far away, because I’ve been banished from every pack in this state and a few beyond. If my reputation spreads, it’s possible I wouldn’t be able to join another pack at all without begging amnesty from our brothers and sisters outside the States.
“Your other choice is to stay here and immerse yourself among the shapeshifters. You can’t be a part of their pack as a dog anymore, but the more you isolate yourself from them, the more you’ll see them as something to sink your teeth into.”
Malcolm winced.
“If you stay,” she continued, “you’ll grow accustomed to their scent. It’s why some werewolves can still live relatively human lives. The only way to do that, though, is to spend time with them but also give your wolf a little rope.”
She guided his face back when he tried to look away.
“Ignoring it isn’t going to make the curse disappear,” Kelly said. “Believe me. The best way to control it is to give in to it. The more you resist, the less control you’ll have. That seems to be the rule of magic.”
“And the others call you quiet,” Malcolm said.
“It’s just a matter of having something to say.” She kissed his forehead gently. “That was a bit of a lecture, wasn’t it?”
“Just a little.”
“I told the others to stop tiptoeing around you,” Kelly said. “So if you still smell pity on them, only you can clean that scent away by showing them a Malcolm that doesn’t need to be pitied.”
“It might be a lecture, but you have a way of making it very inspiring. Maybe it’s the sun rising behind you,” Malcolm said. “But when I’m among them, I won’t be as inspired.”
He glanced down, contemplating. She could practically see the gears in his brain turning as he mulled over everything—both his quicksand thoughts and the potential paths that Kelly presented to him.
“You’ll be there?” Malcolm asked, his eyes meeting hers.
“Yes.”
“And if you think I’m going to do something, you’ll stop me.”
“I’ll kill you myself if I have to,” Kelly promised. “But I doubt it will come to that.”
Malcolm raised his eyebrows but replied, “Actually, I find that comforting. All right.”
* * * *
Malcolm went into the shapeshifter barn first and headed for the clothes bins. He had been wearing just the one pair of jeans ever since he’d been turned. On full moons he’d removed them, but last night Kelly had caught him by surprise, and the transformation had ruined the pair. Nudity wasn’t out of the ordinary in the sanctuary—after all, they were just bodies, and no one tried to clothe the dogs in spite of the fact that they walked around naked as well. But it was less common in the winter months, and Malcolm preferred clothes, at least a pair of pants.
Kelly followed him in wearing her robe that she’d grabbed from her trailer on the way back. She nodded to Ki. It hurt Kelly that Ki was hurt watching her follow Malcolm in. But Kelly couldn’t help her with that—she only hoped that Ki would refocus her attention not on what Kelly might have done with Malcolm, but on what he had just accomplished. He hadn’t been in the shapeshifter barn for what seemed like ages.
“I’d add some sausage to the mix,” Kelly said to Ki. “A lot of it.
Ki visibly tried not to ask, but she couldn’t help it. “What did you do last night?”
“We ran,” Kelly replied.
“Malcolm used to like running the dogs,” Ki said, masking her relief well, which made Kelly feel worse about what she hadn’t said.
“Malcolm can hear you,” he said, coming up behind Ki a little stiffly. “No need to talk about him as though he’s dead.”
Ki almost started to apologise, but Kelly nudged her. Ki took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
“No, he’s not, but he can be a bit of an asshole,” Ki said. “Go sit down. It was going to be an eggy morning, but sausage shouldn’t put me out.”
Malcolm’s nostrils flared and his lips thinned. Ki flinched, interpreting it as anger, but Kelly knew it was just Malcolm reacting both to Ki’s scent and to the promise of sausage.
“Thanks,” he said.
Kelly touched his arm and said, “Breathe normally. It’ll start getting bearable if you face it. It’s not like you can hold your breath through the entire breakfast, you know.”
Malcolm nodded. He gritted his teeth and took a
deep breath, then another and another, before he sat down at the table.
“It’s going to take some time,” Kelly said to Ki, patting her shoulder. “He’s not mad at you. He’s hungry.”
Ki took out a pot for the sausage. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “It’ll be ready in a little while. Think I can eat with him?”
Kelly smiled. “In fact, I encourage it.”
* * * *
Meals had been the first step. Malcolm still wasn’t comfortable being around the dogs. His scent was different than it used to be, but there were aspects similar enough to his old scent that made the dogs act confused and wary—just as they were with Kelly—rather than frightened or aggressive.
However, now that he hung around the shapeshifter barn during meals, Ki had been taking Kelly’s advice to heart and sitting next to him, compelling him into conversations. They had mostly avoided talking about his lycanthropy and instead discussed the dogs, all the dogs he had taken care of and now couldn’t even go near. Although Kelly knew it ached his heart, Kelly encouraged Ki to continue talking about them. Her instinct was spot on that he would eventually warm to the subject, genuinely wanting to know about their well-being and getting an update on each of their lives—their antics, their pains, their colds, their coughs and making sure that they were all being taken care of.
Kelly found Malcolm every evening after the sun had set. He joined her for her night runs now. Once he changed, any remaining reluctance would dissipate.
They did hunt on one of the nights, and Malcolm didn’t speak to her at all the next day, even though it was only small game. The dogs themselves sometimes hunted as well, but the sanctuary staff usually made efforts to kerb that behaviour. Prior to his change, there had been no need for him to experience the hunt and all the parts about it that the wolf loved but a human could find distasteful—the spurting blood, the taste of it, bones crunching and soft flesh yielding.
She knew he hated it because it was a rush that he thought he shouldn’t have.
Kelly allowed him to avoid her during the day. She had accomplished her first task. She had helped him get into his wolf skin on a regular basis. Stretching his legs every night showed its moderating influence by the way he was able to at least interact with Ki again without snapping her head off.
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