I’m stuck. In the muck. How fitting after the evening I’ve had. I set my forehead against the cool steering wheel as if it’ll help.
There’s another lurch, then the car rocks, as if something has hit underneath the front and I jerk as my eyes dart ahead into the darkness, but I see nothing.
I see nothing, but I sure feel and hear something. The car slides forward another foot or so and stops.
Fuzz. A big tree is not far ahead of me. If I slide another six feet, I’m guessing my car will hit the tree.
Crunch!
The car doesn’t move but the crunch sound is a bad sign and came from the passenger side.
I see nothing, but I hear something hit the car again and my car moves back just a little but then lurches forward and there’s all sorts of noise out there as I slide further.
Have I angered a bear because I hit it and now it’s trying to enact vengeance on my poor little purple car? It could’ve been a massive cat like a panther with those reflective eyes, but I don’t know. Are there panthers around here? Or mountain lions?
I look at my phone. Still no signal.
Another noise tweaks me, but this time, it’s not coming from the front or the back. And it feels like I’m being watched.
Something is looking in the window at me. I gasp, holding my phone in my hand and taking in those reflective eyes, the long line of fur down to a big black nose. A wolf. A massively humungous wolf, bigger than any wolf I’ve ever seen in a zoo or even on television, is peering through the window. It sniffs and condensation forms on the glass around its face.
Shit! I think it wants to eat me.
I haul air into my lungs. And then… nothing. I’m frozen, in shock, as I see those eyes on me.
I can’t breathe.
I finally exhale with a “Shoo”.
I wave at it as if to add emphasis.
At least I’m inside the car, but I’m utterly trapped here for the night because no way in Hades am I climbing out if there’s the slightest chance a scary dire wolf waits for me. Okay, I know dire wolves are extinct, but that thing was huge. I’ll just have to stay put until morning so I can be sure it’s gone before I can leg it to look for a phone signal.
It drops back to all fours, I guess, as I no longer see it. I lean forward and then I gasp in shock as I now see a man. A man is unfolding from a bent position and stretching his back as he stares at me now from the same spot.
“What the fuuuck?” I whisper.
He’s huge. He has long, curly hair.
He’s naked.
He.
Is.
Naked!
I actually hear the shocked blinks I make, which sounds as loud to me as those dolls I had as a kid with the eyes that open and shut.
What in tarnation?
2
Tyson
When I knew her scent was directly in front of me, the urge was fierce. The urge to claim. This is urgency I’ve never felt.
Now that I’ve seen her face – I need past all this metal and glass … to get to her.
Yes, to claim her, but also so I can calm her, so I can then claim her.
I’ve never had the urge to calm or claim. The sensations in me are foreign.
I search for a way in. It takes a second to remember how these things open. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this form – man form. Fingers, thumbs. Standing so tall. Feeling the chill of the night air with the absence of my thick black coat.
I pull the handle and it fails to release the door, the door that prevents me from getting to her. Anger bubbles up and I want to use my cock to pierce a hole through it to get to her. My cock aches so much to be inside her it feels like it’s a possible solution to my problem. Fuck through anything in my way so I can find my way into that heat, that mouth-watering scent. She’s mine. I know it.
Finally.
I slow my reactions to offer myself a chance to think. Think of how to get to her. Think like my man form needs to think.
I lost logic as I tried to breach the machine in wolf form after it struck me. I was raging, I was reacting as wolf, trying to tear through the thing that kept me from what I want. The machine…car… slid and I then tried to halt it, but it took me with it. My feet sank deep into the wet earth before I backed off and came out of that state where I do things that I later decide made no sense. It occasionally happens when something is in front of me that falls outside my natural instincts. It’s usually to do with people.
And now I’ve peered through the glass and laid eyes on her.
She’s small, she’s frightened, she’s beautiful, and she needs me.
She. Is. Mine.
As soon as I knew the sight of my wolf frightened her, a strange sensation hit me, and I shifted spontaneously to man. I haven’t been a man in a long time and a spontaneous shift has not happened to me for much longer than that. It’s a time that I recall, though it’s foggy in my mind, when I couldn’t control which form I was in. I hated that loss of control. I don’t want it now.
Uncle... it had something to do with him. What?
It hits me. Uncle left. He left me with the supplies because he said he had things to do, errands he had to complete without me because I just couldn’t stop shifting. I raged as my body changed from wolf to man to wolf to man for days and days until I found a way to slow it and it kept getting stuck in between. He saw that and told me to practice doing it so I could stop in the middle on command like my father used to do. Before he was killed by his mutinous pack.
Memories wash over me. Memories of dried meat, dry bread, canned fruit and pain and loneliness as my body repeatedly and traitorously shifted without my control. Uncle shouting. Uncle swearing at me. Uncle leaving me for a long time while it continued over and over. Uncle shouting. Uncle and his whisky.
A growl rolls up from deep in me at the memories, but I have no time now for rage because this is her. This is her.
My one. My only. She does exist.
Her eyes have grown larger and the fragrance in the air is fear. She fears something. Me.
She’s holding her breath in and behaves like trapped prey. She is trapped, and I’ll free her. I’ll free her so that I can claim her. She’s no one’s prey; she’s mine. Or she will be when I mount, bite, and knot her.
When I caught her aroma in the air before the sky had completely darkened, I knew. I knew it was why I was here, why I’d felt so aware of everything around me, why I wandered so close to the town. Why my thinking had changed, part way to man.
I’ve stayed deep in the forest other than during winter when I sleep in the den. I woke just a few nights ago, late waking from hibernation, and for days I’ve been on the hunt, feasting, gathering strength after my long winter sleep, but staying closer than usual to my den. It was a long winter; I can tell by how weak I felt. And I felt like I woke too early. Yet, it was later than it should be. It made no sense, but I just followed my nose and hunted, feasted, and then today, it hit me.
Energy fizzled in me when I woke, and I couldn’t decipher my actions, couldn’t know why I remained near the town, why I was feeling so strange, until that scent hit. And I hunted for it like I’d never hunted for anything, but without my typical skills. It’s been disorienting. Everything was wrong. The sky, the air, the scents, me…
I was disoriented but I wouldn’t stop until I could see the female behind that aroma, could know for sure that she’s mine. And now I have, and I do.