Hungry Like the Wolf

"What is it, my girl?" Horace asked. "Have you found him?"

Emma knew Horace hadn't even seen him. Horace was only human. If Emma hadn't been there, he would have been upon Horace before Horace was even aware of it. As it was, he approached slowly. His scent was strong, now. She could just see him in the gloom, coal-black fur against the greater darkness. Despite her wariness, despite her need to protect her master, despite her need to find Carl and...obey her commands...Emma was intrigued. She had never seen another of her kind before.

Evidently, Horace never had either. When the other werewolf moved into a patch of moonlight, Horace gave a visible start. She smelled a sudden burst of fearsweat. Horace suddenly smelled like prey to her, but the collar told her otherwise. "What the--?" he said, his quiet gasp loud to both of the other sets of ears in the darkened hallway.

"You come to my home," the wolf said, his voice a low, thundering growl. "You hide on my territory, you hunt my game, you murder my servants. You collar one of my brethren. You slink through my hallways, a guest planning to murder under my roof? You stink of fear, Captain Horace Arkwright. But not gunpowder. Perhaps you know that you cannot hurt one of the Pack with your gun."

"Emma," he said, his voice tight with fear. "Kill it. Kill it now."

Emma loped forward. A part of her wondered who this wolf was in daylight hours. If Horace came upon them in daylight, would he collar them the way he had collared her, the morning after he had barricaded her in his own rooms? Would this man be able to resist the way she could not? Because she could not resist. He was the first of her kind she had ever met, he seemed to know things she wanted desperately to learn, but all she could do now was leap for his throat. She pounced.

He rolled away. She felt his claws rake her thigh, and she let out a yelp of pain. But it had been more startling than painful. He didn't want to hurt her. She didn't want to hurt him. But she had to. Behind her, Horace kept up a whispered chant of, "Kill it kill it kill it kill it--" The fearsweat poured off of him, maddening Emma, but all she could direct her hunger at was the other wolf. She slashed out with her own claws, leaving bloody trails down his back. He yowled, spun, gave her a hard bite on the shoulder.

She could already feel her wounds closing, already see his. She understood that this would be a difficult kill, but some instinct told her that it was not impossible. She tensed, saw him do the same. She understood that they were both waiting for the perfect moment, the moment to leap and bite and sink fangs into the other's soft, tender throat. The moment to crush and kill. They circled. Fearsweat filled the air.

Emma saw her opening. She leapt. In that single instant, she realized her fatal error. The opening was a feint. The other wolf knew far more about combat than she did, had hunted other wolves while she had been forced to waste her talents on scullery maids. Her leap left her throat exposed, and she felt the fangs sink in. At least it would be over quickly.

But it wasn't. The fangs barely nipped her, then withdrew. She couldn't understand it. The other wolf knew that she needed to kill, but he hadn't killed him. Her neck had been bared for the killing bite, but he'd spared her. She crashed to the floor in an ungainly heap, but was quickly back up, ready for the fight. Then her eyes caught sight of a glint of silver, lying on the floor in the moonlight. The collar. The collar lay on the floor, its strap severed by razor-sharp teeth. She growled. The collar no longer held her, and there was prey in the room, cowering and stinking of that maddening, mouth-watering fearsweat, bringing on a furious hunger, and suddenly Emma was loping towards him, and...

Everything went red for a few moments after that.

Then she turned to the other wolf. "Who...arrre...you?" she growled out. Speech was difficult for her in this form. She hadn't had much call to use it.

He walked towards her, a quiet strength in his stride. "I am the master of this household. Your master is dead, now. You have no place to go. I offer you a place in my Pack, at my side."

She backed away, warily. "I have just ended one masterrr's life with my teeth. Why would I exchange one slaverrry forrr anotherrr?"

"It is not slavery. It is the way of our kind. That," he gestured back to the collar. "That was slavery. That was the human way. You are of the Pack." He kept approaching. "Drink deep of my scent, and you will understand."

Emma's back hit the wall. She couldn't back away further. He just kept coming. Drink deep of his scent? What did he even mean? His scent surrounded her. "I...I..." She took a deep breath. Underneath his scent, now, as she approached, she smelled a second scent. It smelled like...she was suddenly aware of an ache between her legs. The scent smelled...it smelled good, warm, like...a liquid rush of arousal forced her to her hands and knees. She crawled forward, sniffing closer and closer for the source of the scent.

"That's right. I lead our Pack, and you can smell that in the air. The scent gives you understanding of your place in the Pack, your place..." His voice trailed off into a low growl as she licked at his crotch, tasting the thick, musky sweat that was the source of the scent. With every lick, she felt her own hindquarters grow more moist and aroused, and she found herself involuntarily raising them in the air. She needed this, she wanted it. "Your place with me."

"Yess..." she gasped. She felt him crawling around behind her, felt his shaft sink deep into her, and she howled her passion to the moon as she felt his love for her, different from the loveless sex humans had given her. His cock swelled up within her, and their mingled scent filled her nose, she knew that this was right, right in a way that she could not resist--no. That was the old way, the human way. This was right in a way she did not want to resist. She was not being broken. She was surrendering.

She felt her lover, her master, her alpha male cum inside her, again and again, and her own pleasure seemed to last all night, until the moon finally set and she felt her body once again becoming small, weak, all too human. The man who lay on top of her was human as well. She looked at him, feeling the stirrings of human love.

She was surprised at who she saw.

*****

A few hours later, Carl slipped out of the servants' quarters, giving one last peck on the cheek to a very appreciative ladies' maid. He practically bumped into Bidwell, who was draped in a sheet, escorting a somewhat-dazed looking miss Emma Masters, also draped in a sheet. "Bidwell, you old rogue!" Carl said, elbowing him in the ribs. "Quite a catch, there! I never would have thought you had it in you."

"I'm afraid sir has misunderstood slightly," Bidwell said. "I--"

"Say no more," Carl said with a wink. "After all, if I told Father, we'd all be in the soup. And frankly, I'd just as soon not see you gone. You run this house better than the Queen runs England."

Bidwell coughed diplomatically. "Sir is too kind," he said, "but I'm afraid there has actually been an incident. That dreadful Mister Arkwright attempted to sneak some sort of hound into the household in order to defraud Lord Carstairs of a sum of money. The beast broke free, killed its master, and ran off into the night. I intend to find Miss Masters a place to stay for the present, while her affairs are sorted out. I fear she has been little more than an innocent victim in all this."

Carl nodded, taking the shocking story in with remarkable equanimity. "And the fact that both of you are just wearing bedsheets?"

"Ah," Bidwell said, his face betraying not a hint of a smile. "There, sir has interpreted the basic facts of the situation entirely correctly." He tapped his nose, winked, and continued his walk down the hallway.

Carl chuckled to himself as he headed back towards his rooms. "Bidwell," he said to himself. "Never saw him as the type. Still, scratch a man, and you'll find a wolf..."

THE END