No Warning

"Same way I've broken it to every other chick," Wayne shrugged, sipping at his Pepsi. "I just wolf out right in front of them."

Kyle felt his mouth fall open. The bat pinged again; that'd be two outs, probably. "What? No warning?"

"Warning?" Wayne patted Kyle's knee. "Bro, this is the point, right? You can't think of a good setting to tell her about our... affliction. I agree with you; there's no good way to do it. So?" He drained the bottle. "Just do it."

"You just let yourself change." Kyle was nodding slowly. It had a certain logic.

"I mean, obviously, you do it right after you've fucked her raw, you know. Like, when she's not really in her right mind. It's hard for 'em to get all irate and shit when they've got your cum running out of them, amirite?" He laughed again. "It works probably sixty or seventy percent of the time. A lot of them pass right out, but then when they come to they're fine with it."

"No way!" Kyle was impressed. The catcher's glove thocked. "Seventy percent?"

Wayne made one of those airy gestures you make with your hands, like he was waving off a fly. "Give or take. Look, most chicks are secretly into it." He squinted briefly as the ump called a ball; that almost never happened. "That closet bestiality thing, I guess. Or they just want to fuck the ultimate badass. Hey! Leeann!" Leeann was in IT at Wayne's firm, one building over from Grob-Ligner's. She stretched her long, yoga-panted legs in front of the bench about halfway down.

"Yeah?" She glared back over her shades. Leeann was known for the laziness with which she guarded her mouth, and her virtue.

"It's true, right? Chicks like to fuck the ultimate badass?" He laughed loudly. Almost everyone else on the bench just rolled their eyes.

She nodded thoughtfully. "Huh," she said after a pause. "I thought there was a reason I hadn't fucked you, you limpdick freak." She smiled sweetly past her extended middle finger, and Wayne just laughed again.

"If she only knew," he muttered, shaking his head. He glanced over at Kyle as the bat pinged once more. "See?" They both watched the ump call the third out on just five pitches. "It's the best way, dude. Seriously. She won't dump you."

"Easy for you to say." The Copy Riders were digging out their gloves amid the sudden dusty bustle in the dugout. "You're not in love."

"Yeah I am," Wayne snapped. "I'm married." He winked, then strode off toward center field without a backward glance at Kyle.

* * *

On the 29^th of October Kyle, Steve, and Wayne met once more at Kiloton's for their weekly dinner. It was almost like their version of AA, a chance for Steve to take stock of his tiny pack and make sure everyone was keeping the ol' fangs well sheathed. Steve got nervous about simple shit, like Turning people accidentally. And Halloween was two days away; moon or no moon things were becoming hard to control. Wayne winced as a fang clinked on his water glass.

"I hate Halloween," Steve admitted sullenly. "It's impossible to concentrate at work." Kyle nodded, shivering. Just that afternoon he'd caught sight through the conference room window of a bunny rabbit bouncing harmlessly across the parking lot, its ears bobbing merrily, and it had taken all his self-control not to flee out of the Norbera meeting and go eat the little fucker.

"It's so much energy," he sighed, feeling the itch of the hair beneath his clothes. Fuck. "It's like you're acting all the time."

"In more ways than one," Wayne muttered, staring across the table through two eyes gone a little feral already. He knew. He knew there was no fucking way Kyle had found it in him to tell Eva. He dabbed some mayo from his lip. "Like you're living a lie, Kyle. Huh?"

Kyle stared Wayne down, feeling his neck go tense in the back as his hackles rose. He drew a deep breath, willing down the urge to lean across the table and swipe Wayne's eye out. Fucking bitch. "Yup," he snapped shortly, and then Steve was joining in, his own gaze burning into Kyle's mind.

"Nothing stupid, boys," Steve said softly, but the growl was there behind his voice. Coming out. Steve was famous in their little community for going off on Halloween. But he wasn't talking about Halloween right then. "Keep it together." No, he was talking about right the fuck now. At this table.

"Yeah, Kyle," Wayne mocked, his voice all ruffled silk, and Kyle felt the scowl come without being able to stop himself. He stared down at his meal, a steak cooked as rare as the kitchen here would allow and yet still not bloody enough for two days shy of Halloween. "Keep it together." He was breathing hard too, his claws already starting to sprout. Two more fucking days!

"Man, fuck this." Kyle wadded up his napkin and threw it across his unused spoon. His nose felt sore, the snout already gearing up to extend for All Hallow's. "I'm hungry."

"You've got food right there," Steve said evenly.

"I've got a dinner here." Kyle cleared his throat. "It's not food. I'm hunting." He pushed his chair back. It happened this way, sometimes, the craving. It came on suddenly like that, like it had that time a couple months back when Wayne had wolfed out about that waitress. The small-critter population of the woodline out back had been decimated that night, and now Kyle planned to decimate it again. "Stay or go, boys." Steve and Wayne looked at each other.

They went.

* * *

Work the next day was a ragged mess for Kyle, his bones rattling inside his skin as the change accelerated. Every Halloween was the same, a much more rapid wolfing than he got as the moon waxed, and with the rapidity came mood swings, muscle aches, and always, always that damned itching everywhere. He longed to rip his clothes off, to prowl naked, his steadily-growing fur already starting to shine sleekly in the light of the moon, a quite ordinary crescent these days.

And concentrating on work? Forget it. He'd catch himself staring off into space, daydreaming about the hunt, reliving the feel of the blood bubbling out of the woodchuck, tasting like iron and fear as it washed his chin. And then a sound in the brush, another frightened rabbit or... he'd sniff the air... no, a chipmunk, and off he'd go in his mind to devour the doomed creature before Steve or Wayne could get it.

He was doing that late in the afternoon on the 30^th, toying with his pen, the flatscreen monitor before him shining on unseen. He'd shifted, uncomfortable, the boxers digging into his furred thighs. He'd need to go to the 2XL set tonight, he thought gloomily. Wolfing was expensive in terms of underwear, but going commando was no option. As the hours ticked on toward All Hallows, his dick was semi-hard nearly all the time now.

An unfortunate side effect of wolfing, Steve had told him early on. Excessive testosterone. Made you popular with the ladies, at least during the full moon.

He started when his nose picked up a new scent, pineapple with a hint of yuzu? Litchi? Kyle didn't know and didn't care, but the smell was powerful and familiar and it poked now at his brain, the smell of Burberry Brit Sheer.

Anna.

He could tell by the scent that she was two rooms away and coming fast, and he could sense the rest of it too: excitement. Urgency. Anticipation. She had good news, apparently, and he knew she wouldn't rest until she'd told him. So he turned his office chair slowly away from the windows, where the trees waited down on the ground hiding their rich haul of groundhogs and other snacks.

She steamed around the corner of his secretary's desk in the outer office, her face a riot of red: the woman was beside herself, swimming in deep earthy pheromones as she hauled herself to the edge of his doorway and leaned there with her black pencil skirt riding tightly down her legs. She'd chosen a low-cut black tank under a scarlet blazer the color of sin. "Whatcha doing?" she purred.

Kyle just looked at her evenly, slouched in his chair with a deceptively lazy air. He stretched his legs out in front of him, the grey slacks as tight as Anna's skirt. "You've got good news to tell me." It wasn't a question.

She slid dark eyes up from his shoes to his face, and Kyle was watching to see whether she'd pause at his groin; her eyes didn't, but her lips stretched into a slight, victorious smile. "I just might," she mused. She stretched her arm high along the jamb, her long-nailed fingers clacking against the metal. A sliver of her armpit and shoulder appeared where her blazer rode up, the slender lace of a black bra strap peering out from beneath the tanktop, and Kyle knew she intended that. "Question is, should I tell you?"

"Norbera," Kyle snapped. His cock gave a twinge at the sight of that bra strap, and Kyle knew Anna intended that, too. But her eyes never left his; admirable restraint. "It's about Norbera, and you'll tell me."

"Maybe." She'd taken care with her lipstick, he noticed, probably touching it up right before she came in here. Like she needed it; she was already the sexiest woman working here.

"Maybe," he mocked. "Maybe I'll hear it from someone else, then." He swung his legs abruptly around, his chair facing him toward his desk once more. "Someone who won't play games while I'm busy." It came out as a growl, which he hadn't really intended. The Wolf.

She laughed harshly, not even slightly intimidated, and her footsteps sounded sure and firm on his carpet. "Busy." She laughed again, quieter this time. "I'm your boss, Kyle. I know you're not busy." She loomed over him, leaning slightly to see his computer, and as always she stood too close. Even without Halloween coming like a tsunami, even without the Wolf constantly knocking at his door, he'd have smelled her pussy; it was inches from the back of his head. He knew she was nodding as she studied his screen. "Well, I've got to hand it to you," she purred. "At least it's Tetris instead of solitaire."

"I'm going for a new high score," he grated blandly. "What do you want, Anna?"

"What? I can't just come in here and share some good news with one of my favorite colleagues?" He could feel the heat off her body, a gently pulsing wave against his neck. He knew he was well over halfway erect, and knew she'd know. He knew, too, that it would be a terrible idea to lean his insolent head over the chair back and gaze up at her, inverted, his head resting lightly on her navel.

But he did it anyway. The Wolf wanted him to.

Her eyebrows quirked upward in surprise, their plucked perfection showing the shock of seeing her subordinate staring up at her so insolently, so intimately close. He heard the stirring of her lunch moving through her gut, saw the jut of her firm little tits directly above him. He paused, stretching the silence, then spoke quietly. "I'm busy, Anna."

"Well then." She winked at him, and he could see the muscles trembling alongside her lips as she tried to keep from smirking. "You won't be interested in knowing that the Norbera people have chosen me to head up a visiting team next month, to give a presentation to their board of directors." She rested her hands lightly, casually, on his shoulders, very close to his neck. "In Bermuda."

"Ah." He could feel heat coming from her fingers through his silk shirt, the knuckles flexing almost imperceptibly as she squeezed. "So what's the news? That we get to hang around here and do nothing while you're away?" She did smirk then, a quick lively red slash across the bottom of her pretty face. "Or that I get to be in charge while you're gone?" He was on firm ground here. He knew she liked his performance, and he was pretty senior in the office.

"Oh no," she purred past a catch in her throat. He smelled her, a quick release of her pheromones straight from her pussy to his increasingly lupine brain, and Kyle knew his cock was throbbing thick and blunt in his trousers. "Guess again."

"I can't imagine," he said softly. He forced his hands to stay on the arms of his chair; it was that, or he knew he'd reach up over his head to grasp her hips and, with his enhanced pre-Halloween strength, lift her straight over his head and onto his face, that tight skirt of hers stretching and tearing like wrapping paper under a greedy kid's Christmas-morning fingers. He swallowed, the Adam's apple bobbing along his stretched neck, and when Anna spoke again her voice was full of black satin.

"I'll be bringing someone with me." The smirk changed subtly, trading mischief for anticipation. "To Bermuda. To... assist me."

"To provide for your needs." Kyle matched her low, even tone. "In Bermuda." Her body was on fire against his head.

"Just so." A dry thumb jabbed quickly at his neck, and Kyle had to work to keep from twisting his head and snapping at it. "Per diem. Plenty of free time. Lovely beaches in Bermuda, I hear."

"I hear the same. I've never been there."

"I'd like you to know that you're one of the people I'm considering bringing." She licked her lips, probably subconsciously, and Kyle understood: he wasn't really one of the people. He was the person. "To assist me."

"I'll think about it," he snapped, feeling her blood moving faster along her body through her skin and her skirt and whatever panties she was wearing in between. Soaked now, he knew. "I'll think long and hard."

She giggled. "You do that," and when she stepped suddenly back from him, her eyes on his lap. "We'll talk, Kyle."

"Count on it." His cock was a steel bar. He had no idea how he'd kept control, but he was already praying the moon would not be full in Bermuda.

* * *

Eva was pouting as Kyle piloted her Toyota around the last curve to her work. The Halloween party was supposed to be in the conference room off the ambulance bay. He glanced at her face in the rearview mirror. "What's wrong?" He had to concentrate now to keep his voice from sounding like gravel.

She took her sweet time answering, sending him several veiled glances while she got her thoughts together. "Nothing," she sighed at last. "It's just..." She scowled. "You're totally going to overshadow me."

"Come on, hon," Kyle soothed, trying hard to still the quaver in his voice. He'd just seen a squirrel skittering across the street. He was hungry. "You look fucking hot." She did, too, and she knew it. When he'd told her he was going to go as a werewolf, Eva had literally danced with excitement. "I'll be a sex kitten!" she exclaimed, and she'd spent the next two days assembling the costume. And, Kyle reflected, if any of her coworkers had been wondering what her body looked like under the baggy EMT uniform, tonight's costume would leave them in zero doubt.

She'd dug around online and found a catsuit, totally sheer but for fake fur around the naughty bits, complete with a tail and a pair of ears. Already she'd been scratching at her tits when she came out of her bedroom to present herself to Kyle, waiting on the couch. Shoulda worn better underwear, she reflected to herself; the fur was itchy and the thong wasn't cutting it.

She wondered how animals dealt with the fucking itching.

And she looked good; she knew it. She knew Mike from Dispatch would be staring at her tits the entire evening, and she was certain some of her male coworkers would be thinking of her butt when they masturbated frantically later. While she was getting comprehensively fucked by Kyle. Because if she looked sexy, he looked deadly.

That's how Eva felt, anyway, when she looked at him tonight. Wherever he'd gotten the costume, she reflected, it must have cost a fortune. "Lordy!" she'd exclaimed when he arrived. "Who did your makeup?"

"Uhm, my sister," Kyle had replied, stalking past her into her apartment. Jesus, she thought, the costume looked like real fur! He even smelled like a dog, faintly, the scent combining weirdly with his usual smells, the smell of the hair she'd breathed in the night, of his armpits, of his balls. Taken together, it made a mix that arrowed straight to her libido. He was powerful and tall and altogether menacing, she thought, despite the artfully torn, carefully soiled pair of pants he'd put on, Incredible Hulk-style.

"Goddamn." She shook her head as they came around into the parking lot, the car jolting over the rough pavement. "You're a fucking masterpiece."

Kyle looked back at her, his eyes weirdly yellow, and once more she wondered how he'd tracked down such realistic contacts. She thought of asking him what his costume had cost. "Takes one to know one," he grinned, the teeth sharp and bestial, and Eva was shaking her head as she led the way into the conference room.

A riot of strobe-lit paramedics with a heavy male-to-female ratio: that was the overwhelming impression Kyle got from the Halloween party, the thick scent of testosterone underlying the odors of booze, chocolate, and sweat. He sorted these things automatically, the Wolf strong tonight, and he sensed also the rich smell of the blood in their veins. But Steve had taught him to deal with that; there were always more squirrels, after all.

But squirrels didn't solve the other urge.

Like always when the Wolf emerged from its lair, he was wildly horny. He was able to keep his semi from tenting the front of the pants, barely, but that didn't mean it wasn't there, constantly, fringing the back of his mind like the sound of cicadas on a warm night. Kyle's eyes and nose hunted the crowd, culling, categorizing, noticing: his senses pulled out the women, sorting them like butterflies at a museum.

The one by the wall, dressed as a sexy witch, someone's forgotten date. Small and a little shy, she reeked of blood. She was on her period. He wondered whether her date realized that.

The one in the corner, dressed as a sex kitten (a popular theme, though Eva wore it far better), who appeared by her confident air to be an employee, not a guest. She was already drinking too much, and he could already see that she was going to fuck one of her co-workers tonight.

The one by the drinks, laughing, dressed as the inevitable French maid, her breasts huge and perfect and nearly falling out, her hand resting on the arm of someone else's husband, grinning at the world. She was heavily in heat, he knew.

The one standing next to her husband, surrounded by people yet completely alone, dressed as Tess Trueheart to his Dick Tracy, stinking of wine and the residue of the barbiturates she still had clinging to her teeth. She'd be passed out soon, he knew.

The one giggling loudly in a small knot of men, dressed as a random crash victim, also on her period but doing much better with it than the witch. She was an employee too, it seemed, but her small hands and submissive demeanor suggested front office.

But above them all was Eva, dominating his awareness, his arm locked in the vise of her hand; he didn't need her nails on his skin to tell him she was jealous, probably of the girl by the drinks, with her tits spilling out.

For her part, Eva was evaluating the women a bit differently, especially once she caught sight of Michelle in the corner. Fuck. Another kitten. Well, she reflected to herself, gripping Kyle's furry arm tightly, at least Michelle isn't as hot as me. That French maid looking one, though... She took an unconscious sideways glance at Kyle, seeing where his eyes were going, reassuring herself, because later she was going to take him back to her apartment, dammit, and screw his brains out. And the French maid, who appeared to be here with Clint from the front office? She could find her own cock to fuck.

So, her lips pursed tightly, Eva ventured into the scrum of her coworkers and prepared to be polite.

* * *

Kyle was laying off the liquor; he'd noticed over the years that drinking while wolfing was a bad, bad plan.