I feel them getting closer
Astoria had pronounced something different about his person on his return from a small tour around the continent, though his sister had not detected anything beyond her comments of ‘have you been eating enough? Your features are too sharp, Michael.’
Michael wasn’t worried about her knowing the truth, per se, but it was yet time to share what had befallen him. Or, in truth, what hadn’t quite happened.
That was the crux of it, though. Such things either were, or weren’t, and yet he found himself somewhere in the middle.
One would think that an encounter with a werewolf in Romania that resulted in a flesh wound would either turn a person, or it wouldn’t. Most of the time, it did, or if the wound was bad enough, they usually didn’t survive the first change.
According to all the recorded information available on werewolves, in any case.
However, three moons had been spent touring the eastern European countries as he promoted his debut album and not once had he turned.
The peculiar thing, however, was the changes he noted. His vision was different - he picked up on the heat around a person, now - and his sense of smell was exponentially better. His metabolism had sped up, which was probably why Astoria had been worried about his diet; he had to eat twice as much to retain his weight, and it hadn’t been until several weeks before he returned home that Michael had realized why he was getting leaner and leaner.
Astoria still looked at him cannily as if she knew weight loss wasn’t all that was different about him, but she’d not placed a finger on it, and Michael doubt she would. Not yet, at least.
Though he was still discovering the extent of changes in him, changes that didn’t result in a turn from man to beast on the full moon. Thrice he had felt the moon wax, felt his blood heat and race through his veins, had watched the silvery orb rise in the sky, felt the pull to run, and yet he had not changed.
And though he’d never had a quick temper before, Michael had felt the heated stir in him more, and only by force of will and his own innate calm did he tame it. But not wholly; he’d spied his eyes, a reflection in the glass, and they glowed blue. Glowed in the darkness as if peering from the brush, not quite his own eyes, but that of the beast he could feel beneath his skin, but which never spilled out to make bones change and fur flow.
He could smell it, the wolf. He was both him, and not, pacing inside, wanting out. Perhaps it was that he was a highly skilled Occlumens, but Michael was quite aware of the slightly different consciousness that was with him now. And yet, it wasn’t different at all. It was him, or his, or perhaps, of him.
There was nowhere for it go, though. It could not spill from him for its allotted night every month.
His steps were silent as he walked through the forest. Despite that he did not turn, Michael had found that he still wanted the night air on him, to smell the ozone that was thick with the moon’s pull, to run.
And he did, chest pale in the moonlight as he raced through the trees, lithe and quicker than any human, stronger than any normal man.
Bare feet carried him through the trees, shoes abhorrent for this, and he was a pale blur.
Run.
Under a branch, dodging between two trees, and vaulting over a log, feet touching the ground and never losing speed. Muscles bunched as he jumped.
The forest was dark, a pitch black that no human eye would be able to see through. But with Stranger's enhanced eyesight and sense of smell, she could run through the thick of the forest at great speed, alone but for her pack.
The air, the rush of wind that blew through her fur was freedom in itself, giving her peace for a single moment.
As she came to the top of a cliff and scanned the forest below, she scented others of her kind, but not, nearby. Her pack. They were playing, frolicking with one another in the moonlight. Leader was resting with his female, letting his new pup crawl over him with an affectionate tolerance.
She wondered if that was the reason he'd failed to notice the scent of a human and take action.
She raced down the rocky terrain, through the forest, eating up the ground beneath her as she loped across the land. She scented the air, ears perking at any signs or smells not of the forest, but it was as if the human had simply disappeared. She ran anyway, through a stream and down a path between two great boulders. The path narrowed and for a moment she thought she'd come to a dead end. But she squeezed through, the fit tight even for a wolf as small as she.
Reaching a circle of trees, she glanced around, catching the intruder's scent on the wind. A rush of adrenaline hit her and her heart leaped in her chest; she raced toward him, baring her teeth in a snarl.
He smelled her before he saw her, and his body twisted gracefully out of the way as a furred body brushed his in mid flight.
Michael landed in a crouch, a feral grin painting his features, dark hair askew.
Hunt. Fight. Dominate.
Even as he catalogued the primal urges of the wolf in him, Michael was conscious of them and they mixed with the questions - Man or beast? Who? What should be done?
She growled at him, a dark beast - bigger than any normal wolf - and paced before him, ice blue eyes peering at him almost angrily.
She. How had he known the beast before him was female?
Keeping his glowing blue gaze on her, Michael breathed deeply, scenting the air. Woman. Not beast, though she was clothed as one. Wolf. Werewolf, Michael concluded quickly enough, interest piqued even as his muscles flexed with the more primal instincts that had assaulted him upon her arrival.
Breathing deeply again, his eyes stayed on her, though he tipped his face to the slight breeze.
There were others, wolves or more, like the one before him, he didn't know. Upwind. That must have been how she’d tracked him given the direction she’d come at him from.
He had not thought to use his nose. If he was a man to berate himself over such things, he would have just then, but Michael just cataloged it.
He stood then, his only clothing the denims that hung from his hips, and watched her. She growled again, but her eyes were intent, cannier than any beast that did not reside in human form all the other days of the month.
Her ears were pulled flat against her skull and she stared back at him through glowing blue eyes as his scent came to her, a strange smell that drifted on the wind, that seemed to wrap around her. Confused, suspicious, the beast growled in warning.
Even as he watched, blue eyes glowing in the darkness, he watched her head cock, and though there was a still a growl rumbling from her, it was as if it was more of an afterthought than anything. Though she was not entirely in control of her thoughts as he was, Michael could see that she had caught his scent in its entirety. He knew himself; human, but also fully something else, wolf.
It was incongruous, not possible, and yet he was a man with silvery white claw marks down the length of his back, gift of a werewolf, and yet they were plainly visible under the light of the full moon.
They should be covered in fur.
Hearing a snap deep in the woods, Michael watched her tense.
The others were coming, coming to collect her some part of him volunteered, though Michael didn't intellectually understand the way of wolves just yet and why he knew that to be truth.
While he had strength, speed and quickness - seeming things that all the werewolves possessed in beast form - he did not have their claws or their teeth. He did have his wand in the pocket of his denims, but the logic of staying to face a pack of wolves as it were did not seem wise this night, not when he did not know the extent of himself yet, his own anomaly.
Breathing deeply again, he took in her scent. Her. He did not know her name, but he would know her anywhere now, even if she was in human form. She would not recognize him, not consciously. Full werewolves couldn’t remember the whole of their activities the night of the full moon, but he would know her.
Hearing them drawing closer, Michael’s muscles tensed and he made to disappear into the forest, but there was a visceral urge in him that demanded he did not run before this wolf.
Running was weakness.
Dominate. First in the pack.
Foreign thoughts, but they rode him regardless and without warning a growl rumbled from his chest even as he closed the distance between him and his wolf. His wolf.
He was quick. Very quick. The human side of his mind posited that perhaps it was something that was just his and his alone, but the wolf in him was entirely focused on the wolf they had pinned.
It seemed too easy, he thought distantly, though just as distant was the reminder that he was stronger now, much stronger, and this wolf, though strong too, was not large.
She bucked and she growled and flashed her teeth, but he had her. Part of him, the human part didn’t know what to do now that he had her, but his wolf sang through him and his eyes glowed almost from pure pleasure of letting the beast do as it pleased when he bared his teeth; a smile, enjoyment, but more.
Potential death, though not from teeth; hands, wand, intellect. But the wolf understood teeth and strength and she stopped struggling, breath coming heavily, ice blue eyes cannily peering at him, challenging still.
Stranger went limp in his grasp, defiant eyes watching his every movement as she waited for whatever would come next.
Some part of Michael, the wolf, could not abide the challenge. This wolf would be his wolf.
It was a surprise, and not, when he felt a change, not the change, but something. A surprise because everything was a surprise, but not, because he could not find it in himself to be truly astonished at anything that was happening to him. He was an aberration to the breed, an anomaly.
As if responding to the basic instinct to claim, to assert his dominance, to bring her to his pack, perhaps even to the threat approaching, Michael's incisors elongated. A vampire? his mind supplied, though it did not feel right. He was wolf.
Pinned beneath his body, his weight and strength holding her to the ground, Michael exposed her neck and she struggled. But she was not a match to his size or strength despite that she had all the teeth, the claws.
She was a small wolf.
A low whine erupted from her throat and she thrashed against the hands holding her down, bucking and growling even as fear swamped her. She was vulnerable, unable to defend herself against the wolf who wore the skin of a human.
The thick fur did not bother him when he bit into the soft spot of her neck. She struggled and as he pressed the sharp teeth that his wolf had willed into her flesh, not quite piercing. She stilled completely, all the tension leaving her.
His.
It sang through him, as if a magic bond snapping into place. Wild, instinctual, magical bonds. A wolf could not describe this, and neither could a werewolf who could not remember their nights, but it burned beneath Michael's skin like a living thing and he would remember.
She remained still in his grasp as the fear drained away to be replaced by something else. Stranger didn't know it, she had never felt anything like it before, but somehow she knew it wasn't a bad something else.
He loosed his hold on her with his hands, holding instead of pinning, and Michael delved into her mind. Legillimens. He rarely used the talent, but she was his, and part of Michael was opposed to this, but it made sense to his wolf.
Stranger. It was what she called herself, but only in this form. Trees, night, the moon, scents - even his scent - he could see in her mind, but there was more. He could find her.
The hands on her pelt were soothing, smoothing away the building agitation as he held her down. She did not like this, not at all. She wanted to be free, she wanted to run and this human who smelled like her kind was treating her like a domestic dog.
The forest was full of sounds. Oak boughs creaked, and fallen leaves stirred, crunching and crackling with the movements of creatures unseen, but Stranger knew; her pack was coming for her, she'd been gone too long.
Other furred bodies, Leader. Leader was coming for her, and she did not like Leader.
Michael growled and she whined, though did not move.
Not Leader's. Michael's.
Pushing at the instinctual urge, Michael delved deeper. And then it was there, a name. Eloise.
He had to leave her now, and he knew that, but his wolf did not want to. He was not ruled by his wolf though, not in this form.
Releasing her, Michael disappeared into the woods, a blur of moonlit skin until the trees swallowed him up.
Eloise.
Stranger's blue gaze was fixed on him, paws shifting uneasily in the dirt as she watched him go. Wolf, but not wolf. He smelled like pack. Her pack. It settled into her bones, in her very fiber, and it felt good.
It made her angry, too. She did not belong to anyone. Not to a wolf who was not a wolf.
But she was his, and he was hers. Alpha.
She threw back her head and let out a long howl, the wind carrying the sound about her and back to her pack, who all responded in kind.
Michael wasn’t worried about her knowing the truth, per se, but it was yet time to share what had befallen him. Or, in truth, what hadn’t quite happened.
That was the crux of it, though. Such things either were, or weren’t, and yet he found himself somewhere in the middle.
One would think that an encounter with a werewolf in Romania that resulted in a flesh wound would either turn a person, or it wouldn’t. Most of the time, it did, or if the wound was bad enough, they usually didn’t survive the first change.
According to all the recorded information available on werewolves, in any case.
However, three moons had been spent touring the eastern European countries as he promoted his debut album and not once had he turned.
The peculiar thing, however, was the changes he noted. His vision was different - he picked up on the heat around a person, now - and his sense of smell was exponentially better. His metabolism had sped up, which was probably why Astoria had been worried about his diet; he had to eat twice as much to retain his weight, and it hadn’t been until several weeks before he returned home that Michael had realized why he was getting leaner and leaner.
Astoria still looked at him cannily as if she knew weight loss wasn’t all that was different about him, but she’d not placed a finger on it, and Michael doubt she would. Not yet, at least.
Though he was still discovering the extent of changes in him, changes that didn’t result in a turn from man to beast on the full moon. Thrice he had felt the moon wax, felt his blood heat and race through his veins, had watched the silvery orb rise in the sky, felt the pull to run, and yet he had not changed.
And though he’d never had a quick temper before, Michael had felt the heated stir in him more, and only by force of will and his own innate calm did he tame it. But not wholly; he’d spied his eyes, a reflection in the glass, and they glowed blue. Glowed in the darkness as if peering from the brush, not quite his own eyes, but that of the beast he could feel beneath his skin, but which never spilled out to make bones change and fur flow.
He could smell it, the wolf. He was both him, and not, pacing inside, wanting out. Perhaps it was that he was a highly skilled Occlumens, but Michael was quite aware of the slightly different consciousness that was with him now. And yet, it wasn’t different at all. It was him, or his, or perhaps, of him.
There was nowhere for it go, though. It could not spill from him for its allotted night every month.
His steps were silent as he walked through the forest. Despite that he did not turn, Michael had found that he still wanted the night air on him, to smell the ozone that was thick with the moon’s pull, to run.
And he did, chest pale in the moonlight as he raced through the trees, lithe and quicker than any human, stronger than any normal man.
Bare feet carried him through the trees, shoes abhorrent for this, and he was a pale blur.
Run.
Under a branch, dodging between two trees, and vaulting over a log, feet touching the ground and never losing speed. Muscles bunched as he jumped.
The forest was dark, a pitch black that no human eye would be able to see through. But with Stranger's enhanced eyesight and sense of smell, she could run through the thick of the forest at great speed, alone but for her pack.
The air, the rush of wind that blew through her fur was freedom in itself, giving her peace for a single moment.
As she came to the top of a cliff and scanned the forest below, she scented others of her kind, but not, nearby. Her pack. They were playing, frolicking with one another in the moonlight. Leader was resting with his female, letting his new pup crawl over him with an affectionate tolerance.
She wondered if that was the reason he'd failed to notice the scent of a human and take action.
She raced down the rocky terrain, through the forest, eating up the ground beneath her as she loped across the land. She scented the air, ears perking at any signs or smells not of the forest, but it was as if the human had simply disappeared. She ran anyway, through a stream and down a path between two great boulders. The path narrowed and for a moment she thought she'd come to a dead end. But she squeezed through, the fit tight even for a wolf as small as she.
Reaching a circle of trees, she glanced around, catching the intruder's scent on the wind. A rush of adrenaline hit her and her heart leaped in her chest; she raced toward him, baring her teeth in a snarl.
He smelled her before he saw her, and his body twisted gracefully out of the way as a furred body brushed his in mid flight.
Michael landed in a crouch, a feral grin painting his features, dark hair askew.
Hunt. Fight. Dominate.
Even as he catalogued the primal urges of the wolf in him, Michael was conscious of them and they mixed with the questions - Man or beast? Who? What should be done?
She growled at him, a dark beast - bigger than any normal wolf - and paced before him, ice blue eyes peering at him almost angrily.
She. How had he known the beast before him was female?
Keeping his glowing blue gaze on her, Michael breathed deeply, scenting the air. Woman. Not beast, though she was clothed as one. Wolf. Werewolf, Michael concluded quickly enough, interest piqued even as his muscles flexed with the more primal instincts that had assaulted him upon her arrival.
Breathing deeply again, his eyes stayed on her, though he tipped his face to the slight breeze.
There were others, wolves or more, like the one before him, he didn't know. Upwind. That must have been how she’d tracked him given the direction she’d come at him from.
He had not thought to use his nose. If he was a man to berate himself over such things, he would have just then, but Michael just cataloged it.
He stood then, his only clothing the denims that hung from his hips, and watched her. She growled again, but her eyes were intent, cannier than any beast that did not reside in human form all the other days of the month.
Her ears were pulled flat against her skull and she stared back at him through glowing blue eyes as his scent came to her, a strange smell that drifted on the wind, that seemed to wrap around her. Confused, suspicious, the beast growled in warning.
Even as he watched, blue eyes glowing in the darkness, he watched her head cock, and though there was a still a growl rumbling from her, it was as if it was more of an afterthought than anything. Though she was not entirely in control of her thoughts as he was, Michael could see that she had caught his scent in its entirety. He knew himself; human, but also fully something else, wolf.
It was incongruous, not possible, and yet he was a man with silvery white claw marks down the length of his back, gift of a werewolf, and yet they were plainly visible under the light of the full moon.
They should be covered in fur.
Hearing a snap deep in the woods, Michael watched her tense.
The others were coming, coming to collect her some part of him volunteered, though Michael didn't intellectually understand the way of wolves just yet and why he knew that to be truth.
While he had strength, speed and quickness - seeming things that all the werewolves possessed in beast form - he did not have their claws or their teeth. He did have his wand in the pocket of his denims, but the logic of staying to face a pack of wolves as it were did not seem wise this night, not when he did not know the extent of himself yet, his own anomaly.
Breathing deeply again, he took in her scent. Her. He did not know her name, but he would know her anywhere now, even if she was in human form. She would not recognize him, not consciously. Full werewolves couldn’t remember the whole of their activities the night of the full moon, but he would know her.
Hearing them drawing closer, Michael’s muscles tensed and he made to disappear into the forest, but there was a visceral urge in him that demanded he did not run before this wolf.
Running was weakness.
Dominate. First in the pack.
Foreign thoughts, but they rode him regardless and without warning a growl rumbled from his chest even as he closed the distance between him and his wolf. His wolf.
He was quick. Very quick. The human side of his mind posited that perhaps it was something that was just his and his alone, but the wolf in him was entirely focused on the wolf they had pinned.
It seemed too easy, he thought distantly, though just as distant was the reminder that he was stronger now, much stronger, and this wolf, though strong too, was not large.
She bucked and she growled and flashed her teeth, but he had her. Part of him, the human part didn’t know what to do now that he had her, but his wolf sang through him and his eyes glowed almost from pure pleasure of letting the beast do as it pleased when he bared his teeth; a smile, enjoyment, but more.
Potential death, though not from teeth; hands, wand, intellect. But the wolf understood teeth and strength and she stopped struggling, breath coming heavily, ice blue eyes cannily peering at him, challenging still.
Stranger went limp in his grasp, defiant eyes watching his every movement as she waited for whatever would come next.
Some part of Michael, the wolf, could not abide the challenge. This wolf would be his wolf.
It was a surprise, and not, when he felt a change, not the change, but something. A surprise because everything was a surprise, but not, because he could not find it in himself to be truly astonished at anything that was happening to him. He was an aberration to the breed, an anomaly.
As if responding to the basic instinct to claim, to assert his dominance, to bring her to his pack, perhaps even to the threat approaching, Michael's incisors elongated. A vampire? his mind supplied, though it did not feel right. He was wolf.
Pinned beneath his body, his weight and strength holding her to the ground, Michael exposed her neck and she struggled. But she was not a match to his size or strength despite that she had all the teeth, the claws.
She was a small wolf.
A low whine erupted from her throat and she thrashed against the hands holding her down, bucking and growling even as fear swamped her. She was vulnerable, unable to defend herself against the wolf who wore the skin of a human.
The thick fur did not bother him when he bit into the soft spot of her neck. She struggled and as he pressed the sharp teeth that his wolf had willed into her flesh, not quite piercing. She stilled completely, all the tension leaving her.
His.
It sang through him, as if a magic bond snapping into place. Wild, instinctual, magical bonds. A wolf could not describe this, and neither could a werewolf who could not remember their nights, but it burned beneath Michael's skin like a living thing and he would remember.
She remained still in his grasp as the fear drained away to be replaced by something else. Stranger didn't know it, she had never felt anything like it before, but somehow she knew it wasn't a bad something else.
He loosed his hold on her with his hands, holding instead of pinning, and Michael delved into her mind. Legillimens. He rarely used the talent, but she was his, and part of Michael was opposed to this, but it made sense to his wolf.
Stranger. It was what she called herself, but only in this form. Trees, night, the moon, scents - even his scent - he could see in her mind, but there was more. He could find her.
The hands on her pelt were soothing, smoothing away the building agitation as he held her down. She did not like this, not at all. She wanted to be free, she wanted to run and this human who smelled like her kind was treating her like a domestic dog.
The forest was full of sounds. Oak boughs creaked, and fallen leaves stirred, crunching and crackling with the movements of creatures unseen, but Stranger knew; her pack was coming for her, she'd been gone too long.
Other furred bodies, Leader. Leader was coming for her, and she did not like Leader.
Michael growled and she whined, though did not move.
Not Leader's. Michael's.
Pushing at the instinctual urge, Michael delved deeper. And then it was there, a name. Eloise.
He had to leave her now, and he knew that, but his wolf did not want to. He was not ruled by his wolf though, not in this form.
Releasing her, Michael disappeared into the woods, a blur of moonlit skin until the trees swallowed him up.
Eloise.
Stranger's blue gaze was fixed on him, paws shifting uneasily in the dirt as she watched him go. Wolf, but not wolf. He smelled like pack. Her pack. It settled into her bones, in her very fiber, and it felt good.
It made her angry, too. She did not belong to anyone. Not to a wolf who was not a wolf.
But she was his, and he was hers. Alpha.
She threw back her head and let out a long howl, the wind carrying the sound about her and back to her pack, who all responded in kind.