Anticipation is a drug.  It tingles down your spine when you first get that hint of something good on the horizon, and makes you do and say stupid stuff just to get to that shiny pot of gold on the horizon.  If you could bottle and sell anticipation, you’d be rich in a week, then outlawed in two.  I savored the feeling of anticipation, because I’d only get my first chance once.

Ragnar and Spot gave me tolerant glares as I walked past.  I saw Spot consider for a second barring me entrance, but then he saw the anticipation in my eyes and winked.  He knew that rush.  Everyone knows that rush.  It’s the drug that everyone’s been high on at least once before their first revel.

The Glade was secluded, impassable without climbing gear on three sides, and the fourth had Ragnar and Spot.  Inside, it was beautiful.  A lazy stream, fed from an underground aquifer, meandered between young pines and old oaks.  Gnats danced in the last rays of dusk, and ivy and moss crawled up the granite sides of the little bowl valley.  I could smell the cairn before I could see it.  There was a faint hint of smoke and roasted meat—the first had been started.  There was a bit of earthy decay—the whole place was damp and green.  But over all that, it smelled of wolf.

And when I hopped up over the cock-eyed boulder that protected our sacred place from prying eyes, I could see it—and them.  All the wolves of my sept were lounging on and around a fallen oak.  Some were still wearing their skin, like me.  A few had gone fuzzy, soaking up the last of the sun on dark pelts.  A few more—those few that were most comfortable on four rather than two, lay with backs to the fire like overgrown dogs.  Each one was familiar to me, yet I’d never been here, not now.  Not when they were all together.  Not when everyone was rushing through the business, riding that same anticipation that was eating at me.  Knowing that when everyone had their say and the last vote had been cast, we’d have the revel.

Roger was speaking, and everyone was listening.  I caught it mid-sentence as I tried to remain inconspicuous at the back.  “-requesting safe passage.  Most of them are displaced, and they’ve given their word they’ve lost their pursuers.  Do we let them cross?”

There was a general chorus of ‘aye’s.  It didn’t sound like a particularly contentious point.  Everyone seemed subdued and lazy.  I tried to stifle my nerves.  I wanted to seem calm and subdued—blend into the pack.  It wasn’t easy.  It bounced around in my brain until I was almost buzzing: my first revel.  The stories were as enticing as they were graphic.  Put up a good howl, I’d been told directly, but only by listening in did I find out why they felt the need. Oh, I’m sure it had some good traditional purpose, but when it really came down to it, we were a bunch of dogs with a wolf’s inhibitions and a human’s sex drive.  Nobody wanted to go into detail, but the implications were clear.  Be bored and responsible for the moot, and you can dip your stick and get your rocks off at the revel.  I had every right to be here now.  I was a full wolf, and no one would say otherwise.

“Hey, who let the pup in here?”  No one but Val.  She was half-fuzzy at that point, still wearing clothes but with a comfortable pelt to fit her tantalizingly human features.  She glared at me, as if I were an unwelcome intruder.  Why was it always like this?  Why was she always chasing me away?

I think I’ve been in love with Valerie forever. She was in my preschool class, where she head-butted me and knocked out two of my teeth.  It’s okay, they were getting loose anyway.  She was in my second grade classes too.  She only knocked out one of my teeth that year with a badly-timed right hook to the jaw.  Tether-ball incident.  The dentist was able to put it back in.  Val knew me—but knowing isn’t the same as love.  She knew me, but I loved her.  At some point, I’d convinced myself it was ‘true love’, but that never really materialized.  

So where she led, I followed.  I was Jay, short for Jason, Valerie Simpson’s little puppy.  I think she found me cute—she never seemed to mind when I tagged along.  I’d stick on the fringe when she and her friends went out, and they tolerated me. She would stick candy bars in my pocket in the supermarket, and I’d take the rap for having stolen them. They would go and choke down cigarettes behind one of the mobile classrooms when they were supposed to be in class, trying to pretend they weren’t coughing.  I think it was our shared ‘condition’ that pulled me to her.  Neither of us knew it back then, but the two of us were part of something special.

Then in seventh grade, she was ‘sick’ a month in the middle of the winter.  When she came back, she looked ragged.  No one doubted her, not even Mrs. Milligan our anal math teacher.  Not with the way she looked like she’d been drained.  But I was in love with her, so I noticed.  She was thin and malnourished, and her hair looked like it’d been savaged, but her eyes had a steel edge in them I’d never seen before.  That’s when she started to push me away.

I found her friends didn’t want me around any more.  When I tried to follow her back behind for a smoke, I lost her—and her friends weren’t there.  She never went out on the town with me, either.  She’d stopped tolerating.  I’d used to be ‘Jay, Val’s puppy’, but after that I was just the puppy, lost and alone.  Everyone laughed that I seemed lost without her.

I had to wait another two years for my ‘sick’ month.  What a whirlwind that was.  To be both wolf and man, simultaneously.  Even when I’m fully man, there’s a wolf growling in the corner of my mind, and when I’m a fully wolf there’s a man watching and thinking and rationalizing behind my eyes.  I found out why she had that sharpness to her glare.  It wasn’t an easy life.  It wasn’t simple.  But it also wasn’t alone.  The sept took me in, and now I was a member of the pack.

But not a full member.  How did I go from being Val’s metaphorical puppy to her real puppy?  She’d been a member of the pack for two years before I’d even shifted the first time, and she was a full member.  Me?  I was still a kid.  I was still juvenile.  I was two fucking months older than her, but I was still the kid when she was the adult.  “Girls mature faster” Roger had said when I asked.  No, not asked—complained.  “Give it time, let some of those hormones wear off.  Being a wolf makes you crazy enough.  We don’t need teenager bullshit making you even crazier.”

Not any more.  I’d done a patrol into the Umbra and killed my first bane spirit.  I was blooded.  I wasn’t a pup any more., and if Val was going to push it, this time I was going to push back.  Anticipation—it makes you do and say stupid things, and it didn’t get any stupider than disagreeing with Val.

“I’m not a fucking pup.”  I growled back at her.

She laughed at the fight in my eyes.  “You’ve always been a puppy.  And here you are again, following me like a lap-dog.  Run off home, Jay.  This is for big dogs.”

“I have every right to be here.”  I smiled my denial right back into her eyes.  This was wolf culture.  Everyone else let us fight it out.  It wasn’t anyone else’s business, it wasn’t anyone else’s concern.  Laws and rules—there were few enough of those.  Everything else is just made up on the fly, by whoever seems to be making sense (and who can back it up with a strong will and stronger claws.)

“Bullshit.  You haven’t earned crap.”

“I’m blooded.  Killed a bane in the Umbra last week.”

“A bane-ling that was barely a shade.  Hardly makes you-”  She scoffed, but I cut her off.

“I’m of age!”

“Next month.  You’re still fifteen by my count.”

“Which makes you fifteen minus three months, Val.  Unless you want to admit you’re not of age either?” That drew blood.  She flinched and snarled.

“You’re a spineless puppy, Jay.  You always have been.”

“So let me fix that.  I’m willing.”

“Willing to do what?”  That last from Roger.  He was grinning.  We must have been quite the entertainment.  We were the pre-revel show.  I blushed when I realized that everyone was paying attention to us.  So much for blending in.

“Willing?  I’m willing.  Just generally willing.”

“Willing to fight for your adulthood?”  Roger asked casually.

I felt the barbs on the question.  This wasn’t an idle suggestion—it was a challenge.  It was a I didn’t know all of the werewolf traditions, but I could tell one when it was hurtling towards me like a train.

“Or go home, puppy.”  Val was laughing at me again.

“Yeah.  I’ll fight!”  I relaxed and let the change wash over me to answer the challenge.

Look, I may have been a scrawny little kid, but no matter where you start, a werewolf is a werewolf.  Once I’d changed in the bathroom back home and looked at myself in the mirror.  I wasn’t so scrawny any more.  I wasn’t such a weakling, and I definitely wasn’t a puppy.  In comparison to the other assembled wolves, I also wasn’t a slouch.

It was a moment of vertigo as the ground rushed away from me.  I wore loose clothes, elastic and open chest so a change wouldn’t rip them.  It was just common sense.  The change felt natural, like flexing a muscle.  What changed was the world around me.  It was a rush of sensory input that disagreed with the human I’d just previously been.  Colors went flat, and were replaced by smells.  Sounds echoed strangely, caught by mobile ears rather than ones plastered to the side of my head.  I could almost taste the meat in the air, and the scent of ‘wolf’ carried with it named and identities, rather than just a sour bite.

“Good.  You’re ready.”  Roger turned away from me.  “Val.  Since you’re challenging his right to be here, you’ll fight.”

“I fucking will not.”  She growled, but she didn’t have the same effect on Roger that she’d always seemed to have on me.

“Oh yes you fucking will.  He’s got a point.  If you say he’s underage, then you’re doubly so.  If you can’t be bothered to follow up your sharp words with sharp fangs, then you probably don’t need to be here, either.”

She glowered at me.  Somehow, this was all my fault.  She would not go easy on me.

So I did the stupidest thing I could think of.  “I’m fighting Val?  Fine.  What do I get when I win.”

“You get to stay here.”  Val’s voice was flat.  She was not impressed.

“I’m an adult.  I don’t need your permission to stay here, so that’s no reward.”

“If you lose, you go home.”  Why was she so angry these last few years?  Why didn’t she want me around?

“Deal.  And if I win, you’re mine for the revel.”

There was a cat-call off in the audience.  “Looks like puppy’s balls’ve dropped!”  There was general laughter.  This wasn’t helping.

So I took my pants off.  In human society this wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere I wanted to be, but nudity wasn’t so much a taboo as a simple assumed fact in werewolf society.  Hell, it didn’t make sense to wear pants when pants weren’t made to fit.  I dropped my elastic sweat pants and showed them all what kind of male I was.  It worked.  There were more cat calls (and to my immense pleasure, some of them sounded female.)  What there weren’t, though, were more people calling me puppy.

“I’m what?”  She was incredulous.

“Mine.  Anything I say, and you know what I want.”

Her gaze narrowed.  Sometimes I wish I knew what she was thinking right then.  I expected her to refuse.  Then her smile returned. “You know what?  Think you got a chance?  Fine.  I’m yours. Better, you win and I call in my favors and you get to be king for a night.”  She glanced around, and her glance was met by a few members of the audience.  There were nods.  She really thought I didn’t have a chance.  Somehow, that stung.  I’d only wanted her respect, and all I had now was her pity.  And now her scorn.

“Deal.”  I couldn’t let it get to me.  I was going to win.

“Good.”  I expected more, but rather than keep talking, she leaped at me.  I was too busy showing off and grand-standing that I wasn’t ready for her.  She bit my shoulder before I could push her away.  She was still mostly human—not the full werewolf I’d shifted to, but the bite still stung.  The message was clear: she wasn’t going to hold back.  I’d won no points with her, not for a very long time.  I wasn’t getting off easy.

So I backhanded her into a tree.  Then I waited.  It was the image of the thing.  I gave her time to shift.  This was a challenge.  Tradition was watching us.  Being the courteous opponent was the right thing to do, especially if I wanted to make myself appear adult.

She wiped her mouth, and pulled her stretchy jumper over her head and kicked her jeans free.  She was gorgeous naked, but I couldn’t let it get to me.  Her pelt didn’t hide much, so I focused on her face—nothing but her face—until she shifted up and was looking me square in the eye.  I wasn’t going to let her get me flustered.  Not this time.  I don’t know what her problem was, but she was not going to get in my way, not with so much anticipation riding me.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen werewolves fighting, but it’s not a graceful boxing match.  There were rules, but they mainly had to do with keeping us both alive.  Sand in the eyes?  Fair game.  Below the belt?  Go for it.  As long as we were both breathing at the end, it was all part of the challenge.  She did what any girl that’s gone through a public school system would do.  She kicked me in the balls.

I won’t lie—I dropped like a rock.  I heard groans from the crowd, mostly male.  It’s like they could feel my pain by proxy.  Fuck, I thought she’d launched my tested up through my internal organs, bounced them off the top of my skull, and let them rattle back into their bag.  In fact, the evidence agreed with that assessment, because my head hurt just as badly as my balls, and she hadn’t even touched anything north of my shoulder.

She kicked me a few more times on the ground, but I warded off those kicks easily enough.  “Come on!”  She shouted at me.  “Get the fuck up and-”

That was it.  She was grand-standing now.  She was so fucking confident.  I grabbed her leg as she kicked me again, and pushed up with my feet.  I returned the favor, punching her in the crotch with the whole weight of my body behind it as I stood.

Attention boys out there.  Girls act like it doesn’t hurt when you get ‘em there, but they’re lying.  It hurts alright—maybe not like a ball-shot, but enough to drop her just like she’d dropped me.  She bounced off of a rock and curled up in a ball, holding her crotch.  I shook my legs, but refused to give into the same useless impulse that she had.  I was going to let her get back up.  Kicking at her while she was like this was giving her the advantage.

Thank little mercies for werewolf regeneration.  By the time she picked her way carefully to her feet, the pain in my crotch had almost entirely faded.  She shook her head, and I could see her recovering with the same aplomb.  Val dropped into a fighting crouch.  Before she’d been careless and stupid.  Now I had her full attention.  Around us, the pack was making bets and kibitzing.  We were the prize fight.  No—we were the prize show.  It was more show than fight.  They wanted to see us hurt, and they wanted to see us learn.  It was a bloodsport, fed by a culture that had shucked its comfortable human origins and left just the savage beast behind.

Valerie and I circled each other.  She feinted and I fell for it.  I was rewarded with a claw swipe to the arm.  She feinted again and I bit her hand.  She pounced, and I threw her off before she could do any damage.  The next time I pulled her arm behind her and clawed across her breast.

It was all a show.  If either of us had committed fully, it’d be over in one move.  Go for the throat, and one of us was going to end up with a win.  Problem was that neither of us knew who that would be.  It’d be risky, and neither of us was going to give it up.  So we circled each other, taking little swipes and bites here and there.  I shed some blood, and in return I painted the granite walls of our little valley with little spatters of hers.

Val, though, I mean it when I say she’d been avoiding me.  I knew her.  She was out with the girls, brawling and fucking and drinking and smoking.  But she didn’t know what I was doing.  I have the feeling that she thought I was doing the same thing, but she was wrong.  See, I was afraid.  I was afraid that I’d get sent out into the umbra and I’d disgrace myself.  I was afraid that we’d go for a fight and Val would see me, and I’d be a weak little shit and disappoint her.  I wasn’t going to let that happen, and fear?  Well, fear’s almost as powerful a drug as anticipation.  When she wasn’t around, I’d been training.

I knew how to control it, the anger and the hormones and the werewolf magic.  It was my advantage, my ace up the sleeve.  Metaphorical sleeve, since I wasn’t wearing anything.  I knew it was a show, so I put in my time and I took my risks.  I bled a bit and let her show the pack I could take the pain.

And then, when she overextended, I struck.  She was taking a swipe.  It caught my jaw.  It wouldn’t have done much, but I was doing my little trick.  See, she was aiming for a werewolf—a big hulking werewolf with a head nine feet above the ground.  Not, as I had just shifted, a scrawny little human that barely topped five foot eight.  Her claw hit my jaw, and I felt numb as something rattled around in my mouth.  Fuck her, she’d taken another tooth.

But I was now where she didn’t expect me.  To her, I’d just disappeared.  And then, when I was close enough to hug her, I shifted again.  Time passed slowly, like I was taking the leisurely path as her head rocketed towards me.  As I became a hulking werewolf again, I did so against her front, with my jaws around her throat.

She was knocked over by my explosive growth, and I followed her down onto the ground.  Her head knocked against the dirt, and I tasted blood in my mouth.  Some was definitely mine from her swipe, but some was hers now, too, as I bit around her wind pipe.

She had a few seconds of fight left in her, but when I squeezed and she started to choke, she went completely still.  Everyone was silent.  They knew what was coming, and so did I.  She didn’t give in quickly.  I knew Val, she’d be thinking of everything, trying to come up with some scenario in which I hadn’t just won.  Seconds ticked by, and I started to bite.  Then I heard the sounds that I’d been waiting for—the whole pack had been waiting for.  She let a soft whine build in her throat.  She submitted.

The response was a thunderous applause, complete with yipping and hooting cheers.  Well, it was thunderous to me.  The pack closed in around us, and I felt some of them physically separating us.  They didn’t need to.  I wasn’t going to hurt her more, but it made me feel wild and feral.  There was the scent of meat right under my nose. I took a bite—someone was holding a turkey leg for me.  Anya and Liz, those were two of Val’s friends, pushed me back towards the fallen oak.

“Holy shit, I actually did it.”  Those weren’t the first words I’d really wanted to say, but they were the first ones I did say.  It was tough enough to get them out with my clawed-up mouth, though that was starting to heal.

Liz was the one holding the turkey leg.  “Fuck yeah.  And thank you.”

It took a moment for that to register.  “Um, thanks for what?”

“Easy way to repay a favor.  I thought she’d never call that one in, and I don’t like owing favors.”

I sat back against the trunk of the oak.  Where Val had clawed at me was still stinging.  In fact, I opened my mouth and dug the loose tooth from my lip with my tongue.  I pulled it out, looked at it, then shoved it back into the socket.  Thank little mercies for werewolf regeneration.

“Then you girls don’t mind-”

“Mind?  Fuck no.  You’re not much as a human, but like this?  Yeah, I can get into that.  Or, sorry, I can get that into me.”  Anya had shifted, and she was rubbing my bruised balls, though they didn’t feel so bad any more.  Liz shot her a dirty look, then gave me the turkey leg so she too could rub my balls.

They both made way, though, when Val stumped over to us and sank to her knees in front of me.  “Let’s get this over with.”

This wasn’t—no.  This wasn’t how I’d imagined it.  “Val, don’t be that way.”

“You’re the one who had to-”  She wouldn’t even look at me.

“No, you’re the one who wanted me to go home.”  She was silent.

Liz and Anya looked at each other, then chose to give us some space.  I made a mental note to thank them later.

“Val, why have you been avoiding me?  We used to do everything together.”

“No, I used to do whatever I wanted and you just followed me around.”  I couldn’t dispute that.

“But you’ve been avoiding me.”

“Yeah.  I…  Look, I don’t want to talk about it.  Just, lets…”  She reached for my crotch, but I blocked her hand with the turkey leg.

“No.”

She stalled.  “No?  I thought you wanted to.”

“I do, but not like this.”

She lowered her head.  “Maybe…  Maybe I didn’t mind if you won, Jay.  Maybe I wanted you to a bit.”

“It sure as fuck didn’t feel like it!”

“No!  I didn’t-”  She bit her lip.  “No, I didn’t let you win.  Sometimes I just get so angry at you, I just…”

In a bright corner of my mind, I was smiling.  So she did notice me, at least sometimes.  And she wanted me to win?

“Okay, so I won regardless.  You wanted it?  Here’s your chance.” I lifted the turkey leg up to my mouth and took a bite.  She looked down, and I saw her smile.

I said I was no slouch, and I did mean that all over.  You think I hadn’t taken the chance to check myself out?  Hell, I’d spent half of my teenage years as a human.  Soon as I got all fuzzy, you can bet that I was shifting to masturbate every chance I got.  It wasn’t necessarily better, but it was different, and when you’re young and shooting a load four times a day, different helps.  I knew I wasn’t so tough to look at, so when she started to rub my balls just like Anya and Liz had been doing…

Thinking of those two, they came over again just as if they’d been summoned.  Somewhere I heard drums.  They each had some food of their own, and they plastered themselves to my side as Val started to stroke my sheath.  “King for the night, that’s what you said, Val?”  She gave me a dirty look, and I heard Liz snicker next to me.  I’d won.  The pre-revel show was over, and that meant my anticipation returned double.  Now.  This was my first revel, and it was just starting.

And starting in style.  No one was just human any more., and only a few were still wearing some articles of clothing.  Our alpha was standing by the fire, saying something I couldn’t hear.  He turned to the fire and pulled his sheath back.  I caught an acrid whiff of ‘wolf’ as he urinated on the bonfire.  There was a yip off to the side where three full-wolves were playing.  It was a mock-fight, growling and nipping and tugging.  Then one of them--Laughs-At-Cars--pinned Hannah and mounted her muzzle.  I thought it would start slow, and the pack would build up to it—but that was a human conceit.  The pack was doing what it wanted to do with no foreplay, no teasing, and no apology.  He just pushed his sheath to her snout, and I watched inches of excited wolf slide up against her tongue and disappear into her mouth.

“Hope you know what you’re getting yourself into, Jay.”  Liz snuggled into my side.  Her breath smelled of chicken.  “This isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen before.”

“I hope not.  I was counting on something a bit more…”

Anya was watching the two wolves.  “X-rated?”  She didn’t turn towards me.  It didn’t last long, maybe twenty or thirty seconds, and Laughs-At-Cars let out a yipping laugh.  He hopped off of Hannah and let her get back up, but not before he’d painted her whiskers with semen.

“Well yeah.”  I looked down at Val.  She was watching me with rapt interest.  I wasn’t unaffected, especially not when her fingers closed over my sheath and squeezed.  She already had me peeking out, and her fingers gathered a spatter of pre that was soaking my belly fur.

“Good, because that’s what you’re getting whether you wanted it or not.”

There was more action on the far side of the fire.  Jason, all shifted to were and golden fur, was sucking off Tony, a big Italian black wolf.  They had a little crowd, and I spotted one of them with a stopwatch.  Ah, more betting.

“So, ‘King’, what do you wish of your subjects tonight?”  Val was smiling up at me.  She’d lost that off-putting frown, and now I could actually believe that she wanted exactly this.  That alone brought me happiness.

“Let me watch for a bit.  I want to see what I’ve been missing.”

She did exactly that.  She ducked out of the way so I could watch the whole of the revel.  The last of the sunlight had faded, leaving everyone illuminated by the bonfire.  What I could see, though, made me wish I’d been here since I’d first figured out what to do with that anatomy south of my belly.

It wasn’t porn.  I’d seen porn, and it always felt fake.  I knew that they were putting on a show for me, and that alone ruined it.  Here, it wasn’t a show.  Everyone was out for their own enjoyment, and didn’t seem to care who was watching.  There were no awkward poses just so we could see the action.  Most of what I could see was just two bodies grinding against each other with the barest hint of pink flesh here and there.  Honestly, that was hotter.  My imagination was working overtime, giving me graphic details of what exactly was fitting where.

Which was all derailed as soon as Val tugged on my cock and slid her muzzle down over it.  It wasn’t the first time I’d had sex.  I’d taken care of that years ago, probably too early for it to have made much sense.  But this was my first time with the pack—with anyone in the pack, and definitely my first while all wolfy.

She felt wonderful.  Her tongue was a bit rough, but so hot and wet, especially compared to the mid-autumn air after sun down.  It pushed at my tip, rubbing it against the washboard roof of her mouth as she slurped.  I let her blow me, eyes glued to the rest of the pack as I let the sensation of her hot tongue wash over me.

The little clumps had dispersed and new ones had formed.  A four-legged wolf was licking at Tony.  It wasn’t golden, so it wasn’t Jason.  I didn’t recognize who it was, but when they turned to the side I could tell it was female.  Tony grabbed her tail and pulled her backwards until his cock disappeared from sight. To the side I caught Jason—mostly human except for a golden pelt—stroking himself as he watched.  To the left, there was a couple slowly humping against each other.  To the right, a feral mating turned rump-to rump.  It wasn’t that everyone was fucking, but that wherever I look there was someone with exposed flesh.  It was hot.  It was uninhibited and exactly what my wolf mind told me was natural when I had a human libido.  It was-

Oh, it was amazing when a second tongue joined Val’s.  Then someone licked my sack.  I glanced down to see Anya, Liz, and Val all going at me.  One hot muzzle I could manage without blowing too quickly, but three?  With all the sensory input, I only lasted a few more seconds.  Val pulled back when she felt me throb the first time, so all three of them could lap at my tip as I sprayed.  Val got the most of it, though by most I meant the most of it was covering her muzzle.

It was an electric feeling, firing off in full view of the pack.  At the back of my mind, I could feel people watching me, just like I was watching them.  I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there.  I wanted to give them a good show, just like the fight before.  It was a mark of pride.  When all the human taboos are gone, I could build my reputation on how long I lasted, or which girls I was seen fucking, or how far I shot or how messy I got Val’s muzzle.  It sounds lewd—and I guess it is—but we were dogs.  It’s not so bad when you have the mindset of a wolf.

Val wanted more, and so did I.  She stood, still dripping from the muzzle, and dropped to all fours by the fire.  She got a few catcalls, and one of the wolves warming his pelt leaned up and licked her swollen vulva.  It occurred to me that he’d probably fucked her before.  Hell, any of them could have.  She’d been going to these revelries for a year.  Had that wolf been under her tail?  I imagined him mounting up and slipping in—then bouncing his hips off of hers by the fire light.  It had me hard again by the time I stood and followed her.  He made way, and I knelt behind Val.

She was eager.  I could tell by the way she pushed back before I’d even touched her.  She wanted me inside her.  That was enough.  I felt that glow burn bright again, and I knew that she didn’t just want me, she wanted me.  She didn’t just want to be filled, she wanted it to be me who filled her.  That meant something.  In a pack that was as free with favors as ours, that meant something.

So while I let her feel my tip, rubbing it up and down against her sex, I didn’t thrust.  When she pushed back, I pulled back.  She let out a growl, and I reached forward and pinned her head to the ground.  “Tell me you want it.”

“I want it.”  It was just simple parroting.

“No, Val.  Tell me you want it from me!”

She hesitated.  “Jay, I…”

“Tell me, Val.”

“Yes, Jay!  Fuck.  I was afraid, Jay.  That’s why.  Afraid I’d treated you like shit all that time you were following me around, and that you’d hate me for it, okay?”

I paused.  “But you know I couldn’t.”

“I know, I just…  Jay, come on.  Fuck me.  I want you to fuck me.”

So I did.  I let my tip slip against her lips, and with one smooth thrust I was hilted.  She let out a hiccup as my hips hit hers.  “How many of the pack have fucked you, Val?”

“I don’t know.  Don’t be jealous.  That’s just-”

“Hot.”  I whispered into her ear as I took another hump.  “Needy bitch.”  I felt her shiver, and I ground her head against the dirt as I slapped my hips against hers.

“Yeah.  Some.  Most of them.  Nnnh, Jah, don’t stop that.”

But I did.  I stopped, and slowly—every so slowly—I pulled out.  “But you’re mine tonight.  I beat you fair and square.”

“Yours if you keep fucking me.  Why did you stop?”

“Mine.”  I held her down, and fit my tip to her lips again.  Then I relaxed myself and marked her.

Look, it’s a wolf thing, alright?  I know it sounds sort of strange, but it’s part of who we are.  Mark here, and this is mine.  Mark this, and it’s a message. I was marking her.  Urine splashed from her vulva and spattered her rump.  Then I marked her back and tail.  She let out a hot shiver beneath me, and squirmed as my scent enveloped her.  I marked her muzzle, and she stuck out her tongue to catch a bit of it.  Okay, yeah, that’s even a little strange for wolves, but fuck if it wasn’t hot in a kinky way.

So she liked that?  I let her have it.  I slid back into her heat, and then let myself ‘mark’ again, though by this point it was just a pretense.  It flooded back out around my cock and dribbled down her sex, then pooled beneath us.

And then we were fucking again.  Then sounds (and smells) had drawn a little crowd.  I know what I’d said earlier about being here for my own enjoyment, but I felt like I needed to give a little show.  I pulled back, then let Val have it in one strong thrust.  She yipped, and I felt her squeeze tight around me.  Her legs quivered, and I felt more liquid being forced out around my shaft, wetting both of our crotches.  Did she just cum?  There were murmured curses around me.  Money changed hands.  Looks like I’d won.

“Hey Val.  Go full wolf.”

She looked back sharply at me.  Then I saw her mouth pull up in a little smile.

“Dirty!”  She taunted.

“Mine!  Anyway, king for the night, remember.”  She flipped her tail, then shifted.  She shrank, though most of the excess mass was taken from her legs and arms, which pulled up to fore and hind-legs.  She gave me a coy look and lifted her tail.

I reached out and put my finger against her sex, and she leaned back to take it.  She was going to be tight—a lot tighter than she’d been in were.  I twisted my finger, and she yipped.  Then I curled it, and pulled her back towards me.  With a loud slurp, I let her push my finger free, then replaced it with something a bit thicker.  It took some work, but after a few seconds I was able to fit my tip past her tight sex, and with a gloriously tight sensation, her hot sex slid down around me.

Like this, I properly fucked her.  I was humping to last.  I could have gone like that for hours, but Anya and Liz had to ruin it.  I was halfway through a proper thrust when I felt a fuzzy head slide under my tail and lap at my balls, quickly followed by a second.  I looked back, and both Anya and Liz had gone full wolf too.  They lapped at me, rough tongues rolling across my knot as it banged against Val.  She was pushing back against me, and I was straining at her…

Then with a pop, I felt her stretch to accommodate it.  She gave a soft whine, but I knew she could take it.  If not, she could regenerate it.  Thank small mercies, right?  It was too much.  I pulled at Val’s hips, and  emptied myself into her.  Anya and Liz must have felt me twitching, because they stopped licking and instead crowded at my sides.  I fit my hands beneath their respective tails and slid fingers into them.  I’d never had a proper girlfriend before and tonight I had a harem.

I had planned to wait out the tie, but Val had other plans.  I felt her bulk and shift beneath me, and where one moment I was hunched over a sexy four-legger, in just moments I felt her snatch go liquid—then loose as it shifted around me.  It was a strange sensation, but definitely not an unpleasant one.

She was breathing hard, and pulled herself off of me, followed by a rush of liquid.  “Like that?  Hah!  I didn’t figure you for the kinky type, Jay.”  She looked back over her shoulder and bounced her rump.  I watched her wet sex quiver in reflected firelight.

“I think that for all the time we spend together, you could probably say you barely know me.”

She stayed quiet for a few moments, then nodded, almost sadly.  “Okay.  You’re right, and I’m sorry.  I promise you I’ll fix that, okay?”

“Night’s still not over.”  I said, and she looked up.  The moon was just cresting the horizon.

“Over?  It’s barely even begun.”

So it had.  I had a whole night left to celebrate being the king of the revel.  As the wolves around me coupled in pairs and groups, wagering and pitting their endurance against each other, I grabbed Anya by the tail and pulled her back onto my shaft.  By my side, Val fingered herself as she watched.  I kissed her as I fucked her friend, and she rubbed her cum-stained muzzle against me as she presented herself to another wolf in the pack.  As he mounted up and began to fuck, I figured it’d been worth the anticipation, and worth the blood I’d spilled.  Was it true love?  No.  That’s not how us wolves work.  It was wolf love.