by Harry Nix
Alex let out a breath and tried to get comfortable, but his thoughts continued to chase themselves around. In his hybrid form he could hear everything around him. Nia's soft, slow heartbeat and Juno's. Outside the house he could hear insects and the occasional passing car many streets away.
He rolled over and listened to footsteps, April walking down the corridor and then the slight creak of the back door as she went outside to stand on the grass. She was having trouble sleeping again.
Alex listed to the quiet nighttime noises for a while and sometimes heard the faint chime of April’s magic as she cast unknown spells outside.
Eventually sleep found him, creeping up like a thief and Alex drifted off.
6
Alex woke up in the morning when Nia sat on him, stark naked. He opened his eyes to find Juno was gone and both he and Nia were completely healed from yesterday.
“Good morning,” Alex murmured, his gaze traveling up Nia's body. She was like a work of art. Her flat stomach, the curve of her breast. Her luscious red hair spilled down over her shoulders, matching the color of her lips.
“Good morning Alpha,” Nia said. She was sitting over his hips. During the night he'd shifted back to human form and so his boxer shorts was a barrier between them. Even so, he could feel the heat of Nia's resting against him. She leaned forward and kissed him. She tasted minty fresh.
“No fair, you got up to brush your teeth,” Alex said. Nia sat up and stretched, which in itself was a thing of beauty.
“Someone needs to bring standards to the bedroom,” she said with a cheeky look. Then she placed a finger on his chest. “Now watch and copy if you can.”
She suddenly shifted, but only partially, a tail appearing and two furry ears. Alex felt the tug of it. He always did when he was near Nia and she shifted, that first connection made by their mingled blood calling to blood, pulling on him.
This shift felt weaker but Alex had failed every time so far to do it properly.
He focused on how it felt and then shifted. Just like every other time, he went the whole way, his body growing to just over eight feet, with Nia still resting atop him. Thanks to the shifter charms they'd bought yesterday his boxer shorts vanished and now she was resting against the hard length of him, which in his opinion was a great improvement.
Without saying anything, Nia reached down and slipped him inside her, all the way. Alex let out a breath at the molten heat of her. He expected her to start rocking back and forth, but she just sat perfectly still, resting her hands against his abdomen and looked out at him.
“So, what's on the agenda today? she asked, as though they weren't so intimately connected and she was just asking him about the weather.
Alex went to answer but then Nia squeezed, clenching muscles around him and he let out a soft moan instead.
“Why are you moaning? Do you have a plan for what we can do today?” Nia said. She had a cheeky look on her face as she continued to squeeze rhythmically. Alex opened his eyes and took a breath, but it was hard to concentrate.
“I was thinking… we should see… Howey. He’s completely obsessed… damn… obsessed with war and is a huge history buff,” he managed to say.
“Oh, that does sound like a good idea,” Nia said, continuing to squeeze.
Then she reached down to the bed and picked up her phone that she dropped there, unlocking it and beginning to tap away.
“I did get a message from Juno who said if possible it would be good if you could edit some of the protection rings. She and April have gone out.”
Then she started swiping at a phone, making a big show that she was reading something.
“Hey, look at that, new home approvals are up almost two percent this quarter,” she said. With that she squeezed again in a hypnotic rhythm that was driving Alex crazy. He went to reach for her and she swiftly slapped the back of his hand with the strength that only a wolf girl could summon.
“Ah ah,” she said, waggling a finger at him.
“Oh, look at that. They say that recycling rates have increased across the broader Baxter area,” she said, looking back at her phone.
“This is a dangerous game you're playing,” Alex growled.
Nia looked at him with a puzzled frown.
“I don't know whatever it is you're talking about,” she said. She returned to her phone and continued to squeeze.
Okay, find two of us can play that game Alex thought. The next time she squeezed, Alex tensed himself, moving inside her, keeping the rest of his body still. Nia’s cheeks were already slightly pink but now they turned red and she let out a slight gasp. She looked down at him, her pupils dilated.
She didn't say anything but then squeezed again and in return, he tensed. They continued like this, Nia reading random things, squeezing and tensing until red glimmers began to appear in the air.
Nia seemed surprised when they began to drift towards Alex and settle on his skin.
“So you can absorb them like Juno?” she murmured almost to herself.
Alex didn't answer but tensed again and something in Nia seemed to break. She couldn't hold her pose any longer. She bit her lip and then dropped her phone on the bed, giving up on reciting the world news to Alex.
All of a sudden she started rocking, thrusting hips back and forth, Alex let out a moan at the pure pleasure of it all. The buildup had been intense and he had a slight case of blue balls from yesterday and going down on Juno in Boris’ front seat.
They’d both worked each other up to a peak in the slow stillness of the morning and it wasn't long before Nia was riding him, rocking back and forth like crazy. He finally managed to get his hands to her hips and grasp them.
Using his strength to move her back and forth, Nia lost control completely, shifting to full hybrid state, fur covering her luscious body. Alex could never have known that he would have found a wolf girl so sexy.
Her large breasts were bouncing and her tail swishing. It wasn't long before they both raced for the peak. The red glints of magic were pouring out of the air around them, most of them splashing into Alex, pulled towards him by an unseen current.
Soon, Nia’s rocking reached a crescendo and she let out a moan that was half a howl as she came. Alex soon joined her, the air around them bursting into red as a huge surge of magic was pulled out of it that immediately rushed towards him.
For a few moments, Nia jolted back and forth, enjoying the aftershocks before she collapsed down on his chest, panting like she'd run a marathon as he wrapped his arms around her and held her close, still inside her, still connected.
They lay there like that maybe five minutes more before Nia eventually slipped off him to the side, pulling one of the pillows under her head. He turned to face her, running a hand down her body and thinking that round two needed to start immediately. But then, Nia stroked a hand down the side of his face.
“You still don't remember the first time?” she asked.
Alex shook his head. The blackness of the first shift was still empty, a chasm cut between his current life and his old life. Apart from a fragment of a dream of him killing a boar, Alex still had nothing between blacking out the alleyway and then waking up on the floor of April’s the next morning, looking at a nodding monkey in a beam of sunlight.
“Don't worry, it'll come back eventually,” Nia said, stroking her fingers through his fur. He kissed her. She still tasted minty fresh.
As he came closer she rolled on to her back and pulled him atop her, lifting up her knees. He slid into her easily. Nia moaned as he began moving. Round two was faster and more frenetic than round one; Nia bit him a few times and he bit her in return.
At some point, Nia grabbed one of his hands and held it to her throat, so he could hold her in place.
There was something inside Alex that went wild at it. The dominance of the act, that she was completely vulnerable to him. He clasped his hand around her throat and she let out an urgent moan. There was so much red flying through the air that it
was like someone had thrown glitter into a ceiling fan.
Alex came first this time, closely followed by Nia who was gasping beneath him, holding onto his arm, the one hand around her throat.
This time, Alex couldn’t hold himself in place so he collapsed beside her, the bed giving a warning creek at the weight of him. Alex woke up a short time later and found Nia looking at him, her eyes half-lidded, coming out of sleep herself.
“As the witches say, goddess that was good,” Nia said. He kissed her again before his stomach grumbled, reminding him it was breakfast time. Nia’s did the same a moment later and the two of them laughed.
Feeding two hungry werewolves was a huge task and both of them could be frequently found in the kitchen rummaging in the cupboard like teenagers going through a growth spurt.
Nia kissed Alex and told him she'd make some breakfast so he took himself off to the shower and brushed his teeth afterward. By the time he got to the kitchen, Nia had served up two enormous omelets stuffed with peppers, red onion, some jalapenos, and cheese as well as the last of the bacon they had left. The two of them demolished the breakfast and went back for seconds.
“So, you want to see Howey today?” Nia finally said, gulping down her second orange juice.
Alex nodded, polishing off the last of his omelet “I think so. If he weren’t a computer programmer he would be a historian, specifically focusing on war. He loves all that stuff. I feel like we could do with a bit of outside advice. I obviously can’t tell him about mages and blood golems but maybe he has something useful to tell us.”
“Sounds good to me. Corvus are clearly out looking for us and they must know me because why would they just attack some random werewolf in the street? I left two bodies in that park and the third one got away. They’ve definitely escalated things.”
Alex's glass suddenly shattered in his fist, orange juice splashing across the table as his rage spoke up.
“Dammit,” Alex swore.
Nia put a hand on his arm.
“I'm okay. I'm safe. We’re definitely going to come back at them,” she said.
Alex took a deep breath and let it out, practicing what Nia had taught him. Although he was clearly advanced magically, he was at a disadvantage compared to other werewolves who’d grown up in their natural state their entire lives. They'd had years to deal with the wolf inside them. That mad being of rage and fury that wanted to fight and run and hunt.
Alex had only been a werewolf for weeks now and the pure shocking rage of the beast inside him could rise up faster than he could contain. Thankfully, he hadn't gone wild again, not since that first time out at April's.
It had been close though. On more than one occasion, he’d felt like he’d been inches away from potential disaster.
Alex cleaned up the broken glass and orange juice and then helped Nia clean up the kitchen.
Following Juno's request, they collected the protection rings and together the pair of them went down to the basement room with the house ward batteries.
Alex had been growing stronger magically. He was almost at the point where he could edit a ring on his own. However, he was still under strict instructions not to do so anywhere other than next to the batteries in case something went wrong and it took more mana than he had available.
Alex opened up his spellcasting screen, casting Know Thyself by habit and saw with surprise that the long red bar titled sex magic was now completely full, no doubt as a result of his early morning encounter with Nia.
Juno hadn’t yet taught him a spell to specifically use that mana and had, in fact, told him to leave it alone until she could but he was far too curious to resist a little experimentation.
Was it stronger or weaker than ordinary mana?
He cast the standard Analyze on one of the rings to bring up the compressed gibberish of compiled code. This was a three-charge protection ring. Normally Alex would then cast a charged up version of Analyze on the gibberish to decompile it, so he could edit it.
He wasn’t quite sure how to use the sex magic but he figured that like most things he could direct it with will and intention.
He cast Analyze except this time he concentrated on drawing from the sex magic.
The moment he did, the compressed code exploded open onto another screen. Alex smiled at the ease of it.
When Alex had first seen spell code it had been unreadable to him, filled with strange symbols and sometimes images and even emojis in some cases. Now it was in basic English and getting closer to pure computer code.
His knowledge of it was still deepening and he was beginning to understand the structures and the commands within, although his sample size of code still needed to be far larger.
Alex quickly found the three and changed to a thirty and then there was a jolt as the ring sucked up half of the red bar before closing up. It had taken less than thirty seconds for him to edit the ring and not only that, he was still full to the brim with blue mana and still had half a bar of the so-called sex magic left.
“I'm going to the next one,” he said, dropping the changed ring on the floor.
“Is that dangerous? Didn’t you just use most of your mana?” Nia asked.
Alex shook his head. “You really won't believe this,” he said.
Without waiting for an answer, he repeated his edit on another ring. It took the remainder of the red bar and was complete in under twenty seconds this time.
Alex picked up the ring off the floor and handed the two of them to Nia.
“Two rings changed in about a minute thanks to sex magic,” he said with a grin.
“Amazing!” Nia said and then grabbed him in a hug. Alex kissed her and for a moment the idea crossed his mind to drag her down amongst cushions to see if he could recharge that magic and change more rings, get them all done instantly.
But the day was wearing on and he hadn’t even contacted Howey yet to see whether they could meet up, so he gave Nia passionate kiss instead and reluctantly pulled apart. With that, the two of them went upstairs. From within the safety of the house wards that blocked phone tracking, Alex rang Howey who quickly agreed to meet them at the Grease Trap, happy to hear from Alex again.
They were about to leave the house, Alex's hand on the door handle when an odd feeling washed over him urging caution. He stopped and then stepped back, looking through the curtains of the front window. The instinct to pause served him well as a police car went slowly rolling past with none other than Officer Monroe driving, looking closely at each of the houses in turn.
“That police officer is probably about those dead mages if they were found,” Nia said from beside him.
In preparation for leaving, Alex had already removed the battery and sim card from his phone so he couldn’t be tracked. He quickly went to his laptop in the lounge room and sure enough, there was an article about two dead bodies being found in a local park, the journalist speculating it was the result of gang activity.
“How does the Great Barrier handle this?” Alex asked Nia.
“Depends what this is. I mean, magic rings to a normal are just rings and maybe the mages were dressed in robes but that's easily ignored. You also have to remember a lot of the major enclaves have people in positions of power.”
The two of them returned to the front window and waited for a little while, but didn't see the police car again. Eventually they decided to make a run for it.
Juno and April had taken Boris so they went in the opposite direction from the park until they managed to catch a taxi to take them to the Grease Trap.
7
“What is it called when the small group with barely any resources fights against the larger group who are overwhelming and have a lot of power?” Alex asked Howey as they sat down in the booth at the Grease Trap.
Howey raised his eyebrows at the question. “Asymmetrical warfare is what you're looking for. Is that you want to talk about?”
The waitress came over and handed out menus, promising to return in a minute.
“Let's hypothetically say that a very small group with not many resources is facing off against a large group who have enough money to hire mercenaries, way more weapons, way more people and some unknown agenda to kill the first group. How does the weaker smaller group win that conflict?” Alex asked.
Howey looked at his menu for a moment and then back to Alex.
“Okay, so hypothetically, that small group needs to realize they have two main strategic objectives. Firstly, war is the continuation of politics by other means. So you need to realize it's going to get political.”
“Carl von Clausewitz,” Nia said.
Howey looked at her in surprise. “Yeah, you're right! You into war history too?”
“No, not really, but my dad is. Wasn't it Von Clausewitz who also said to make sure you wrap it before you tap it?” Nia said with a smile.
Howey laughed, which helped take the edge of the strangers he was clearly feeling. The waitress returned and they quickly ordered, Alex and Nia going for the Heart Attack Special again with plenty of sides. Although they’d eaten at home both were hungry again. Once the waitress took the menus away, Howey resumed, falling back into his lecturing.
“So the first strategic objective is psychological not military. You need to intimidate your adversary directly or indirectly. This means fear and terror. That’s either direct use of violence or the threat of it. The reason you do that is to get them to comply with your demands or, and this is the most important one, to impress a wider audience. And this is where it gets political. Because the second strategic objective you want to achieve is that you must win the hearts and minds of those observing the conflict. These are potential supporters, sympathizers, maybe people who might join you. Others who might offer logistical financial support. A smaller group cannot survive or achieve its objectives without that outside support system.”
