by Ava Lore
Night was falling, and soon the moon would rise. Number One felt his thoughts fraying at the edges. He would be lost soon. Totally lost. There was no escape for them.
That didn't mean he was going to stop trying.
He ran on.
The sky grew darker, until at last the sun dipped below the horizon. The clouds obscured it, but he felt it in his blood. The moon was not yet up, but it would be soon. At the edge of his acute hearing, the helicopters still whirred as the wind picked up, presaging a cold front. Gusts of wind bit into him and rattled the trees together, and their pursuers grew closer and closer.
It was useless. Subject Number One slowed, stumbled, came to a stop beneath a tree. On his back, he felt Michelle's query without her having to say a word—why stop? But he wasn't sure he could form words any longer to answer her, and it was pointless to try. Without the strength of the mate bond, he would not have the fortitude to fight or flee. He was exhausted and hadn't eaten in a day. Water from a creek splashed in his stomach, only emphasizing its emptiness. He needed food. He needed rest. Without Michelle's blood, he couldn't go on. And without mating, her blood would have no power.
Strangely, in his chest, he felt a tight knot, a deep, hard ache, and he realized that, for the first time since he first awoke in his cell underground with no memory of the past or who he was, that he wanted to cry.
But in this form there were no tears.
At the realization the lump grew harder, tighter.
"Why did you stop?" his mate demanded from his back. "We have to keep going."
Wearily, he laid down and she made a noise of surprise, slipping from his back and to the ground as he let out a resigned sigh and laid his head awkwardly in his paws. His human torso and still humanoid arms made it difficult, and he felt more out of sorts with his monstrous body than he ever had before.
Their pursuers were closing in. Like villagers with pitchforks, he thought suddenly, and an image flashed across his mind. He didn't know where it had come from, because he couldn't remember ever seeing anything like it, but it didn't matter. The analogy was apt. He closed his eyes.
Michelle's good hand landed on his hunched shoulders. "Get up," she commanded. "I'm not letting you go back to the lab, and I'm sure as hell not going either."
Her words warmed him, but it was too late. Gently he shook his head. "Too late," he managed to grind out.
She made a sound of frustration, compounded by fear and hunger, and then she kicked him in the ribs. It was a light thing without any malice behind it, but it startled him enough that he raised his head. She didn't strike him as the sort of woman who went around kicking people. He looked at her.
She was a mess. Her long, beautiful hair stood out around her head in tangled black waves, like the eddies of a black sea caught in a tide-pool. Her soft brown eyes sparked with anger, and her beautiful, pouting mouth was drawn down and thin. The clothes she wore obscured her slender frame, but he felt her outrage radiating from her as though it were a tangible thing.
She was magnificent.
"Get up," she commanded. "I won't let you give up."
He worked his tongue in his mouth. "Tired," he tried to say, but what came out was a garbled mess, and her face twisted in sadness and frustration.
"Are you okay?" she demanded. "I know the moon is about to rise and it's full... What do you need? How can I help you?"
Her earnestness touched him, but he couldn't ask her to mate with him in this form. He couldn't even speak. She was a human woman, and he was... this.
He had already failed. His mistakes in handling her, in communicating with her had ruined their escape. With a sigh he laid his head back down and shut his eyes again.
"No!" She practically screamed the word. The sound of fabric moving over fabric made his ears prick up, and then she cried out in pain.
Immediately his head was up again, and what he saw shocked him. In the dim twilight she had worked her shirts off over her head, leaving her torso exposed to the chill air, and she winced as she peeled the sleeves from her injured shoulder. Then she untied the scarf she'd wrapped around her wound, and the smell of old, dried blood hit him as she sank down and crawled toward him. "Is it this?" she said. "Do you need to bite me again? Do you need my blood?"
How to tell her they needed to mate first? The mate bond was one that needed to be continually renewed to receive its protections. Any way of telling her he could think of was unbearably crude. He put his ears back against his head and whined.
Without hesitation she reached out and ran her good hand over his head, though it trembled as she began to shiver in the cold. The stroke of her fingers sent a little splash of pleasure cascading out over him, and he rumbled and moaned at her touch.
Her hand stilled. "Mate," she said. "You need to mate again so the blood works. You said that, didn't you? Mate again, give blood, get blood."
One held perfectly motionless under her hand. Had she truly remembered that? In the dimness of twilight, her face was thoughtful. Then she leaned forward and kissed him on the high dome of his canine forehead.
Subject Number One came apart. The sweet grace of her touch moved through him, reviving him, and he whined again as she moved forward, plastering her body against his. "Turn over," she said. "Mate with me."
He did so. His body was now almost entirely wolf, ungainly, weird and alien, and yet she moved her hand over it as she might for any human lover. Blissful heat radiated from her touch as she smoothed her palm down over his still-human chest, stroked his stomach, then moved her hand to his cock, already hardening in anticipation.
Gently she moved its sheath back, exposing the firm pink flesh beneath the fur to her gaze, and he panted with arousal when she didn't even flinch. His arms were useless to hold her, his hand now just paws, but his spine bent and bowed like any male's would as she lowered her head and put her mouth to his cock.
Her lips on him sent fire straight to his balls, and he moaned as she sucked him inside. She had never pleasured a male this way before—he could tell—but she seemed perfectly content to lick and suck him at her leisure, and every strong draw of her mouth on him drove him wild. The blood of his body rushed to his groin as she swirled her tongue around the pointed head of his cock, and when her curious fingers brushed against his balls he snarled his pleasure.
She didn't waste any time. Once she judged him fully erect and ready for her, she reached down and peeled her clothing away. One saw she was shivering in the cold air, and he rolled upright.
"Lay down," she said as she struggled to get her boots off, but he ignored her command. Her chattering teeth were loud in the still, falling night, and the throbbing sound of the helicopters was coming closer. Gently he placed his nose on the back of her neck and breathed warm air over her skin.
"Oh," she said. Her pants were down around her ankles, but that was not a problem. He only wished they had enough time that he could have returned the favor and pleasured her with his mouth as well.
Time was of the essence, however, and her generous offering of her body would not go wasted. Slowly, giving her a few moments to adjust to his weight, he climbed on top of her as she leaned forward, sticking her ass into the air. His cock scraped over the mounds of her ass and probed the sweet, dark valley of it, taking his breath away with thoughts of her tight, sweet body clenched around him. He wanted to reach for her breasts, tangle his hands in her hair, but he had no hands. All that was beyond him now. All he had was his cock, and he prayed she would forgive him for taking her this way as the head of his erection pressed against her sweet, slick entrance and slid inside.
It was like coming home.
She moaned and trembled around him, her sighs of pleasure reaching somewhere deep inside him, into the place where only instinct lived, and his hips picked up a rhythm so primal and necessary that he knew he would never be able to stop until he came inside her.
Her sweet, slick core clenched around him and he thrust and thrust against her ass. B
eneath him she cried out, and it almost sounded like pain, except he was able to discern, within the wordless shriek of desire, the word yes.
"Yes," she said, with each thrust. "Yes, yes, yes..."
Not just submitting to him. Embracing him. Embracing him even as a monster. His heart filled to bursting and he leaned down and licked her injured shoulder, sweetly, softly as his cock mercilessly pounded into her. Above and far away, but getting closer, the helicopters searched for them, but now it was they who were too late. His mate had accepted him and nothing would stand in his way now.
"Please," his mate pleaded beneath him, and he pumped harder as she began to pant her pleasure. Her slick, tight core began to quiver around him, and inwardly he rejoiced. She would know bliss, even if he couldn't give it to her properly, as a man could. She writhed and thrashed beneath him as her inner walls hugged his pounding cock close, drawing him further and further inside, and though their pursuers were closing in, he tried to hold on, tried to keep himself in check as she built toward her release. It was the least he could do for her. The least he could do to repay her generosity.
Under him, she buried her face in the ground, in the fallen leaves, in the coming winter, and sobbed out her ecstasy. "More!" he heard her cry. "More, more!"
He obliged, picking up his pace, though it was pure torture to hold himself back when her sweet core clenched and tightened, and when she came at last, milking his cock with powerful waves of bliss, it was such a relief that he may have sobbed himself.
Inside her, his cock swelled and burst, sending spurts of seed deep into her body, wave after wave as his entire being suddenly seemed to fill up with light. The renewing of the mate bond. The sweetness of her sacrifice. It was all he wanted. All he needed.
She was his.
Even though she had come powerfully with their coupling, Michelle couldn't help but feel the pang of disappointment rise in her as he retreated from her core before the knot at the base of his cock could swell any further and tie them together, leaving them both vulnerable. She felt cold and small when he left her, and when she turned to look at him, she saw only a wolf shape standing there, the light now so dim that he was just a shadow on shadows.
She swallowed, hard, and for a terrible, dizzy moment, she wondered if she weren't insane, if she had dreamed up Subject Number One as some sort of figment of her imagination that made it all right for her to lay with a wolf as she would a man—a desire definitely beyond the pale. Her thighs, slippery with cum, made her stomach turn...
Then she heard the sound of a helicopter approaching, and she knew she wasn't crazy.
Well, not in that way, at least.
Reaching down, she plucked some dried leaves from the ground and began to scrub at her thighs. She only had the one set of clothes, after all, it wouldn't do to make them messy, but before she was able to get very far Subject Number One gently bowled her over with his body and licked it away. The warmth of his tongue bathing her pussy and thighs was enough to turn her on again, but the helicopters were getting closer, and when she was clean he backed off. Sitting up, she pulled her pants on, and then the helicopters were on them, shining their lights into the woods, catching them in their unforgiving spotlights.
Subject Number One stood before her, now completely wolf. He was beautiful. His green eyes shone in the light. She wondered why he wasn't taking her blood, now that he needed it more than ever, but then she realized he was waiting for her to invite him.
She could still turn back. She could turn back to the world of men, and leave this alluring, terrifying reality behind.
But fuck 'em. "Bite me," she said. "I won't let them win."
He dipped his head and padded toward her. This time he was slow when he took her shoulder in his mouth, gentle, but it still hurt like crazy when he scraped away the scab and lapped up her blood. Above them the helicopter floated, and she heard shouts and voices as men slid down long black ropes, through the canopy and into the woods. Subject Number One's tongue probed her broken skin, coaxing more blood from her, and Michelle closed her eyes and bit her lip and hoped it would be over soon.
Then he growled.
The sound scraped over her ears, down her spine to her legs, and they jerked beneath her in an aborted attempt to run. The growl had been so low she almost hadn't even recognized it as such—it was more the sound of some huge thing, thundering toward her. She opened her eyes.
Subject Number One had grown.
No... was growing. Right before her eyes, she saw him stretch and expand, even as the mercenary guards touched down around them. His fur grew as it turned crimson and his sides swelled as though he just kept breathing in and in. The dome of his skull ballooned as he got bigger, like some kind of bad movie effect. But it wasn't a trick. His tongue grew larger, until it lapped over her entire breast, flicking against her with the force of a shove.
With one last lick, she tumbled back into the leaves at the base of the tree where they had stopped, and his huge green eyes pinned her in place.
She knew what he was trying to tell her without any need for words. Stay put.
He didn't have to tell her twice. Rolling over and reaching out, she grabbed her jacket and shirt and pulled them towards her with her good hand, shrugging the jacket around her shivering upper body as Subject Number One—huge now, too big for the tiny space beneath the canopy of branches, larger than a tiger, larger than a bear, as big as an elephant but filled with lupine grace and predatory intent—turned to face their pursuers. His feet thudded against the earth, and though she knew he would never harm his mate Michelle scooted back through the leaves anyway until she hit the trunk of the tree.
Shouts filled the night air around them, the thud of helicopter blades reverberating through her bones and jarring her teeth. Her injured shoulder screamed with pain as she huddled close to the rough trunk, but it was just background noise to the magnificent sight unfolding in front of her.
Slowly, majestically, One plodded toward the mercs. He didn't flinch as they raised their rifles, didn't even slow down as they struck him first with tranquilizer darts, and then with bullets. He simply kept walking as the guns fired.
Some of the men dropped their weapons and ran, while others tried to stand their ground. One man ripped a knife from his belt and charged, shrieking, straight for One's side.
As quick as a viper, One turned and snatched the man from the ground, plucking him up in his massive jaws before jerking his head back and sending him flying through the air. The man would probably not survive the flight, but he could. If he were lucky. She watched, wide-eyed, as One reached out and gently batted the remaining guards away with one enormous paw. They careened backwards, hitting trees and bushes before falling to the ground and laying still, and when their colleagues saw them they turned their tails and ran.
The helicopters in the sky reeled, their lights illuminating the woods so brightly Michelle could hardly bear to look at them. But as soon as the guards were dispatched, One lifted his enormous head to the sky, and let loose a howl.
The world trembled.
It was like nothing she had ever heard before. Like the earth in mourning. Like the dying moan of the sky. The howl reached up and up, beyond the clouds, all the way to the hiding place of the moon. Pressure bore down on her, within her. She was going to disintegrate, was going to fall apart, as she did in his arms, as she did when they mated, but this time it would be real. Her blood would boil, her brain would dissolve, everything would be unmade.
Above them, the helicopters tipped and dived, then skidded off their courses to crash in the trees. Explosions rocked the forest, but even their violence couldn't cut through the sound of the howl.
It went on and on and on.
When it stopped at last, Michelle collapsed into the leaves, panting and half-shocked she was still alive. The forest was catching fire around them, and in the flickering light she saw One turn and pad back to her. He bled from dozens of bullet wounds, but when he held out a
paw to her, dotted and streaming with blood, she understood what he wanted her to do.
Dragging her stunned body upright, she reached out, slathered her palm with his blood, and applied it to her shoulder.
Immediately she felt her body healing. The pain disappeared, and the useless hand in her lap suddenly sprang to life again. In wonder she lifted it to her face and flexed it, but then One's nose—bigger than her entire head—grew close and snuffed at her, and she realized she was still half-naked.
Quickly she reached down and pulled the rest of her clothes on before he scooped her up with his nose and deposited her on his back.
Yellow light filled the night, and he headed straight for it. Dry timber caught, and within seconds they were enveloped in the flames.
Covering his tracks, she realized. A wolf the size of an elephant would leave a trail. But it would be impossible to follow him if their trail burned his footsteps.
Heat buffeted her from every side. For ages Subject Number One ran through Hell itself, but perhaps it was only a few minutes. It felt like forever. And when he finally emerged on the other side, he was no longer the size of an elephant. His ears no longer grazed the treetops, and he crouched down and slunk through the woods, away, away, away.
Michelle clung to him and marveled at his strength, though it was a long time before she was able to relax. They weren't being followed.
They had done it.
Chapter Nine
Subject Number One finally stopped when they reached a lake with fine cottages clustered on its shores like flocks of contented ducks. His mate slid from his back and tried the doors herself until she found one with a suspicious-looking rock in the front yard which turned out to be made of plastic and yielded a key. The blood-bond was subsiding and One felt his body shrinking to normal size, but he still could not fit through the door. Michelle gave him a scratch behind the ears and went inside.
One shuffled off and hid himself in the shadow of a tree arching over the garage. His keen ears picked up the sound of running water from inside the cottage, but when his mate came to the door she was shivering violently.
