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Brighton 2008

I felt mum's heartbeat. It always felt like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest when she held me like this. Mine was too. Her coat rubbed against my chest, and mine on hers, and I felt her mane falling over my head.

"Please Ryan, don't struggle."

"Mum, please!"

"You heard her colt. She knows what's good for her, even if you don't. Just lie there and take it you piece of shit!"

The wolf's growl filled my ears, and made them flatten against my head.

I wanted to run, but I knew now what happened if I tried. Mum's boyfriend was good at carrying through with his threats. Not that I could do much about what he would do to me, but his threats to take my defiance out on her were very real. I had seen it, worst when he denied her the drugs. She almost died last time, or so it looked, like she had the flu but one that threatened to kill her, vomiting and shitting the bed with no life in her eyes and her coat matted with vomit. And she looked at me so angry, like I had done it to her.

I guess I had.

"Mum, please..."

"Just take it Ryan. Be a good colt. Mommy needs you to just be a good colt..."

"This piece of shit wouldn't know how to be good. That's why he needs this!"

The whip landed on my rump, biting in hard. I tried to protect myself with my tail, and I screamed and struggled a bit, but mum wrapped her arms around my back down near my rump and pulled me tighter and held my tail to one side. The drugs gave her a strength I never could understand. It wasn't just her strength though that held me there, it was the look in her eyes, wild and desperate.

"Just don't struggle honey."

He had tried a whole bunch of things. Coathangers. Electrical wire. A fibreglass flagpole. He had settled on this, a piece of thick flexible hose with notches in it. It killed so bad when it landed and it tore through flesh even under my coat and left welts and blood. I had become used to hiding it, slapping on mum's sanitary pads the last time to soak it up and stop it showing through my shirt when I went to school. If he kept this up though I would have to stay home or someone would find out.

"That's it you weak piece of shit. Just take it Ryan...you take it so well colt."

He mimicked mums voice for that last bit, and then gave a mock whinny. And then he giggled at his own joke, and then the whip landed on my back, right across the shoulders. And again, all over me. And again, over and over.

I screamed, until my throat felt sore from screaming, almost as much as my back and rump. Both felt wet, and in too much pain to take.

"Good colt Ryan."

She stroked my mane. I hated how much I had come to hate that gesture now. Like everything once good in my life, of which there was precious little, mum's boyfriend had polluted even this.

The heart beating in the chest pressed to mine began to beat harder, and I watched her eyes through the tears in my own, blurring the signs I didn't want to see.

Was he going to do that to me again? I felt like I did die last time he did it.

I wondered if there was a threshold beyond which she would fight for me. I had not found it yet, and when this had not brought it out in her, despaired of ever finding it. I knew better than to beg her to make it stop.

My body began to shake, part pain, part fear, as he reached between my legs and mum held me to her tighter, like a doll in the arms of a determined four year old. Like my old toy rabbit, I was losing stuffing at a rate of knots. Limbs and ears next, if I followed the same pattern.

Then he did something neither of us expected. I felt a hand on my penis, wedged between my mum and me, and the rough handling had an effect I feared.

The changes in my body had taken me by surprise. The boys in school with me talked a lot amongst ourselves, but none of us were capable of much. Except for me. I could, and frequently did with little provocation, drop and obtain a passable erection. Even, to my shock, manage an ejaculation, though not much of one. Still, I didn't know much of anything about sex, but I knew this was wrong, amongst the many things I knew that were wrong that nobody should know. So did mum; her eyes were like saucers, feeling my erection against her as her boyfriend took his fun any way he wanted.

"Thinks he's a big shot. A stallion. Don't you colt?"

I clamped my muzzle shut. I knew enough to know no answer could make it any better. He squeezed my cock, and then my scrotum, and I yelled, but I still didn't answer. Unfortunately, I also never lost my hardon.

"Well, he's stallion enough for this mare at least. Go on, take him into you. Make him a stallion, or as much as he can ever be. Go on bitch, or do you want me to hurt you again?"

"No...wait..."

I heard the shock in her voice, and the sudden stiffening of her body. He had found something that even shocked her, when I thought there was nothing left to shock. Maybe enough to fight for me?

I felt the horror begin to suffuse my being slowly, steadily, like a tidalwave rolling inexorably across the ocean towards a beach. Mum saw it too, better than me. She began to shake like I was, and then shake her head. I heard a growl.

"I said, take him into you. Or do you want me to take away your stuff again? A week this time?"

"No, please..."

"Do it bitch."

I felt a new hand on my penis, one that was shaking. I looked into the eyes right in front of me. They were dead. I had killed them after all.

"Ryan, don't fight it, please..."

"Mum, no!"

"Please honey, mummy needs to do this."

My first mare. Warm, wet, so strange. I felt a tingle inside me, but worse. A shame that nothing can wash away. Only one thing feels worse, and I realised that is going to be next.

I felt his hands on my thighs, spreading them, his wolf claws digging into my flesh. I began to struggle but mum held me tight to her, that reserve of strength matched by the determination in her eyes.

"Please Ryan, you know I need you to just be a good colt..."

"No mum! Please, don't let him..."

"Please Ryan."

The pain overwhelmed me as I went slack in her arms, and yet my penis remained stubborn to the last. I blacked out until I felt him over me, his chest on my back, hairs rasping on the wounds left by the whip making me scream again, and I heard mum crying under me. But she kissed me anyway and licked the blood from my back and stroked my mane.

"Good colt..."

A snarl came from behind.

"Not much of a stallion is he. Go on, kiss your mum little bitch. Two bitches; you make a good fucking pair."

"Please Ryan, do this for mummy."

"Hope you enjoy her. This is the only woman you will ever have, worthless piece of shit that you are."

The pain grew as he fucked me, even as other feelings came to me, ones I couldn't understand. And through it all, mum stroked my mane.

"Good colt Ryan. My good colt..."

"Daniel? Daniel?"

I gave a sudden jump, like a horse startled in a paddock. I felt like that horse too and wanted to bolt, my body tense, senses on alert, the acrid taste of adrenaline in my throat. I felt like I was going to be sick.

"Daniel?"

It took me long seconds to work out where I was and what was going on. Too many.

I was standing in the back yard of the house belonging to Mrs Westland. She was one of the customers for my fledgeling business doing household chores around the neighbourhood. An elegant lioness with impeccable taste in clothes and jewellery, and a face devoid of expression for the most part. She was wearing a black dress, and a slight scowl.

Ever since I tried to kill myself a few months ago, I had tried to at least on the surface, appear reformed. A model product of the foster system, and a credit to my foster parents. I had eschewed my nightly excursions to pick up guys to fuck for money in favour of more wholesome pursuits. Well mostly; the siren call proved hard to resist entirely, and my mate from foster care, Clay, needed the money still to feed his heroin habit.

But my forays into the night were more measured now, and less frequent, after a bad experience when I had been drugged and raped by a stranger. Instead, I had gone around Brighton offering my services for general household chores to a market used to paying for everything to be done for them. I could undercut Jim's Mowing and still do ok. The money went mostly to Clay, to feed his heroin habit, but some for me. And I knew my foster parents bathed in the approval of their peers.

"Oh, look at the foster colt the Camerons took in. Dennis...Damien...Daniel? Danny! That's it! He did a wonderful job of the back garden over at the De Bruyn place. And he is so polite! You would never know he was...well..."

Yeah, well.

Always important to know where you stand. When you live by the charity of others. An object, not a subject. But a worthy one, dontcha know? The dowager ladies of Brighton said it was so.

Mrs Westland was one of my clients. They had a big place on the Golden Mile, not far from my foster home, with a big back yard of lawn, camelias, gardenias, pool. I could edge trim, mow, prune, mulch, and be out in an hour if I didn't have to clean the fucking pool. And yet my watch told me I had been here almost two hours.

I didn't know why it happened sometimes. It came to me during the day rarely, but when it did it was disorienting and terrifying partly because I never knew who I might be around, and what I might do. Often I couldn't see why it happened too, presumably a situation or a threat that triggered my mind into reliving all that horror, but while sometimes the triggers were obvious sometimes they eluded post brainsnap analysis like a bad episode of Air Crash Investigations. A smell, that reminded me of him? A word? Or just the feeling of being trapped, alone, frightened, terrified. Lethal, though, when I fought back. I was close to going inside the big house because of it, a tendency to go nuts with my fists and leave a trail of devastation in my wake.

Night was the worst though. At night it came to me in my sleep with a regularity that was worse than the randomness of daylight, the more than a nightmare from which I could not escape, and which prompted my nocturnal expeditions as a means of just never sleeping if I could help it.

Not even my doctors seemed to grasp the sheer horrific potential of the flashbacks. To be suddenly, and completely, transported into the moment of complete helplessness that was my life before I went into care. The pain. The shame. The knowledge of what was to come, and unable to escape.

All senses betrayed me in these moments. I could feel mum's coat on mine, and the hard thrust of her boyfriend into my depths, his tapered wolfcock suddenly thickening as it delved into me. The thud of his knot on my broken hole. Smell her hair, and the goatlike scent of an ice addict on them both. Taste the sweat in my mouth, and the adrenaline. Like now, when I came back to the real world and the here and now, in a back yard in Brighton, a world and five years away from the horror I could not speak of and yet which still owned my mind, and my soul.

"Daniel? Are you all right?"

And here was the homeowner, looking perplexed, and worried.

Am I all right? Fuck, I wondered in what universe she could cope with a truthful answer to that question.

"Yes. Fine. Sorry."

"You finished?"

I looked out at the back yard. It appeared I had, and as memory returned, I knew it was true. I had done all my assigned tasks and spread the mulched branches and the cut grass on the pile behind the Grevilleas to slowly compost along with the carefully recovered kitchen waste. Mrs Westland was big on organic gardening, and recycling.

"Danny, your back..."

I almost jumped again. I had stripped off my top while I worked. It was a warm Saturday afternoon, and the sun felt good on my body. I rarely if ever got to strip off like this even at the beach, but with nobody around, I had become careless. The scars left by mum's boyfriend covered my back in a pattern of shame I didn't want to have to explain, and the worst of them showed through my coat, even though I grew my dark brown hair long.

She reached for me and I felt touch. I recoiled as if from a snake, and she gave a slight start at that. She had touched not one of the whip scars but a patch down near my left bum cheek. I knew it was one of the ones he had burned with a cigarette lighter, at the end, when he was actively trying to kill me and not just destroy me body and soul, and my fur had never grown back there. I was wearing only footy shorts and briefs, and the footy shorts had fallen low on my hips, exposing the patch of scar tissue about the size of a saucer from a girl's toy tea set.

I went to reach for my polo top to find she had it in her other hand. I stood motionless for a moment, my brain thrown by this particular problem. I wanted to snatch if from her hand, but feared the gesture might scare her, so instead I waited, horrified. Her eyes latched on mine, but also roamed. I felt heat rising in my face to my ears, now flattened on my skull. She smiled reassuringly and held out the top, and I put it on with a slight shudder and prepared to go.

"Danny, can I get you a drink? You look hot...I saw...your coat was covered in sweat, it is a hot day. Let me get you a cold drink, please?"

I took one of the stools beside the kitchen bench and drank the soda water with ice like a dutiful colt. I was dutiful. Even mum had to admit that. I had learned it well, and never unlearned even though it almost killed me.

"You are so efficient Danny. I can see now you are built for it though. You horses...and you are a heavy, I can see. A Clyde? I'm sorry, please forgive me, I haven't seen you...with your top off before, so I never knew you looked so...well..."

"Ahhh..." I pleaded with my eyes, and she seemed to give in, a little.

"You looked built just right for a labourer. Have you thought of that for a job once you leave school? Maybe landscape gardening? It is a good steady job..."

Her condescension grated, but I couldn't blame her. Anything more would be a miracle for someone like me. And I could feel it slipping away by the day. My school wanted me to finish up at year eleven and go for an apprenticeship or into the army. I knew I could do more, but lacked the will to fight for it. Or to believe I could truly make it work.

So maybe a labourer wasn't so bad. I had the body for it, at least, as she had seen. A Clyde is built for work, and toil, and to survive the worst. We are hard to kill.

She seemed to realise she had hurt and rushed on, in a hurry to make amends.

"I didn't mean...well, I just meant, you are so much more developed than boys your age, though your breed obviously helps. I can barely believe you are sixteen though. I must admit, I find it hard to see you as a schoolboy Danny, if you can forgive me. You are a lot more mature than the ones who were my son's friends at that age. Come to think of it, you are much more mature than they are now. Even your foster brother. Brad is such a child sometimes, and he and Domenic were such a trial together at sixteen."

"Is Domenic coming home for Christmas?"

She gave me a slightly dark look then. I had just been wanting to change the subject, and Dom was her son, a young lion with a bushy mane he was inordinately proud of and the same age as my eldest foster brother Brad at twenty. I thought it was safe ground, but instead I had managed to throw her into a bad place without realising it. I cursed under my breath as she took a long gulp of Chardonnay. She had taken the bottle out of the fridge when she got my soda water, and it looked like she was already halfway into the bottle. Her face turned even darker, and she showed her incisors without realising it. My fur shot up in response no matter what I intended, and I felt a tingle inside that told me to flee.

She seemed to realise what had happened, my rolling eyes and flat ears and she calmed her face deliberately, replacing the snarl with a sad half-smile. I relaxed, a fraction, but only a fraction.

"Domenic is staying with his friends in Sydney this Christmas. He never comes home these days from university, I guess that is one reason we need you. He used to do the back yard when he was younger, in exchange for his pocket money, but my husband relented and just gave him the money anyway and he stopped doing anything around the house long before he went away to university. He was never as good at it as you are though. He is slack, is Domenic. He would do a half job and take the money and run. You are always conscientious Danny. Everyone says so."

I sipped my water, eyeing her warily. She was fighting something inside, and losing. I could see it written on her face. One consequence of my life was an ability to read people and situations, to see trouble well before it came. Hypervigilance they called it. Even for an equine I was always on guard, always ready for the worst. I called it survival.

Now I saw a breakdown coming at me like a train, as the second half of the bottle of Chardonnay began its journey into a glass. Her voice became a little slurred, a soft purr under the words, and the tone became a touch bitter.

"Mister Westland is away too. He never does anything here anymore either."

I heard the bitterness well, and tried to deflect it with all the futility of the damned.

"He's busy, with his work and all..."

Mister Westland was a lawyer, but not just any lawyer. A barrister, and a silk. He earned $8000 a day and went all over the country.

She looked up at me with a look of infinite patience, like speaking to a particularly dull infant. I hid behind more forelock in embarassment, I couldn't help it.

"Yes Danny, "busy". He is supposed to be doing an arbitration matter in Brisbane. I know, though, that he is doing his instructing solicitor instead. She is a stunner, or so I am told. They are holed up in a mansion in Noosa fucking like teenagers. Our friends all know, and one of them finally told me. How thoughtful of them."

My eyes darted round the room seeking escape. There was none though, as the lost lioness moved in closer with her wine glass swinging in her fingers and the silken tread of a predator closing in on it's prey.

"I bet she is nowhere near as beautiful as you are though, Danny."

"Mrs Westland, I..."

"Please, call me Meghan."

"M...Meghan...I..."

Her fingers found me then. First my forearm, then my bicep under the sleeve of my polo. Slowly sliding over skin. She was careful to keep her claws retracted. The heat built.

"Rumour is you are gay Danny. Oh, don't pull away. These things are talked about in Brighton. But I think a handsome young stud like you could still find it in himself to satisfy a woman in need. What do you think?"

Her hands slid over my thighs. I knew I should run, but I froze. Like I did with mum's boyfriend. Like I always did. The fight or flight reflex found a third setting, freeze. Not a good idea with a predator over me, but it was all I could manage. And her fingers slid inside my shorts, up the legs. And now I felt the claws, rasping through the short hairs of my coat on the inside of my thighs.

"I'm bi..."

"Even better. How many girls have you been with Danny?"

I didn't count my mother. I had compartmentalised that. I guess when you have lost your virginity without consent to your own mother and her boyfriend as a young colt, you can pretty much throw normal out the window, so I decided to rewrite the book. Still, it began way too young, on both counts. I didn't count the subsequent times as rape, even though by the law it often was. I knew the difference, or I thought I did, between what happened with mum and her boyfriend, and what happened when I lost my virginity for real at fourteen to a woman of twenty-five. Time would tell though if those time really were any better, or if I really had much choice in it after all.

"About...about a dozen."

"Experienced too. Tell me Danny...do you think you can do something for me? Can you make me feel like a woman again? Please?"

She took me to her bedroom and made me strip. I saw the hunger in her eyes, and the disquiet. I tried to turn my back so she could not see the damage there, but she noticed. Sensing I was on the brink, she took me into the shower to clean my body of my exertions. In the shower she soaped my body to remove the sweat and grass and dirt, so I would be clean for her when we did it, her paw moving easily over my sheath, soaping and caressing.

I tried to shout it out, but could not.

I would never be clean. I could never be clean again. Not since mum and her boyfriend. All that was left was dirty, diseased, toxic.

But she wanted me anyway, so who was I to argue?

Her hand slid across my back, tracing the outline of the biggest scar. It went right across my shoulder blades, and tingled just so when touched. It tingled now. I shook like a newborn colt.

"Danny...what...how..."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Is this...is this why you went into care?"

Turning I silenced her with a kiss. Her whiskers tickled my muzzle. I always found felines exciting for some reason like that. The differences intrigued me. And the heat with which they took what was theirs. I needed that now. Not this inquisition.

"I don't want to talk about it."

I was, if I may say so, a diligent practitioner by now. With the added benefit of enough SSRI's to take the edge off my ability to cum, stamina was no issue. And I had been taught well by women who knew how to teach a willing colt. I had one desire only after all; to be wanted. And so I was predisposed to please. Like now.

"So beautiful Danny..."

Her words burned into me, her sigh a completion in its own right, at least for me. I could not resist that desire, or the need. And I gave as good as I knew how to give, until she lay spent and content, and I lay beside her with both our coats lathered with sweat and with one need satisfied and others nowhere near. I managed to cum once, almost without feeling it. But that was better than most times.

Lying on my side, contemplating the wall as she rested, I felt her hand again on my back. I tensed but did not withdraw. Something about the gesture felt soothing.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not really. It tingles sometimes, when its touched. Sometimes I feel the pain like I did when I was beaten, but that is not real. It's a flashback. The only real stuff is a slight tingle, and maybe an occasional pins and needles."

Then she shocked me. I felt her muzzle, lips, and tongue, and she kissed along my scar purring as she did it. Now I did react. I moaned, and gasped. She liked that. I knew she liked that.

"Young men. Domenic tore his leg to pieces one day on his bike. He kept pretending it didn't hurt, and when he came back from hospital, he loved showing off his scar. Sign of his masculinity, almost as proud of that as his mane. You should show your body off more Danny. A sign you are indestructible."

"Thanks but no. I'm ok, really."

"Just like Domenic there too. Well, here, let me. Mummy can kiss it better!"

Her lips touched me again, but this time I did recoil. I rolled to face her, and I could see my expression had shocked her. I used my training, from the doctors, to calm. I had felt myself slipping into another one of the flashbacks. I didn't want to think what could have happened if I did.

"Danny, I'm sorry...I didn't know..."

"It's ok. Just...don't say that ok?"

She nodded, and I saw tears at the corners of her eyes. I wiped them away as she ran hands all over my body. That was better.

"Danny, I don't want to make you feel like...well, like your mother..."

"It's ok Meaghan. You are nothing like my mum. Trust me."

That seemed to mollify her, and we fucked twice more, just so I could be sure not to leave her with those thoughts. I knew what was in my mind though. It echoed till I almost went mad.

Yeah, she was in her own way. Like mum.

My name is Ryan Daniel Lawrence, though now Ryan is no more and I use Daniel. A clean slate, when I would never be clean. Polishing a turd, as best I could. But do not be fooled by that appellation into thinking I am a person. I am an object, pure and simple. I have no worth, no virtue, no existence except as that. And occasionally I earn the right to exist by allowing myself to be used.

And for Meghan, as for mum, I was nothing more than that. A means to an end. Just different ends...though in the end, how different, after all? I could not find it in me to blame her. It was what we both wanted, and I deserved no better than that.

Leaving her sleeping with a contented look on her face, I felt my body rebelling as I walked the footpath back to my foster home. I barfed into a hedge, startling the old guy trimming it. He looked about to call the cops and I hurried away, mumbling.

In my pocket I felt the wad of twenties she made me take. I think it made her feel better somehow. Strange, that treating me like a prostitute should make her feel better. I wanted to throw it in the hedge, but I knew it would keep my friend Clay in smack for a week, and that was not to be sneezed at, and after all, I had long since lost the right to be picky about how I felt about this. I had sold my body for money enough times to be honest about what I was. I gritted my teeth and walked on.

================

Kyneton 2020

My boyfriend was being difficult. I hated when he was being difficult, because it was usually due to something I had done and didn't yet know how much I had pissed him off.

He was still beautiful, even after the years we had known each other. A wolf with blonde fur and a perpetual silly grin, he was an optimist was Brad. His positivity in the face of disaster often grated, and never more so than now. On this occasion he was trying to deflect me in ways that were becoming ridiculous.

"Dan, we could go to Castlemaine! You know, I have wanted to go to that Viennese coffee house. It's supposed to be awesome!"

"Brad, for fuck sake. I'm cold, I'm wet, and I'm covered in mud and my mane is all matted and my tail is a mess. I don't want to go to a Viennese coffee house, I want a shower and my own bed."

"I'm sure they have showers in Castlemaine. We could book into an Air BnB. Come on, we were in Covid lockdown so long, I've been dying to get out and about!"

"I know that Brad, but your little camping trip hasn't been a spectacular success. After the fucking gale force winds, the rain, and the way our tent folded like a cheap suit, I've had enough. I want to go home. So that's where I'm going."

I heard his pout without having to see it. I also heard the air of desperation in his voice. That troubled me more than the pout.

"Brad, what is going on? You fucking hate camping. And yet you were all fired up to get out to the falls. What gives?"

"Can't I want some sex in the great outdoors?"

"Yeah, I know you like that. So do I. But that doesn't require us to go camping. I'm fully able to take you into the state forest and find a nice clearing and fuck your brains out with nobody but the wallabies to see. So why camping? Why overnight?"

He wouldn't look at me, just nervously darting his big blue eyes round the place, until we came up to the driveway and I saw a car I didn't recognise under the carport.

"Who...?"

"Just a friend of Kevin's. I'm sure they are out."

He was sounding even more nervous now.

"Kev's car is there too. He had better not be taking a stranger to see Rangi. He doesn't always react well to strangers."

Kevin was our housemate, a cheery soul like Brad, a Doberman whose stubby tail always seemed to be wagging at a hundred miles an hour. He was also our landlord. Best mate from school of my boyfriend, he was a sweet and accommodating guy. We got on great, and he was a good housemate, though like Brad he had no idea about housework. Growing up with a housekeeper meant he never learned basic cooking or laundry. I had to teach them both and do most of it myself, if I wanted to get food and not have my clothes shrunk in the drier or turn pink thanks to shoving his red towels in with my whites.

Kev was not bad around my horse Rangi, but he was no horseman. He couldn't read the signs. It was in the ears, mostly. I could read Rang instinctively now, but Kev had no clue. I didn't want him taking some spoilt Brighton boy like him to see my beautiful horse boy and getting Rang all upset by handling him wrong. And I knew if someone got a hoofing, I would be to blame.

He knew better though, did Kevin. And the moment I opened the door I could tell they were inside, in front of the fire, with the voices I associate with young guys sharing stories and spinning shit. It made me smile, a little nostalgically. Kevin was the same age as Brad at 32, but in a lot of ways still just a big puppy himself, like Brad. I was the old one, at 28. Aged beyond my years.

I aged a couple of extra ones though when I came into the lounge and pulled up short.

Brad managed a gasp behind me. He gripped my shoulder and squeezed. I stood nice and steady. There was nothing else to do really. I wasn't the problem. Or at least, I was the problem, but I didn't get to choose what to do about it. He did.

Kevin and his friend looked up at Brad and me and the conversation died. His friend suddenly scowled, and the temperature went down a dozen degrees in spite of the fire.

"Fucking hell! You...I was told you weren't going to be here!"

The lion was still familiar, his mane still luxuriant, and his face still bore a scowl I remembered well.

Well, now it all made sense. I made a mental note to give an earful to Brad for this little piece of work.

"Hello Domenic. Long time no see."

The only drawback of living with Kevin was the baggage. Kevin was from the same social set and the same neighbourhood as Brad, and therefore, as me at least for that time. When I ended up placed with Brad's family as a foster kid at fifteen, Brighton was a complete unknown to me. I was made to feel like the complete outsider, which in the end I was. They all knew each other, went to the same parties, the same schools. Not Brighton Secondary like me. Brighton Grammar. The difference mattered.

Kevin had been at Brighton Grammar with Brad, and had supported him through coming out in school and the inevitable shit that followed. He had been one of the few to stick up for me too, and invited me to parties even though it made him unpopular. That bought a lot of loyalty from me, and I would always love him for that.

But amongst his best friends, apart from Brad, I had some problems. And the biggest of those was Domenic Westland.

I had fucked his mother four times in all. I kept answering her calls asking me to come round to do some work, but the work she had in mind wasn't on the garden. She paid me well though, very well.

On the last of those occasions, Dom had come home unexpectedly and sprung us. He had managed one punch to my face, which broke my nose but mostly just left me angered, but I stood there and just invited him to take another shot. He declined, but his anger and his hatred had continued I was told even to the present. I had wondered when he would want to come and see Kevin, and what would happen then. It turned out my housemate and boyfriend had cooked up a little scheme and been foiled by the weather.

And now were in it right and proper.

"I can't believe you put up with this piece of shit Kev. He is a flog."

His snarl had a nice deep roar behind it. I could see his claws extended, paws clenching and unclenching. His big brown eyes were wide, and his whiskers quivered. I watched him like an Attenborough special. I tried hard not to do the voice.

"And now the alpha male prepares to attack, to defend his territory, and his primacy..."

Kevin was making conciliatory gestures, his droopy ears and, miraculously, still tail unnerving me slightly. I heard Brad behind me start to rumble deep in his chest, a slight howl that began in the infrasonics. This was about to get ugly. I decided it was time. Well past time.

"Yes Dom, I am all of those things. But I want you to know I am sorry. Really."

"Why the fuck did you do it then? You never explained..."

"Because she wanted me Dom."

He stared wide eyed and shook his head.

"Is that all?"

"It was all I needed Dom. I needed to be needed like I needed to breathe. I'm sorry. But it took two to tango mate."

"You know they got divorced."

I nodded, suddenly sad.

"Yeah. But you know..."

I wanted to tell him all of it, all that his mum told me. But I couldn't do it. Not now. And in the end it didn't matter. I played my part, and now the piper had come a calling.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Fucking useless flog."

I did manage to stand up tall then, and look him in the eye. I had a good few inches on him, to be honest. I was huge even at sixteen, but now I was enormous. Taller than him but a hell of a lot bulkier, my body losing the puppy fat and gaining muscle. He eyed me up, his expression dark, but not charging for now. He knew he was toast if he tried.

"Dom, we need to get over this. For Kevin at least, so he doesn't have this issue every time he sees you. So whatever you feel you need to do, do it. If you need to take another shot, go for it. I wont stop you. But you need to work out whatever you feel about me now."

"Hey! Fuck that! No way..."

I looked at my boyfriend and silenced him with a look. He subsided into mumbling howling fury, staring at Kevin and Dom with equal menace. I knew he had backed off though, and I returned my whole attention to Dom. My ears perked up and forward. I crossed my arms. I set my muzzle hard, green eyes guarded and waited.

"I can't forgive you you shit!"

"Not forgive, but at least get past the point where you cant be in the same building as me without needing to snot me. So what will it be?"

Brad and Kevin finally moved, belatedly. Brad to come in front of me, Kevin to hold onto Dom by the shoulder. I just stared at Dom, sensing his mood. He bunched one hand into a fist, flexing and relaxing as he stared me out and I did the same to him.

"I only got one punch last time, and anyway, I hit the wrong place. Nothing inside your head to hurt."

I did manage a brief smile then.

"Ok. Well, I might have another idea then. Maybe it will do the trick."

I knew Brad would hate me for this, but I had had enough. A means to an end. Always a means to an end.

Brad tried to insist on being in the bedroom, but I ordered him out with a curt command. He saw my face then and knew this was not the time to resist. Later, of course. Later he would give me an earful and more, and he would tell me how stupid and how fucked up I was. As if I needed a lecture on that, but I would let him yell himself to a standstill.

For now though there was something to be sorted, between two males. A price to pay, atonement to be made. And this was as good a way as any.

"You always were a stupidly built shit."

I had my shirt off. I didn't want blood on it if I could help it. He eyed up my chest with a degree of respect.

"Spare me the editorials. Are we doing this or not?"

"Fine."

He hesitated.

"What's wrong?"

"This is so fucking weird."

"Come on. Are you a man or not? I fucked your mum for fuck sake. She loved it too, she came like a firecracker and kept begging for more..."

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

His roar was intensely satisfying, almost as much as the impact of his fist in my guts. Fuck it hurt. He wasn't especially well built even now; his mum had been right there. But he had some strength, and a lot of anger, and I knew how much that could drive you to places unknown. I let out a soft grunt.

"Good. Now keep going till you think its enough."

"You fucking cunt!"

*WHACKKKK!*

Ahhhfuck that hurt so good. Right on my chin, sending the bels ringing well. He followed up with one to the chest and I felt the impact, even a claw digging into flesh.

Pain so beautiful it blossomed like a rose. I took refuge in it, like the arms of a lover. Or a mother. Or both. My mind dissociated, feeling nothing as the ache rang through me like a bell struck by a hammer and he laid into me with all the suppressed ferocity of the last twelve years made flesh and blood.

I didn't realise he had stopped at first, I was too into it, too much enjoying the escape from a really good thrashing. I heard him gasping, for air or something else. Maybe he was crying. I realised I was on the bed, lying prone, having collapsed after he gave up. Then I felt his touch, right on the place his mum had touched, the burn mark above my left arse cheek. His hand slid up over scars round and lateral, burn and whip, and his fingers trembled.

"What the fuck..."

I heard yelling from the door, and Brad burst in., finally breaking down the lock. I saw Kevin behind him, his eyes dark too.

"Enough!"

My boy had found steel. His mouth was bared in a wolf snarl, teeth showing. Dom looked at me, then up to Brad, and back to me.

"Yeah. Enough."

When Dom walked out Brad closed the door, still shaking, and lay on the bed cuddling me, with towels and ice.

"Why Dan? Why did you..."

The easiest questions are always the hardest for me. What? Why? How? Sometimes it was because I blanked out in the doing, and so none of those things were available to my conscious mind.

Sometimes it was because my motivation was a mystery even to me. Like now. Oh, I knew the ostensible reason. But inside, truly? Fucked if I knew.

So Brad would get the bit I could understand, and the rest could come later.

I spat blood from my muzzle and took some ice to suck on and he applied blessed relief in the same form to my ribs.

"It needed to be done my love. We are living in Kevin's parent's place, lets face it. I can't be a problem for him with one of his best mates..."

"Fuck that! Dom is the problem, not you."

"Yeah, I am Brad. I did it, I can't deny it. Someone needed to be the bigger man, and it was my turn. Hopefully once he is over this it ends the awkwardness between him and Kev. It was just a means to an end, that's all."

"A means to an end? That's all?"

"That's all I am Brad. All I am worth. I'm always the problem, and I don't want to be that here."

He snarled then. I kind of loved it when he did that. His strength could be so erotic, in a way.

"You fucking shit. After all this time, you still come up with that shit? Ahhhhhhhh!"

He hit me in the chest, pummeling me in frustration before he realised what he had done. He looked so lost, and then collapsed beside me crying.

I pulled him into my embrace and kissed, and he melted into my arms and began to moan too.

"You stupid shit..."

"This piece of shit wouldn't know how to be a good colt. That's why he needs this!"

I began to shake now too. I hoped he didn't notice.

"Please Brad. Make me feel good. You know how."

He did, of course. It had become our thing, in recent times. I had become better at bottoming, he better at topping, and he knew how to turn the pain turned to loving, as he gave me what I craved, and what he needed to give. His body an instrument of redemption, mine his to use.

So what if I felt nothing much these days, except the pleasure he could feel. I was just a means to an end. Even for him now, its all I could do.

He stripped me, sighing in shock at the sight of my body, before laying me carefully on my belly with my rump propped up on a pillow. It sounded like Dom had done a number, and he rubbed his fingers over my bruises and then dove in with his muzzle. I sighed a deep sigh of contentment as he licked, his long pink tongue finding my tailhole as his paw played with my tail and lifting it high and drilling in until I was squirming and begging. Begging. Sometimes it was ok after all.

He mounted me from behind, over me, as I lay prone. The penetration felt like coming home, as he slid into me to the knot in one deep long thrust of love. With his body over mine he rocked his hips slowly, gently, and his muzzle found the scar across my shoulder blades. As had become custom, he kissed. Long, soft kisses, right along it as he fucked into me sensually and slow, a very different wolf, making me feel very different.

"I'll kiss it better Dan."

"That's it you weak piece of shit. Just take it Ryan...you take it so well colt."

I shuddered. Alas, I seemed unable to escape the other wolf these days. He seemed to take it as a good sign though, a result of his kiss. So be it. It was better that way.

"So beautiful Dan. I will kiss away the pain, one kiss at a time."

"Good colt Ryan. My good colt..."

I felt my tailhole clench, reflexively, anticipating an unwanted violation instead of the loving fuck from my boyfriend. He moaned, as the sensation felt good for him. He whispered in my ear.

"You are so sexy my love. I love you so much."

When he came it was so intense he collapsed on me panting out of breath. I rolled on my side, holding him inside me, spooned together until his cock softened and left me and he fell into a softly snoring sleep. All the exertions of trying to pitch a tent and set up camp in a fucking gale finally told. He needed to be back here in his own bed too, more than me.

I left him sleeping cuddling a pillow and headed out into the lounge. There was no sign of anyone, but I saw a light on out on the patio. I headed there, not knowing what I would find, to see Dom sitting on an outdoor chair with his muzzle in his paws and several empty beer bottles beside him.

Not knowing exactly why, I headed out. He looked up, and eyed me up, but dropped his head in his paws again and sighed.

"Need another beer?"

"Nah. I'm fucking wasted already."

It looked like it. He should be well gone judging by the number of casualties beside him.

"Kev not here?"

"He left to go for a walk. I told him I needed to think for a bit alone."

"Need me to go?"

"No."

We remained in silence for a long time, watching the bush and the trees moving in the wind. He reached for a cigarette beside him and took a puff. Then he began to speak in a soft voice, as if reluctant.

"Dad got me a spot for work experience in year ten. With a law firm, big one too. They referred a lot of cases to him, so they had a good relationship. I loved it, pretending to be a lawyer and all. I was fifteen, didn't know shit."

"I got to got to a hearing in the Federal Court one day, and in the lunch break, the solicitor from the firm took the client we were representing and our barrister to lunch at a nice restaurant in the city. I got to go along. I felt so mature you can't believe it. Then I saw over on the other side of the restaurant; it was dad, and he was with a mare I knew was one of the pupils in his chambers. Palomino, about twenty-five. Hot as fuck."

I just nodded and sipped beer. He needed to speak. I thought Dom probably needed to speak as much as he needed to smack my face in. So I would meet that need too. After all, I was just the worthless foster kid. He had no face to lose in front of me.

"They were all over each other. Kissing and everything. The solicitor and his barrister with me noticed, and they knew dad, and mum. Both were so fucking embarrassed, wanting to change the subject. I wanted to hide under the table."

"Did he see you?"

"Nah, he was too into her. We had to go soon to get back to court. I didn't say anything, not a thing. Fucking coward or what?"

"You were a kitten mate, it wasn't your responsibility..."

"Yeah, I guess. Truth was, I thought it was. I was fucked up back then, you see. Got into pot badly, shitting around. Brad....well, you know he was a bit wild too. Kev got me through. I owe him everything. But part of me wondered...if I caused it. If dealing with me was what drove them apart. Dad used to say I was driving them both to a heart attack. He meant it too. And mum told me she was ashamed of me. Ashamed."

I swallowed hard. I hated that I felt I needed to console him. But I knew a bit of that.

"Mate, that's shit. They did that to themselves, not you. Blaming you is just not owning their own shit. And you shouldn't do it either."

"I was so angry when I caught you and mum. But part of me was glad. It wasn't my fault. It was yours. That was why I told dad about you two. I wanted it to be your fault, and I wanted to get back at mum."

"Did it help?"

"Not really." He managed a laugh then.

"Are you still angry at me?"

He gave me a sad look and shook his head.

"I'm sorry."

"Well, at least you didn't break my nose this time, so that's an improvement."

He managed a snort.

"Might have broken a knuckle though. Fuck your chin was like a block of granite. And your ribs. I...ahhh....I'm sorry. For going off like that. I know I really had no cause..."

"Mate, we are even, ok?"

He shook his head and looked into my eyes. He still needed something, I could see.

"Did you...enjoy it?"

I gave him a hard look and nodded.

"A bit. I like pain, It helps me to forget."

He shuddered and took another hit on his cigarette.

"You still haven't told me why you did it."

Ahhh now I had to be careful.

How could I go into it all, and would he understand? I barely did myself.

How much it hit me when she told me she wanted to feel like a woman again. I knew what it was to no longer feel like a stallion, and I wanted to feel like one, so much. I heard mum's boyfriend in my mind every time, and felt like I was showing him he was wrong. Wrong.

And in part, how much I wanted someone motherly, to make me feel ok, in the way I had come to associate with a mother. That part of me was so twisted and fucked up, but it was there all the same.

"Hope you enjoy her. This is the only woman you will ever have, worthless piece of shit that you are."

"I told you mate. She wanted me, needed me. She knew...she knew about your dad. She needed to get back at him I guess, and feel ok about herself. And I wanted to give her that. I wanted to be needed, and wanted. We were just two totally lost fucked up souls clinging to each other in the middle of an ocean. I'm sorry, but that is the best I can do. I know I'm worthless, did then, do now. You have no idea what it means for someone to want you, even for just that. I couldn't say no."

He was staring again, and shook his head though his eyes never left me.

"What...what did they do to you? What the fuck happened to you?"

"Mate, I can't..."

"Why are you like this?"

"Just be grateful you will never know Dom."

After a pause he sighed again and spoke.

"Mum asked about you, last time we spoke. I think...well, I think she knew she did something wrong. To you. She isn't one for asking for forgiveness, but I think she would if she had it in her."

"Is she ok?"

"Yeah, moved to Brisbane. Shacked up with a guy my age. So I guess she still likes her toy boys."

We managed a good laugh that went on and ended up in tears. Sometimes that's the best way. Shared vulnerabilities, after all.

"If she asks again, what should I say?"

"Tell her I'm ok Dom. And I didn't go into landscape gardening."

That drew a chuckle, and a nod.

"Fair enough. You fucking horses...you are a lot better built than her toyboy. I will tell her that at least. See if it gets a response."

I left him smoking and sipping beer to return to my wolfboy. He was sitting up in bed drowsily, eyeing me with a wary cast.

"Everything ok?"

"Yeah, me and Dom have kissed and made up. I think its ok now."

He did seem to relax then, though he still eyed me sternly.

"It was still fucking stupid..."

"It's done babe. A means to an end. Mission accomplished. I told you."

He took me in his arms and pressed his nose to mine, though he backed off a little when his cuddle drew a slight gasp. My ribs felt like shit. His eyes were serious though.

"I hope I'm not that for you. Ever."

I settled for misdirection, by kiss. He was a sucker for a kiss.

"No Brad. Never."

After a long, wild fuck in which I managed to actually cum this time and drew a couple of shattering orgasms from my boyfriend, we lay together covered in sweat and I felt him relax into sleep as I lay there watching the ceiling.

I hated lying to him. I seemed to do it all the time these days.

I still knew I was worthless, nothing, useless. Unworthy of his love, and destined to hurt him. I hated that. If I could have gone and not hurt him, I would be gone in a heartbeat. But I knew that did not parse. When I told him each morning this was not my day to die, I knew I didn't really mean it. I really wanted it to be the end. But I knew now, suicide doesn't make the pain go away. It just passes it onto someone else.

While the doctors had given it a name, C-PTSD, knowing what my past had done to me, and how I was broken, didn't help. From everything I had read this wasn't something you got over. At best it was something you survived. The trouble was, I could feel the tank inside me getting low. I had made it this far, to twenty-eight, but I had used up everything I had to get this far, and finally realised it wasn't getting better. There was nothing to top this tank. I was soon to run out of gas.

My name is Ryan Daniel Lawrence, Danny now to everyone, and though now it is long since I used Ryan, he is still there. A clean slate is a myth told to the damned to keep them clinging onto life. I still know I am a not a person and now the realisation was dawning that I may never be, just an object, pure and simple. I still have no worth, no virtue, no existence except as that. But occasionally I earn the right to exist by allowing myself to be used, or to find strength for others, or closure like for Dom. Or love, like for Brad.

I can pretend, to find joy in life, and my supposed accomplishments, when nothing about me will ever be worth anything at all. Even pretend to the wolf I love that his love can save me, when my broken soul feels that's the worst lie of all. But I have no other way for now, and I know that's what he needs to feel, to hope.

But in his way he is a means to an end for me, as I am for him.

I had come precious little distance since I was sixteen, and in many ways I was still the colt Meghan Westland seduced on a September afternoon twelve years ago, just with a million more miles on the clock. But in this I had evolved; I could be honest with myself. As much as I was a means to an end for them, for the Meghan Westlands, or the guys in the tee tree off the beach, or the hookups I turned tricks for male or female, they were a means to an end for me too. A moment of belonging, of validation, in a life of utter worthlessness. My other addiction, and the hardest to break.

I had broken it in the end though, and committed to Brad, but paid a price. For now I had no escape from the nightmares, and nothing to hold onto except a love I increasingly felt unworthy to receive. Even pain didn't cut it anymore, except as a distraction in and of itself. I was beyond redemption for my sins. But I also knew he needed me, and that was the hardest one of all to ignore.

I held him close while I tried not to fall asleep. The flashbacks were coming with avengeance these days. Too many bad things going on, and my mind punished me by throwing me into the flashbacks almost every night, and even during the day sometimes.

"I love you Dan..."

He mumbled in his sleep, muzzle contented as I stroked his headfur. I felt like a heel, but it served its purpose, a means to an end. I knew this would do, until I found a better way, until I maybe found a way to heal against the odds. His love would keep me safe, or as safe as I could ever be, even if it couldn't make me whole.

But now for sleep.

I felt mum's heartbeat. It always felt like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest when she held me like this. Mine was too. Her coat rubbed against my chest, and mine on hers, and I felt her mane falling over my head.

"Please Ryan, don't struggle."

"Mum, please!"

"You heard her colt. She knows what's good for her, even if you don't. Just lie there and take it you piece of shit!