Taming the Werewolf - 13
#13 of Taming the Werewolf
Jacob stopped looking for Amanda after two days. He was frantic in the moments after she ran out of the house for his own protection, but assumed that she would come home in the morning. When she didn't, he drove out to the conservation area to go find her. He began to panic when he decided she wasn't there.
Their neighborhood was a fairly developed area. Even with the woods, there weren't that many places where someone could go missing and not be found. That was how he convinced himself that she didn't throw herself off a cliff or run into traffic. Amanda was somewhere, she just wasn't coming home.
Yet, he stopped worrying when he checked with the bank. The charges to their credit card showed where she was.
Jacob drove an hour west of their home to the mountains, where they kept a summer cabin that they hadn't used in almost a year. It was a secluded place they had managed to afford when his publishing business started to really take off. The development had a full-time staff to maintain the grounds and provide concierge to the residents. If someone needed to buy groceries or a fresh change of clothes, there was always someone at the front desk at the management office. Jacob and Amanda also kept a set of important documents for identification and other matters in a safety deposit box at the office, perfect for weather and other emergencies. With the fake rock hiding a key to the front door in the middle of the garden, and it was an ideal place for Amanda to get away on a moment's notice.
He hardly believed Amanda, even as a werewolf, was capable of traversing such a long distance on foot, until he saw her. Two days since the full moon, she was in the summer clothes they kept at their second residence, kneeling down on the soil and planting flowers. As if nothing had happened. She was oblivious to his presence, as he watched from the car, which he parked on the side of the road that had a good view of their property from above.
Then Jacob realized he didn't have a plan for what to do when he got there. What was he supposed to do? Talk it out with Amanda? They had talked it out before. Sketched out an idea to mitigate her lycanthropy. Now that plan was cast aside. She had chosen the werewolf over him. The transformation was too strong, too appealing. She was halfway to tears the last time she felt forced into dialysis. They had tried to compromise, and it resulted in him nearly being bitten. And now, were they supposed to just figure things out? What does a couple try to figure out when one is a werewolf? She wasn't going to listen to reason.
He drove away when she collected her gardening tools and went back inside.
Two days turned into two weeks. Jacob buried himself in his work. His responsibilities to his clients were beginning to pile up in the months when he was tending to his wife's lycanthropy. In a way, it was therapy, a chance to take his mind off their real problems and take a break from the constant dread and fear. He had hoped Amanda had felt the same way. Maybe this was a useful respite for both of them. Leave the werewolf alone as the moon waned, spend some time apart, and catch up with the rest of life.
She seemed to make sure to cover her tracks. Jacob called her work to check on whether she was, in fact, telecommuting while she was recovering from some rare illness that kept her from the office. Withdrawals from the bank and payments for deliveries to the summer home assured him she was supporting herself. By now, this was a separation. An amicable, temporary separation, but a separation, nonetheless.
Jacob called the summer home during a fit of loneliness one evening after work. The phone rang four times before a click indicated Amanda had picked up. There was no answer on the other end. He spoke anyway.
"Come home when you're ready. Call me if you need anything."
By then, the moon had disappeared from the night sky, and had begun to wax again. Jacob began counting down the days to Amanda's next transformation. Three days before the full moon, a terrible idea nagged Jacob about the security cameras they had wired to the Internet and were accessible for viewing from any computer. He didn't want to spy on his wife. He had to trust whatever she decided to do. But he convinced himself that he needed to know Amanda was okay.
The camera feeds were black and white and had no audio, but it had a clear evening view of the backyard garden, illuminated by a porch light the shone all the way to the treeline.
Amanda was sitting on the grass for Jacob to see. He could see her from her side, head tilted upward. She wore a bathrobe to warm herself on a cool night. When he zoomed the camera in for a closer look, the look in her eyes was manic. Wide eyes scanned the view in front of her, like an animal searching for prey. The wolf, rested and strong, was growing in influence over Amanda's body. Underneath her bathrobe, Jacob could see Amanda's shoulders tense and relax each time she inhaled and exhaled sharply.
Her gaze tilted downward and in the distance when an unclear object entered the camera's wide view. Some small animal or another. Whatever it was, it captured Amanda's interest. She leaned forward on her hands to study the creature. Jacob zoomed in again to look at her face, shaped in a growl with her teeth bared at it. Equal parts angry and hungry, Amanda yelped at the animal, making clear the bounds of her territory. Jacob zoomed out to watch the animal dart off in the opposite direction. With the creature gone, Amanda looked skyward and rounded her lips. With no sound, he could only assume her intention was to howl at the moon.
He turned off the computer shortly after that.
When the time came, a month since almost making love to his wife, Jacob returned to the mountains in the late afternoon just before the full moon rose. He debated whether he could just watch the security camera feeds from his smartphone, but a part of him thought he could really be there with his wife so she wouldn't be alone. Ten minutes out from the residence, it dawned on him that they built no restraints for her werewolf form in their second home, and just being with sightlines while she transformed put him in danger, no matter how much she cared for him. He went anyways. At this point, watching her was about making sure she wouldn't do anything to harm herself before the werewolf took over.
His eyes went back and forth between his wife sitting on the porch, fully nude, and the large full moon just beginning to emerge from the horizon. Through a pair of binoculars, he could see Amanda tightly cradling herself, rocking back and forth to soothe herself and brace for what was coming.
The sharpening of her fangs was first, followed by the glowing of her eyes.
"Oh God! Oh God!"
Jacob could hear her scream out loud as she writhed in pain. She fell from the porch onto the grass, rolling herself into a ball and unrolling herself flat onto her back. A dark patch spread from her chest and bloomed upward and outward, quickly enveloping her body. When she was completely hairy, her body expanded and reshaped. With no dialysis to filter out her curse, the werewolf would emerge fully in a manner of minutes. Even from a distance, the transformation remained terrifying to Jacob. But if he had asked Amanda in that moment, he figured she would be torn between fear and ecstasy. Her cries that pierced the nighttime air had shifted several times between pain and pleasure as she transformed.
Amanda snarled so loudly that her growls nearly shook the car window that protected Jacob. She had rolled herself onto her hairy chest and breasts and lifted herself up with her huge, powerful arms. Her face had turned in Jacob's direction now, giving him pause. Underneath her slightly furred face and glowing eyes, a snout began to darken and emerge, stretching her upper jaw until her mouth no longer closed, revealing her perfect white, sharp fangs dripping with saliva.
The woman he loved was gone, if only for the evening. Replaced was a feral creature that knew nothing of humanity. A terrifying beast that knew only of raw, unending pleasure from the bounty of the forest around her.
If she noticed him, she gave no indication. With her nose fully blackened, her transformation completed with a great howl to the moon above. Jacob watched her sniff the air, look in another direction, and run off in search of something to sate her hungers.