FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The idea of werewolves celebrating Christmas is, perhaps, a little silly to those who aren't one. Why would a wolf celebrate a holiday, much less one we have no real connection to? Christmas itself is certainly a Christian invention, and beasts like us had little place in any of the bigger religions. Most didn't even know we existed, ruling the entire fusion of man and wolf as a pagan, or even delusional, superstition. The few who did know of us, hunted us for much the same reason. We were a leftover from the old times when man and beast were less distinguished, our spirits interchangeable, the old gods fusing them into one body when they felt particularly inspired. Luna, the moon, was our central goddess, and she had nothing to do with human holidays. She had none, or countless ones depending on how you saw it; every hour spent hunting was our work week, and every hour resting was a holiday.

So why was I here, then, drudging through the deep snow in the middle of the coldest damn winter - a fimbulwinter, if you will - looking for a suitable tree? Well, many forget that we're still half human. Half the time, at any rate. It's an easy thing to forget with how common humans are. If one has something extraordinary next to something mundane, the mundane is overlooked as if it was invisible. The wolf half of me cared little for Christmas, but the human side liked those traditions, and the other wasn't exactly opposed to it. Not that I had two personalities, you understand, but I had two sets of priorities, two sets of instincts, and sometimes, they conflicted. Not in this case. Sure, getting and decorating a tree was a waste of energy, but there'd be a feast, too. The beast liked that. After convincing my entire tribe to do this, at least once, they'd of course delegated me for the most boring part of it, while the rest went hunting for food and "gifts", god only knows what those would be, but in a way I was looking forward to it regardless.

I could feel my breath freezing my whiskers solid, forming tiny icicles on my chin. At least the darkness held no sway over me like it did the humans. The night was clear as day, even deep in the forest. There was nothing to be afraid of. A bear, a temporary annoyance that soon became food. A human hunter, a soon-to-be brother in beasthood. Or food, depending on how they behaved. A perilous pitfall- ow, fuck.

I'd stubbed my toe on a rock beneath the snow. An instinctive growl-yelp escaped my muzzle. It wouldn't really do any damage, but the pain was certainly there. Well, there were no existential threats. There were plenty of annoying ones, though. The pain soon subsided and I kept on wading through the almost knee-high veritable _dunes_left here by yesterday's blizzard. It was a fool's errand, really, because finding a good tree would be difficult at the very best.

An owl's hoot echoed through the night. Damn those things too, their ghastly visages still scared me occasionally when I wasn't expecting them. Animals didn't like things that puffed up and looked far larger than they were, not when relaxed. Sure, if I entered a rage there was nothing that inspired fear in me, but merely shifted like this I was a relatively calm wolf. Half-wolf. Werewolf. You know how that goes. Everyone thinks we're always raging, but we're not, only when provoked by something. A scent, a sound, a sensation.

I decided to follow the owl's ghastly vocalizations. It'd be an easy dinner; I was actually prepared for it, and they were too dumb to fly away immediately, instead relying on their great poofed-up size to scare away predators. That wasn't going to work with me. Thinking about roasted - or perhaps even raw - drumsticks, wings, and breasts distracted me from my task. I hadn't eaten for a while. I was hardly starving yet, but... well, they say you're hungry like a wolf for a reason. Then again, they also say owls are wise, and they absolutely aren't. At least not the typical ones. Of course, this was not what it seemed, but I wouldn't figure that out until later.

So, I was there chasing the owl without ever having seen it when I ran into the most perfect spruce I'd ever seen. Most perfect being relative, at least it was the best I'd seen outside of television programs as a kid, you know, before the First Shift. It was almost perfectly illuminated by the moonlight, as if Luna herself was telling me to take it. For a moment, I forgot just how cold I was and just stood there, staring at the tree and past it into the wilderness, the glimmering stars above the mountains and valleys of the forest. I thought about all the childhood winters I'd done the same thing with my parents. This time, though, I wouldn't need an axe.

I dug my claws into the very base of spruce and yanked with all my might. The tree came loose and I crashed backwards into the snow, managing to keep my hold on the trunk. Perfect. I couldn't wait to rub this into everyone's faces. It was perfect, disregarding the splintered trunk. They'd have to admit it was a good idea. Plus once Christmas was over, we'd burn it for heat. Now, there was only one thing missing; decoration. We didn't exactly have any ornaments laying around, but I figured some chunks of meat would be a festive red. Maybe some bone charms from the shamans. Yeah, that'd be good. I hoisted that platonic ideal of a damn Christmas tree onto my shoulder, and set off towards our camp.

I just hoped that the hunters, and Grey in particular, found something good. I had a pretty good idea of what gift I'd give him.

...yeah, Sharp can go fuck himself with the Christmas thing. Jesus didn't exist and God certainly never has. Santa doesn't exist, you can't wish upon stars, there ain't even any abominable snowmen or those other big monkeys they always talk about in these mountains. I'm still sad about the last one, because hunting those fuckers would've been amazing. But no, as it turns out, it's just us. Some other were-types too and that's it, y'all, have a merry Christmas. So, given that all of that was bullshit, why was I even out hunting for meat? Well, a feast's a feast, yes? As long as we didn't have to pretend like it meant anything but filling our bellies and maybe a hot fuckin' orgy, I was all in on that. Something to make me feel good for a moment. Sharp did have a pretty tasty ass, right up there with venison. If only. Wolves were mostly monogamous, and I was a lone wolf. Don't get me wrong, I loved solitude and only stuck with the pack for easier food - and maybe for Sharp, even though nothing would ever come of that. At least he was pretty good eye candy, with his slender but tough as nails frame, his bushy tail, those shapely triangular ears. And yeah, the tight ass. That was fucking great. But yeah, it wouldn't lead to nothing for me. I was too feral, too rough and worn, my ears missing pieces from all the fights I'd been in, my muzzle and chest scarred from wrestling bears and taking human shots for my pack. Didn't mind, not really, or at least that's what I kept telling myself.

No, relationships were nothing for me, no matter how much my cock told me it wanted them. I used to be a hunter, you know. I mean, fuck, I still am, but I used to be a human professional hunter, not a werewolf that hunts because he has to. Well, this was more or less the same thing, right, except I traded the rifles and shotguns for a nose that could pick up any damn scent for miles and miles around. I doubted I'd ever get used to that, and that's because it was goddamn amazing. I could basically see scent trails with my nose, like I'd be able to tell which way whoever left the stink went. It's like trying to explain colors to the colorblind, smells became like, fucking four-dimensional rather than just smells. I knew which way they went, and how long ago too. When I was a human I had clogged sinuses, imagine that.

So what I'm getting at is that it was easy to track animals down, if there were any animals nearby. There were rabbits, which would do in a pinch, but I couldn't smell any deer. Might be hiding, it was too cold to really be outside unless you had unnaturally thick fur like yours truly.

I heard an owl. Not having any better leads, I figured I'd follow it. If nothing else, bird was tastier than rabbit, though Sharp had requested deer in particular. Why was that, anyway? Wasn't bird the traditional Jesus dinner 'round these parts? I doubted I'd find any turkey, but an owl would do in a pinch. I didn't like owls very much. If it decided to just sit there like it had a stick up its ass I could probably just leap and grab it. But as I approached where I'd heard it have its little hoot-party, the disgusting stench of deer suddenly hit my nose. Yeah deer don't smell good, it's just that the meat under the stink is real damn good. It was almost as if the owl was intentionally leading me towards them. I found two pretty large ones hiding huddled between a bunch of trees, illuminated by the moonlight. Now, Luna didn't exist neither, but for anyone a bit duller than me, this was enough to make a believer out of you. Those fuckers almost looked too adorable to kill. Almost, y'know.

A pounce and a couple of bites and swipes later I had two of them to carry home. About enough for our little pack, assuming the others caught anything. Didn't count on it, myself, because I was the only half-decent hunter out of that little bunch of misfits. Sharp, bless his soul, wasn't very sharp when it came to the hunt. He had other strengths, of course. His ass. The whole mystic mumbo-jumbo, he was like Luna's prophet, right? Wasn't something I really believed in, but he gave good advice and led us to where we needed to be, so I let him keep pretending it was that.

I licked the blood off my claws. The deer stench didn't even bother me, not with such a successful hunt behind me. It was time to head home. Looking at the moon, I still had quite a few hours. Everything was great.

So, I got back with the tree and all the pups went absolutely crazy over it, trying to bite it or roll around on it. I had to fend them off and promise them there'd be treats under it for them later. Werewolf pups were weird. Half the time they were children like any other, and the other half of the time they were puppies. Some, like myself, would just be children and grow up normally until our First Shifts. It had to do with our parents. Two werewolves produced a shifting child, one werewolf produced someone like me. In this situation, that meant we had to take care of children _and_puppies, which was a little much. Imagine a puppy with roughly the intelligence of a human child. Being wolves ourselves made it a little easier, but it was still a community effort.

At least they loved digging holes, so I had them dig one - and they did it with the kind of hyperactive enthusiasm only puppies show - for me to slam the tree into. A few dirty little wolves later, I steadied the tree with more dirt, thawed by our bonfire, and then stepped back and admired it. What a beautiful specimen it was, particularly in the combined glow on the fire and the moon. I stood there admiring it when I heard the pups start a howl, subsequently joined by Grey, who just returned from his hunting trip. He was covered in blood that'd apparently been leaking from the two huge deer he was carrying, but he had an enormous grin on his panting face. He slammed the carcasses onto one of the big slabs we sometimes used for eating, particularly in human form, and shooed the hungry pups away.

"Hey, Sharp! Looks like your dumbass holiday is saved," he laughed. A big, hearty belly laugh. He gestured towards his prey.

"You found two? In this weather?" I asked, genuinely impressed.

"Yep. Ace hunter, remember. Well, I mean, I didn't find 'em at first, but some stupid owl ratted them out. Regular fucking Judas, that guy," he grinned, grooming himself. With the rivers frozen, we didn't have much in the way of water - we could melt some snow, but that took forever - but at least wolf tongues were good for rudimentary cleaning. Not as much for kissing. Did he say owl?

"I actually saw an owl as well. That's strange. It basically led me to the tree..." I commented, trailing off as I became lost in thought. Owls were associated with the night, and the night with the moon, Luna. They could well serve as her messengers, although if they did it was nothing she'd ever revealed to us.

Grey guessed what I was pondering. "Well, it ain't Luna," he barked. "But a gen-u-ine Christmas miracle! Next thing you know Santa's gonna come by and..."

I toned him out. Why would Luna choose to help us celebrate this? It didn't really make sense, she wasn't associated with any holidays. It could be a simple blessing, I suppose. A gift for our dedication. Well, hardly Grey's, but maybe the rest of us. We'd hunted in her name, we'd grown our pack, everything that she wanted us to do, so maybe she also wanted us to dedicate our Christmas to her. I didn't really have time to think about it, though. Everyone had gathered around us, and especially the pups were eyeballing the deer carcasses with wide-open eyes and drooling mouths. Some came back with more prey - rabbits, small birds - and others brought shiny objects they'd found previously to decorate the tree with. Despite our lupine natures, there clearly remained enough human memories, some nostalgia for the holidays past, spent with their families fathered around a fireplace. We only had a bonfire, but it was close enough. I gestured towards the pile of meat and some of us went to work flaying and gutting. Myself, I wanted to decorate the tree with the pups.

We had a couple of real ornaments, shiny baubles that seemed to entrance the young ones. Someone had a rather well preserved string of bright red guts. She said she was going to fashion a bowstring out of it, but for now, we draped the branches of our beautiful plant. Our aging shaman brought bones carved with lunar runes, some of which took on an eerie glow in the moonlight. Finally, at the top, we placed an old skull one of us had kept from earlier hunts, for no particular reason. As we stood back to behold our magnificent centrepiece, the pups looking absolutely spellbound, it was finally time to feast. Some of the meat we roasted, some of it we tore into raw, but it was the best we'd eaten in weeks.

So given that Sharp saw that damn owl too, I had to admit I was feeling a little confused about it. What exactly were the fucking chances that both of us would be guided to our particular prizes by weird ass owls? Not big, I'll tell you that much. I still didn't buy into any of it, but on the other hand, if it meant I got to eat a lot of juicy meat, I wasn't exactly opposed to that either. I just didn't like the idea of some god staring over my shoulder all the time. I preferred hunting alone, unlike all the other dogs in the pack. Having others around - no matter how ghostly and invisible - bothered me. It drew my focus away from the hunt, the one thing that kept me going.

Well, we sat down and ate. Reminded me of home, that. Just the whole family getting together and having a good time. Wasn't anything for us wolves, but I guess old habits die hard. We ain't humans anymore but still, watching the pack all actually have fun for once did make my cold, dead heart feel a little warm and fuzzy. What I didn't much like was the damn gift exchange. What did we even have except meat and bones? I guess some of the bitches - and that ain't misogynistic, they're actual bitches - would knit blankets and whatever for these cold ass nights, but I didn't do anything like that. Didn't want nothing either.

So everyone else is trading presents, right, while I sit there like a particularly well-fed fucking Grinch. Now the gifts ain't exactly like they are for humans. A chunk of salted meat. A shiny apple they probably stole from some camp. A ball, like we were actually tame dogs instead of wolves. They all ate it up. Was probably time for me to leave the scene and go murder a bear or something. Then again that'd mean going back into all the snow and hoping for a magic mystery owl to guide me, so I opted to just sit beneath my current favorite tree and ponder the falling snowflakes. Nobody noticed me leave, or so I thought, and so I could simply enjoy the silence. Didn't think of much really. Wasn't much of a thinker. I followed my instincts, right? And right now the instincts told me to relax 'cause my belly was full. A rough mating would've probably done wonders. Maybe I could find a human to-

"Hey, what are you doing here all by yourself?" I heard Sharp's voice call out. I growled without opening my mouth, ending with a creepy cat-like purr in my chest rather than the sound I wanted to make.

"Thinking about our next hunt," I lied. "Ain't gonna be easy finding more prey here until spring."

"With Luna-" he began and then corrected himself, knowing I hated hearing the spiritual shit. "We'll make do. After all, we have the best hunter of any pack in this county, or maybe the entire country," he tried flattering me. It worked, because I'm a dumb idiot who can't resist the ol' "good boy" thing, and that was exactly what he was doing, just using different words. I couldn't react angrily to that, but I just wanted to be left alone. Particularly left alone by_him, '_cause he reminded me of all my human crushes. I was meant to be above all that now. I was old, grizzled, _not human._Those emotions, those memories, were useless, and if Luna existed I resented her for changing me back into human form for the day. I'd long since embraced this new life, y'know?

Sharp sat down next to me on my little patch of dry, dead moss beneath the tree. I sighed. I knew this old song and dance. He wasn't the kinda wolf who'd let go. Particularly when in this form. He might've been the spiritual type but he was fucking tenacious. When he bit into something, he didn't let go.

"Grey, you don't need need to bring any gifts..." he began, and I got up and started walking. Fuck it, if he wanted to do this to me he'd get to join me in the snow and the cold.

I followed Grey, of course. He was such a stubborn mutt, insistent on stewing in his own misery instead of just letting himself have fun, for once. Archetypical tough lone wolf. He wasn't likeable, at least not on the surface. I'd seen newspaper clippings of him before I had my first shift. He held the record for biggest bear felled by a single man, at least in this country. He'd had a bunker prepared for the apocalypse too. Survivalist kind of thing. I didn't fully understand the mentality, but I tried my best. Part of the reason he was so disagreeable was that he wasn't a natural born werewolf like myself and others; he'd been claimed for the pack at a rather old age, as revenge for trying to hunt us. He said it didn't bother him, but it clearly did, and it was why he cultivated his hostile image. He'd never trusted humans, but he couldn't trust his own pack either. Not fully, not truly. I intended to change that. I wanted to at least give him one person he could trust, and seeing if that didn't make him feel better.

I wasn't the leader of the pack. I wasn't an alpha or anything like that. Really, I was the omega, if anything, leading from behind. Guiding us in the right direction with Luna guiding me in turn. If we had a leader, Grey was the closest to it, but we weren't as close as I would've liked; no matter how long he'd led us, he was still a lone wolf at heart. I had been hoping that this celebration would help him finally truly accept us after all these years.

He took the most difficult route he possibly could've, clearly trying to get away from me. First through snow that was almost waist-deep and nearly impossible to wade through, up a slippery cliff wall - not as hard as one might imagine with our claws, but nerve-wracking regardless - and then across a frozen lake with no cover from the freezing winds. I barely managed to keep up, and by the time he finally stopped in a little half-formed cave, I was panting with exhaustion.

"We shouldn't get too far from the pack," I told him, breathlessly. "If we shift back in this kind of weather we're going to die."

"I can make it back. Can you?" he growled, though clearly just as exhausted as I was. At least we had shelter from the wind, shallow as the cave was. For a few minutes, we simply sat there, listening to the howls of what seemed like a storm picking up. No more than an inconvenience right now, but it could become catastrophic. I heard Grey sigh, staring longingly into the wilderness outside, but the snarling expression his face finally relaxed as he realized he wasn't going to get away for once, and he accepted the situation.

I liked being close to him like this. He radiated warmth like a furnace, and so I gradually inched closer until I was leaning into him. I'd be lying if I said it didn't turn me on, too.

"You ran off before I could even give you your gift," I told him.

That initially set him off again. "I don't want any fuckin' gifts, Sharp. I don't believe in any of these human bullshit rituals!" he shouted. "And neither should you, we're not-"

I stood up and turned around, presenting my wagging tail for him, along with the red ribbon tied at the very base of it. He went silent as I raised to give him a better view of my ass. "Are you sure?" I asked, in a teasing tone.

For once, he was lost for words. "You want me to-" he stammered. "To mate-"

It was adorable to hear him taken aback for once, confirming what I'd be suspecting for a while now. I'd caught him eyeing me more than a couple of times. I turned back around and he had his hands on his lap, in a completely uncharacteristic display of bashfulness. I guess it was his southern upbringing, even though we were far from the south now.

"Yes. That's my gift to you. All you have to do is raise my tail and follow your instincts," I told him, in the most seductive tone I could muster. "But I want more th-"

He_pounced_ on top of me with the hungriest expression I'd ever seen from him, bowling me into the snow. He was rock hard already and his cock was pressing against me like a red hot iron despite the coldness all around us, eager or even desperate to be buried inside me.

"You have no idea how long I've wanted this," he growled, jaws gnashing in the air above me. I rolled around and raised my rump for him, presenting myself for mounting. My tail was wagging like crazy, and I couldn't have stopped it even if I wanted to.

Oh, man, when Sharp told me what he'd gotten for me I couldn't fucking think straight. My blood escaped my brain like rats from a sinking ship. Wouldn't need that thing for the next few hours anyway. Yeah, I wanted to fuck him. Had since we first met, and that urge had turned into a minor obsession, like a damn crush. Now I'd always suppressed my gayness when I was a human, right? But wolves didn't judge; you did whatever you fucking felt like, as long as your partner was into it. And from the way Sharp was waggling his ass at me, I'd say he was on board with it.

My cock touched the snow beneath us for a second though, and the instant chill down my spine - and a fear that it'd get stuck like a tongue on a flagpole or something - made me drag him back into the cave by his legs. At least the wind wouldn't be chilling us. I regretted not just hearing him out at the camp, 'cause doing this by a campfire would've been a lot nicer, but god, I did _not_have the patience to walk all the way back there, not with Sharp's rump grinding against my swollen cock. Nope, he was getting mated, knotted and filled right the fuck here. And he seemed to agree with how he was wiggling against me.

I couldn't believe I was actually doing it before I shoved my hips forward and the tip of my cock pressed against his incredibly warm rosebud. That's all it took for instincts to take over entirely, and the next thrusts were like I was a fucking dog, desperately seeking to bury myself inside him while growling like I hadn't had sex in years. Which I hadn't, but that ain't the point. I growled, he yelped, and then I finally got the aim right and buried a good few inches of wolf cock inside him, the slipperiness of preseed helpin' a little bit, but I heard him clench his jaws. Took every damn ounce of my willpower to hold still for just a few moments, to let him adjust, despite my instincts screaming at me to pound his ass. Fuck, the way his ass was clutching at me, the warmth, I could feel myself squirting more precum in there, and I was _drooling_into his neck as he tried his hardest to relax.

"Okay, take me..." he finally groaned, and it might as well have been a choir of angels singing that to me. I hilted myself inside his eager body, biting my lip to stop myself from cumming before my knot had even formed. Fuck me, it's impossible to even begin to describe how pent up I was.

Grey would never admit it but he whimpered with pleasure when he slid his cock into the warm confines of my body. He was leaking his watery canine precum like a faucet, which helped a lot given how thick he was. He wasn't the only one who'd gone without any relief for a while, either, and I wasn't much better off, and once he began thrusting I quickly started leaking with arousal as well, my clear tears of joy dripping and spurting onto the cave floor where they quickly crystallized into ice.

I squeezed around his length, feeling his knot already beginning to swell. It wouldn't take long at all before he was tied with me, and I felt giddy with anticipation about receiving his thick, warm seed. It was cold, after all, though not cold enough to quell the raging fire of arousal in my loins. His hips thumped against my buttocks as his slippery red rocket sunk under my tail again and again. It felt so wonderfully right to have him on top of me, his grizzled and heavy form resting on my back as he rutted me in the proper wolfish way. We'd do it again in human form, that much I knew I wanted. I preferred our canine members, but as humans, sex was more intimate. More passionate, somehow, more loving, even though I knew Grey would still be rough. What I wanted - beyond simply being mated - was to actually be his mate, but I was afraid he'd reject me. A casual mounting, a rut between friends was one thing, but asking a lone wolf like Grey to tie himself to someone, in the figurative sense, was a much tougher thing to request.

Still, the warm fuzziness of being claimed by someone I had these feelings for, it was enough, if only for the moment. I yipped as his knot slammed against my tailhole, demanding entry before it grew too large. I relaxed, pushing back against him to show how much I wanted it. And then I came, without even touching myself, his frantic pounding stoking the fire of my ecstasy into a sudden, consuming conflagration. My seed erupted from my pointed tip and I howled out my release to Luna and anyone else who would hear, and I felt no shame. No, I wanted them to know that Grey was mating with me, that I was his, at least for the moment. I wanted them to smell him on me, and myself on him. The spasms of orgasm wracked my body, months of pent-upness leaving my body in thick spurts, and when it was over, I still had more to give. The thought of how much cum Grey would pump into me kept my cock hard even as my body went limp. Just imagining that thick, sticky warmth seeping into every nook and cranny of my body... I just hoped whatever leaked out when his knot went down wouldn't freeze on me.

I pushed and pushed and finally my damn knot popped past Sharp's abused ring, clenching down again right at the sensitive root of my cock. Immediately, I grew big enough that we'd be stuck here together for a good while. My legs were twitching with how fuckin' good it felt, like I wanted to scratch myself, or my body didn't know what to do. I mean, it did, but it's that nerve thing where if you scratch your bellybutton you feel it in your cock. 'cept for me, I wanted to scratch myself because of my knot being hugged by Sharp's wonderful, wonderful ass.

I'd never been into this whole gay thing back in the days. No, I'd been the opposite, you know, you get like that if you grow up in a small bible thumper town. Becoming a wolf was what it took, and I don't think it's just the instincts either, it's more like I realized that no animal except humans gave a single shit about what I buried my cock into. It felt good, so it was right, as far as I'm concerned. Besides, why else would we have prostates? That, and I preferred the company of Sharp to any ladies I'd ever been with, so it only made sense to me.

Where was I? Oh yeah, so I knotted him, and then promptly fucking exploded inside of him, pumping cum into him like crazy while biting his neck a little too hard. Like, I could feel my own cum sloshing around my cock inside him, trapped by that fat knot, and I just kept pumping, really filling him up with my very essence, marking him and claiming him with each blissful throb.

I yelped when Grey bit my scruff, but the intense sticky warmth erupting into me, blossoming deep inside my body - knowing that he was filling me, seeding me - soothed the pain. There was so much of it too, and I almost wished I was female so he could actually breed me, because Luna knows his body was trying. I just laid there and let him dump his load into me, occasionally lazily clenching on his knot or wagging my ass, both producing adorable growls from him. It felt like it went on forever, and even after he slumped down on top of me, the spurts dying down to a slow oozing that'd continue as long as we were tied, he'd occasionally grunt and throb. With our mating complete, I felt that warm, pink, and fuzzy affection for him radiating through my body instead, a much gentler but yet no less intense sensation of what at least I interpreted as love. Just a desire to be with him, just as we were being together right then and there.

And then, of course, it started to get cold.

"Fuck," Grey mumbled, and I felt him shivering against me, this time not from pleasure but from the constant chill in the air. He pulled at his knot, experimentally, and we both yelped with how much it hurt. We'd be stuck here for... how long? He was the survivalist type and could easily survive this night, but not if he was stuck in one spot.

"I don't suppose you could carry me?" I asked. "It's getting a little bit chilly."

"Maybe," he replied, pausing as he presumably tried to picture the scene in his mind. "No. I ain't that strong."

"Well, how long are we going to...?" I began.

"Twenty minutes? Forty? I dunno, I was pretty damn horny so it could be an hour," he chuckled. At least he was still in a good mood, high on endorphins. "Still feels kinda good actually..." he said, rolling his hips against mine with the tiny little thrusts that his knot would allow.

Then, suddenly, an owl landed in the snow right in front of us.

"Oh, that looks exactly like the fucking owl I saw earlier," Grey exclaimed. "What, you're gonna lead me to a bunch of deer and watch me kill them, and then watch me mate too?"

The owl cocked its head.

"Oh, fuck off with that. The second I'm free I'm going to have drumsticks for dessert if you're still there," Grey growled.

The owl spread out its wings and tailfeathers, as if deliberately trying to provoke my lover. I stayed silent, starting to figure out what it was trying to do.

"I'm going to suck the marrow from your bones like a victory cigar, you fucking-" Grey roared at it. He seemed to be more than a little overloaded on testosterone after finally getting to mount someone, but right now, that was a good thing. I felt his knot deflating inside me, as he was too distract by the owl's provocation to pay attention to my warm body wrapped around him.

The owl seemed to stare right into his eyes with that typical spooky owl gaze. It didn't seem to give a single hoot about his threats. Well, it did hoot, but you know how it goes.

Grey yanked his cock out of me, his knot shrunken enough for it to only sting a little, a fair bit of his seed splashing out of me with it. He leapt over me and towards the owl, which, of course, flew away without looking back.

"That's right, you better-" he shouted, and then realized we were free. His demeanour instantly changed. "Well."

I let him process what just happened as we made our way back to camp. The meat was all gone, but at least there were bones for us to gnaw on. The tree stood as beautiful as ever in the middle, and our packmates gave us knowing glances as we returned. It was a silent, warm Christmas after that next to the fire, with me snuggled up in Grey's rough embrace. Despite being as old as both of us were, we didn't really know how to express our affections verbally. It didn't need saying, though. The silence was plenty enough, and wolves didn't need words to express their mateship. That was the way Grey preferred it anyway, simply being a wolf. He was completely focused on me, as I was on him.

"That was Luna guiding us, you know," I whispered to him.

"Nope. It was a stupid owl that almost became lunch. I'll accept a Christmas miracle, though. Thank you," he replied, his hand sneaking down to my tailbase again, and finding the ribbon still tied to it.

"Oh, looks I forgot to open my gift," he grinned.

At least when we inevitably got stuck together again, it was by a warm fire.