FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

(2)

"Skies a-fucking-bove, --, on top of everything, else, why do you smell like cum?"

We were back in the apartment with Phosphor. My clothes were stained with dirt and semen and most of me had shallow scrapes, bruises, and/or assorted forest floor debris. At least I probably smelled great to the gardener squirrel I lived with. He had bandages wrapped around his chest holding down little anti-scarring pads, but hadn't done anything about the marks on his neck. Seeing that, I felt guilty, proud, partially aroused, ashamed. He hadn't hated all of what I'd done. Just the part where I tried to carve him.

"I, um. Whatever happened to me was hedonic. I jacked off a lot," I answered.

It was five in the morning. That was the only reason we'd been able to sneak Fasted inside without anyone noticing. He was pacing restlessly from room to room, completely in the buff. He'd bolted down a pair of boneless chicken breasts. We'd both been afraid he'd start marking territory and thankfully, enough snarling from me and preoccupation with his meal had convinced him that was an extremely bad idea.

"What's the demon's name? We have to exorcise the rest of it. I have Ghost-be-Gone ™ in the freezer - will that work?" He was still angry. I couldn't believe he was even letting me in the same room as he was, after what I had done, but I was grateful. I felt like I should be treated like as much of an animal as Fasted.

"I doubt it. And that's the thing. I don't know its name. The ink on the page where its name was written is what started all this."

"What do we do with Fasted? Some of it's in him, too, right? You, you're aware enough to deal with it. Fasted's... I don't know. I have no idea what he is, but that stuff in his throat is dangerous. It makes me want to just jump in."

"Me, too." I paused to look at the tuna sandwich Phosphor had put in my hands soon after we'd walked in. It was two of those tiny tins of tuna dumped onto bread with some mayo. Basically the perfect no-effort sandwich. I was hungry. I still hadn't eaten. I was hungry, but I was scared of the feeling of it. What I'd yelled at Phosphor over the phone hadn't been a lie - it had just been a harsh, mean way to tell the truth. I'd wanted to eat him. All of that sensation was gone, now, but the memory of the wolf that had become Fasted sliding down my throat, the badger that had been subsumed into me, the mouse, the demon itself, all entering me, being enveloped, melding into my flesh... I found myself intensely erect.

"Goddammit," I whispered. "My entire... limbic system is broken."

"What? Oh..." He glanced at my tented crotch. "If I leave the room, will you eat? You have to be able to think right now, and you can't without food. Eat something."

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna see if I can convince Fasted to put clothes on. You eat that damned sandwich." God, he was so angry. He was so worried.

"Thanks, Phosphor."

"Thank me by eating it." He chucked my shoulder with a fist and stood up from the kitchen table where we'd been sitting. I looked after him, taking in the gorgeous, orange-yellow-maroon hues that sprawled across his jet black fur. I'd barely noticed when I'd fucked him earlier that night. Everything had just been need. He was beautiful.

"How are you doing? How are you doing this?" I asked quietly.

He turned and looked me in the eye. "I love you, asshole." His voice quavered. "I'm not going to hide it. I'm hurt. I'm still pissed off at you. I'm scared of you and I'm scared for you. I'm scared I'm going to have to call the magic cops and they'll take you away and you'll turn into someone that gets whispered about by librarians. But I do... love you."

My heart throbbed painfully in my chest. "Yeah. I love you, too."

"Eat the fucking sandwich."

"Yeah."

He stepped out. It was like a light flicking on. I crammed food in me so fast I almost choked. I hadn't swallowed the last bite before I was at the fridge to chase it with a quarter gallon of milk. I tore through a half-pound block of cheese, only stopping myself from swallowing it whole by a fraction of a second. I washed down everything with water. My vision went hazy. My limbs trembled. My feet were kind enough to not give out until I'd found my way to the couch. Blessed, sweet unconsciousness greeted me.

--

I woke up to uncomfortably hot, hard weight on top of me. I didn't want to be awake, but we didn't have curtains in the main room that served as kitchen and living room and office.

"Get off," I muttered. Not fully conscious, I rolled, thinking I was just dislodging Phosphor. Instead, there was the sound of flailing, a thump, and a distinctly canine yelp. Lupine, even. "Skies on fire," I swore to stave off the shock.

Phosphor giggled. He was seated at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and his laptop. "You make bizarre and cute go hand in hand in ways I never thought they could," he teased.

"Rnngmmm," I responded in adroit pontification while I considered the shape of the recovering Fasted on the floor. "Coffee."

"Yeah, yeah, I made a pot, Frankenstein. Surprised you're up so early, though."

"Bright." I stood up, only half-stepping on Fasted. He half-yipped and half-growled, stood into a hunched crouch, and stared at his raised hands. I could not imagine his internal workings. Part person, part animal. Scattered memories from my life. Affection and respect for Phosphor was clearly one of them: as though drawn by instinct, he gave me a respectful berth with his head bowed, then walked in a crawling crouch and gently head butted the squirrel's hip in greeting.

"Coffee?" he asked.

Phosphor and I exchanged glances. "Can canids have coffee?"

"Besides that being a great kids' book title, I don't think so. Should I ask Rambo?" A neighboring wolf anthro we sort of knew.

"Do not ask Rambo," he said. "First, Rambo would say canids can drink lighter fluid. Second, he'd want to know why we're asking, and I don't want to explain this."

"Easy enough," I lilted with feigned confidence as I filled a mug cleverly shaped like a buttercup and sat next to him. "We adopted a pet. Who is also an adolescent child, and a me."

"Post-adolescent," corrected Fasted. We both looked at him with fully perked ears. He worked through the mouth sounds again, less concerned with the meaning and more with the polysyllabic word. "Post. Adolescent."

"And also a demon," Phosphor added darkly.

"About that," I mused.

"You're not hunting it down. I'll leave you."

He said it so simply. He'd clearly spent all of the last several hours thinking about it and not sleeping. Maybe the entire past night. He met my eyes and continued.

"It's that easy. A residue of this demon nearly killed both of us and created a new consciousness for whom you - not we, you - are now responsible. Now, if you want to call up the dean or whatever, write a grant, get the cops involved, because I know you care about it and it's for your thesis, great. You'd probably make the news with something like this. 'Ancient demon of blurred lines discovered by grad student'? That's a title of the local front page and definitely the front cover of a journal. But 'grad student goes missing on demon hunt' happens a couple times a year and the only response it gets is 'wow those kids are dumb fucks.'"

I kept his gaze for a while, then said, "Okay. I'll think about it."

There was a beat of silence as his jaw dropped. He was stunned. "You'll think about it?" He sounded like I'd punched him in the gut. His eyes looked so tired.

My jaw got tight. "If you're going to put down an ultimatum like that, you have to be ready for either end of it." I didn't get up, yet. I hadn't actually made a decision. And I wanted my coffee. Fasted started pacing. He could sense the sudden discord.

"That's fair," Phosphor pushed out, breathily. I could see tears forming. He had been up all night worrying about me, and this was my answer. "That's... I mean yeah. I mean. We have to set our boundaries, right?" He had assumed it was an easy decision for me. Him, or a suicide mission based on pride and a hunch.

My throat closed. Why was I doing this, after what he'd just done for me? Because it was my career. It was my life. It wasn't his right to decide how I went about my work, my research, my puzzles. No one bound me. No one told me how to act. I could be anything. I could do anything.

I stood up. "I'm gonna shower. I'm um. Skipping class today, but don't feel like you have to. Sorry about the couch. I'll see if I can clean it up after."

I moved past him with my lips pressed in a thin line. I didn't want to make this choice. I wasn't in a state of mind to make this choice. But my mind was a maelstrom of sudden, rapid fire indignation, perforated pride, and selfishness. I stripped out of my clothes and took sanctuary under the warm spray of water. Showers were always the ideal refreshment. My senses cooled on reflex. The sensations of cleanliness and rejuvenation rippled through me with each stroke of claws that tugged out dirt and dried gyzym.

Phosphor and I didn't have a burning, star-crossed romantic relationship. We liked one another. We were good friends who had gotten closer and slowly gone through all the sportsball metaphors of intimacy. We shared a love of academia and a sense of wonder. If one of us was more dominant or submissive, it never showed for long. We were of an age, of a build, of a station, and on many things, of like mind. Sexually, I liked things rougher than he did; he liked things dirtier than I did. Neither of us were really into sharing, but we both enjoyed making things and doing things for the other.

"We're a good match," came his voice. I peeked out of the shower curtain. There was a tightness in his eyes. I stood in the water and just looked at him. "I know we're young and all, and there are... a dozen more romances we could each have. But I like you. I love you. I mean that."

He was saying all the hardest things. I felt like a coward. Or a child. I wasn't used to us having conversations like this. Our relationship had started and eased along so casually that these real emotions never really came out. I took his hand in mine and held it. I took the other hand and held it. We squeezed hard, but didn't move towards one another.

"Please don't... I will do it. I will leave you if you go after that thing on your own. I'm not going back on what I said. But it'll hurt. It'll hurt so bad."

"Would you go with me?" I asked. I did care about him. I haven't said that enough. I cared about him, to start. After last night, even if I was furious with him for his demand, the breadth of emotion I held for him had amplified over and over itself. This was the loud, opening, incomprehensible love I felt when we went on walks or had romantic sex or in a particularly warm kiss or when he made me coffee. Maybe it was a burning romance. Maybe we didn't say that enough.

"I think so? Holy shit I'm scared, though. I'm not saying yes or no. Not right now."

"I know. We're both tired. It's not fair of me." My thumbs moved across his knuckles. My eyes roved over his body, just taking him in. His expression was cautious, but hopeful. Guarded, but curious. He nodded slowly, then coughed to clear his throat and shook his head to clear his mind.

"Hey use those big burly badger arms and pick me up."

I flushed for several reasons and cracked a smile. "Well, I told you, it all sorta burnt up-"

"Shhhhhhhut up. Please kiss me."

With a bit of graceless struggle - and mostly the simple act of him using his legs - I "lifted" him into the shower and held him against me. We kissed. Our bodies pressed close to one another, closing as much space as possible. I gripped around him as hard as I could and he did the same. Our bodies were both lithe. We twined limbs and tails around one another, wrapped together in a many-limbed embrace. Yes, obviously we both got hard, but more importantly, for several long, necessary, quiet minutes, we just held one another. I gently licked where the marks would, eventually, appear on his neck in the form of faintly discolored fur. He whimpered and gripped tighter, then playfully chomped his enormous squirrel teeth down on my own neck, and I dooked and laughed in response. We had reached some level of harmony again. It wasn't sure to last, but it was good, for now.

And, there were erections to manage. I didn't want to be the first to turn the situation sexual - I felt it wouldn't be right. So, I was pleasantly surprised to feel his fingers wrap around my turgid, pink organ and squeeze. I groaned against his cheek and returned the motion. His was - because of course we paid attention to these things - shorter and broader than mine. I loved gathering the girth of it in my hand, gripping against the belly of it with the base of my thumb, then rubbing that thick digit up towards the tip and rolling the pad of my thumb in circles against his glans. He flexed against my hand and pumped his paw up and down in a reverse grip. Our lips and tongues tended to chins and ears and necks. Keeping my body close to his, I dropped my other hand down to his sack, which was the enormous size due his species and the warming spring weather outside. One testicle filled my hand. I gave it a tug with my other thumb still pressed up near the tip of his cock, he flexed again, and I felt, despite the shower, the slick, warm flow of precum over my paw. I growled through a smile, moved to the other nut, and repeated the motion, with my thumb now swirling against the slick, rubbery flesh of his cock head. My thumb pushed against that pliable tissue just above the rigid shaft beneath, then, with a gasp, I felt the digit slip inside his cock up to the first knuckle.

He groaned, and flexed, and I felt a grip against my thumb before it slipped free. "Are you okay? What was that?" My heart pounded. I was terrified I'd hurt him.

"Do it again," he answered. The hand that wasn't toying with my groin tightened on the back of my neck. "Go deeper. That felt amazing."

"You... you sure?"

He growled, a surprisingly low sound, and pushed at my muzzle with his until I could meet his eyes. "Do it."

Far was it from me to deny him whatever this was. I looked down. He followed my gaze. His cock, which had always been pale pink like the skin under his coat, was inky black. I watched this time as I slid my thumb against the drooling tip of his member, pressed it to his slit, and sank the digit inside as it dilated. "What..." I whispered.

Phosphor's hand on my neck dug claws in. "Deeper," he rasped. The hand on my cock tightened almost painfully. My senses lit up. I wasn't used to him commanding me. I was used to carefully dialing the violence I liked in bed up or down in response to his lower threshold for it, but he was rarely, if ever, demanding. He flexed at the hips, and without my input, his body dragged my thumb down to the second knuckle. I felt peristaltic ripples inside, like a snake swallowing. I watched the skin easily stretch around the invading appendage. The perverse, awful thought that it would swallow the rest of me just as I'd swallowed my meals the previous night washed through my body. He'd be enormous. I'd become something impossible, something wonderful, as part of him...

What had happened to him? That entity had changed us, changed our minds and bodies. I bit my lip to break myself out of what I was thinking. He had grabbed my other wrist and started guiding it to the fat, onyx member. I took a step back. "Phosphor. Wait."

He blinked those black, rodent eyes. He shook his head. "Oh. Oh, wow, --, I didn't..."

"No! It's fine. I just have an idea." In his flash of clarity, his cock had loosened its grip enough to let me free. But I did want to feed it, feed him - just, maybe with not so final an outcome as we'd both been momentarily fixated on. I took my cock in one hand and pushed it down to perpendicular with my body. The weight and girth of his meant it was often at about that angle, anyway. I aligned them tip to tip, with both of us staring in lusty curiosity, then rocked my hips gradually forward.

As hoped, the tip of his member dilated greedily. "Fuck..." I moaned. "Oh, fuck." It was hot. It was a fleshy, muscular, wet, slick glove. I pushed again to sink two more inches of myself into him. We both held our fingers under the belly of that black organ as mine slowly disappeared into it and stretched it liberally.

"D, deeper," he grunted again. "More..." He rocked his hips and swallowed two more inches. The tip of my cock was at the base of the visible extent of his. There's a lot more penis on a man than the part that sticks out from the body, though, and he braced one paw on my arm and yanked with his newfound musculature. The last of my pink cock disappeared, fully enveloped in his. The bizarre muscles swallowed constantly around my member. I shivered with pleasure. He kissed me hotly, hungrily, and began rocking his hips back and forth with fervor. He was half stroking me, half trying to consume me. He raked his claws down my back.

"What... is happening," I managed between whines of pleasure. My toes were already curling and my heel was stamping the ground.

"What's happening is, you're going to give me every drop of stoat cum in those little nuts of yours," he said. He stuck his tongue in my ear. The motion was weird, aggressive, possessive, and set my nerves wild. He liked a little degradation. I usually didn't, but I couldn't deny that the way he was acting was pressing every button I had. I needed to be put down some. It cracked against the shame I'd built up from what I'd done and said to him. He made it something he owned and was making right. "And then," he continued, "I'm going to pump you so full of cum you won't need to eat for a week."

"Fuh, fuh..."

"Say my name." He didn't stop ramming his hips forward. It was like being fucked and sucked off at the same time.

I whined, "Phosphor, fuck, ahhh!!!" I wrapped one leg around the back of his thigh and yanked his hips into me as I came. I wasn't given a single millimeter to buck my hips as he gripped, owned, enveloped my cock with his. I was forced to stand there, blasts of climax pulsating through my body, gripping him with everything I had, as I unleashed orgasm into him. His physiology had obviously changed. He grabbed my wrist again, harshly, and directed it under his nuts. I could feel my essence splashing directly into them. It shouldn't have been possible. I felt them bloat with my seed as I gave more than I knew I could to him. Any extra mass I'd retained from my feasting the previous night became his.

"Mine," he confirmed directly into my ear. "Now let me show you the right way to use it. Turn around."

The vacuum grip on my spent cock lessened enough that I could pull away. He was turning me around to press me against the shower wall. We'd never tried this, but the entire conceit of what had possessed us was to do more. Even so, the thing about shower sex is that it is a logistical nightmare. Finding enough friction in the right places is

FUCK. He wrapped my tail around his arm and yanked up. My claws scrabbled for purchase. They didn't need it - he held me. I felt him swell as he pressed me against the wall and pinned me there. I'd taken that broad cock of his before. It was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing supernatural, but it wasn't an easy fit. I had had to learn how to control the internal musculature, the right times to relax or clench or whatever was needed. This time, I barked in pain when he used the hand on my tail to arrange my ass against his cock, strapped the other arm up across my chest like a seatbelt, and managed to whisper, "Sorry," in my ear before slamming three inches in all at once.

I shouted. It went in smoothly from a sudden flood of precum, but without mercy. He bit behind my ear, set his stance, flexed his cock to spew precum deeper inside me, and thrust again. At our feet, I heard a series of popping, ripping sounds that briefly boggled me before the ordeal of getting split open on my lover's cock occupied the whole of my attention again. He was six inches taller than he had been moments ago. I felt his breath wash down over my head. Six inches taller, and "FUCK, Phos!" at least "phor, fuuuu-huuuck!" four inches longer. I yelled as another two of those rammed into me, he readjusted his grip and his feet again with another series of impacts, he lifted me up onto my toes, and he slammed forward until his hips were flush with mine.

"Skies... skies on fire, what the fuck."

"Don't know, don't care."

"Fuck me."

"That's the plan." He hammered me. His bulk wasn't all muscle - the lithe little squirrel was broader all over. The shower-soaked, warm, soft belly and hard chest covered my back each time he slammed half a foot of fat, demon squirrel cock into me. His nuts swayed and slapped wetly against my thighs.

With our bodies locked together and whatever he was doing to anchor himself against the slick surfaces around us, he could dedicate both arms to keeping me in place. I watched his claws turn black as dragonglass and perforate the wall. He grunted, "Hold on." I complied without thinking. I set my claws in the holes he'd punched. Skies above, it felt good to finally be able to control my own body a little, but it was only a little - most of me was just a weight being bounced on this monster's girth. He repeated the same thing on the other side. I gripped in there, too. "Good," he muttered. "Good fuck toy."

If he'd said it as though he were a person putting me down, devaluing me, anything like that. I'd have stopped him that moment - or tried to. But he said it like an animal reminding us both what I was in that moment. I was his. I was a creature for him to pump full of cum, who was making up for deeds done. I held on, clenched my teeth, and cried out through them as he closed my hips in his hands and started jackhammering my prostate. He fucked, well, like a squirrel.

He came three times before he let me down. He didn't stop thrusting between the first and the second - I only knew from the break in tempo and broad pair of tooth marks he left in my neck. The second, several minutes later, came with series of long, gushing thrusts and another bite, but one that was possessive more than damaging. I whimpered when he did and turned to nuzzle his cheek. He licked my face, held himself full sheathed in me, throbbing a while... then started thrusting again.

"Again?" I gasped.

"Again," he confirmed. The water had gone cold, but his body was warm. This time, it was slower - he was tending to my pleasure as well, and even though I felt spent, I felt him find angles, stroke my insides with affectionate intention, as he rocked his hips over, and over, and over again in the long, rolling, circular motions of controlled, unceasing lovemaking.

"You have me so... fucking pent up... in so many ways," he muttered between panting breaths and firm thrusts. "I n-needed this... there it is, ahhh..." His voice descended into a blissful growl as he pumped up the tempo again to drive himself into a third climax. I felt - I felt - the warmth of his essence suffuse me from the inside. It was many times more than either of us had ever cum - than the vast majority of people had ever cum. I released my death grip from one arm and held one of his with the other. And finally, finally, he let me down.

We both carefully sat down, finding room to do so in the cramped space, with our legs trembling. Well, he sat down. I eased myself into a half-sitting position. The size went out of him like a balloon deflating. Our eyes went to the holes in the linoleum of the floor and the drywall. "Skies almighty," he mumbled. I grinned and laughed breathlessly. He returned it. "So, uh. That's what you were going through, huh?"

"Something like it, yeah." I reached out for his tail. I just wanted to touch some of him.

"I'm, uh. I think I'm sorry. I think we probably shouldn't just... go buck wild every time we get the urge, knowing the source."

"Yeah. Fun as hell, though."

"Accurate," he quipped. "Once, uh. Once we can stand again, we should rinse off. See what Fasted is up to. Eat, like, a lot."

Both of our stomachs growled loudly enough to hear.

--

When we finally disentangled enough and got enough energy to dry off and start making a proper breakfast, we instantly noticed the smell of spray cleaner. We had left Fasted on his own for close to an hour, which in and of itself was deeply concerning.

... and he had used the time to, apparently, make a 1:1 water:vinegar solution, put it in a spray bottle, and start cleaning the variety of stains I'd left on the couch.

"... Fasted?" I asked cautiously. "What, uh. Whatcha doing, there?"

"Omega."

I blinked hard once at the oblique answer, and then instinct-memories that weren't mine fluttered through my mind. A wolf jumping between two who were fighting to land and roll on its back, yipping and wagging its tail. Omegas weren't just the bottom of the pecking order in a pack - they played an extremely important role in defusing fights and diffusing tension. The omega threw itself into fights between pack mates that were getting dangerous and it"lost" those fights. And it would "lose" multiple times, in silly, cub-like ways, to distract the combatants and give them each the sense that they'd beaten something and "won." People did it, too, just in different ways.

I explained it in fewer words to Phosphor, who looked at me strangely, but nodded. Then, I asked the wolf-person, "But how did you know...?"

"Internet. Laptop." I was still bewildered. He had clearly identified 'clean the couch' as an undesirable task that needed doing, that each of us would be ameliorated by seeing done. How he'd managed to successfully read instructions and labels to follow them was beyond me. Then again, canids were known to be highly observant, highly socially cognizant problem solvers.

Phosphor tickled my ribcage. "You spend so much time online, even your instincts know how to do a web search."

"Hey!" I dooked. "Ah, hey. And read, I guess."

"What a helpful little assistant," Phosphor mused.

--

We didn't immediately go to the hot springs where we assumed the rest of the demon would be. Phosphor was still anxious about it. I was, too, though I was more impatient. For one thing, the lingering effects of the demon were stronger than I felt they had a right to be and were too tantalizing and enjoyable to be good to hang onto for long. I wanted to interrogate the thing, even at the known risk of getting in range of its full powers. For another, the longer we were on campus with demon blood inside us, the more likely it was we set off one alarm bell or another. More than that, I knew that part didn't actually bother Phosphor. He wanted to be found out. He wanted to spill the beans to someone so we could get help, so he stalled with classes and extracurriculars for a full week.

Which, of course, left us with the problem of Fasted. Phosphor and I were relatively social folk who liked to have people over for drinks (wet campus) and game nights. We weren't going to be able to explain a child-sized, semi-feral wolf man.

We argued over what to do with him. We both acknowledged that he had a mind and that it was probably equivalent to that of a young teenager, with the caveat that wolves, like many animals, mated basically as soon as they were able to. Phosphor, again, believed we needed to go straight to one authority or another. There was an office of anomalies. There were specialists in monsters, demons, and magical accidents. There were the cops. It wasn't that Phosphor liked authority. It was that he felt it was morally wrong for us to be Fasted's caretakers. We didn't know what we were doing. I argued that they wouldn't, either, and it would be an even bigger shock and even more ruinous to his nascent mind to give him to researchers or the government.

"Isn't there... isn't there that ranch? Over in Yonder?" Phosphor asked.

"It's a six-hour drive, but... yeah." We were both doing various forms of pinching the bridges of our noses in irritated concentration. Fasted was eating some bone-in pork I'd found on sale, which seemed to mollify him after he'd learned we weren't going to let him leave, yet.

"Yeah. Can we do that? Is that a good compromise?"

"I figure it's that or drop him off on a hiking trail and just let him live his life."

"His short, awful life of being hunted down by-"

"We don't need to run that circle again. Sorry."

"Sorry. Okay. Yonder Ranch it is."

Fasted whimpered. He'd finished the pork - wolfed it down, haha - and was cleaning his face while he looked at us. "We're going? Ranch?"

"Yeah," I answered. "I'm sorry this happened to you. The ranch is a commune for a lot of weird people. It's protected."

"You'll come?"

Ah, shit. I'd forgotten I was the alpha, now, and Phosphor was the... co-alpha? He certainly wasn't beta, as he had demonstrated on my rear end. My expression softened. "No. We'll bring you there and leave you there."

He looked back and forth between me and Phosphor. His tail wagged slowly in confusion. "I'll go back outside. Here. Woods. Mate. Visit you."

Phosphor had his hand over his mouth. He murmured, "It hasn't been a day, and this is heartbreaking."

Fasted raised his voice. "I'll stay. Not a ranch. Not away." He shifted from one foot to the other anxiously. He had imprinted on us to some extent. We had become his pack. It made sense. He had left his original one voluntarily. Circumstance had landed him with us.

"You won't be safe," I said. "Someone else will find you. They could hurt you."

"That's always true," he said stubbornly. He yipped and threw his head back as he took a step away. "Wolves die. People die. Hunting, fighting. Get sick, get old."

I looked at Phosphor again. "We should take him with us to the hot springs, when we go. He has a right to see what's there, too."

"--, I swear to everything that could possibly be holy," he growled through clenched teeth. Fasted backed up another step. Even I leaned away from him. I'd pushed too hard, when he'd said he wasn't making a decision about that, yet. "I'm going to class. I've said what I want. It's not what he wants or what you want. I don't think any of us are right, but I have to go experience something normal and I have to sleep and I have to start researching demon bane charms that either one of us can actually afford."

"Alright," I said. I gave his hand a squeeze as he walked by. He forced a smile, then heaved a backpack on his shoulder and closed the door behind him. Fasted froze when the door closed, looked at me, looked back at the door, looked at me again, and trotted towards it. I couldn't help but let out a bitter laugh. The poor thing. I texted Phosphor, "Please come tell Fasted you're coming back. He thinks he made you mad."

I met him at the door and grabbed around his waist to hug him fiercely and press a kiss to his lips. "I lied. Sorta," I mumbled against them.

Tension melted out of him over a few long seconds. "Thank you for lying. Sorta. Is he okay?" He peered past me. Fasted was standing a few feet away and wagging slowly again. "Ah. Hey, I'm coming back." The little wolfman took a few steps on two legs and a few on four and stood up to rub his head against Phosphor's hip. My squirrelman rubbed his ears and smiled. "This is so fucking weird."

"Real big relationship step. Does adopting a feral child usually come before or after getting a house?"

"Shut up." He nipped my lip and disengaged, still smiling. "See you soon."

"See you," I answered.

The door closed. I waited a few moments, then turned to Fasted. "So, I think we just let you out in the woods, but let's make a deal. You know what a deal is?" He cocked his head at me. "A deal is-"

"I know."

He was staring at me oddly. I stared back. My hackles raised. I shouldn't have offered a "deal." I was the alpha. If I was giving him something, maybe I was backing down as alpha. The new, lupine mind that now occupied a corner of mine made me stand up straighter, face him more fully, and start up a low, guttural growl.

He remained stubborn for a few moments before starting to crouch submissively.

"Don't you fucking pee in this house I swear to god."

--

And so, that evening, I carried Fasted in my backpack to the woods behind campus. He had slept through most of daylight, feral wolves being nocturnal and all. Even the anthros typically weren't fully awake before late afternoon. It had given me time to think about what to do and start looking up forms of protection that might help us when we went to investigate the demon.

I gave him a small leather pouch on a shoulder strap I'd bought at a Renaissance festival and a tablet with an Internet connection. Correction - I didn't give them to him. I made him take them along and instructed him to call me on the tablet if something bad happened. It was still daylight, so I made sure I was a solid two hundred feet off the beaten path before unzipping and letting him out.

Honestly, with the lean physique of a young, feral wolf, the casually confident nudity, and the leather accessory, he looked hot. That was obviously an absurd assessment, because he was still basically a child and was half animal, but the thought flickered through my mind.

"Okay, Fasted." I crouched down, but kept myself taller than him so I wouldn't trigger a fight for dominance again. "I'm pretty sure you'll be fine. I am definitely worried. I expect you to return that tablet. Any questions?"

"Can I come back to sleep?"

"Yeah. Just let us know so you can do so stealthily. Lots of lights here, even at night."

"Okay." He shifted from foot to foot and bared his teeth. It was frustration, I was pretty sure. "What am I?"

That question again. I sighed. "I don't know. You're feral, and you're a person. I guess you have to be a person around people and be a wolf around wolves. We have anthro wolf people. In an ideal world, we'd make you friends with some of them, even though they're not feral, but even that isn't... right. I'm worried."

"Worried. I didn't worry before," he said in that not-quite-complete voice. Anxiety isn't for predators. Anxiety is a monkey emotion. A prey emotion. "Only when leaving family. Never about food or where to sleep."

"Yeah. We should probably teach you to meditate."

"Yes."

Every thought from him was a surprise. He must have grabbed the idea of meditating from one of us at some point. I reached out and rubbed his head. "You'll be fine. Hunt well. Don't get hunted."

He wagged more excitedly and pushed his muzzle towards my face to lick it sloppily. "Yes. I. I will see you... in the morning. I'll see you in the morning. For sleep."

"Yeah." Everything had gotten so hard, so quickly. All because I'd picked up a book.