FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"You sure you don't want any more?" He looks over his glasses, across to me, with a combination of concern and insistence. A plate of uneaten steaks occupies the center of the table. He cooked a dozen, but with all the mashed potatoes and bread on the side, we could only down seven between us. Three for him, four for me.

"If I try, I'm going to barf and waste all of it," I reply, jabbing my fork into a glob of fat I trimmed from one of the strips. Dad said the fat is good for energy reserves, but it's the protein that gets you through the change.

He stands and pushes away from the table to gather his dishes. "Well, the rest will go to your mom when she gets back from her spa weekend with Bonnie and Lynn."

"I still don't know why she couldn't just stick around," I say, a little petulantly. She made her reasons clear, and both Dad and I understand them, but I have to prod just a little. Because as much as she wants to complain, she knew about the Wolf before she married Dad. And she knew about the chances of the Wolf with me when she got pregnant.

That's why I'm an only child.

While he runs the hot water, I grab my dishes and walk over next to him by the sink. He clears his throat. "You should know by now that the Wolf isn't her thing. She's okay with it as long as we don't shove it in her face. You're lucky she's letting you stay under her roof." He dips a sponge into the suds and swirls it around, prewashing before the dishwasher.

"Yeah, I know. It's your roof too, though." We'd had a fight about it, Mom and me, about six months ago when I broached the subject of going off my meds.

_But you're so young, you're my baby, you need to go to college.

I'm almost eighteen, I'm not a kid, the Wolf has nothing to do with college, it's one fucking night a month, you're bloody for a lot longer than I'm furry._

I deserved the slap she gave me, and the week-long grounding from Dad. Not for wanting the Wolf, but for disrespecting them both. I don't deny I deserved it.

But then I talked to Dad. More like begged, really. And then Dad talked to Mom. Oh, sure, she cried a little, but when she admitted there hadn't been a single problem with Dad's Wolf in the twenty years of their marriage, she conceded to his pragmatism and said I could give it a chance.

I don't know why she worded it that way. With the Wolf, there's no giving it a chance. You take your meds or you turn, and you turn for good. And with all the regulations, it's easier than ever to go out during the full moon. Just twenty years ago they were shooting us with silver bullets. Now there's pills for that too.

There isn't an "us" yet, though. I have about an hour before there's an "us."

"You're awful quiet, Alan. Don't try and tell me you're not thinking about anything." He knows me too well. "If you have questions--"

"Can we finish the dishes first?" I ask, my attempt at levity an abject failure. Bad time to start getting scared about this.

He holds my eyes as firmly as the soapy glass in his fingers. And he smiles, but it's full of stuff I can't decipher. "Sure, son. We can talk after." His lips go thin, and it doesn't help.

We finish the wash and load the machine as father and son, as buddies, exchanging enough small talk to get things done and nothing more. I should have known tonight wouldn't go as smoothly as I hoped. And the moon isn't even up yet.

"You want a Mountain Dew?" Dad pulls a glass bottle from the fridge, waggles it in my face. It's the kind with real sugar, because corn syrup spikes too fast and you end up crashing before you change. The caffeine helps too. He pulls out a Monster for himself, cracks it open and adds a few packets of raw sugar. I take the bottle and pop the cap with my teeth, watching him shiver.

"Regeneration doesn't mean invincibility," he admonishes. "You break a tooth before your first change, you'll never get it back. Come on."

I follow him into the living room, where we sit at opposite ends of the couch and pretend to be calm when we're anything but. Normally, all the food in my gut would have me up in my room sprawled out on my bed, but tonight I feel wired. It's not a physical kind of energy, like from the soda, but deeper even though I feel this tingling just under my skin.

After a few minutes staring at the dark TV, Dad uncrosses his legs and sits forward. Clears his throat. "You know, it's too late anyway." I think I knew that all along, ever since this morning when I woke up in a cold sweat after dreams of running through an endless forest under silver light. On the days before and after, when the moon can't get into your body, it gets into your head instead.

"Not even with a Lupi-Pen?" I'm joking, but hearing my voice you wouldn't know it.

Dad sets down his can and leans back into the couch, raising his left arm and flexing his fingers. His face becomes a mask of concentration, but for him it doesn't take much. The fur sprouts quickly, growing in little patches that merge and cover the skin in a shiny brown coat. By the time it reaches his hand his fingers have already lengthened, his nails already shifted to the tips, black and sharp and brand new like they are every change. Nothing I haven't seen before.

"If I can do it this easily," he says, clenching his new paw, "it's too late. I'm actually holding back a little now." He chuckles as if the arm thing was some kind of nifty parlor trick, when in fact he only learned how to master his change when I was in middle school. I knew what he was back then--he'd even let me watch a couple times, when Mom was out for the night--and I'd felt scared and lucky in equal measure.

"You can't take it back?" I ask, nodding to his arm.

"Not now. I've gotta go through it all. So do you." He sighs one of those sighs that tells me he's not sure this was a good idea. "I'm not going to lecture you on responsibility, Alan. You're old enough to figure that out for yourself." He also means I should be old enough to want to prove it to him.

I've been out of high school for only four months. I don't really know shit, do I?

I can smell him now. At least, I can smell his arm. My nose itches with the scent, familiar and foreign. It's him, but it's wolfy. It's both.

"We have about twenty minutes before we have to go down to the basement," he says, twiddling his thumbs, pad around flesh, claw around nail. "Ask now, or find out for yourself."

There isn't too much I haven't asked him in the past few months. He's schooled me in the art of the change. How you need to load up to get through the transformation and again right after, to last the night. There's a pile of raw steaks in the basement waiting for us. We'll polish those off without a problem. Apparently uncooked meat smells better when you're not human.

"I know it doesn't hurt."

"Not in the traditional definition of pain, no." This coming from a man who can turn his own arm furry with no problem. "You might think it hurts at first, but when it catches up to you it changes your mind." He's said that about a lot of Wolf things. I've seen him stalking around the basement and running around the neighborhood. There's still enough human in there that he recognizes things, but his reactions are different. I'm sure it'll be easier to explain tomorrow morning.

"I still..." I begin, but I take a moment to choose my words carefully. No dice, so I just throw it out there. "What if I go crazy?"

He smiles. "You only think you're going crazy. Your body's doing things it was never meant to do, and your brain can't reconcile you with the Wolf. Then you get past that tipping point and things start to make sense, but in a different way." He's trying hard to relate something that's more easily experienced than described, and he's struggling. The more I want to know, the less he can tell me. Maybe once I've changed I can stop asking questions.

"You're mature enough, so you should be fine," he continues, picking up his Monster again. "I wasn't so fortunate my first time." I already know the story of his first, at twelve, when they didn't have suppressant meds. My grandparents used to tie him up in a cage with a bunch of dog food; they weren't mistreating him as much as they simply didn't understand the Wolf. Like spanking, it was just the way they did things back then.

"Thanks, I guess, for making me wait." I give him a weak smile, and he takes my hand in his paw. A little electric shock runs up to the nape of my neck: that's going to be me in an hour, I think, and I clutch it harder, feeling the leathery pads and soft-but-wiry fur.

"My house, my rules," he says. "So long as you understand that, and don't get in trouble. The Wolf is a pretty small part of your life, when you think about it."

"Yeah, right. You're stuck with it forever and you have to tell all your girlfriends you have this Wolf thing going on."

"Alan, it's hereditary, it's not an STD." Then he starts laughing, loud bark-like sounds that don't sound like his normal laugh. His Wolf is pretty close. "You just reminded me of a joke we had in college. Oh, my."

"What's that?" I withdraw my hand before it gets uncomfortable.

"I was just starting to accept the Wolf as this cool thing in my life, after eight years of feeling like a prisoner. I was a member of the Campus Weres and Allies group, and we were having a movie night. Conversation got around to what you said--that it was a disease--and Joe, who was an Alsatian, said he called it 'Shepatitis.' Pauly, the husky, followed up with something about 'a case of the Derpies.' It was hilarious! Didn't remember it until just now."

It's good to see him so lighthearted about it. So many times we've talked about it, the Wolf was something to take seriously. Still is, but I'm glad Dad can see the bright side. I think that's why he and Mom go together so well.

"I'll have to use that," I smile. "I could say I have Lupus, but it's not as funny."

"You might scare off some girl, if you're not careful," Dad says, following up with a deep belch that ends up sounding like a growl. When he looks over at me, his face pallid and his eyes bright with nightshine. "I think we had better head down." We finish our drinks and head over to the stairs. Not until he opens the door do I realize it should be too dark to see without stumbling or stubbing a toe on a piece of furniture.

He pulls the string on the single bare bulb over the stairs, turning to me. We share a moment of arcane knowledge. He says, "Just in case."

The basement is half-finished, and as long as we live in our house it will stay that way. One side--the side closest to the stairs, for company's sake, is a finished entertainment room that Dad built once I was old enough to want some privacy from the rest of the family. It's where I played countless hours of video games and watched cartoons after school, until I convinced Mom to let me have a TV in my room. After that it became Dad's retreat for sports and meditation, though I'm pretty sure the latter means "alone time."

To one side of the staircase is a finished alcove with bookshelves along one side and a bar along the other. On the opposite side are the air conditioner and water heater. I follow Dad to this side and watch him bring out a key from his pocket, twist it in the hole on a metal door beside the heater and push it open.

He flicks a switch and the room is bathed in fluorescent lighting, greener than it's ever been to my eyes, which dart crazily around the space.

"You see it too?" asks Dad. I turn to look at him, and now he's bathed in a haze of color I can't describe. It continually shifts, as if it's afraid of making a decision.

"Which one, the lights or you?"

"I meant me, but yeah, I know about the lights. Which one's cooler?"

"You, by far."

He reminisces. "Scared me the first few times I saw the auras too. I thought I was going crazy. It wasn't until I did some research that I found out your eyes start shifting before the rest of you does. Happens in waves."

You don't have to tell me, I think. I'm living it.

Closing the door behind me, Dad locks it with the key, turns a deadbolt and covers a keypad next to it with his paw while he puts in a code with his hand. Something solid slides into place behind the door, or inside it, I can't tell.

"You don't trust me?"

"It's not that I don't trust you," he says, hanging his keys on a nail next to the door, "it's that I don't know what the Wolf will do to you. Past a certain point, it's not you at all." That doesn't make me feel any better. The thought of losing control of myself hardly appeals to me. All those dreams I've been having about running through the forest at top speed seem like a lycanthropic version of a timeshare seminar.

But, in a sense, I've already bought into it. I own it whether I want it or not.

"I don't feel so good," I say.

"Good. That means it's working."

Unlike the rest of the basement, this room is all purpose and no play. It's four cinderblock walls and a door and not much else. It occupies a corner of the basement, so it has two thin windows along one wall and one on another, all at ceiling level. I can't see the moon, but I can see its bluish-white light streaming in through them as if it were a solid thing.

Going to one of the pools it makes on the floor, I stare up through the window into a dark sky that's somehow alight with surreal energy. I don't become aware of my panting until Dad's paw lands on my shoulder.

"It's beautiful, isn't it? The moon's on the other side of the house, but the light just sorta wraps around and comes in anyway." I can feel his claws against my shirt, tugging slightly at the cotton. He's trembling, trying to hold it in.

"Yeah. You weren't lying when you said it would be hard to hold back."

"It's easier eating a spoonful of cinnamon," he says, and he allows me to drink it in for a few more moments before he shakes me gently. "Come on. Time to buckle up."

I know what he means, and I'm not about to argue. Even when I turn my back I can feel the light there, burning in its harmless but sirenic way. I want to go back to the windows and bask, but I can feel my higher brain losing the battle. It might take years to get my Wolf under control, like Dad needed for his. He's shown me the statistics for first-timers who try to go it alone. More than half of them die before completing the change, another twenty percent of those don't make it back to human.

I'm one of the lucky ones with a supportive family.

In the center of the room (the "dungeon," Dad jokingly calls it) is a series of hooks bolted to the concrete foundation. Only one of them is occupied, by a heavy chain attached to a single iron shackle that would look more appropriate in some medieval castle than a suburban basement. I know it's for my own good, and protection for the both of us.

Funny how the plate of steaks smells more appetizing now, even though they've nearly warmed up to room temperature.

"Go ahead and strip off," says Dad, and I wince even though I knew it would come to this. I've heard from a couple friends that their girlfriends think it's sexy when they blow out their clothes when they change. I, personally, find it weird that the girls find their men sexier when they've changed into half-animal beasts, and give it up when they usually give out blue balls like Halloween candy. Then again, there's a whole werewolf-fetish industry, so I guess people can find just about anything sexy.

Honestly, I don't know what I've been dreading more: the first traumatic, perhaps painful, transformation into a wolf-thing, or the fact that I have to get naked in front of my father. It's not the first time, not by far, butnot even all those years in the Boy Scouts--the showers and the skinny dipping--can't dull the little-boy self-consciousness when I drop my pants and try to avoid cupping my hands over my crotch.

"Oh, get over yourself, Alan," Dad says before throwing his stuff into a pile in a corner. "This won't be the only time we'll be doing it, either."

"What?" I let my hands go only after thinking about it.

"Until you're ready...until I know you're ready...I need to be your training wheels."

"Really, Dad?" He had to use the "training wheels" metaphor?

"'Under my roof,' remember? You follow the rules, and I'm responsible for you. I didn't get a chance to make friends with my Wolf until I was in college. Consider yourself lucky."

I do. It's just hard to tell him that, you know?

"So," I say, "where does the shackle go?" I walk over to the thing, pick it up and let it fall. The sound it makes sends a chill up and down my spine.

Dad comes over to me, his aura following him like streamers of colored steam. The brown fur of his paw ends just below his elbow, and the Wolf aura has a different color than the rest. It would mesmerize me if I didn't have to concentrate to follow his words.

"This time, and until you can control the change, it goes around your neck. Anywhere else and you'd slip out of it. Not that you'd be able to escape this room, since you don't know the code and you won't have fingers to type it in anyway." He smirks. I have a hard time believing he's not as weirded out as I am being naked like this. He just...doesn't acknowledge it.

I sit on the floor, next to the chain, surrounded by the empty rings. My head swims with a fuzziness I can't explain. It's nothing like the weed buzz I had the one time I got up the nerve to try it. Back then I knew what was going on, and I even half-enjoyed it. But this thing's just fucking up my head, washing out certain parts of my mind before clearing again, like a passing fog. Nausea might be a good way to describe it, without the stomach issues. Or heat exhaustion.

Suddenly Dad's propping me up; I didn't even know I'd started to lean. "Whoa, there. You okay?" His skin is slick with sweat, the odor of him almost offensive.

"I told you I don't feel good," I say.

"You probably have a hard time believing me, but you get used to it." He pushes me up until I'm squatting on my haunches, where I can steady myself. I don't see the shackle until it comes up below my chin, and then it's around my neck, cool and oddly comforting. Another metallic clank and a padlock dangles from my throat. Whatever embarrassment I might have is overshadowed by the blinding light coming in those slits of windows, the light of heaven.

I am vaguely aware of collapsing yet again before a rush of cold water envelops my body. My mind clears like a plane cresting a cloud bank, and I shake my dripping head. Dad crouches over me, searching my eyes.

"How's that feel?" he asks in a voice that's scratchy and slightly lower.

"Better."

Dad holds up a bucket. "You were overheating. Your body doesn't know how to react to the onset of the transformation, so it heats up as a result. You could say it's at war with itself."

"That's what it felt like," I say.

"That's what it'll feel like in a few minutes," he says, his smile turning sad. "You know, this'll probably be harder to watch than your circumcision and your vaccinations combined."

"I feel so much better now." Already my body's heating up again, tendrils of steam rising from my chest and shoulders.

Stepping back, Dad takes his glasses off and tosses them onto his clothes. "I should do myself before you start, so I can stand by without being distracted." I nod in my mind, but I don't think my body cooperates. Sweat drips from every inch of me, or it could be water, I can't tell anymore. My Wolf claws from somewhere between my stomach and my intestines, some dark place I have a feeling I'm going to know very well, very soon.

Dad hunches over, breathing hard. There's something raw, almost sexy, about the way his body reacts to the Wolf. I've seen him do this so many times it's not even surprising anymore, but it never stops being fascinating. I still think it's a privilege to have a father who's got this wild side. I've never considered it a burden, like some say. Depends on how you think about it.

He glistens in the moonlight, his own rainbow dissipating as he gives up resisting. The fur at his elbow crawls up the rest of his arm, and once it reaches his shoulder his body seems to explode into its new form.

The patches start from different places each time he changes, and this time it's his groin and chest that get the head start. Fur seems to grow from nothing, emerging from his skin and covering it like multiplying bacteria. Dad's face is screwed up in concentration but I know he's not in any pain. He learned to control that early on.

Once I told him that he made lycanthropy look good. He laughed and thanked me then, but we were both thinking the same thing. Some people kill themselves over one day a month, over something that's gone through demonization and glamorization and come into assimilation. Nowadays the worst you hear about is someone getting ticketed for peeing in their neighbor's yard.

A pain grips my stomach down in that deep dark place and I bend double, clutching myself. Stars explode behind my eyelids like too-close fireworks, but that's not nearly as bad as the pain. I remember when the "It Gets Better" campaign broadened out to new weres as well, and try to chant that mantra to myself, but it's useless.

Whoever said that virgin transformation was somewhere between giving birth and getting kicked in the balls was pretty damn close.

"Alan, hold on," Dad says in a voice that isn't his anymore. His eyes are still a calming blue, but wild and scared. Scared for me.

"Trying," I reply, but only the first half gets out before another cramp hits me and I curl up on my side.

I hear him growl. "Come on," it sounds like. The new auras around him shift wildly through an inhuman spectrum. I can't make out much beyond the soft cracking of bones and the whump of his body hitting the floor as his legs shift. An explosion of lupine scent hits my nose and it's comforting and challenging and confusing all in one. My brain can't decide what species it is.

Then he's crouching by me, helping me to my knees on the concrete floor, his scent all around me. He's in his demi-were form, two-legged but still a wolf, his paunch gone, his body taut and primed. Mom's seen it a couple times, and she maintains that it freaks her out, but even through the haze of my vision I can see how it's become just another fetish for some people.

"You're doing great," he says.

"I don't feel like it," I try to joke. "I feel like I'm gonnathrow up."

"You probably will. Your body thinks it's a disease, and will try to get rid of it. Don't fight it if you feel it coming on." I open my mouth to tell him I don't think I could fight it if I tried, but all that comes out is a bunch of half-digested steak and Mountain Dew. Dad pats my back and holds me up by my hair until there's nothing left in my stomach. Heat crawls through the space where the wolf was clawing and blossoms. It's started.

Scientists have long called lycanthropy an "entropic reaction." Something to do with how the body copes with the change in structure and physiology, taking all the energy created by two bodies at war and throwing off all the excess as heat. Some weres have been known to top a hundred fifty degrees while changing. I don't feel hot, I feel like a volcano.

A spear of white-hot pain shoots up my spine and lodges in my brain. I scream,I know I'm screaming, but I can't hear it any better than I can hear Dad's cries for me to calm down. Parts of me are twitching and I can't control them; strings of drool hang from my slack jaw. Every so often that spear will dig a little deeper and I jerk against the shackle-collar. The metal pinches and I'm vaguely aware that I'm bleeding only by smell.

"Alan, you need to stop," Dad says. It's getting harder to understand him. "Alan!" The sting of his slap calms me long enough to look at him. His eyes have gone grey. His muzzle moves, amazingly able to form words. "Relax your mind. Accept it." He holds my face, wipes tears from my cheeks. I didn't know I was crying. For the first time I realize my nose is a couple inches longer than it should be.

Something else. Turning into something else.

My body is roasting inside and freezing outside. Dad's paws on me burn like brands, and for all my screaming I can't tell him to get off because I can't talk anymore. My world consists of a concrete floor, an iron restraint and the puddle of my own sick in front of me. My wolf nose starts analyzing the nuanced odor of my stomach's former contents but my human brain doesn't want to know the details. I heave, but it's only saliva now.

I never thought I would regret deciding to go off my meds, but by the time I see my face pushing out in front of my eyes, and hear my skull cracking from the inside, I'm wondering why this was ever a good idea. Everything is pain, but that I can handle. The feeling of bones breaking and joints repositioning all at once is almost more than my nerves can take.

"Alan, lay down," Dad growls, and the first two times I don't understand him. I'm too busy watching one of my hands shrinking, entranced by my disappearing thumb. I turn it over and see the darkening skin on my fingertips and palm. Something crunches, and I realize with dumb horror it's the sound of my bones shortening. They burst bloodlessly through the skin and merge with my nails to form my new claws.

"Alan!" Then I'm on my side, shoved and held there by my father's gnarly paw as my limbs flail and dislocate themselves into their new shapes. The moon sings to me, her light playing my body like a tribal drum.

Something else.

The collar is tight, too tight, but I can still breathe. I try to look down but there are new muscles in my neck that won't let me. Somewhere a dog is barking and whimpering but it's me, I know it's me, and Dad is patting my head and there's new ears there and it's okay because he's here to help, I can smell that he's here to help.

I see the fur sprout on my muzzle before I feel it elsewhere; whiskers appear from nowhere. My body itches like crazy, but in a good way. Wherever I roll on the floor my follicles scream from being trapped, and I roll away to let it all grow in. Only when it creeps up my legs do I realize I'm fully hard and probably have been for a while. It reaches my sac and crawls its way up my thighs and around to my shaft, growing new skin around and over the head. I come without touching anything, splattering my chest and belly and most likely Dad's arm.

"It's okay, it happens," he says, still petting me between the ears. I can't understand him but his tone is calming, his ears forward.

The heat dissipates over the next few minutes, giving me time to adjust to my new senses. Dad's aura is a swirl of purples and mauves, and while I don't know what that means I don't have to. I can smell him just fine. I can smell everything about him. I can smell his steak and the Monster and even the leather from his car. And, for once, I really _know_him.

But not for long. I see his face, bathed in silvery light, and then I stretch my neck out and look through the window. For that moment all I know is the moon, the mother that gave life to me, to the new me, and the last bit of humanity leaches away, taken by her into the sky.

"Alan?" The sounds are foreign and vaguely threatening. "Alan, look at me."

Something's around my neck. Something cool, something restraining. Something un-freedom. I push away from the wolf-thing that smells a little bit like me and flail my paws at it. My claws scrape along its smooth surface without making purchase. I scramble to my feet, tripping while I get used to four legs. The wolf-thing next to me is yelling and trying to grab at my haunches, but I turn and snap at him. He draws back, but only for a moment, before snarling and looming over me with his weirdly-shaped body.

"Don't you fuckin' come at me," he says, pinning me down by my neck, hismuzzle next to mine. Meat coats his breath. "If you can't understand me, I'mgonna have to make you listen. I don't want to do it. You've been in enough pain already." I try to make sense of the sounds by watching his ears. He lets me go, and when I don't move he slides the tray of steaks over to me. "You need these more than I do."

It's the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. I can't believe I've never tasted anything as good as raw flesh before. It comes apart so brutally between my new teeth, so easily, and melts in my mouth. The only thing that would make it better is if it were still alive. I could have hunted it down, earned my meal.

Half the plate is history before I see a paw reach in from one side. My reaction is so quick I don't even realize I've snapped at him again until he cuffs me across the face. I forget I'm the one chained up and dive at him. How dare this hulking slow-moving biped try and steal food from me!

"You had better stop that, son," he says, his tone unmistakable. Even so, when he reaches again I growl out a warning. He doesn't listen, so I lean forward and go for his arm.

I never make it. He jumps back and his body lurches into a four-legged posture, everything sliding into place effortlessly. His scent changes and becomes pure, free from the un-wolf stink that permeates the rest of this room and makes my nose quiver with disdain. But now his hackles are up in challenge.

And I'm still chained.

He's on top of me before I can move away from the plate, ears flat, snout wrinkled in a dominant snarl. No more words, and I understand him perfectly now. Like it does any good. His teeth clack past the shackle and clamp down on my neck, applying enough pressure to choke but not enough to crush. My only thought is to roll onto my back and look away. My bladder releases without my say-so, soaking my exposed belly with shame.

After I'm done, he renews his grip, stands over me and does the same. His urine is pungent and overbearing, and it washes my musk away. I try to curl my tail up over my sheath to placate him, but I get the full brunt of his bladder, all the way up to my chin. My urge to challenge him is erased as readily as arousal after an orgasm.

When he finally lets go of my neck I stay still while he sits by the plate and eats a few steaks. He takes his time, savoring them in front of me. All the same, I don't think he's punishing me with the display. I seem to remember some reason for him needing at least some of them. I still watch, my muzzle watering.

After he's done he groans and shifts back to two legs. It only takes five seconds or so, like he's tapped into some kind of magic I can't use yet. He bends to look me in the eye. "Are you proud of yourself? You think I wanted to do that? My house, my rules. God, you can't even understand me."

I can smell his frustration, bitter and clear above his musk. I've done wrong and he's punished me, I know that much on instinct. I don't know how I know, though.

Dad (I smelled it right away in his urine, funny how I didn't know for sure until he marked me) takes the key ring from beside the door and unlocks the collar. I leap up and shake my head; the feeling of freedom overwhelms me. Still unsteady on my new legs, I do an awkward happy dance, keeping a safe distance from my father in case I do something else wrong. He's smiling, though, watching me. I try to smile back and my mouth can't quite make the shapes.

"Come here," he says, patting his thighs. I trot over to him and immediately go around back, sticking my nose under his tail. I don't know why, I only feel like it's something I have to do before I say hello. He doesn't get what I'm doing until I poke him with my snout, but he gets on all fours and raises his tail just the same. Among everything else I learn, I find out he's embarrassed. Why? I'm just getting to know him.

When I've had my fill of information, he takes me into his arms and embraces me. His musk washes over me, more comforting than his urine and not shameful at all. We breathe in each other for a while before he nudges me back toward the plate of steak.

"Go on." I take the hint and polish off the meat. When I'm done my belly is full to bursting, but I can't shake the feeling I'll need it for something important later. I roll onto my back (on a clean, dry part of the floor) and he rubs my stomach, making me kick my leg. I should be mortified, but it feels much too good for me to care.

I clean up as best I can with my tongue, while Dad watches me incredulously. He mumbles periodically, something about not believing I got through okay, but he's not as important as I'm finding my balls to be. There's something unbelievably special about being able to lick your own balls. Who wouldn't, if they could reach?

Once I've finished, he calls me over so I go to him and sit. He pats me on the head; I kind of like being good for him. After fiddling with a panel on the wall that my paws wouldn't have been able to work, he opens it and presses his thumb to the single button inside. At the far end of the room a panel opens up, letting in the bright glare of the moon and the smells of the outside. I make it nearly to the door before Dad barks at me and I stop, fidgeting and wagging.

He looks at me for a long time with his arms crossed. I want to go outside so badly I can't stand it, but I know waiting for his command is more important. Finally he gets on his paws and knees and asks me, "You sure you're ready for this?"

I loll my tongue out at him and cant my head. Just waiting for the go-ahead.

"Fine, Alan. But wait for me." He shakes and shifts fully, sidestepping the pile of my vomit and joining me at the door. Ears up, he ducks through and starts running.

We're free.

The only thing I can see is his tail darting to and fro under the moonlight, and it's what I use as a point of reference as we run through yard after yard of soft manicured grass. Where we meet fences, we go around them. When we can, we crawl under them, and when we cross a road and enter an undeveloped field I nearly go crazy with the elation of being unrestricted. Even out here I can smell the humans sitting, watching TV and snacking their lives away, while out here we live.

For the most part Dad lets me do what I choose, nipping at my legs if I get too close to the road. I dart after wild rabbits and squirrels, bumbling along on legs that are still strange. One time I almost catch a raccoon but hold back at the last moment when I smell sickness on him. I go back to tell Dad to watch out, but he seems to understand the ear-flicks and low barks I make just fine.

I remember a camping trip with my Dad a few years ago, and the bonding we did then doesn't hold a candle to bounding through a field after him, running to nowhere in particular. Then it occurs to me that my Wolf brain is relaxing, letting in human memories as I get used to my body and anatomy. It feels like the best lucid dream I've ever had.

We cavort for hours under the moon and stars, avoiding the neighborhoods and keeping to fields and the wooded areas around a local river. Dad freaks when I bend to slurp from the water, but he eventually gets over himself and laps with me. It's not like we can operate the fountains in the park. Dad could, if he shifted again, but I get the feeling he doesn't want to push his luck.

Not too long after we slake our thirsts, my nose catches a whiff of something I can't put my nose on. Literally. It's far off but strong, and irresistible. It goes into my head and dances around and does things to me that send tingles everywhere, like the polar opposite of the pain I felt earlier. I whimper at Dad, but he's gone back to the river for another drink. With an inexplicable sense of naughtiness, I start running back toward the houses.

It doesn't take much to follow the trail. I might as well have a GPS for as good as my nose is. As I lope along I can almost see the wind blowing the heaven scent my way. Keeping my muzzle up, I zigzag through alleys and across sidewalks trying to figure out the source.

As I turn down a street, another smell hits me like the last missing puzzle piece: frustration. They're hard to pick out, but I can hear dogs whimpering, scratching at doors and whining at fences. They're frustrated because they can't get at the thing I'm trying to track down. And that thing is a she. And that she is two blocks away.

I break into a run, ears blown back, tail flying out behind me, my mind set on one thing. Never mind what my human side thinks; human rules don't apply tonight. Darting behind a hedge, I squeeze between the leaves and a wooden fence until I pop out the other side, almost in front of her.

She starts, but doesn't run away. We stand there and size each other up. A golden Lab, either stray or escaped, making the most of the night, and in heat. Her scent surrounds her like cigar smoke around a new father, and I can't turn away. But she sure does. Without so much as a greeting sniff under my tail, she raises hers and waits, panting desperately into the night. It's all I can do to control myself as I approach, my sheath dropping appreciatively.

My tongue finds its way to her sex, and I finally get a taste of what I've been chasing. A cloud of arousal blinding thought or logic, my brain sets my hips into motion even before I've finished tasting her.

She braces against me when I put my forepaws on her back, and meets me when I search her out. Three juvenile jabs and I find my mark, sinking into the heat. My legs take over as I hold her for all I'm worth, my singular purpose in the universe at this moment being the completion of the act.

A blinding pain explodes on one side of my head. I'm on the ground before I can see again, and when I look for the Lab I see her running down the street, tail as far under her as it can go. I look up and see my father, on two legs again, very mad. He wants to yell or scream or howl or something, but we're in the middle of a bunch of houses and that would be unwise. So he does the next best thing and kicks me in the side.

I get to my feet and cower, one side of my body on fire. I don't know what I've done wrong. It could be any number of things, come to think of it, and so I cower more. It's not my fault I'm trying to get used to the Wolf; he's the one who gave it to me. My resentment is short-lived, though, when he picks me up by my scruff and something inside me snaps. I twist around in his grasp and sink my teeth into his wrist. Blood fills my mouth and nose, a seductive and savage thing in itself, but I don't get to savor it for long. He drops me and I'm off. I hear him cry and yowl behind me. I know he'll try to catch me.

Home. I just want to go home.

Down the street at twenty miles an hour, searching desperately for a scent I recognize. At one point I'm sure I hear Dad's paws just behind me, but I don't dare look back. Maybe, if I get home before he does, we can spend the rest of this night waiting to change back. Then maybe I can make sense of everything, when we can use words instead of odors and body language.

I don't recognize any of the houses I pass, but I can't see colors very well so it's confusing when I try to remember how things look through human eyes and try to map them onto how things appear now. Eventually I remember how we crossed a field to get to this neighborhood and double back to it. Halfway through, I catch the unmistakable odor of my shift earlier. It's more of a beacon than the Lab was, and I break into a full-on run, reaching my street in less than a minute.

Three houses down. No fence. Around the corner, past the deck, through the little door.

He's already there. I skid halfway across the room before gaining traction, but the little door is shut before I can get back out. Dad takes his hand-paw from the button and holds it out while it shifts back to normal, then he stalks the length of the room towards me. His other arm is still dripping blood. I can't cower any harder than I already am.

Leaping the last five feet, he pounces on me and bites my scruff, his teeth sinking into my skin. It feels like he's going to tear my neck off from skull to shoulders. Instead he picks me up with his jaws and throws me back into the corner he pulled me from. The floor around my head gains several red dots; when I shake my head, they become lines.

I don't know. I don't know what I did.

Dad comes at me again, snapping at my forelegs, then my hind paws. He never really gets a hold of anything, but he nips the skin and it hurts like a pinch does when tweaked. His face contorts from lupine to something slightly less, but what words he does get out are human words. They're all angry, though.

"Did you see the sky?" he yells one time before ramming me into the wall. "Your dick almost got us caught! You don't know how long you tie!" I try to make myself as small as possible, but he keeps dragging me out from the corner. His teeth dig into my already-injured neck and toss me into the room. I don't dare get up, and when he climbs on top of me I go limp.

"Fuckin' teach you tooorrrrrghhh," he says, ending in a sound that sets my hackles on end. I almost understood him. Daring to turn my head, ignoring the burst of pain as I move, I catch a glimpse of his eyes. They're black. A dead black. My father isn't in there anymore. And I can't get away.

He's on top of me as soon as I get up, his weight nearly too much for my legs. His claws go to my hips and I yelp, but escaping would mean more wounds, this time along my fleshy underbelly. I want to protect my neck from his teeth, but all I can do is lower my head out of his way. That doesn't matter, because he's not going for my neck. He's going for my tail.

Shifting his weight forward, Dad pulls his chest over my back and starts thrusting. My rear gets a fresh blast of urine and a wave of humiliation washes over me. I don't think any amount of shift trauma will make me forget this feeling. But he doesn't stop when he's done marking me, instead stepping closer until he's blindly jabbing under my tail. It doesn't dawn on me that he's serious until he finds his mark and spreads me open.

I saw a dog get hit by a car once. The sound it made, and the sound I make when Dad penetrates me, are very much alike. Almost as bad as the spear of pain up my spine, it radiates from my violated hole through my back and chest, never letting up because the wolf on top of me just keeps going faster, harder. It's not Dad, not anymore.

This is punishment. It has to be.

I scramble under him, my legs trembling to hold me still while he rams his body against mine. Unbelievably, I feel my sheath responding even through the excruciation that's settling into a hot throb under my tail. I can't stop it any more than I can stop him.

He nips up my back and forces my neck up, where he holds me still while speeding up. Whiteness washes over my vision. When it clears, color has returned to some of the things that were grey. The button that opens the little door, for instance, is bright red now. No longer does the moon's light shine through the basement windows. Now it's just the pale blue sky of approaching morning.

I'm changing back.

Dad's knot hammers against me, stretching me wider with each thrust. I can't yell, I can only pant. He clamps his mouth down around my neck, turning his head so he's got my windpipe in his jaws. I don't know if he knows what he's doing. My cock strains and pushes out of my sheath, dangling below my belly, spasming of its own accord. I'm going to come again.

Stars dance in front of my eyes. Struggling to keep us both upright, I lock my legs and hold myself rigid. I can't breathe, but I can't move either. His shaft is the only thing holding us together. And then he pops through, and now we can't come apart. In the few seconds before I lose my grip on the world, I feel my cock and his spurting in unison. When the pain stops, the pleasure begins. And when the pleasure stops, the darkness begins.

*

I wake up in a pain that makes me wish I never woke up at all. Light streams in through the narrow windows and warms my body with a much more pleasant heat than my transformation provided. Someone's put blankets over me. Dad.

Dad and me.

My neck hurts. My ass hurts. Everything else is either sore or stiff. I lay, unmoving, for minutes, willing myself the strength to throw the blanket off and sit up.

Seeing the room in the harsh, real light of day brings it all back with a clarity I wish I didn't have. The empty plate is where we left it. So is the vomit. Behind me, in the corner and all around it, are splatters of my own blood. Well, the Wolf's blood. Dad's clothes are gone, but mine are still piled where I left them. When I hear the clanging of silverware upstairs, I know it's about time I went up.

Getting dressed is awkward, as I try to avoid my injuries. My neck is a dried, bloody mess, though the puncture wounds have healed nicely with the miraculous powers of lycanthropy that science still hasn't figured out. My rear is another story, still tender to the point where I can't walk straight. I can't even take the stairs without resting both feet on each one before tackling the next.

The smell of breakfast wakes my stomach as I step up into the kitchen. Dad's sitting at the table, reading the paper. Pancakes and eggs, along with a gigantic plate of bacon, wait to be eaten. He hasn't taken a bite. He looks up from his coffee mug, his eyes peeking over the top of the pages. Then he folds it and sets it down.

"I figured food would get you up here. You need to replenish after last night."

"Thanks," I manage.

"How do you feel?" It's not really a question, by the way he's asking it.

"Worse than hung over." I catch his look, but I don't think me having been drunk before twenty-one is anything to be concerned about right now.

"Good. No asking questions or pointing fingers yet; you had better eat some of this food. Your body's starving." He picks up the paper and continues to read.

He's right. It turns out the food on the table is all for me, and I get through most of it before I have to push my plate away. Just like last night, we do the dishes mostly in silence. I can't tell what he's thinking, but I can't get my head around that one thing we did. That one thing he did to me.

On our way out to the living room this time, he hands me a beer and pops one of his own. "We both need it," he says, and I don't disagree. It's the good kind, not piss water.

We plop down on the couch. This time he doesn't hesitate before launching into a spiel. "Do you remember everything?"

"Yes."

He nods. Takes a swig. Clears his throat. "Good."

"Good?"

"Yeah, good. Maybe you'll do things differently next time. I was hoping you'd be more responsible, but I was wrong."

"It was my first time," I balk. The beer has soured in my stomach. It's killed some of the pain, too. "I don't understand how fuck--"

"I'm sorry about that," he says flatly. I didn't expect an apology. "It started as punishment, but the Wolf took over and did the rest. I didn't have control until I'd tied." Somehow this sounds like a cop-out, but what am I supposed to do? Challenge him?

"I never wanted to hurt you," he goes on. "But the rules are different when you can't talk things out."

"We're talking them out now."

"It's a little too late for that. What's done is done." He downs the last of his beer and crushes the can. "I need another one."

I go get it without him asking, and he nods his thanks when I hand it to him.

"I'm sorry I ran off," I say, guessing that's why things went to hell in the first place.

"You have to understand, Alan, that we have an obligation to be good stewards of the Wolf. We don't go around rooting in trash cans, we don't howl all hours of the night, and we don't go around mounting stray dogs without protection."

I look at him. He just shrugs. "I pushed you away for two reasons. One, if you'd tied with her, you would've ended up shifting still attached. That's not something we need the paperboy to see on his early route. You understand?"

"Makes sense. So, you didn't push me off because it was wrong?"

"You couldn't help it. I don't think I could have helped it either, if I hadn't chased you back to the house to drill it into your head. She was getting to me, too. Happens."

"What about the protection part?"

He shrugs again. "Can't be too careful," he says. "Once you learn how to control yourself, putting a rubber on isn't too tricky, even with the knot." I think of last night, and the pain of the stretching under my tail, and I shudder.

"I'm sorry about your arm, too."

Dad rubs his bandaged forearm and smiles wanly. "We'll both be healed in two days flat. That's the beauty of it."

We sit in silence again, Dad sipping from his beer and me looking at mine and trying to be thirsty. I wonder if he'll ever want to talk about how it felt last night, for him. Regretting it would be pointless. Neither of us can take it back, and I don't think we'd want to. Taking it back would mean taking back the whole night, and bounding through that field in search of prey...well, I'll never forget that.

I'll never forget any of it.

"Is the second time any easier than the first?" I ask.

He chuckles, flexing his right hand. It poofs into brown fur, then reverts just as quickly. He can control it now that the moon's past full. "With any luck, yours will be a lot easier than mine. Six years with nothing but chains and dog food is no way to treat your Wolf."

I think about that. Suddenly a night of fighting, bleeding, pain and all that doesn't seem much compared to what he had to go through. And even if he couldn't control himself, it was a lesson that needed to be taught. It's certainly more effective than sending me to my room without TV.

"How long before I can take the training wheels off?" My smile infects him, and just for a second I think I can see that grey, feral glint in his blue eyes again.

"We'll see," he says, like he says every time he doesn't know an answer. This time, however, I don't think he's going to tell me to go ask Mom.