As with most nights, she lay awake in bed, sleepless. The full moon's glow painted the trees outside her window onto her wall, an ever-swaying portrait of shadow. Turning from one side to the other, then onto her back, she pondered how her memory foam was able to forget how she slept so readily. She had purchased the mattress with the promise of better sleep, but it would seem that a mattress that didn't claim to know such things, one more unyielding and stern, would have been a better match for her. She chuckled to herself amusedly, noting how different her bed preferences were to her social ones. Smile fading, she flipped back onto her side, cursing the cramped discomfort in her lower abdomen. As if the full moon wasn't enough to keep me awake, she thought, with pursed lips. At least it's almost over. Seeking and finding a distraction, she began to lose herself in the weaving leaves on her wall, imaging herself projected through the shadows into the forest itself. As she finally began fading away, her mind echoed shadowy forest figures, running, leaping, crawling, and beckoning for her to join them.
~
The pine needles snapped and crackled underfoot, sending ripples of their sharp, verdant scent across his nose. Though there was very little breeze this deep in the forest, the speed with which he bounded through the brush left his fur flowing backwards against his body, and a tapestry of ever changing scent through his breaths. He'd leap to a halt, on occasion, when a particularly immersive scent presented itself. Amid the mineral tang of the river to his left, the various herbal notes of each plant, and the earthy must of the forest floor, there were spots that still sang of the deer that passed through earlier, or the rabbit warren deep beneath his feet. Rarer still, were the elusive specklings of mountain lion that warned of confrontation. He respectfully skirted away from these, for a noisy conflict would send any prey still in the area far far away, leaving both parties hungry and huntless. Such was the way of the forest, written into his bones by ancestral instinct.
Suddenly, he slammed to a complete stop, waves of primal desire washing over him. Every moon he ran these woods, but never once had such a complex, powerful compulsion found him like this. It was an absolute paradox of a scent, whispering gentle beauty into a blanket of musky excitement and raw vitality. Unlike the fickle creatures before, this scent persisted, a siren song of temptation. Unable to quell the electric pulsations pounding through his veins, he stood tall against the dark night and howled with abandon into the moonlit sky.
~
As she settled into the recesses of her own mind, her senses began to tell their own story. She found herself in a moonlit grove, looking up at the cool light above. Glancing around, she couldn't make out much past the treeline, finding a mottled grayscale where the rest of the forest continued outward. There was no definitive noise, but a blanket of muttering sound covered her ears. She stayed here, silently observing for some time, before a gentle breeze rustled the trees around her. The breeze began building, and as the trees found their voices, clouds began darkening the sky above, the moon fading to darkness. The rising wind began to reach ground level, her hair playing across her face, an unkempt, wavy crown of auburn curls. They whipped around with more and more fervor as the wind steadily grew, and before long she was struggling to stand against the chaotic gale. She closed her eyes, and faded back into reality, the howling treetops the last sensation to recede.
Now in a half-awake fog, the howling of the pines played over and over in her head, then fell silent as she jolted upright, wide awake. It was hard to be sure in such a state, but she felt almost certain that the howl was, in fact, a noise from somewhere outside her house. She wrestled with her sense of reality, and in trying to ground back into her body she found her skin taut, covered in goosebumps and tingling with the same chaotic energy that the storm had brought her before. Though it was a warm summer night, she could feel her breasts pressing against her shirt, two peaks betraying the nervous excitement that lit up her being. Against all logic, she found herself rising out of bed. Barefoot, in her nightshirt and her comfy shorts, she glided to her sliding door. She opened it to feel the outdoor air welcoming, the darkness calling to a part of her that rarely, if ever, spoke to her. Leaving the door open, she walked steadily towards the trees.
~
Falling to all fours, he began scenting the air around him, then the ground, searching for any sign or direction that would bring him closer to that unexplainable smell. To his side, the scent came strongest, and so he turned and leapt forward, eager to discover it's source. It grew steadily stronger, smooth floral murmurs dancing with earthy emanations, a sensory paradox. There was something familiar hiding within, like an old friend, reaching out for an embrace. He couldn't shake the feeling of the hunt, though he knew not why. Whatever was at the epicenter of this beacon, it wasn't a meal.
He paused to stand tall, sniffing the air again. He was close, now, and as he continued forward, he began to place his footfalls with more intention, moving slower to muffle the sound of his approach. The scent was so near, now, and it had its tendrils deep inside him. They flowed down his chest, through his core and lingered, pooling in his loins. His blood followed the energetic waves, and his member began to stiffen with anticipation.
He could now start to create a picture in his head of what he was to find at the end of his pursuit. It seemed that there was some concentration of a flower, splashed around a living creature. The creature was a human being, and definitively female by the musky scent. Now nearly on top of her location, he finally could make out the missing, familiar note, the one that sang just like a successful hunt; the smell of blood.
~
As she strode deeper and deeper, the exhilaration that had buffeted her before began to fade into a sharp sense of danger. Some semblance of rationality began to speak from the back of her mind, asking her why she felt it wise to come out here in the dead of night. This was far beyond her domain, and deep into the grasp of the unknown. She paused, and the reality of what she had done started to set in. A faint snap snapped her attention straight forward, and jolted her heart into her throat. A second snap brought the chills back into her body with full force, and a third had her knees weak. She had time for a fleeting thought of her safe bedroom before the bush in front of her began to rustle. Paralysed, she could only watch in terror as the branches and leaves bowed towards her, and as a hand, dark and furry, emerged into the moonlight.
There was nothing going through her head at that moment. She had fully sunk into her body, and a chemical cocktail of adrenalin, fear, and uncertainty kept her rapt focus on the emerging clawed hand. It flowed into an arm, that of a lithe, strong human, covered in short fur. From the shoulder down to the chest, the fur grew long and flowing, shortening again into a more smooth, well defined abdomen, which blended into a modest fur coating at the hips. Her eyes widened as she beheld, between furred, lupine legs, his pulsing, erect manhood.
She felt a twinge below her navel, like the fall of a rollercoaster with the area of a pinhead. Looking up, finally, at his face, she could not reconcile the nature of his being with her understanding of the world. He had a definitively wolf's head, atop a definitely human neck, and his eyes shone with a glint alien to both. She did not feel that he was intending to harm her, but as he stalked towards her, she couldn't be sure. Her neck craned up to the end of its mobility as he towered over her. There he stopped, mere inches away from her, and she could feel the heat radiating off his body, bringing with it a strong whiff of deep potent musk. Adrenalin still coursing through her body, she couldn't process the conflicting emotions within her; she simply stood and stared, as if for an answer, into his eyes.
~
He had come upon her quickly, suddenly, and he drank her in as he began to approach and see her clearly. Her hair fell down to her collar, loosely framing her pale, moonlit face. Her eyes refracted the light, profoundly luminous, shimmering above her cheekbones that flowed above her dimpled cheeks. Her lips, parted in shock, were a pale red contrast, even in the night. Where her hair left her collarbones exposed, her shirt resumed cover, swelling over rounded breasts with poised nipples, before falling loosely down to the indent in her stomach. The shining alabaster skin sent a shiver of desire through his body, and he lingered on her smoothness before his eyes slid back up to her face, now down below him as he loomed above her.
Her head barely stood at sternum-level for him, her upturned chin pointing to his core. Seeing her bright eyes, filled with trepidation and an uncertain curiosity, he felt yet another wave of exhilaration through him, and at such proximity, her irresistible scent forced an involuntary twitch through him, and his manhood jumped, grazing her breast. The sensation drove him wild. His observations of her faded back, taking the background to a deep carnal desire.
They both leapt at the same time, him with lustful intentions and her out of sheer instinct, in the same direction. As his body caught hers, they tumbled to the floor, and there they fell and lay, her face to the cool ground and his mass atop hers. The air left her lungs in a whoosh, and as she lay reeling from the sudden impact, he shifted down and thrust his snout snuggly between her splayed legs. The full impact of the scent of her sex left his brain reeling just as hers, and the warmth against his cold nose reflected the scalding heat rising in his blood.
