It's like she was made for me.
Ben Striker had thought of his ex-classmate while he had been plugging wires and running tests on the system he was setting up at his client in Smallville during the next day after the incident.
She was one of the few who didn't sneer at me. One of the girls who looked at me.
High school had been a nightmare, even with the few friends he made, and college had been almost a relief. An intense two years away in another town, where he had considerably more success, with women and with school, graduating near the top of his class, and starting right away with a company that closed only one year after he started there, caught in the local mafia scandal.
He'd come back to his hometown jobless and disillusioned and his friend Kyle, who'd been working in programming but had improved his business skills, had examined the precious experience he'd already gained and offered to start up a security systems business with him.
Kyle was like a brother to him. They started right away. Within two years, they had become pretty successful, traveling the country far and wide, gaining in experience and contacts, occasionally meeting girls along the way. Gaining more experience.
Kyle had become attached to a few of them and started setting up a regular route. Ben hadn't. He was carefree and would remain that way as long as he could.
And then that fateful night in Mexico happened and his life changed forever.
That wolf had blue eyes,
he remembered, 'El Lobo Magnífico'. During his stay in the local hospital, an old lady had visited him, a woman he didn't know. She had been there during the fever-dreams, patting moist towels over his brow and murmuring words he didn't understand in a sing-song lilt.
In the dreams, he had become a wolf.
A month later he had suffered the first change. It was only luck he had been on the road again, work helping him get through the grief of losing his best friend Kyle. Contracts had been signed, and the insurance money would keep him afloat, so he fulfilled them on his own.
And he remembered when, looking out the car window, he looked at the full moon and thought it was strange.
It was pink.
He'd stopped the car. He was shaking, nauseous. He opened the car door and threw up on the road. He got out on shaky legs, walked around to the back, the cool night air helping him. He thought the crab salad he had eaten had turned out to be a mistake. He walked back to turn off the ignition, and by the bright moonlight he saw a little inroad into the thick woods and sat down there, unable to walk anymore. When he fell onto his back he saw the moon again, it was blood-red.
He didn't remember much of anything about that night, except for pain, and running naked through the woods on feet calloused like thick leather, and finding a fawn. He remembered his first taste of blood.
He remembered waking just before dawn, naked, only a few feet away from his car, hands covered in blood, blood on his face, quickly dressing up in spare clothes and washing up with water from the canteen. His face hurt. Everything hurt.
He checked into the motel where he had reservations and when he undressed again to get into the shower he saw the most horrible change.
His cock had warped.
The past three years had been lonely. He'd been rejected more times than he could count, and it had been highschool all over again. He'd eventually paid for sex, dull-eyed women who had gagged at the sight of him but performed nonetheless, and he'd at least learned a few things about it that way: how to 'present' it, what it could do, the knot. It had cost him, though, mostly in dignity, and he'd eventually learned to just keep it in his pants.
Coming back to himself, he watched the light-hearted brunette walk ahead of him, messy ponytail swinging with each step.
But Lana, I think she accepts it. She certainly likes me. She likes what I can do for her.
But she didn't know the half of it. He looked up into the sky, sensing more than seeing the full moon.
*
Ben Striker is only passing through,
Lana reminded herself.
There's no pressure.
It took a few hundred meters before she regained her senses enough to start up a conversation about her work, and how she used her free time to write short stories, some of them fairytales. Some fanfictions on shows based on fairy tales that had struck her with characters that particularly fascinated her.
"Stories like the tales of Arthur, with wizards and fae and witches-- " she told him, "and magical monsters." She continued when he nodded, "there's this story with a Manticore, he's such a monster... but I think there's something more to him..." she let it trail, wistful. "Oops, are you okay?" she asked when he tripped at that,
Her phone rang, it was the sheriff's office, they were waiting for her to come in, but as they spoke she gave them the address and he would come meet her instead, and did she need anything?
When they reached the cottage, Ben told her he had some other client he needed to check up on.
He left and after she'd had some lunch the sheriff drove in. She met him outside, noticing the dead hare had been claimed by its captor while she'd been gone.
"That Ben Striker guy, how well do you know him?"
"I don't really, only that he's real nice, and he
saved my life,"
she accented, annoyed with the questioning. Were they really thinking he had 'provoked' Dale?
"Dale said he caught him with you. That he heard you cry out." Sheriff Karley was frowning at her now, very intense, and it was all that Lana could do to keep from laughing out loud.
Yeah, he heard me cry out,
she thought,
like he never heard me cry out before,
now she was furious.
"We broke up six months ago because he was a damn jealous bastard," she started, her voice rising with every sentence, "Always checking everything I was doing, who I was doing it with, where I was going, and he was
not worth it!
Ben Striker was nice to me, and Dale pulled a gun on me. On
me!
" she finished, yelling.
"Calm down, Lana!" Karley told her, "It's just, this guy, you know, he had a suspicious accident a few years back and..."
"Suspicious? You think he planned on his best friend falling asleep and ditching the car where he could get attacked by wolves?"
"By wolves? The report we got -- translated as best as we could -- said his partner had been killed by a local man. A naked man. But there were dogs, because Striker did get bitten by them."
"A naked man?" Lana remembered the rumors about Kyle and Ben... maybe... not another jealous boyfriend story! She shook her head.
