(Author's note: Firstly, thank you to all the readers who have taken time to write to me about my stories, I cannot appreciate your words enough. Secondly, I can't believe that it's been nearly three years since I last wrote a Wolf story, and almost five since the first, though I am gratified that people still take time to write and ask about another story. Thirdly, I have endeavoured to make this story as readable as possible without people having to know or read the previous Wolf stories on Literotica. However, feel free to go back and read the others, at the very least Wolf's Bane. Or re-read them. And if you want, leave some feedback too...)
*
The snow swirled and rose and dove in thick swarms, sapping the harsh outlines of the forest and leaving it a dark, dream-like haze. It seemed, for the longest time, to be the only movement in the Russian wilderness.
Until a family of chestnut-coloured deer broke through into a clearing, scattering clumps of snow with their panic, and yet instinctively remaining as silent as possible, despite the danger literally at their tails.
Not that this would help them; their predator had locked onto them with keen senses, and kept on their trail with an equally keen intelligence. Large as a bear, swift as a cheetah, she focused on the largest of the deer, leaving the younger one alone, though they would have quicker, easier kills. She told herself it was because she needed the larger one for its meat and skin, but she also acknowledged that she relished the hunt.
Her heart beat with exhilaration inside her massive frame, a sharp excitement at the imminent kill more satisfying and sweet than the flesh itself would be... Watching the wolves in their natural environment, she never thought she could fully understand it, until circumstances gave her this opportunity. If she could remember these feelings for a report-
Focus. There isn't much time, and you need this prey.
She listened to the voice inside her head, and paid attention. Just ahead of her, the deer – a female, to judge from its scent – had stopped looking behind it, as it dodged and weaved around the tall, thin black birches, the fog of its breath lost in the swirls of snowfall. Its fear was almost palpable, and that touched the human portions of its predator.
So she stopped playing with it, poured on the speed and brought it down, quickly breaking its neck with her powerful jaws, putting it out of its misery, as the rest of the family scattered.
Then she ate, equally quickly but being careful not to damage the hide too much. She let her hunger, and her borrowed instincts, submerge any remaining human squeamishness. She needed food, and a vegetarian lifestyle just wouldn't cut it here.
She filled her belly as the familiar pains struck her, as if the meat had been bad. She glanced up to see the first hints of light fighting to be seen through the thick clouds covering the dark mountains in the east. It was time.
The final time.
She was afraid of the pain, and ashamed of her fear.
Do not feel shame. No one seeks real pain when it can be avoided. But it will pass, and you do not have to be there to endure it. Come to me.
She did gladly, focusing her mind inwardly, as if she were racing through a labyrinth, sure of the path to reach the centre. She left her outer senses behind, as her bones and muscles and sinews twisted and melted, her silver and black fur receding into soft, pale skin, brining with it agony…
She ventured deep into her mind, into a mindscape much like the one in the outer reality: a forest, but one without snow, one of huge Nordic trees and a sky packed with stars and an eternal full moon hanging above the rocks. Here, she remained in wolf form – as did her lover, perched upon an overhanging rock, looking suitably proud and regal, and his iron-grey fur immaculate, and his copper eyes aglow.
Beloved...
If she had a human mouth, she would have been grinning with giddy delight. Fenris: the Norse wolf god, the spirit of unfettered ferocity and instinct. The spirit that she once, in her arrogance, tried to leash and use to do her petty bidding, but who made her his pet – and then, so much more.
He leapt from his perch, towering over her, greeting her with a lick across her muzzle, and then a playful nip of her ear, triggering a chase game through the virtual clearing, as if they were pups, before he caught her, and they joined in a brief, primal game more suitable for adults.
Afterwards, they lay together on the grass. The pain of her real body was a distant, but still present thing to her, though now she could feel it ebbing as the transformation neared its end. She had to go, didn't she?
Her lover nuzzled at her neck.
Yes, Beloved. And you will not transform again. My spirit helped you escape the humans" prison, but it is too strong for you to contain forever. Your human body is fragile.
He licked at her fur.
But appealing.
She wondered if there would be any after-effects of these transformations.
Sadly, yes. There will be times when you will feel the need to mark your territory with urine.
Really?
No.
She nipped him - he'd been hanging around inside her head too long, he'd developed a taste for human humour – and pushed in closer to him, as if that would keep her inside her mind. Would she be able to survive in the wilderness without this ability? Was the Source he scented close enough?
Yes, to both questions. The Source is near, and there are humans around it. When I've learned more, I'll tell you.
And would he love her still, when they couldn't meet in her head in lupine form? When he had to settle for appearing in the real world, and having her boring, human form-
He nipped her ear, making her yelp.
Go, and keep heading eastward. And when nights come again, summon me, and then learn how much I still hunger for your human body.
And as she felt her mind drawing away, he added,
and carry my undying love for you in my absence…
The rush back to consciousness reminded her of the time she'd foolishly dove into the deep end of the community pool as a child, never believing that a mere three meters could be such a great length, and that the struggle to reach the surface and breath could take ages-
"Aaahhh!" The morning air was like a flannel on the inside of her lungs, and Sam Brennan sat up naked in the snow, in the middle of nowhere, covered in deer blood. She pushed aside the acute ache that suffused every cell of her body following her transformation, knowing that to remain in place for too long, exposed like this, would inevitably end her aches – and everything else.
Beside her, the remains of the deer lay, its black eyes staring accusingly at her, Sam literally having made a meal of it, the snow around it dark and spattered but its hide remaining relatively intact. The smell was strong, but she was used to that.
Now she knelt up and began to skin the kill, using the sharpened end of a broken rib bone from its carcass to cut and trim the hide into things she could use: moccasins, and a wrap to cover her torso, where most of her body heat would escape, not her head as the old wives" tale went. She used some remaining blood to mat down her long chestnut-brown hair and keep it out of her face.
God, what a sight she must look, like some wild woman of the woods...
She needed rest; she'd travelled far in the last seven nights, sleeping during the day whenever she found suitable shelter in some cave or hollow. But now she was trapped in human form, and besides, the Source Fenris spoke of was nearby, as well as other humans.
And how would she explain her situation to any of the latter? It was one hell of a long, complicated, unbelievable story: Sam travelled the world with her wolf god/lover, seeking Sources of arcane power in order to contain them before malevolent forces could exploit them.
Okay, maybe not that long and complicated.
But certainly unbelievable. The last person who'd heard her story, a Russian officer who'd captured and tortured her following an incident involving one of those Sources, certainly didn't believe. And if Fenris hadn't hidden inside her, transforming her body at night into a being powerful enough to escape, she would still be an anonymous prisoner instead of a naked fugitive, destined for a short, painful life.
Something not too dissimilar to what she would face out here now, if she didn't get help.
Suddenly a weariness overtook her, and not of her body. It was hard, sometimes, very hard to live the life she did with Fenris, though it was something she could never bring herself to admit to him; he wasn't human, what could he say or do about it?
For a moment she just sat and cried. How had she reached such a point in her life? She wished that she wasn't a witch, with the power and knowledge she possessed. That there was no conflict, no danger to the world, and that Fenris and she could settle down again. And though she was ashamed to admit it, she sometimes wished he was a normal man too, and that they could have real children.
Then she pushed such thoughts aside as unproductive, and unworthy.
She started eastward, as the snow eased off.
*
Sam had stopped at a wide, shallow stream cutting a gorge into a slope, in order to quench her thirst and wash the dried deer's blood off her body and out of her hair. She was cursing at the icy water when she saw her first human being in over a week: a man, barrel-chested with an unkempt pepper-grey hair peeking out from under a beige cowboy hat and wrapped in a battered brown longcoat, filling up a large plastic water container. And now staring at her. "
Dobroje utro
."
She had removed her hide to wash, but now lifted it up to cover herself as she crouched there, not sure what to say, except, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."
He nodded. "American?"
"English."
He rose. "Forgive. Hard to tell from wardrobe. I am Kolya Aranovich, but ladies call me Cowboy Cole. You lost? Hurt?"
His English was broken – but far better than her Russian. "Yes. I mean no, not hurt. Just lost." She rose as well, still covering herself. "And uh, in need of help."
"
Da
." He looked away as he shucked off his longcoat, revealing a broad frame in jeans, boots and a T-shirt with Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name character on the front. He dropped it between them. "Lone Wolf is on road behind me."
