Peter is the Wolf Chapter 2 so far

Chapter 2

You humans have some weird legends about weres in general and werewolves especially. One of them is this idea that we werewolves are solitary, lonely creatures, and... well, that’s just dumb. There’s NEVER just one werewolf. In fact, werewolves are the LEAST solitary were type. We organize for mutual support, boosting each other’s businesses, making connections to open doors among humans on the quiet, covering up for the occasional... okay, in my case frequent incidents... anyway, stuff like that. In fact, other were types tend to rely on werewolves for organizing things, at least in areas where packs exist.

Somehow or other Hollywood got the idea not long back that werewolves have packs, and they ran with it, making stories about monsters gathering at night, changing into cannibal beasts and slaughtering anybody dumb enough to be out in the woods at night. 

That’s still wrong, and not just because we aren’t at war with vampires. (No, vampires don’t exist. That’s why we’re not at war with them.) 

As a general rule, when weres get together outside their own families, they do it in human form- NEVER in wolf form. Why? Because even a grown, fully trained werewolf still has much stronger instincts in wolf form than in human form. It doesn’t take much for a werewolf to say, “fuck it,” let the human mind shut down, and let the wolf take over. That means any meeting between two or more wolves in the fur is about two steps away from a brawl and three from an orgy. Either way, that’s a recipe for massive trouble.

Don’t ask me how I know. If you can’t already guess, you’ll figure it out as you keep reading.

The one exception to this is the Howl- the meeting most packs have on the full moon, where everybody gets together, re-establishes community ties, conducts pack business and settles disagreements.

Now, you’d think the full moon, when the wolf and all the wild instincts are at their strongest, would be the WORST time to do anything important or to bring large numbers of weres together. That’s sure what I thought. Then Jean explained it to me, as her parents explained it to her: that’s exactly why we do it on the full moon. The main purpose of the Howl isn’t to have fun or to vote on some fundraiser or something; it’s to keep an eye on the weres who might run wild if left to themselves.

That’s the reason why everyone in our pack is supposed to show at every Howl unless they have some really good reason. (I thought I had a good reason- getting with my girlfriend again- but, as I’ve been told often enough, I’m stupid.) 

So, who enforces the rules? Well, up until a couple years ago it was our pack alpha. That’s what we call the leaders of a pack- the top male and female (usually mated). But our pack alpha stepped down a couple years ago and implemented a new system- the pack elder council, which is the alphas and the strongest weres in the pack. 

On this particular night the elder council consisted of six weres.

First, there was Constantine Nero, or as everyone in town knew him, “Uncle Con.” He’d been pack alpha for over thirty years... and sheriff for nearly as long. He appeared at all the schools for safety events and other things several times a year, so absolutely everyone knew his smiling face and his gigantic sideburns. What they don’t know is that he became alpha by killing the previous alpha- my granddad, who decided the alpha should have all the women, including Con’s wife. And he held his position as alpha by fighting off a lot of challenges after that. So yeah, nobody with a brain messed with him.

Then there’s my parents. You know what I said about nobody with a brain? Dad challenged Con for leadership four different times. He thinks he’s the pack’s Big Bad Wolf, but he got his ass handed to him every single time. Unlike a lot of other weres, Dad did at least have the sense to give up when he was beaten, which is why he’s still around. That said, Dad is either the second or third strongest were in the entire pack, so I guess Con found him useful for things that don’t require thinking.

Mom- Sally Wald Stubbe- is the strongest female werewolf in the pack... or was, before Sarah. She’s also a lot smarter than Dad, and when she gives an order, he backs down. Her granddad was the alpha between Granddad and Great-Grandad, and the Walds were the pack leaders before that as far back as anyone remembers. When I was young she talked about that stuff a lot, but as I got older she stopped even mentioning it. 

Jean’s parents are also on the council. In fact, her parents are the current alphas. Her dad is Jack Goodwin, who edits the town newspaper, and he’s the first alpha in at least fifty years to get the position by election. (His main opponent was Dad. Dad got five votes; Jack, thirty-one.) Jean’s mom is Carla Whitetail Goodwin, whose family comes from the Ojibwa tribes around here. Her great-grandparents opened a pharmacy ages ago, and today she owns three locations. Neither of them is particularly big or strong- Jack’s only about half a foot taller than me in wolf form- but they’re cool people, so almost everybody likes them.

Everybody, that is, except Gus Cramer. He’s Butch Cramer’s dad, and he’s where she gets all her crazy. He scares me even more than Becca does, and that’s saying a LOT. He challenged Con pretty much the day he came to town, about twenty-five years ago. Con let him live and gave him a job at the sheriff’s department so he could, I guess, try to tame him or something. It really did not work. He’s always talking about how weres should rule humans- kinda ignoring that you humans outnumber us something like a thousand to one. He ran in the same election for alpha on that platform, and not only did nobody vote for him, but there was actually a vote afterwards on whether or not he was too dangerous to be allowed to live.

Gus is still breathing on a two-vote majority... and he acts like it was a twenty vote majority. Once I asked Con why he let Gus live, and he said, “Sometimes it’s better to have them inside pissing out than outside pissing on you.” And that sounds smart, but every time I have to hide from Gus, I think it doesn’t work in his case.

Anyway, that’s the six of them. Six werewolves basically running things for about fifty to sixty weres in town and out in the surrounding countryside. And at the moment Jean and I were meeting the new economy-sized Sarah, the six of them were gathering near the barbecue pits in the camping area at Del Ray Park, talking about us...

Weather permitting, it was the same site every month- Camping Area B, in the back of Del Ray Park. The site contained several welcome facilities- public restrooms, picnic tables, several communal barbecue pits, and ample parking- but it had been mainly chosen because of the quarter mile of curving drive leading in, with a bridge crossing a small but deep ravine and a lockable gate at the end of the bridge.

The campsite was, above all, private- not in the legal sense, but in the sense of security. If the gate or the sign reading CLOSED FOR FAMILY EVENT failed, the intruders would still give plenty of warning to those in the campground. As for sneaking in through the woods, such an intruder would have to walk not less than a mile to get around the ravine and its spring-fed creek. And, of course, if someone really was that determined, it didn’t hurt that all the people in the campground had superb hearing and literally superhuman senses of smell.

Privacy was important, because it was a gathering of werewolves on the first night of the full moon. And, being that it was the full moon, it was “fur optional,” which because of the difference in size between the werewolf’s two forms also made it “clothing optional.” Things like silk panties or tailored suits just didn’t work when you suddenly gained a foot of height and a couple hundred pounds of muscle, bone and attitude.

Not that every were present was naked down to the fur. There were a couple of wolves working the grills, wearing aprons for safety, as did the three or four matrons watching over the potluck dishes on the picnic tables. A couple of pups ran around, on twos or fours, wearing shirts but no pants, being chased by parents in mixed states of undress. 

But most of the females were completely nude, and most of the males wore nothing but a pair of sweatpants or, in a couple of cases, a loincloth. And all of them- every last one- had a coat of various shades of fur, large pointed ears, and a muzzle full of decidedly carnivorous teeth that, were an outsider to see them, would be much more embarrassing and harder to explain than a bare butt or loose nipple. 

This was the way it had always been in the Peterstown pack, for as long as anybody could remember, and so nobody questioned it. 

What hadn’t always been the way in the Peterstown pack was the cluster of werewolves gathered between the parking lot and the picnic tables, within sight of one of the barbecue pits. Rule by a elected council instead of an alpha couple was still new, even after two years. But, since the old pack alpha was still on the council, the rest of the pack figured it would be all right and didn’t think much about it.

“Moon’s up, Jack,” the old alpha said. Con Nero was on the short and stocky side as a werewolf and still fit in his sheriff’s uniform pants. He’d taken off the rest of his uniform, revealing an array of scars on his chest and arms- scars no other were in the pack possessed. His light gray fur blended into the darker gray hair on the back of his scalp and in his massive sideburns. “How ‘bout we get this show on the road? You know, while the pot of dumplings is still full and the bushes are still empty?”

A growl erupted from a red-furred male standing next to Con. The blonde hair on top of his head was trimmed and waxed into a rigid flat-top, but his sideburns grew out wider and wilder than even Con’s. Unlike every other male werewolf at the meeting, he wore no clothing whatever. “We’re still waiting on Goodwin’s brat and that runt of Stubbe’s,” Gus Gramer said. “Any of you know where they are?”

Rebecca Cramer, still in the outfit from before, knelt on the ground next to Gus, head lowered, eyes turned away from her sire. She said nothing.

The tallest were in the group- and in the whole pack- cracked his knuckles and rumbled, “When I get my hands on that boy...” Walt Stubbe stood out among the other werewolves not just because of his sheer size but also because, unlike the vast majority of werewolves, he didn’t retain his human hairdo in wolf form. Instead he wore a huge shaggy mane that blended almost seamlessly into his gray pelt.

Yeah, and Dad is really sensitive about that, too. Don’t EVER mention it to his face.

The female standing next to him, smiling like an angel, grabbed the waistband of his badly stretched sweat pants, yanked, and twisted, making Walt squeak for a moment. “Behave, dear,” Sally Stubbe said, her smile never slipping an inch. Having made her point, she resumed the pose that practically screamed “good little wifey,” if a 1950’s housewife stood seven feet tall, cared to go naked before the world, and had a thick tuft of russet-orange fur fluffed up between her breasts.

Across from Con and Gus, two smaller weres kicked back in camping chairs. The male, his coat a solid grey not far from black, hadn’t done more than undo his belt and unbutton his dress shirt. Jack Goodwin leaned back a little farther, stretched his hands back behind his head, and drawled, “Eh, we know Peter and Jeannie. Peter doesn’t start trouble, it just finds him. And Jean wouldn’t let him start trouble even if he wanted to!”

His wife, brown with white underpatches right up to her muzzle, sat next to him, smirking a smug, silent smirk. Carla Goodwin knew perfectly well that Jean was more than willing to start trouble if it amused her, but she wasn’t going to give Gus Cramer the satisfaction of admitting he had a point. And besides, Jean knew where to draw the line. And if she was off somewhere with Peter- as she probably was- then they didn’t need to worry.

“So,” Jack said, sitting back forward and pushing his hat away from his eyes, “I suppose we could just get-”

The sound wasn’t loud, but even as soft as it was, it silenced every were in the campground instantly. Ears literally pricked up, twitching to find where it came from. It came soft, deep, much deeper than anything they would ever have imagined... but it was, unmistakably, a wolf howl.

Which meant, since coyotes didn’t sound like that and no natural wolves existed in this part of the state, a werewolf howl.

And it went on and on, paused, and then repeated, for close to a minute before it ceased.

Then, after a second of silence, every wolf at the Howl began talking at once, including the council group.

“My hearing ain’t what it used to be...” Con muttered.

“That wasn’t anyone here!” Jack said, jumping to his feet.

“That wasn’t Jean, either!” said Carla.

“Or Peter!” Sally added.

“That was from across town,” Walt said, a touch of awe in his voice.

“Cut the bullshit, Stubbe,” Gus snapped, looking away from the lights of town through the trees and glaring at Walt. “Across town? Impossible! Howls carry, but not through city noise!”

“It came from that direction,” Walt snarled, bristling back at Gus, “and a long way off! You heard how deep and distorted it was!”

“Of course you’d say something stupid like that, Stubbe.”

Walt’s lip curled up, revealing his fangs. “Are you callin’ me a liar, Cramer?” he snarled.

“I’m saying you’re trying to cover for your pup, Stubbe,” Cramer sneered. “Whatever that howl is, that runt’s going to be involved, along with that spoiled brat of Goodwin’s.” He turned his glare on Jack and Carla as he added, “You people need to learn how to raise pups. Isn’t that right, Becky?”

He looked down, but Rebecca was gone, with nothing but a last rustling of leaves at the far side of the campground, and a younger male with a frisbee staring into the trees, left to show her trail.

My parents didn’t tell me everything about thralls, obviously. I think we’ve made that clear. But they (and by they I mean Mom) didn’t tell me nothing about them. 

The word thrall is from either Old Norse or Old German, and it means “slave”. Humans applied it to werewolves a couple hundred years ago or so. Specifically, it applies to humans who, deliberately or not, get infected with lycanthropy, supposedly to become the servants of the one who “turned” them.

And you humans believe this because you keep getting us mixed up with vampires. Which we aren’t, because there are still no such things as vampires. But, Mom says, werewolves never really had a word for it, because we didn’t need to make a difference between born werewolves and “made” werewolves until, well, about two hundred years ago. So we just adopted your word for it.

How much of this is accurate and how much something you tell little kids because they’re too dumb to understand anything more complex, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll ask Jean sometime, or Debbie- yeah, Debbie’s not in this book, she comes later, so don’t bother looking for her.

... where was I?

Oh, right, vampires and stuff.

Anyway, no, werewolves do not enslave the people we turn into thralls. Thralls have their own minds and their own will. The problem with that, when a human gets bit... or, in Sarah’s case, fucked... it takes them a lot of time and practice to learn how to control their transformation. (Even I have problems doing that, and I was born this way.) And all the time, their minds and will are flooded with new sensations, new instincts and new urges, so strong that self control goes flying out the window.

That makes thralls completely unpredictable. And, since even the weakest werewolf (like me) is still really hard to kill, generally stronger and faster than any human, and has really sharp teeth and claws that will turn any enemy they don’t kill into another werewolf... that makes them goddamn DANGEROUS.

Especially to other werewolves, because wounds from the claws or teeth of other werewolves don’t get the fast-heal treatment any other kind of wound does. We can bleed out from them or get infections just like you people. Not fun.

Another bit of vampire lore Hollywood came up with is that, if you kill the one who created the thrall, that cures the thrall. So far as anyone I know ever heard, that doesn’t work with werewolves. But when Sarah saw me and Jean in the fur for the first time, I thought I was about to find out for sure first-hand...

When she looked down again after howling her heart out, Sarah saw her call had brought help... but... 

... who were these things?

She didn’t recognize either of them, exactly. Something about them seemed a little familiar- and one smelled every familiar indeed. But she didn’t know any dog-people, especially not dog-people like the female wearing nothing but a feather in her hair and a shirt-shaped piece of netting that didn’t even try to cover the nipples poking out of her fur. 

And anyway, they were too close. WAY too close. She wanted her personal space while she figured out... well, everything. Why did everything look wrong? Why did she feel... well, not wrong exactly, she felt perfectly right, but not the way she remembered feeling before. Something had changed, something that for some reason kept just slipping out of her reach, and right now she didn’t need distractions from apparent strangers.

She bent down to look the two interlopers in the eyes- it took a lot of bending- and growled. Her lips bent back to bare her teeth.

“Um...” The male’s voice quavered a little. Again it seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite match it up with the three different colors of fur and the ratty clothes scattered between. “Er... n-n-nice girl?” He leaned back, almost falling on his ass, and added uncertainly, “Sit? Stay? Please?”

“Try something simple, Pete,” the female said, baring her own teeth in what looked like a playful grin to Sarah. “How about, ‘Don’t kill us?’”

Sarah didn’t appreciate these two talking down to her, especially considering they stood- well, mostly sat now- in her shadow. She growled a little louder and bared more teeth.

With a crablike backwards scramble the two backed off.

Satisfied, Sarah stood up again. Her legs seemed a bit more comfortable if she kept her knees flexed, so she squatted a little, testing her balance. It felt right, balancing on the balls of her feet, her ankle way, way up from where she thought it ought to be... and yet, well, it just felt right that way. Why had it ever felt otherwise?

She bounced on her paws again, and this set other parts of her bouncing, which called her attention to her chest. There was an awful lot of it- in fact, if the two maybe-strangers had stood close enough to her, she wouldn’t have been able to see them. They were firm- really, firm, surprisingly so. She brought her hands up to poke them, and to stroke the somewhat shaggy fur that covered them except for the part around her nipples.

The sight of her hands distracted her again. They were big too- nowhere near large enough to even start to cover her boobs (and she remembered being able to do exactly that, before, but now she couldn’t, and the memory flitted away). There were definite fingers and a thumb- pretty long fingers at that, at first glance. But the tips were a fair bit wider than the rest of them, with thick bare pads of skin just under the claws, which didn’t seem all that large or out of place anymore.

She gave one hand a sniff. Oh. Was that what she smelled like? There was still a hint of hand sanitizer, a little bit of canned chicken soup, a bit of forest loam, but mostly fur, clean fur like Fluppy Dog’s fur. Cute little Fluppy Dog, old but still glad to see anybody, so cute and friendly-

She felt something moving behind her. She twisted to look over her shoulder and there it was- something big, and yellow, and bushy, and stiff, swaying rapidly back and forth.

She had to catch it. She just had to.

Her head lunged forward to take it in her teeth.

It spun away.

She tried to follow. 

It dropped down and sped around her.

She spun after it.

She didn’t notice going to all fours.

She barely felt the bouncing of her enormous tits under her, bumping her elbows and occasionally her knees. 

The world vanished from Sarah’s attention, except for a tiny yellow bit of fur which she hadn’t quite yet realized was part of her own body.

Time passed, unheeded.

“So, you wanna talk about keeping a pup in line, Cramer?” Walt snarled. “You couldn’t keep a crayon in a line!”

“Crayons are about your speed,” Gus growled back. “You’re too dumb for anything more complicated.”

Sally, standing behind Walt, folded her arms. “Oh, both of you quit acting like terriers trying to mark territory,” she muttered.

Both the big male wolves snarled softly, teeth fully bared, eyes locked.

A shorter male- Jack- pushed between them and shoved them apart. “Enough,” he grunted. “Save it for later. Right now we’ve got a strange werewolf on the other side of town- a BIG one- to deal with.” Stepping through them, he began buttoning his shirt back up as he added, “And if our missing kids aren’t already involved, they will be shortly.” He glanced around and added, “Any bets?”

Nobody said a word. The two larger males stayed separated, both of them watching him instead of each other. Sally clung to her mate’s arm, her eyes also staying on Jack.

Jack sighed, then took a deep breath, and forced himself back into his human form- a fairly ordinary-looking man, fairly skinny in his middle age, no gray in his hair. He picked up a rumpled suit jacket from next to his chair and slung it on. “Con,” he said, “if we heard it here it must have been like a jet taking off where it came from-”

“Already on it, Jack.” The ex-pack alpha was halfway through dressing and forcing himself back into human form as well. “I ought to know the drill by now.” With his uniform shirt back on, he reached into the pocket and pull out the hand radio. Switching it on, he said, “Dispatch, Car 1, Dispatch, Car 1.”

“Go ahead, Car 1,” a fuzzy, distorted voice rasped from the radio mini-speaker.

“Larry, I’m on the northwest side of town,” Con said. “I just heard what sounded like some kind of big animal cry, somewhere far off. Any reports?”

“Affirmative, Con,” the voice on the other end said. “Cindy’s taken two calls already, one from Sherwood Estates, one from down by Lake Packard.”

“Roger,” Con said. “I’m on my way down there. Send a car to each report if you can. And send a couple to Shelle and Turkey Creek. The one I heard might be something different.”

While Con continued to give orders that spread his sheriff’s department thinner than an oil sheen on the river, Jack finished gathering up his belongings. “I’ll have to go back to the office,” he said. “People will be calling the newspaper hotline to report this, which means I have to be there to suppress it. Everybody else says put until Con finds out what’s going on.”

“Fuck you, Goodwin!” Gus snapped. “I’ve got to go retrieve my girl! She’s running loose-”

“You especially stay here, Gus!” Jack snapped right back. In his human form he didn’t even come up to Gus’ shoulders, but he strode over to him and stood less than an inch in front of him, head craned back to look the flattop-wearing wolf in the eyes. “Have you forgotten you’re on probation with this pack? We rejected your bid to become pack alpha, and then you ran for sheriff so you could use the job to force your way into being alpha. After that stunt, nobody trusts you farther than they can throw you.” He snorted and added, “Hell, nobody here would be in a room alone with you except Con. And that’s only because, old as he is, he knows he can still take you down.”

Gus didn’t blink. “Big talk from a weak bullshitter of a wolf, Goodwin.”

Jack didn’t blink either, and he didn’t even acknowledge Gus’s statement. “You’ve proven you’re a danger to the Secret, to the pack and every wolf in it,” he continued. “We debated this. We had the vote. You got to live- barely. And you got to live for two reasons: out of concern for your daughter, and because it’s a pain in the ass to make a deputy sheriff’s body disappear.” His eyes narrowed as he finished, “But if you want to compare notes with D. W. Cooper and Jimmy Hoffa, just take one step out of line. Give me the least bit of trouble.”

With that Jack spun on his heels, walking towards his car. Gus’s jaw flapped for a moment, and then words returned. “Listen to you, you neutered pup!” he shouted. “We voted. We decided. You’re too weak even to take responsibility for your own decisions!” He spread his arms and shouted, “We’re WEREWOLVES! It’s our right to be free! Our right to do whatever we want if we’re strong enough!” He took a step forward and said in a tone only marginally softer than a shout, “And it is still my right to challenge you in combat for your position-”

Grass rustled, and Gus paused in his rant. Looking around, he noticed that about half the pack- and almost all of it between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five- had either surrounded him or was walking in his direction. Every eye he saw was hostile. A couple of weres, including Walt, had teeth slightly bared. 

“-if I wanted to,” he finished, backing down quickly. “Which I don’t. Tonight,” he added hastily, as if that made it any less a retreat. 

“Smart boy,” murmured a female voice. Carla Goodwin stood in front of him, smiling. She had a million smiles, and this one was about the third least friendly in her arsenal- the one that said it was a nice evening, but it would be even nicer if your entrails were stretched out like clotheslines on the trees. “For a change.” She stepped forwards, and Gus’s foot twitched as he had to force himself not to step backwards.

Carla stood as tall as she could, stretching herself up to be in Gus’s face. It was easier for her than it had been for Jack- she’d never left wolf form- but it was still quite a stretch. Even so, a trickle of sweat ran down the fur of Gus’s cheek as she murmured, for his hearing alone, “Maybe we won’t have to reopen the question of what happened to Nancy Vulthar. Or her daughter.” And then, in a hiss with notes of growl in it, “And what I know about her.” She tapped the side of her nose in a gesture which, on a human, would mean a-word-to-the-wise. 

Gus took two steps back, and then, slowly, walked over to where he’d set up his camping gear.

Meanwhile, at the car, Jack shouted back to the pack at large, “Everyone stay here for now! Once I’ve got things settled at the paper, I’ll get with Con and help him investigate this. We’ll make whatever decisions we need to when the moon is gone.”

Looking over at Walt, he sighed, shook his head, and opened the car door, shouting, “Walt, keep an eye on the pack for me.”

“M-m-me?” A look of unholy glee exploded on Walt’s face. “Acting pack alpha? Me?” He laughed, a long, not terribly mature laugh. “At last! I get to run things for once! I get all the power! All the glory! All the WOMEN!” He laughed again, flexing his arms and showing off a build most bodybuilders would have died for, or even glued fur to their bare skin for.

Jack leaned out the car window for one final order. “Sally,” he shouted, “you keep an eye on Walt.”

Sally waved back cheerfully. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t do anything too stupid!”

Walt slumped, ears drooping. “Awwwwww...”

It’s difficult to stay scared of a gigantic wolf monster when it spends a quarter hour chasing its tail.

“Shouldn’t she be dizzy by now?” Jean asked. 

“I’m getting dizzy just watching her,” Peter said, hands in his jacket pockets, fully relaxed.

“I don’t get how she’s not bored yet.” Jean had only relaxed a little, just enough for her to begin fidgeting. “I mean, how much fun is it to go around in circles chasing something you can’t possibly catch?”

“You ever watched NASCAR?” 

“Not funny, Petey,” Jean grumbled. “What if she decides to chase- watch out!!”

Sarah had put a foot or hand wrong somehow, and her momentum sent her spinning and then tumbling past the other two werewolves, eventually rolling with a thud into the trunk of a tree. She uncurled and flopped on her back, shaking her head. After a moment she wiggled her shoulders. With a soft wurfing sound she did it again, and harder. In a few moments she was rolling and squirming around in the dirt and old leaves, making loud happy barks all the while.

“Awwww,” Peter said, watching the display (and in particular the two huge mounds on Sarah’s chest that wobbled and bobbed randomly with her writhing). “She’s just a puppy!”

“A puppy?!” Jean snapped. “She’s at least twelve feet tall!!”

“So she’s a twelve foot tall puppy!” Peter grinned back. “Big but harmless!”

“Wrong,” Jean said firmly. “She’s a twelve foot tall werewolf who doesn’t have control of her instincts or transformations. That makes her dangerous.”

“Look, we’re a mile away from anyone out here,” Peter said. “There’s nobody she can hurt except us, and if she was going to hurt us, she’d have done it by now, right?”

“Just because she’s half a ton of blonde fuzzy ADHD doesn’t mean she likes us, Peter.” Jean threw up her hands in frustration (which, Peter couldn’t help noting, showed off Jean’s also very nice, though much more proportional, breasts through her fishnet top). 

Yeah, I looked. If you’ve been straight, eighteen and male, you know you can’t not look, not even if your life depended on it. 

“Don’t worry,,” Peter said, pulling his glance up to Jean’s face, “it’s going to be cool. All we have to do is be friendly, play with her a bit, until we wear her out. Maybe we can just find a stick and play fetch with her until the sun comes-”

The loudest snuffling sound Peter had ever heard echoed from about three inches behind him. It coincided with a very strong, irregular breeze that pulled at his clothes and fur. Slowly, carefully, he turned, realizing that in the course of their conversation both he and Jean had taken their eyes off of Sarah... and the big wolf, curious at all the noise, had come over to investigate. 

Peter, without thinking, stepped backwards, leaving a frozen Jean to face the sniffing. Sarah was crouched, not quite on all fours, keeping her head well below the level of Jean’s. Her eyes, catching the moonlight for a moment and throwing it back as if the light were their own, bore a look of confusion. After a few seconds the sniffing stopped and, with slow and deliberate caution, the mega-wolf eased around Jean to sniff at Peter again.

SNIFFFFFFFFF, SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF. SNIFFFFFFFFF, SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF.

“Um... what are you doing girl?” Peter squeaked. He took another step back, but Sarah kept pace with him, her sniffing speeding up as she bent her head lower, focusing more or less on Peter’s pants.

Peter tried to take another step back, only to find a fallen branch, but as his leg moved, Sarah lunged forwards, accidentally head-butting him in the stomach. He sprawled backwards onto the dirt, immediately propping himself on his hands and getting ready to crab-walk out of danger. “Um, okay, I can handle this,” he muttered to himself, and added in a slightly louder voice, “Good Sarah, nice Sarah, who’s a good girl?”

“You think you could patronize her just a little more, you dolt??” Jean shouted. “I told you she’s not a puppy!”

“Niiiiice Sarah...” Peter ignored Jean, keeping his full attention on the giant wolf whose muzzle kept getting closer and closer to his crotch, the deep snuffling sound speeding up as Sarah’s tail began swishing back and forth behind her.

SNIFFLE SNIFFLE SNIFFLE SNIFFLE...

 SNURF!!

Sarah’s head lifted, her jaw dropping into a big wolfy grin, showing off way too many teeth for Peter’s peace of mind. Without thinking he scrambled backwards and up to his feet, about to run for his life.

Before he could even turn around, with a bark that echoed through the trees, Sara rushed forward and wrapped her arms around him, tackling him to the ground.