Peter is the Wolf novel project moving here (Chapter 1)

Well, my financial outlook for the next six months or so indicates I really need to find some way to get back to writing on a regular basis.

And, as it happens, I have multiple writing projects, and one of those is one that's been hanging fire for fourteen months... on a separate Patreon that, in all honesty, has no reason to exist anymore.

An hour or so ago I announced its shutdown over there, and I'm moving the Peter is the Wolf novelization project over here. Here's the first draft of Chapter 1 in its entirety, for everyone; the rest of it, as I write it, will be members-only posts.

And to those of you coming here from the PitW Patreon: welcome aboard! (PS, please sign up using a desktop/laptop compy or an Android device, because Apple iPhone apps take 30% off the top before Patreon takes its cut, which means on a $1 pledge I would owe Patreon money.)

(NOTE: PitW will have sexually explicit scenes, and even parts that don't will be NSFW. You've been warned.)

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PETER IS THE WOLF

BOOK 1: THE FIRST DAY OF THE WORST OF YOUR LIFE

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 1

Hi there. I’m Peter Stubbe, and I’m a werewolf.

No, really.

The name is traditional in my family, or so Mom told me once. I think she’s making it up, especially since we live in a place called Peterstown, so-

Oh, that wasn’t the part you had trouble with?

Well, it’s true. I am a werewolf. I grow a snout, fangs, tail, fur, the whole bit. So do my mom and dad. In fact, if you put all the different kinds of werebeast together, about one out of every thousand people is one. There’s a good chance you know one.

Also, I found out there was actually a guy named Peter Stubbe in Germany five hundred years ago who got prosecuted for cannibalism and pleaded not guilty by reason of being a werewolf. So yeah, the name thing still matters. I think Mom or Dad just decided to get my life as a cruel joke off to a running start.

Anyway, when you think about werewolves, you probably think of murderous creatures that change shape under a full moon, either gifted or cursed with the reason of men, the instincts of animals, and strength far surpassing either. A fusion of man and beast, immune to harm, towering over mere mortals…

… yeah, that’s so not me. Especially not the mindless cannibal parts.

There are a lot of seven or even eight foot tall werebeasts out there, but I’m not one of them. I’m a runt- a major disappointment to werewolf-kind, as my dad never fails to remind me when he bothers to talk to me at all. I can barely lift a car tire, let alone a car. My clothes are still just as baggy after I shift as before.

(Well, except for the crotch. That’s the one place I’m not a runt, and I don’t care what you’re thinking, it’s caused me more trouble than it’s worth. And it gets much worse in werewolf form, which is a big reason why I wear baggy clothes in the first place.)

It’s not all bad, though. My senses are just as good as any other werewolf’s, and my reflexes are actually better. I can’t fight, but I sure can dodge and run. I also have all the werewolf immunities you’ve heard of. Fire, silver, a few particular herbs, old age, and the teeth and claws of other weres- those are the only things that can kill me. Poisons and drugs barely do anything. Everything else short of decapitation will heal- and I speak from way too much experience there.

Anyway, yeah, that’s me. Peter Stubbe. Werewolf. Life’s chew toy.

That point was in late June the year I graduated high school. In a few weeks I was going to move into a college dorm on a baseball athletic scholarship, get away from the disappointed stares of my parents, and restart my whole life.

Oh, and a couple weeks before, my girlfriend and I celebrated high school graduation by doing the nasty on her dad’s couch. So yeah, I was feeling good about life for the first time, well, ever.

And that’s when the weirdoes in hazmat suits with the nets and tranquilizer darts showed up.

Again.

Peterstown was an in-between kind of place- too small to be a city, too large to be a town. It was far enough south that it had a summer, but far enough north that someone could wear a fur coat in summer and not keel over instantly of heat stroke. It was large enough to have a large-ish downtown district, but small enough that the interstate didn’t come close enough to count as a bypass. It was large enough to have a university with a Division I athletic department, but small enough that the name of the university included the word “State” and one cardinal direction.

More to the point, it was just large enough that the sound of squealing tires didn’t draw anybody’s attention. It was a busy Monday afternoon. The streets were full of traffic, and there were pedestrians here and there, so someone slapping on the brakes was only to be expected.

So nobody really looked at the figure on the skateboard that the van had just barely avoided hitting. They didn’t notice the fur-lined jacket, which made zero sense in late June. And most importantly, they didn’t notice the tail sticking out from the waist of his pants, the large fuzzy ears sticking up through his hair, or the gaping muzzle on his face, panting for breath as he kicked and kicked the skateboard to faster speeds.

Peter had just enough presence of mind, over the waves of panic, to reflect that everything would have been fine if he hadn’t gotten startled by that car backfiring. And if it hadn’t been the first day of full moon, that wouldn’t have been a problem. But it was, so it had been, and so his control had slipped and he’d gone fuzzy. And, of course, the instant he’d gone wolf in public, the hazmat people had shown up out of nowhere and begun chasing him, not giving him even a second to regain his focus.

Of course Peter had his skateboard with him. He always did. He’d gotten around town on his skateboard for more than half his life. He’d yanked it out the instant he dashed through the closing circle of net-wielding weirdos, and he’d just jumped on it when the van zoomed out of an alley and screeched to a halt just short of flattening him. Now he heard its roaring engine behind him, and he racked his brain to think of anything that could make his board go even faster.

There hadn’t been a van last time. The guys in the bunny suits, yeah, they’d tried to catch him before. He’d got away by the skin of this teeth, then. But this time they had wheels, and unlike his wheels, theirs had an engine. Peter looked back over his shoulder; yep, it was gaining.

When he looked forward again, there was an oncoming car right in front of him- a cherry red new-version Beetle.

There had been a time when Peter had wanted to be a professional skateboard superstar when he grew up, until he found out how few of them made any money at it. Still, the two years of practice paid off in a perfect ollie that launched him and the board up over the hood of the Beetle. The landing wasn’t quite perfect, and the underside of the board screeched across the car roof, ripping off the top layer of paint. Then the car was gone, and Peter kicked down, locking the skateboard wheels to the pavement, adjusted his balance, and skated on.

The driver of the Beetle reacted about as one might expect. The car’s brakes squealed, and the driver’s head poked out the car window for a glimpse at what he’d just barely missed. This meant, naturally, that he didn’t see the van coming at him until it used the Beetle as a pinball bumper (fortunately for the Beetle driver, sideswiping the passenger side). The Beetle went spinning to a halt in an empty parking lot, while the van roared on, barely slowing down.

         Peter saw none of this. Grinding the Beetle had slowed him down a lot, and he was pumping hard to get back up to speed. To a certain extent gravity was his friend. The southeastern half of Peterstown was flat as a pancake, but the northern and western sides had some hills, and the street Peter was on ran south-southwest from the high school towards downtown, down-slope most of the way. Of course, only an idiot would ride a skateboard down the middle of a four-lane city street-

Hey! I didn’t have a choice! Like you could have done better!

- but Peter was a man out of options, so he kicked harder and leaned-

         Something stabbed him in the right shoulder, deep and hard. He yelped, reached behind him, and grabbed something large and cylindrical, with a furry or feathery tail. He yanked it out and looked at it- a large dart with a clear, hollow shaft.

         Then the world went swirly and wavy. Ooooh, he thought, horsey tranky. Lotsa horsey tranky. Not the first time he’d been drugged either. It would pass in about a minute. So long as he could keep his balance…

         Then he looked forward down the hill into downtown, which all of a sudden looked a lot steeper and more uneven than he remembered it. And he noticed, really for the first time, just how much of the roofs of the multistory downtown buildings he could see from the top of that hill.

         And at the bottom of the hill sat the single busiest traffic light in town, glowing red, A wave of oncoming traffic was coming up the left side of the road ahead of him; the right side was filled by vehicles stopped for the light. And, thanks to the tranq dart, all of it rippled and shook like bad chop on the lakes.

         Peter had just enough time to whimper before he felt the slope of the road drop out under him.

         Yeah, quick side note here: that neighborhood’s called Deadman’s Hill. Not because of the hill- it’s really not that bad when you don’t have a gallon of ketamine or whatever burning through your system. There was a mass grave there two hundred years ago from some battle against Indians or something. There’s no cemetery there now- just some shops and houses and stuff. But there are a hell of a lot of wrecks at the bottom where downtown begins…

         The skateboard, and Peter, went down the hill at ten miles over the speed limit, followed closely by the van full of hazmat-suited men.

         The oncoming traffic came up the hill, the lead cars already honking horns at him.

         With no other thought in his mind than oh crap oh crap oh crap, Peter covered his head in his arms and tried to make himself as small as possible.

         Horns honked.

         Tires squealed.

         Wind rushed by one side of Peter, then the other, then both.

         Peter shifted his weight back and forth, sending the speeding skateboard through a series of S-curves that threaded it, and him, through a rapidly closing gauntlet of skidding, swerving automobiles.

         A truck horn blared, directly ahead. A shadow loomed in front of him.

         Peter leaned backwards hard, and his tail brushed along the side of an old Buick sedan.

         OH CRAP!!

         There was the briefest feeling of hot diesel exhaust on his face.

         Then the air opened up around Peter, and the screeching of tires stopped, replaced by a symphony of car horns.

         Steadying himself on the still-speeding skateboard, Peter took a moment to pat himself down. Nothing broken. Nothing injured. Nothing even torn.

         A quick look behind him revealed a sea of cars and trucks, none actually wrecked, but all in a hopeless tangle that would take the township sheriff’s department at least an hour to undo. At the very back end of it was the white van, spun sideways, the words AMINAL CONTROL receding at about thirty miles per hour.

         Relief, and then triumph, surged through Peter. With a laugh he put his hands along his head, spread his fingers, and stuck out his tongue at the hazmat goons. “NYAAAH! YOU LOSE!” he shouted over the horns. “You can’t get me! I’m untouchable. I am IIIIINVIIINCIBLE!”

         He turned back around just as the street left downtown and forked. He ran facefirst, and then crotchfirst, into the pole holding up the road-divides-here sign.

The skateboard rattled along the pavement without him for another four blocks before hitting a curb and beaching itself.

         Yeah. Really not proud of that moment.

         And by the way, I can confirm, rapid healing aside, taking a shot to the wolf nards still hurts a LOT…

Jean Goodwin sat on the park bench and watched the sun lowering towards the treeline.

Peter was late, but she didn’t mind. She had all night, and the night hadn’t even quite arrived yet. And besides (she smirked to herself), women always appreciate a man who comes late.

  She idly contemplated the possibility of giving Peter another chance to come very late indeed, later that night. The two of them had been friends-with-benefits through most of their teen years, mostly because there weren’t any other weres in town within five years either way of their own age. (Well, there was one, but that one just had SO many red flags. And you didn’t need to even HAVE a dick to know not to stick it in the crazy.)

Anyway. Jean had no problem bumping uglies with Peter- none at all!- but that was where it stopped. Sure, Peter was a sweet, caring, and frankly adorable goomba, but he had also inherited every bit of his father’s stupidity. (And so far as Jean was concerned, his mother wasn’t winning any Nobel Prize either- sure, she taught elementary school, but she married Mr. Stubbe and seemed to be happy with him, so there had to be something wrong with him.) And besides, as entertaining as Peter’s nonstop stream of minor catastrophes might be to watch, she didn’t want to spend her life dealing with the fallout.

No, Jean had a plan. She was going to enjoy the three most free years of her life in college, then pick some major or other- it really didn’t matter what- spend another two years getting the sheepskin, then find a new pack somewhere else, find someone well-off and well-hung, and begin working out how to make it seem like proposing marriage was his idea. Maybe she would send Peter a dirty selfie every once in a while for old times’ sake, but that was all. 

She hadn’t been surprised by Peter’s lack of reaction when she’d explained all of that to him. For one thing, he was sweet. For another, he was pretty dumb. And mostly he was a heterosexual male lycanthrope just out of high school, which meant his only thoughts about lifetime commitments centered on pro baseball scouts. 

Still, they each had about a year and a half left of being horny teens, and they would both be going to the uni in town (Peter on an athletics scholarship, Jean on a Mom-owns-three-pharmacies scholarship), so she didn’t see any reason not to enjoy a good thing while it lasted. Snag a bit of barbecue, find some unoccupied bushes, get that stupid ratty old jacket off of him, and-

-and there he was now, skateboarding down the jogging path. Peter looked a bit wobbly, and Jean noticed his feet were considerably wider apart on the skateboard than he usually kept them. And... yep, those feet were bare, except for the set of emergency flip-flops that he carried in his duffel. Jean knew exactly what that meant.

“‘Lo, Jean,” he said as he let the skateboard coast the last little distance to the park bench. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Hey, Petey.” Jean didn’t even try to hide her amused smirk. “See you lost your shoes again! What’s the matter, couldn’t wait for the moon to get fuzzy?”

Yeah, here’s the thing. Werewolves don’t just change under moonlight. Technically, once we learn how to control our shifts, we can change back and forth any time we want to. But the problem is, it’s harder to stay wolf during the new moon... and much harder to stay human during the new moon. On those days your body just wants to be fuzzy, and any little lapse in concentration means it’s walking-shag-carpet time. And if you do lose control, it takes absolute calm and a lot of concentration to get back to human form.

Well, it does for me, anyway. But as everybody likes to remind me, I’m slow. 

Anyway, on the night of the full moon, when the need to shift is at its strongest, most packs, including ours, have what we call the Howl, where everybody gets together and really lets their hair down. The Howl serves a lot of purposes, but the biggest one is to give weres a safe space to let our instincts free a bit, where other weres can keep us under control if things go sideways.

At least, that’s the theory. The problem is, maybe there are some members of the pack you don’t really want to get all instinctual with...

“Aw, lay off,” Peter whined, flopping onto the park bench next to Jean. “First i had to ditch Butch Cramer, and that took forever. Then there was this car backfiring, and I was already jumpy from Cramer, so I lost control, and then those goons I told you about showed up again and tried to grab me-”

“Again?”

Jean, who had been slumped lazily back on the park bench enjoying the tale of stupidity, froze rigid at that voice. 

“Crazed hazmat goons with butterfly nets trying to kidnap you again, Peter?” The voice was female, deep, and had a growl under it barely smoothed by its current sneering tone. “You sure they’re not just the nice people in the white coats from the place with the cozy padded walls?”

Peter and Jean looked up and behind them. There stood a tall, voluptuous blonde (close-cropped in back, but long bangs in front that obscured half her face) in an outfit that looked like someone had taken a wrap-around military tunic and modified it to be a one-piece swimsuit. She smirked down on them, hands on her hips, smirking down at them. 

That was Rebecca Cramer, who had picked up the unfortunate nickname of “Butch” in the three years she’d attended high school with them before getting her GED and dropping out. She was also, in their estimation, the second craziest member of the Peterstown pack, second only to her father. 

For most of their childhood, Butch Cramer had been a vague, briefly-glimpsed face at Howls, and then a slightly more frequent sight in the halls of Dante High School. For most of that time she’d had as little to do with them as possible, which had been just fine with both Peter and Jean. 

That had changed a few months back, for the much, much worse.

“Best not let those mean, nasty people lock you up,” Cramer said in a mocking tone. Then, in a tone clearly lifted off some movie villain somewhere, she added, “You belong to me.”

“Butt out, Cramer!” Jean snapped. “Peter ain’t your property!” She felt her own inner wolf stirring, but it was still sunlight, and this wasn’t the part of the park reserved by her father for the Private Family-and-Friends Event. There didn’t seem to be any humans around, but... 

Cramer let loose a snort at that. “Everything belongs to the strongest.” She reached a hand down to caress Peter’s check. Then she stretched her hand, grabbing his jaw and squeezing... as she shifted.

One moment an outside observer would have seen a blonde human holding a black-haired human’s jaw in her hand. The next moment the hand was twice as large, with sharp claws extending from each digit and light yellow fur running up an arm bulging with muscle. The outfit stretched, as it had been designed to do, around a body that had put on more than a foot of height. The buttons down the front left had to stretch to cover the expanded torso, gaps between showing the inner curves of breasts that refused to be compressed any tighter.

And the face above it all had a smile that, thought it rode on a wolf muzzle and bared sharp wolf teeth, was still the smile of a human being deliberately threatening.

“That is the way of the true lycanthrope,” Cramer finished, giving Peter’s chin a rough waggle back and forth in her hand before releasing it. Flexing her other arm and curling her paw into a fist, she added, “And I’m strong enough to take what I want.”

As Peter scrambled off the bench and away from Cramer, Jean stood and put herself between them. “Back off, Becca,” she said, keeping the growl out of her own voice with considerable effort. “Or else I’ll make sure you miss the Howl tonight.”

“Temper, temper, Jeannie,” Cramer replied. She brushed past Jean as if she weren’t there, leaning down to lightly touch a claw to Peter’s lips. He stared crosseyed down at it as she said, “I’ll claim what’s mine at the Howl. Be ready.” Then instantly Peter’s cheeks were crushed between Cramer’s thumb and forefinger again as she whispered, “Don’t even think about refusing me.”

Then she leapt onto the bench, bounced off the back of it, and was off, bounding on all fours to the trees. In five seconds she was lost to sight.

Peter and Jean both let out a long sigh of relief. “Peter,” Jean asked, “why don’t you EVER stick up for yourself? Even just once?”

“Hey, it took everything I had just to stay human during that!” Peter said sulkily. 

“Lame excuse, Petey.”

“Hey, it’s important!” Peter said. “I already lost my shoes and socks. I don’t wanna mess up anything else when I’m going out with Sarah tonight!”

“Tonight??” Jean’s slow process of relaxing out of fight-or-flight mode reversed. “With Sarah? TONIGHT?? I’ve covered for you two before, but I am NOT making excuses for you blowing off a Howl to hang out with a human! Do you even care how much trouble you’ll be in?”

For some reason (maybe the fact he was stupid), Peter grinned at this. “Well, I’m kind of obliged to be there,” he said, “seein’ that last time we got together we finally DID IT!” He grabbed Jean by the arms and pulled her to him, not quite hugging her.

Jean’s brain didn’t want to accept what it had just heard. “You- what- come again?” 

“You bet I HOPE to!” Peter continued, almost giggling. “Two weeks ago were were all out on her couch, I’d dosed up on wolfsbane, ‘cause her parents had taken her little sisters to grandma’s in Bloomington, and they weren’t gonna be back until the next day-”

“What??”

“And then SHE was all, like, pulling off her panties, and then we-”

“YOU DID WHAT??”

Two seconds later Jean, holding on to her human form by sheer willpower, was hauling Peter down the sidewalk, out of the park, at full gallop, paying no attention to his whining about the duffel, the skateboard, and the sandals they’d left behind. 

They could go back and get them later, assuming the two of them were still alive then.

The park I met Jean in- and, for that matter, the park our pack hold our Howls in when weather permits- is on the far northwest side of town, up in the hills. 

My girlfriend’s family- you’re going to meet her in a minute- lives in the high-end suburbs on the far southeast side of town. Walking, it would take at least two hours to get there from where we were, going through downtown and the main shopping district along the way. 

The thing is, even without my skateboard- which got left back under that bench along with my bag and my flip-flops- I could run it in about forty-five minutes, even in human form. (Though my were form isn’t that much faster, really.) 

But Jeannie is faster than me. Also stronger, even in human form. In fact, she’s fast enough and strong enough to drag me behind her with me kicking off the ground every couple of seconds to keep from dragging the ground.

And she wasn’t in any mood to stop for the lights or for traffic. I don’t think she even noticed them...

Two figures, one being dragged along by the other, bolted along the sidewalks of the shopping district. A few heads turned to watch the one running hell-for-leather and the other apparently float along behind her except for an occasional step to keep from falling. Then they shrugged and went about their lives, forgetting about them.

And despite having gone miles in minutes, pulling along someone who weighed slightly more than she did, Jean had more than enough wind to tell Peter exactly what she thought of him. “You IDIOT! You complete and total DUMBASS! What the hell were you thinking??”

“Mostly I was thinking, ‘This is so much better when I don’t have to worry about Mrs. Garrity interrupting me.’”

“My fucking GOD,” Jean shouted, bounding across Peterstown’s main north-south drag against the light. “You weren’t thinking at ALL, were you? Did you at least use a rubber?”

Peter spread his legs to let a fire hydrant pass under him, took a couple of stumbling steps, and let Jean keep dragging him along. “Is that some kind of kink thing?” he asked. “Roleplaying the spring mud or-”

“A CONDOM, moron!!”

“I didn’t have one!” Peter shouted back. “It just sorta happened! It’s not like I’m one of those losers who carries one in a wallet for three years hoping-”

“So not only did you have sex with a human,” Jean yelled, yanking Peter around a corner, “you had UNPROTECTED sex with a human!! You had me COVERING your dumb ass while you were FUCKING a HUMAN!! I can’t fucking BELIEVE you!”

“Hey, I was on wolfsbane!” Peter stumbled a little bit, knees almost sliding down to the concrete before he got back on pace. “I stayed human the whole time!”

“You think that makes a fucking difference??”

“Well, she doesn’t know I’m a werewolf! I thought that was kinda important!!”

“Well, she’s gonna know real soon, dumbass!” Jean’s arm yanked Peter forward, and he nearly fell forward onto his face before he regained his balance. “Didn’t your parents tell you what happens when a werewolf has sex with a human?”

“No... the werewolf gets a load off?”

Jean ground her teeth... and then, as Peter’s lame guess sunk in, her jaw dropped. She stopped dead on the sidewalk, letting go of Peter’s arm and allowing him to flop face-first onto the concrete at her heels. “You... your parents,” she said quietly, “they never did the ‘facts of life’ thing with you, did they?”

“Owwww.... my frickin’ head...” Peter slowly picked himself up, holding his head in both hands. “Wasn’t that some kind of bad sitcom from when our parents were kids?”

“Peter,” Jean said, still very quiet but recovering her anger very quickly, “could you quit being stupid for a minute and answer the question? The sex talk. Did your parents ever give you the sex talk?”

“No,” Peter groaned, still holding his head. “There was that class in fifth grade. And Dad gave me an old copy of Hustler and told me to figure it out. Said his nana never told him anything, and he didn’t see why I should have it any easier.”

“Of course he did,” Jean groaned. “What about your mom?”

“She told me to ask my dad or Mrs. Garrity.”

“Of course she did,” Jean growled. She took a deep breath and continued, in a soft, level voice, “Petey, I’m gonna share a little factoid with you now. It’s important, so I need you to listen very carefully. Okay?”

“Um... yeah, okay?”

Jean leaned forward, taking Peter’s cheeks in her hands and bringing his face close to hers. Then, one hand snagging his ear and yanking it to her lips, she shouted, “WHEN A WEREWOLF SCREWS A HUMAN, THAT HUMAN BECOMES A WEREWOLF!!!”

Peter’s hand went to his ringing ear the instant Jean released it. “Oww,” he moaned. “That... wait...” He looked at Jean, finally getting what had her so upset. “You mean Sarah’s going to become a thrall?” he gasped.

“Naw, naw,” Jean said sarcastically, “I mean she’s going to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Fucking Court!” Her hands balled into fists as she continued in a deadly serious tone, “Think about it, numbnuts. Lycanthropy is transmitted through bodily fluids. Blood. Saliva. Mucus. And, yeah, jizz. Any contact whatever that bypasses the skin. A bite, breastfeeding, and- DUH!- sex!!” 

Peter’s eyes went utterly blank as he stared out into nothing, or into the future, which in his case began to look like the same thing.

“Long story short?” Jean continued. “You just got a load of lycanthropy off, moron. So yuck it up, funny boy. Sunset is in...” She pulled out her cel phone, took a quick look at the time readout, and finished, “... half an hour.”

An instant later one figure hauled the other along the streets, running hell-for-leather into the southeastern suburbs. This time, however, the figure in the lead was male, and the figure being dragged along was able to run fast enough to keep up without bouncing around like a rag doll.

Behind them, a pair of sneakers with a checkerboard print lay abandoned by the side of the street, slowly cooling off.

My girlfriend’s name is Sarah Hazen. I first met her my freshman year of high school, when her family first moved to town. It was a little awkward at first, because both of us were used to being the weird kid in school, and neither of us really knew how to deal with other people. Anyway, we hardly ever shared classes. Sarah is a top-tier egghead, honor student, and so forth. Me? Not even a little bit. So we were friendly, but not really friends.

That changed my junior year, when I was failing algebra hard. I needed a tutor and bad, and Sarah was the one who actually helped me. I still don’t really understand algebra (or trigonometry, either), but she somehow got me able to fake it enough to save my athletic eligibility. And in the process we got to know each other pretty well.

When I’m around other weres, even Jean, I always feel like I’m not measuring up. Every minute is a test, and I fail every single time. There’s always this horrible pressure, and the only thing I can do that helps even the least little bit is to play along, never cause trouble, just laugh it off, be quiet, and slink away as soon as I can escape.

It’s a lot better with humans. Oh, they still think I’m weird, but they don’t think I’m a complete failure. They don’t expect things out of me- well, they do, but when they do it’s based on their standards, which I have a chance in hell of actually meeting. Team sports are really fun, because my teammates actually think I’m good for something, which is more than I can say for every single member of the pack, my parents included.

But with Sarah it’s different from everybody else. She understands what it’s like to be under expectations- she’s the oldest child of three, and her parents think she’s going to be the next Einstein. She also understands what it’s like to be a misfit- she’s all into comics and cartoons and costumes and things, I mean really into them, like nobody else in school was. 

We shared experiences. And... well, we clicked. 

It wouldn’t have worked at all if we were both weres or both human, I don’t think. And it wouldn’t have worked if we were into the same stuff. But when we were together it was... okay. Okay to just... you know, just to be, without anybody demanding that we be something else.

So of COURSE I fucked that up. And that was the night the consequences began...

Peter rang the doorbell once, then stepped back to wait.

After three seconds Jean reached around him and begin pushing the doorbell button like she wanted to drive it through the doorframe, sending the electronically reproduced chimes of Big Ben into utter confusion.

After about ten seconds of this the door opened, revealing a lanky- not to say scrawny- young woman with long blonde hair and a frazzled look to her. Her pajamas had been buttoned unevenly, and the large fuzzy monster slippers she wore had seen better days. “Oh, hi, Peter,” she moaned. “I was just about to call you. I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel our date.” She blinked, then looked over Peter’s shoulder. “Say, Jean, what’re you doing here?”

Peter tried to think of something to say. Hi, Sarah, you’re about to change into a werewolf and lose your impulse control. And it’s kind of my fault, so sorry for making your life really complicated? No, there’s got to be some gentle way of doing this. “Uh... are you feeling, like, um... sick?”

Jean gave Peter a look that should have gotten ten to twenty for attempted murder.

“I’ve been feeling sick all day,” Sarah moaned. “I’m all... itchy, like my skin is trying to crawl right off.” Without noticing it, she slid a hand behind her and scratched her butt through her pajamas. “And for the last hour I keep feeling my heart having palpitations. I can hear the blood rushing in my head. That can’t be right, but with my parents off picking up-”

“Whoa, wait, wait,” Jean cut in. “Maybe it’s just the flu? Any sniffles? Got a temperature?”

“No, I’ve checked my temperature,” Sarah insisted. “With both thermometers, even!”

Peter and Jean shared a moment of imaginative silence before Sarah produced the thermometers from her pockets. 

“Oral and ear,” she finished.

“Oh. Yeah,” Peter muttered. 

“So,” Jean continued, “your parents are gone? Home alone?”

“Well, they’ll be back after midnight,” Sarah said. “When Daddy called and I told him I was sick, they cancelled the hotel reservations and decided to drive straight home.”

“I see,” Jean said, giving Peter a look.

Peter gave Jean the same look back. 

Five seconds later a pair of fuzzy monster slippers joined the city’s rapidly growing collection of abandoned footwear, as Peter and Jean, each holding an arm, carried Sarah around the back of her family’s cul-de-sac house and into the woods behind the subdivision.

Behind them, the sun began sinking behind the hills northwest of town.

Before that night, Jean and I had never seen a thrall. 

What we did know, though, was little were kids. We’d seen them. We’d been them. And the thing is, it takes a really long time for a little kid were to get control of themselves. Little kids are a bundle of runaway emotion under any circumstances. Add to that wolf instincts and the changing phases of the moon, and you understand why a lot of were kids are either homeschooled their first two years or doped to the gills with wolfsbane when they leave for school.

(Guess which one I was.)

So we didn’t even need to discuss what we thought was about to happen. I mean, yeah, Sarah was a high school valedictorian, but she was still a teenager- and a teenager who had zero practice controlling her emotions- or even her shape- under a full moon. 

We had a pretty good idea what was about to happen, and we wanted to make damn sure it didn’t happen anywhere near innocent bystanders. 

Sarah Hazen was getting angrier by the minute, but she thought she had good reason.

Her high school boyfriend had both hands under her left armpit, and Jean Goodwin (who she barely knew except as Peter’s alibi with his parents) had one arm under her right. Between the two of them they’d carried her in a bumping, jostling run into the woods for the past fifteen minutes. Neither of them said a word to explain themselves. “What are you doing?” Nothing. “Why are you doing this?” Nothing. “Put me down right now!” They sped up slightly. 

At first she’d been confused. Then, after she’d seen the fear in both their faces, she’d been frightened herself, for a few minutes. But after being hauled ever deeper into the woods, with the twilight fading rapidly in the sky between the tree branches, for the first time since she was seven years old she was ready to pitch a tantrum. 

Her shoulders hurt where Peter and Jean held them. Her feet, protected only by her socks, kept bumping rocks and tree roots. Her pajama bottoms had begun riding down off her butt. Her head was spinning as tree trunks and leaves and branches and shafts of brilliant moonlight mixed into a confusing blur. 

She’d felt bad... well, not bad exactly, but wrong... all day, with her skin crawling, her fingertips itching, and her heart going into palpitations at random. 

She’d been worrying about the date with Peter, especially since she’d decided to dump him that evening. Oh, Peter was a sweet boy, and she liked him very much- better than anybody else she’d known in her four years at Dante High School. The problem was, she was going to a top university out of state for what would be a seven year pre-med track followed by internship. Peter was staying in town at the local uni on a full athletic scholarship, but Sarah knew he’d have all he could do to maintain a simple 2.5 GPA to maintain eligibility. They were moving on to wildly different worlds. It could never work out.

So she’d decided to dump him. And then, half an hour later, she decided to wait until a week or two after the date. And then she’d decided to dump him. And then she’d decided to call him and both cancel and dump him on the phone. And then she’d decided to call to cancel the date, but not dump him, because only horrible people dumped their SOs by phone. And then she’d decided... and undecided... and redecided all day, back and forth, working herself into a state of mind which the weird sick feeling did not help in the least. 

So, here she was, sick, emotional, having been dragged what felt like halfway to the next town through the woods, sore and confused and absolutely done with all of it.

“I’ve HAD IT!” she announced. “This has gone on far enough! I want you to let me go and give me a good explanation for all this RIGHT NOW!”

No answer. Peter and Jean kept running.

“I told you to let me GO!” Sarah shouted, thrashing in their grip.t.

They kept running, passing out of the trees into a small clearing flooded by the light of the low-hanging full moon.

“I... said...”

Sarah’s feet, which had been dangling an inch off the ground for far too long, suddenly found purchase on the ground. Her hands grabbed Peter’s shirt and the fishnet bodysuit under Jean’s blouse. 

The anger that had been building within Sarah all this time rushed into her arms and shoved.

“LEGGO!!”

Sarah stopped. 

Peter and Jean, on the other hand, went flying, up and backwards, twenty, thirty feet in the air. Peter hit the crown of a tall cedar tree, while Jean caught the top of a sprawling oak.

Jaw gaping, Sarah stared at what she’d just done. “Omigosh,” she gasped, falling to her hands and knees. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” She looked down at her hands, wondering how she’d sent three hundred pounds of teenager flying farther than a football. “I didn’t mean-”

She took a second look. It was getting full dark, but the moonlight was more than bright enough for her to see her hands... 

... which were the wrong shape. The bones were all wrong. Her metacarpals had stretched twice as long as they should have been. 

“... to... do... that?”

Her fingernails grew rapidly out of her fingertips, the ends sharpening into large, sharp points.

“I... I...” Sarah goggled as she stared at herself.

With a visible ripple beginning at her wrists and running up to her elbows, her forearms bulged with muscle, tugging the sleeves of her pajamas down so suddenly that the top button popped open, and her left shoulder slipped through the sudden gap. 

She shrieked. 

Suddenly the heart palpitations, which had been an on-and-off-again thing all day, struck again, except this time instead of lightheadedness Sarah felt blood rushing through every part of her body, and with it the anger and fear she’d been feeling, expanding out from her chest to her hands and feet. She tried to hug herself, to calm down until the fit passed, but as she did so she felt her shoulders widen, pushing against her blouse-

-and then, with a long series of rips and pops, her arms shredded her sleeves, massive bulges of muscle rising from what had been, for eighteen and a half years, skin and bone.

“WHAT-?!” The shout came out half an octave deeper than it should have, from a mouth that suddenly felt entirely the wrong shape. She could feel the bones in her face and head shifting around, her upper jaw pulling away from her eyes, her ears migrating upwards. It didn’t hurt- none of it hurt except where her clothes were cutting into her body all of a sudden- but it was such an alien feeling, such a WRONG feeling, that pain would have been more comforting by comparison.

  She clamped her eyes closed, curling in on herself, terrified to the bone. When she shouted, her voice didn’t even sound like her own anymore. 

“What’s HAPPENING TO ME??”

“You know,” Peter said offhand as he picked himself up and crawled over to Jean, “I always laughed when they said that in the movies.”

Jean didn’t bother looking at him; she was busy shedding her outer layer of clothing as quickly as possible. “Yeah, well, laugh this one off, Petey- she’s your responsibility now.”

Peter let the change happen, sprouting fuzz and, incidentally, healing a broken bone in his right leg instantly. “What??” he asked, getting to his feet and rocking his hips to let his tail pop out the back of his waistband. “My responsibility?”

“Yeah, your responsibility!” Jean was down to her fishnet top, the rapidly spreading coat of fur more or less covering everything she felt needed covering. She glared at Peter over her shifting muzzle. “You know the lore!”

“Um... no?” Peter asked. “Dad said that if I needed to know any of it, I’d pick it up as I went.”

Jean groaned. “I can’t believe how believable that is,” she muttered, “Someday I gotta figure out how much of your dumb is you, and how much is your parents.” 

“So what did I miss about thralls?” Peter bounced from one paw to the other anxiously. “The only thing anybody told me is that I shouldn’t make one, because they can’t control themselves.”

“Yeah,” Jean said. “That, and also because they’ll tell other humans trying to get themselves cured. Which is why nobody’s made a thrall in our pack for longer than either of us have been alive. But if it happens, the werewolf who did it becomes responsible for everything their thrall does until the thrall gets control of themselves!”

Peter needed a moment to absorb this. “Everything?” he asked. 

“And if the thrall endangers the pack,” Jean said, “both the thrall and the maker get put to death!” Jean bounded off, first on two paws, then on four, bounding over to the clearing where the sounds of ripping and grunting had mostly faded. 

“Put to death?!” 

“COME ON, PETER!”

Peter took a few quick breaths. “Okay,” he muttered. “No problem. Sarah’s scrawny, and I’m a runt. She’s probably even more of a runt. A smol thrall.” He had a feeble chuckle at this. “No problem...”

Famous. Last. Words.

Sarah’s change accelerated.

Some time afterwards, when she actually tried to remember her first transformation, the main thing she remembered, besides being scared and confused, was that it didn’t actually hurt. It hadn’t been fun, either- nothing like some sort of glorious explosion of power or sexuality, as nice as that might or might not have been. But there wasn’t any pain, aside from the clothes that kept getting tighter and tighter until they gave up.

What it did feel like, so far as she could make sense of it, was that she was trying to hold... something... together, but her grip kept slipping. She could feel something inside her that she could, somehow, well, flex, and she was trying to flex... but the muscle, or whatever, just wanted to relax, and relax, and keep on relaxing. 

The final surge began at the top of her head, about the time her ears finished stretching up to tall, fuzz-covered points. Her hair, already shoulder-length to start with, grew down to her waist, her bangs covering her face, the whole gaining a bounce and body it had never had before. Her nose and jaw finished stretching to fit a new set of large, sharp teeth between them. New smells invaded her awareness- the mold of old leaves, a hint of exhaust fumes on the breeze blowing over the treetops, a drop of chicken soup she’d spilled on her pajama top.

Then her shoulders exploded outwards, and she groaned as the rapidly disintegrating pajama blouse grew suddenly tighter across her chest. The cloth ripped and tore in a dozen places, but the stitching and buttons, for some reason, held stronger than the rest, binding her. The feeling annoyed her, and she brushed at her chest with fingers blunted by massive soft pads and claws that only got snagged in the unravelling threads. The tattered trailing edges brushed against the bottom of her ribcage, leaving her belly exposed to the air- a belly that had gone from soft and slightly flabby to rippling granite. 

Then her breasts surged forward, swelling from practically nothing to massive spheres, nipples clearly visible through the last tatters of her top. The seams and strings dug into flesh a lot more squishable, a lot more sensitive- a lot more, period. Sarah flinched, trying to draw her chest back by pulling her shoulders forwards. Her bosom grew faster than any slack, and the scraps tightened- then, as her back muscles bulged, finally snapped and parted ways, releasing her newly grown tetons to bounce and sway.

The momentary relief passed as the change spread below the waist. Her pajama bottoms, which had been looser than the top, had already drawn tight by the early stages of the change. Now Sarah’s hips spread wide, butt swelling to match, followed by thighs and calves. The cloth pinched against her, especially against the tail she hadn’t been aware of until this moment, caught down one pants leg. A growl rattled from her throat as the elastic chafed against her waist, as the leg cuffs dug into her calves. 

But flexing had worked before. It would work again.

She flexed her leg muscles, and the pajama pants practically exploded off her body, setting her big, bushy tail free to curl into place behind her. Her panties fell to the ground in rags along with her pajamas, leaving a bubble-butt covered in golden fur bare to the world.

She didn’t even notice her feet shredding her socks apart in one last burst of growth. 

Slowly she got to her feet, standing tall, waiting to see if anything else was going to happen. Her balance felt off, but... it was different, but it felt natural. It felt right.

It felt like something she didn’t need to think about, and so she didn’t. Thinking no longer seemed all that important anyway.

She opened her eyes, and the woods looked bright as day. She didn’t recognize them. She had no idea where she was. She was lost. 

She threw back her head and called for help, in a long, resonant howl that nearly deafened the two other werewolves who had just stumbled to a stop in front of her. 

The two other werewolves who, to their shock, were roughly at eye level with her bellybutton. 

Peter Stubbe, werewolf, looked up, up, up at the massive voluptuous mega-werewolf who had been his human girlfriend ten minutes before. “Yeeeeeah,” he sighed, feeling doom settling on his shoulders. “Piece of cake.”