20. Who Let the Dogs Out
Who Let the Dogs Out
Present Day
Cian
Colourful bands striped the last of the evening sky. My smart watch told me it was eight oh eight. Half an hour until sunset. I took a deep breath in and puffed it out in one continuous, dragging sigh.
Here we go.
Time to get naked in a tent with a hundred strangers.
Covered in a fresh pot of my best friend’s piss.
Hashtag winning at life.
Mash and I had talked about it beforehand. The way that shifters shifted was different to werewolves. Our shifts were much less dramatic. Much less “oooh look at me, I was human-like and now my skeleton has changed and I’m a massive fucking dog.” Shifters simply shifted, and that was it. No fanfare, no extravagant moaning or writhing. No big deal.
We’d agreed the best thing to do, to avoid suspicion, would be to wait until most folk were mid-shift and then . . . poof , change. Hopefully, no one would notice, and if they did, perhaps they wouldn’t remember, or would blame it on their werewolf brains.
The only people we needed to stay clear of were the cubs waiting to turn as they’d likely not second-guess what they’d witnessed. Which was fine. I didn’t much fancy whipping my kecks off in front of the teenagers anyway.
“There are two rules to remember once you’re shifted,” Mash said as we filed into the marquee. He was barefoot. Told me it was easier that way. “Don’t stray off Howling Pines land and don’t harm the cats.”
“How will I know if I’ve gone off Howling Pines land?” I asked.
“It won’t smell like werewolf piss, duh.” Mash took one last look at the moon, its brightness somewhat diminished with the fading sun, and pulled me into the tent.
“How come you—I mean we don’t shift until the sun sets?”
He shrugged. “Werewolf thing.” That was a typical Mash response. He never questioned anything; he simply went along with things and tried to squeeze out as much fun as possible. “You wanna strip off with my pack, or with the men, or the women, or somewhere else?”
“With your pack is fine.” It didn’t matter. Everyone would be naked, with nowhere to hide. It was a square marquee. There were no secret areas I could sneakily undress in.
Mash smiled at me like the question had been a test—even though I knew it wasn’t—and that I’d selected the correct answer.
He led me to a section in the middle of the right-hand side. Cubbies lined the walls like lockers without their doors. Just cube-shaped holes to place clothes in. There wasn’t one with my name on.
“You put your things with mine,” Mash said. And without warning, he whipped his tank off and dropped his shorts.
Mash was not wearing boxers. I made a point of not staring at his body, even though my eyes desperately wanted to trace the curve of his ass, slide down the taper of his waist, his happy trail. But on second thoughts, getting a chub and stripping down to my birthday suit in front of dozens of people I’d only briefly met last night wasn’t an idea I was super fond of.
Okay, here went nothing.
I unlaced my boots, pulled them off, and pushed my socks inside them. Then I took out the clothes Mash had crammed into the cubby, placed my boots in and folded his clothes on top. He watched me, smirking the whole time. I tried not to look at his dick. I felt like it was waving at me, trying to get my attention. Behind him, random naked strangers gathered, patting him on the back, telling him how nice it was to finally see him again at a Harvest Fest.
Some of them even wanted to shake my hand. “Great to meet the new Howling Pines beta,” they would say.
“Everyone is so naked,” I said to Mash.
“And you’re not. You’re drawing people’s eyes because you’ve still got all your clothes on.”
I unbuttoned my shirt, folded it, and arranged it on top of Mash’s.
“And the cords too,” he whispered. “Don’t worry, I’ll stand in front of you like this . . .” He stuck his hands on his hips. “So no one sees your ankle spanker.”
My laughter shot out my nostrils. “Fine, fine.” I dropped my trousers, folded them, placed them in the cubby. “Anyone looking?”
“No,” Mash said, though he wasn’t even paying attention. He waved to someone over my shoulder.
I tugged my boxers off.
“See, not so bad, is it?” He smiled at me, his gaze flitted down to my dick and the smile vanished. “Oh my gods!” he cried, and jammed his hand over my junk.
“What the fuck?!” I hissed, then I realised people might be looking.
He leaned over and whispered in my ear. “I’m sorry. I’m literally touching your cock right now. I’m so sorry.”
“You could just not,” I whispered back. But Mash didn’t remove his hand, and I didn’t want him to. “What’s going on?”
“I totally forgot you have foreskin.”
“What?” I was so confused.
He lowered his voice even more. “Werewolves do not have foreskins.” Mash was still touching my dick.
“Why the hell not?” I asked, but as I looked around the marquee, I realised he was telling the truth. I could see only pink wolf tips. Not a foreskin in sight.
“We aren’t born with them. It’s a—”
“Werewolf thing,” I finished his sentence for him.
“Can’t you just push it back?”
“Yeah, I can, but it’s not going to stay there. Not unless I have a stiffy, or I hold it. Also, people are starting to stare.”
Mash removed his hand but replaced the cover with his hip and thigh.
“Is it really that much of a problem? Like, is anyone gonna look at my dick? Everyone is naked and nobody is looking at anyone else’s bits. They’re all acting completely normal.” Which was good, I was glad for it. I didn’t want—“Oh my gods.” I interrupted my own thoughts. “Your mum is naked.”
“Of course my mam is naked, she’d shred her clothes otherwise.”
“This is so fucking weird,” I hissed at him. “Werewolf culture is so weird. Why are you all so okay with everything flapping around, and I’m the outsider because I’m intact? Oh, shit, she’s coming over.”
“Boys, how’s it going?” Kimmy said nakedly. Because she was naked. Naked! Mash’s mum was naked, standing right next to her adult son, who was also naked and covering my foreskin with his massive thigh because I was naked too.
“Oh, wow, those tattoos are everywhere, aren’t they?” she said. “You’ll have to tell me the story behind them.”
If ever there was a time that the ground would split open for hell to claim my soul, please let it be now. I was surely going to die from embarrassment.
Gods, and as if it couldn’t get any worse, Clem and Sean were coming over. ALSO FUCKING NAKED. Fuck my life. I determinately kept my gaze to the upper part of the marquee. Shoulders and heads only and absolutely nothing below that.
“Ci, what’s wrong, sunshine? You seem stiff,” Kimmy said.
“He’s just nervous,” Mash replied on my behalf, still keeping his body twisted at an odd angle to hide my foreskin. “He’s never been to a mass shift before.”
“Oh, well, there’s nothing to be shy about,” she said, which obviously solved all my problems.
“Everything okay?” Clem said, coming to a stop next to Mash and me.
“Hey, cool tattoos,” Sean said, pulling up on our other side. I didn’t look at his junk, but I was super aware of the bright, blurry outline of it against his hairy body.
I would not look. I would not look.
“Bro, you can step away from your mate,” Clem said. “We can smell your bond from outside the tent. No one’s gonna try to claim him. You don’t need to guard him like that.”
Mash pursed his lips together.
“I’m gonna go check on my grandchildren. Welcome to the pack, Ci,” Kimmy said. She walked away in the other direction, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
“What’s up?” Clem asked again.
Mash indicated with a flick of his eyes to my crotch and mouthed, “Hoodie.”
“Oh. Oh,” Clem and Sean said in spooky unison. Sean craned his neck a little as though trying to spy between Mash and me.
“Can you pull it back?” he asked.
“That’s what I said,” Mash added. “But it doesn’t work like that, apparently.”
“Hmm, what a pickle,” Clem said. “What if you tucked the whole thing between your legs?”
“That would look even weirder,” Sean said.
Yup, I was going to die from embarrassment. My gravestone would read: Here lies Cian Barker and his foreskin. Loving son and friend. Taken from us too soon by excessive cringe.
“Shit, what are we gonna do? If any of the others see your extra layer, they’ll tell Rita for sure,” Sean said, now fully invested in my penis predicament.
Mash snorted. “Extra layer. Good one. What about . . . his little tip pouch?”
“Pig in a blanket,” Sean said back.
“His sausage wrapper.” Mash.
“Peenie pocket.” Sean.
“Schlong sleeve.” Mash again.
“Lipstick purse.” Sean.
Clem eventually stepped between them. “Lads, focus. You’re getting silly. What are we actually gonna do?”
We. Clem had said “we,” like me having a foreskin was now her problem to bear.
“Circumcision is not an option right now,” Mash said.
“Circumcision is never going to be an option, okay?!” I snapped.
Mash held his hands up in a surrender gesture.
“I got it!” Clem declared, as though figuring out the crossword clue for eleven down. “There’s another five, ten minutes until we start shifting. Say you need to pee, and leave the tent, and we’ll figure something out for next time.”
“I must reiterate, again, the foreskin stays on my dick for as long as I have it. No snippy snippy,” I said.
“I’ll take him outside,” Mash said, guiding me as he walked backwards to the closest tent flap.
Sean opened his mouth, but obviously decided better, and closed it again.
“Sean, if you want to see it . . . come on then,” I said.
He looked at his mate, who gave him an if you must look, and followed us through the side of the marquee.
“Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating,” he said, after bending down to get an eyeful of my bits. “It looks so cosy. Like a naked mole rat wearing a little flesh-coloured blanket. Anyway, thanks. Catch you later.” He turned on his tail and slipped through the slit in the tent.
“Happy now?” I heard Clem whisper before she dropped the fabric back into place, leaving Mash and me alone and naked under the glittering sky.
Finally, I let my eyes travel over Mash’s perfect form. Over his abdominal muscles, the veins that tracked down the lines of his hip and pelvis, those large, powerful thighs of his, and his dick. Soft, but no less inviting.
Damn, damn, damn.
“Bangers, are you eye-fucking me?” he said.
Busted. “Course not. Trick of the moonlight.”
“Right,” he said with a derisive snort. His face was half in shadow, so it was difficult to make out his expression. What wasn’t difficult to see was the way his gaze dragged from my face to my feet and back up, lingering for a moment longer than was strictly necessary on my dick.
I stepped into his space. “You weren’t just eye-fucking me, were you?”
Mash’s lips parted, but no words came out. He started growling.
What the—
Oh, the full moon. It was time.
He pushed me away, and I watched as his already enormous limbs elongated, his face twisted into a snout, and fur grew in a slow wave over his body. He howled as he transformed, lifting his head up to the sky and arching his back. A few moments later his paws thudded onto the soil.
In Mash’s place now stood a gargantuan wolf, over seven feet in height. Golden-brown shaggy coat and luminous green eyes. He closed the gap between us in one step and pushed his huge head against my chest. His cold wet nose on my bare skin reminded me how naked I still was.
Then he licked me from my nipples to the top of my hair. It knocked my glasses off. They tumbled into a patch of grass. I picked them up, but kept them in my hand.
The noise from the tent was reaching almost deafening levels as a hundred wolves shifted at once, growling and snarling and howling.
“Give me your glasses so you can shift,” Mash said.
I balanced them on the tip of his snout like he was wearing them. They looked like cartoon reading spectacles on him. He rolled his massive wolf eyes.
Three and a half seconds later, I was a wolf. Smaller than Mash’s behemoth form, my fur a shiny gunmetal grey.
I hadn’t fully shifted into my wolf form in so long it took me a while to get used to the feel of my new skeleton and the way my limbs now moved.
Mash gently tipped my glasses onto a small boulder near the tent. “We’ll come back for them in the morning.” His tail swished wildly from side to side. He buried his nose into the fur at my neck. “I’m so happy night now.”
“I’d have never guessed,” I replied.
“We’re gonna have so much fun tonight. You smell good. I can’t believe my Bangers is here with me at my pack’s Harvest Fest and we’re shifted together. Urgh, this has been my dream for so long.”
Wait—what?
“I’m just so fucking excited. If I hump you, I’m sorry.”
“Um . . .” I said, unsure how to process any of that.
Mash bounded over to the opening in the marquee and turned back to me, his ears twitching. “Ready to sniff some butts?”
“No. No, I’ll never be ready.” But my words disappeared into the night as Mash vanished through the gap.
Reluctantly, I followed.
I could do this for him. It was only one full moon. Well, the first of three, but I could do this.
The second I stepped foot in the marquee, I was sexually assaulted by someone’s nostrils.
“Wow, okay, we’re really going in there with no consent,” I said to Mash. The wolf who’d sniffed my butt vanished into the crowd—couldn’t say who it was, or where they went.
“You just gotta get in there, mate,” he said.
“No, I don’t just gotta. I’m not were. My brain is still my human brain, it’s not been magically switched out for a dog’s.”
“Practice on me,” he said, ignoring my comment. Then he spun around and held his tail high, presenting me with his asshole. When I didn’t shove my face into it, he spun again. “Come on, sniff my butt.”
“No.”
“Just do it, sniff my hole. Sniff it, Bangers, sniff it real good.”
“Fine, whatever, turn around.”
He did, and I moved my head closer, but nowhere near hole territory.
“No, get right up in there,” he said, backing his asshole onto my snout.
“Smells like butt,” I said, though I was lying.
“What? No it doesn’t.” Mash curled over on himself, spinning twice, sniffing his own butt. “Smells good.”
Another cold, wet snout smushed against my anus, and I jolted forward.
“Let’s get out of this tent before I have to sniff your mum’s or brother-in-law’s ass. Or worse, watch you do it.”
Mash laughed and led me out of the marquee. Wolves had begun to spill out and disperse into the darkness of the trees.
“Follow me,” Mash said. He immediately bounded over to a tree and cocked his leg against it. “You piss wherever I piss, okay? It helps to strengthen our territorial claims, and reinforces pack values and shit.”
I sighed and cocked my own leg. One night. One night. I just had to keep telling myself that.
Though it turned out running through the woods, pissing on everything Mash pissed on, was actually . . . fun. I found myself laughing, howling when he howled, and laughing even more.
I never knew I could run that fast and that freely. It was exhilarating. The wind whipped through my fur, my paws thundered against the loamy soil.
Eventually we slowed our pace to a walk and fell in line with each other. My heightened wolf senses picked up everything, from the fluttering of moth wings overhead to the pattering of bunny feet in the warrens below the earth. From the night jasmine drifting over on a downwind to the very distant wood smoke from someone’s chimney.
“Are you having fun?” Mash asked me.
“Yes,” I admitted. “It’s been a while since I was in my full wolf form.”
We were alone in this patch of the woods. I would have smelled another wolf nearby if we weren’t.
“When was the last time?”
I let out a nervous laugh. I remembered exactly when my last shift was. “About six years ago. Probably that time you walked in on me . . .”
Mash laughed too. “Oh my gods, okay, I remember. Man, I was so jealous. If I could shift at will, I’d be sucking myself off all day every day too.”
We slowed even more. The trees around us began to look familiar.
“How come you don’t shift any more?” he asked.
“Don’t really know. I guess I tried so hard to be somebody else for so long, I forgot about my true self.” It was way more profound than I meant it to be, but I realised I could tell Mash anything right now, and he’d likely have difficulty remembering in the morning.
We’d reached the overgrown outcrop that dropped into the ravine, the one where we’d kissed all those years ago.
I sat down. Mash stretched and lay down with his front paws extended.
“The community I grew up in was mostly human. I wasn’t allowed to shift outdoors. They said it was in case I destroyed stuff, but in hindsight I realise it was for the neighbours’ benefit. So their kids weren’t afraid of the wolf kid. I promised myself as soon as I could move away I’d be free to shift as often as I wanted. And then I met you and it was fun for a while, but I guess . . . somehow I’ve slipped out of the habit. They always say you turn into your parents, and back then I’d have told them to fuck off, but now I’m genuinely terrified that’s happened.”
“You’re not your folks,” Mash said.
“Thanks,” I replied, though I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“No, I mean it, Ci. You’re everything they could never be. You love and you give, and you’re selfless, and incredible, and they are . . .”
“They’re what?”
“They don’t deserve you as their son. And I wish I could . . .” He trailed off again.
“Yes?”
“I wish I could wrap you up in a big blanket and keep you safe.”
My throat tightened.
Mash had obviously mistaken my silence for offense. “I don’t mean it like you’re delicate, because you are so much tougher than I am. But you are delicate. And I can’t have anyone hurt you. I won’t stand for it.”
Holy fuck.
He continued. “I miss living with you. I miss sharing an apartment with you and seeing you every day. I miss our Sunday movie nights. I miss your food, and your cuddles. Don’t miss the cry-baby music, though.”
“I miss it too.” I miss you so much I feel as though my chest might split open. I needed to shake these thoughts up. “So, you wanna run around a bit more? Hunt rabbits? Howl at fuck all?”
Mash got to his feet. “If it’s not too weird . . . can we just nuzzle?”
“Sure?” I said, like a question.
He didn’t wait for further confirmation. Instead, he pressed his nose into my ruff and rubbed the top of his head along the underside of my chin. Then he dropped into a curl in front of me. I laid my head on the scruff of his neck and breathed in the scent of us.
“Ci?”
“Yeah?”
“You look after me, don’t you? Promise me you’ll always take care of me.”
I faltered. My heart beat so fast he must have felt it thrumming against his back. “Of course. I’ll always take care of you.”
He sighed. Relief or contentment, I wasn’t sure. “I know I’m supposed to be this big powerful alpha dude, but I can’t do it on my own. I don’t want to do it on my own. I need you, Ci. Will you do it with me?”
It took me a moment to stop the screaming inside my head.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
I need you.
Mash needed me.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
He was the next alpha?
He was the one rejecting the call year after year.
Not Clem.
Mash was alpha.
He needed me.
Needed. Me.
“Of course I will,” I said, the words barely working their way past the lump in my throat. But Mash was already asleep.