15
Logan
My body bumps the hard lines of my containment, unrelenting to every lunge, shove, every attempt to break free.
Some of the lines bend when they’re hit hard enough, but none break.
They’re far flimsier than the window frame that tore apart under my claws, but the urgent, jealous bloodlust that fueled that escape has subsided some.
Around and around, there’s no obvious end or entrance, only the lumpy perimeter of the cage. It’s a familiar path, to trace the edge of my enclosure, a habit my wolf knows well from years under the brewery.
The whole space smells like her, slowing my restless pacing.
It pulls my attention from the cramped space, the need to stretch out itching within my joints.
There was an innate fear that took over upon being caged, a claustrophobia rising up through my chest, spilling out through every limb in a ferocious struggle against the bars.
But that fear waned, my snorts and growls turning merely into heavy breathing.
Likewise, my mate paces the room, muttering to herself. “I know that cage is like, way too small and probably inhumane or whatever, but you’re, like, really scaring me, and I can’t think of a better solution right now.”
She nears the cage, and the scent of the stranger on her invades the air, raising my hackles and baring my teeth instinctively. A growl falls from me as easily as a breath, and she leaps back, yelling, “Oh my god, just stop it, stop it! I can’t think!”
She throws something, a bundled-up wad of cloth at the cage angrily, a third scent, one that takes me by surprise. My own.
It’s the first human thought in several hours, like a sip of air before the moon pulls me back under—this is my shirt. Where did it come from?
My mate stomps away, and the lights flick on. I snarl reactively.
“Shut up!” she snaps back, every bit as ferocious as mine. “If you don’t stop growling at me, I’m going to call my boyfriend, and he’s going to help me get this crate into my truck, and I’m gonna drive you to the nearest animal sanctuary, and then you can be their problem!”
Not every word means something to me; as a wolf, very little seems important besides what is directly in front of my nose.
But the thought of her ex—the man she had spoken of quietly, the man who had damaged her sense of safety, her ability to trust me—it lances through me, a growl falling from my mouth as I bare my teeth reactively.
She breathes heavily for a moment when she’s done yelling, and then sinks down onto the floor, her knees falling aside as she buries her face in her hands.
“ . . . Ok, he wasn’t my boyfriend. And I don’t know that he would come if I called. God, and if he knew what I did, he’d probably hate me by now.”
Good, don’t call him. I don’t want him here either, not when I can’t put myself directly between my mate and the man who hurt her. Just the thought of her ex coming back into her life makes my muscles tense, preparing to leap at him and tear at whatever my teeth close around first.
Ava huffs a breath. “Whatever. I don’t need his help. I’ve got this. I’ll figure it out.”
All I can offer is a low whimper in response.
“I don’t want to hear it,” my mate mutters, hugging her knees into her chest. “Oh, I don’t know how to deal with this.”
Her cheek presses against her knee as she taps a thumb against her phone, before there’s the tiny, familiar sound of a phone ringing, before it goes to an answering machine.
“The Massachusetts Fish and Wildlife Office is open from nine to—”
The rest of the pre-recorded message is drowned out by my mate’s exasperated groan.
“Hi, yeah, uh, I caught a really big . . . uh, I don’t know, it’s super not a coyote.
It’s too big. I don’t think it’s a wolf, but what else could it be?
Like a fucked-up groundhog? I don’t know how big they get.
What do you even do with a groundhog? What, do I just drive it out to the woods and drop it off there, let it go?
Anyway, if you could call me back, that would be lovely. Thanks, uh, bye.”
She scowls and tosses her phone aside on a table. My world remains focused on her as she turns back to me, kneeling down before the cage as close as she’s been all night. Her hair is windswept, and her cheeks are still flushed with exertion. “What even are you?”
Your mate, I think desperately on an exhale, but the words are compressed into a canine whine.
There was a reason I had turned her away, one buried deep underneath complications and rules and things that in this moment, I could not explain to myself. A reason lost to my wolf, beyond the bounds of its understanding, like the logic of a dream that dissipates instantly upon waking.
I know one truth like this: She is mine, and I am hers.
“I don’t want to have to deal with you any more than you want to be in this situation. So maybe we could cooperate and get through this without making things worse.” She sighs, hugging her knees. “I know it’s not fair of me to put you in here. It’s so small. But if I let you out, you’ll hurt me.”
She frowns after a moment, peering around the side of the cage. “Is your tail wagging? No, you’re not allowed to be happy to see me. I don’t even like dogs.”
I can’t help it. The way she’s holding my stare, it makes my heartrate pick up. Her eyes rake over me every few moments, as if she didn’t see enough the first time. There’s something so terribly freeing about being in this form—I can’t suppress the joy seeing her brings me.
It doesn’t even occur to my wolf to play coy—the tail moves regardless.
Ava rolls her eyes when the wagging intensifies. She looks down and sees a slice through the fabric of her pants, the scratch bleeding onto the frayed edges. My mate’s head tips back as she groans.
“Better and better. Fuck! I cannot afford another round of rabies shots,” she mutters as she stands and crosses back toward the bathroom, shucking her pants to the floor on the way.
She’s gone for several minutes, perhaps a lifetime. It’s hard to be sure.
Rolling over in the cage, there isn’t much comfort to be found in here. There isn’t even an old towel down over the bottom, just the thin metal rungs pressing into my body.
Her cabin is barely less claustrophobic than the cage itself, chaotically messy. Cabin is a generous word for it. A flimsy pre-fab with peeling, plasticky fake wood floors, with a patchwork of plywood on a couple of the sides is more accurate.
I only notice any of it in her absence, the moment her bare footsteps pad across the floor again, my ears prick up.
Ava reappears, her thighs only covered by a patchwork of small Band-Aids over the scratch.
She ignores me, brushing past the cage on her way to the bed on the other end of the room.
She rummages around, digging through the piles of laundry on the ground for something.
Eventually she finds a vape pen with a note of triumph, but it quickly returns to frustration as she tries to take a pull from it, only to get a flashing red LED.
“Don’t tell me it’s dead,” she grumbles, and begins searching through all the piles she’s already searched through.
The barest note of a whimper escapes me on a breath, hoping she’ll come back over here.
“Don’t give me that. I think better with this,” she says, replying as if she feels judged by my stare. She tries to take a pull from it again, frowning, before she lets out a long sigh and discards it into the floor laundry piles.
My tail wags a little again as Ava drifts back over, her attention settling on me again. “You’re not so scary when you’re . . . well, no, you’re still pretty scary looking.”
I have no reply but to lean my head against the inside of the cage.
She sighs, scrubs her hands over her face. “What do you eat? Is bologna ok?”
Not wild about it, but there’s no communicating that to her. She crosses the small space to the fridge covered in magnets, pulling the package out.
“Don’t snap at my fingers,” Ava warns, dangling a fragrant, damp slice above the cage cautiously. “Biting the hand that feeds, all that.”
I reply with a snort, and she lowers the slice in. I catch the tip of her finger with my tongue, licking eagerly, not for the bologna but for any touch of her skin. My wolf knows no sense of shame, eagerly tasting her fingers through the bars.
There’s a lot less worry over the idea of whether or not I should, the myriad of possible consequences to analyze and weigh whether it’s worth it. Like this, I’ll easily beg at her feet for a grain of her scent, her taste.
“Good boy,” she murmurs, and the words do something to me. My heartbeat stutters, heat floods my body, my cock twitches.
“Oh, wow. Yikes for the female of your species, dude,” she says, her head tipping to the side as she peers through the top of the cage.
My cock lays heavy against my stomach, a heated awareness traveling down my body as her gaze sweeps over me.
My blood thrums through my veins, pure base animalistic desire overpowering everything else.
There isn’t enough room in this crate to stretch out, belly up and begging for her touch, my legs bent up against one of the walls.
I hold still under her gaze, waiting, my cock growing harder, needier with every passing second.
My breath grows heavier in my chest as my mate’s eyes linger over me.
If nothing else, I know I can please her.
I know the sounds she makes when I tease her, each degree closer to unraveling, the way she breathes when she’s close to coming.
My knot throbs, growing thick and bulbous under her attention. I hear her swallow, and I’m tortured by the memory of her cunt squeezing tight and hot when she took it into her.
My breath catches in my throat, not quite a whimper, as warm, pearly drops leak from the tip, gathering in the divots of my stomach.