Crying Wolf

Crying Wolf

Devon sat on the hillside with his head in his hands and wept until his body ached. He missed his mother. He wanted to leave and forget the rancher, the town, and especially the ranch. When his sheepdog, King, died he’d lost the last friend he had in the world. Without money to go to college, he’d settled into the life of a ranch hand.

Except even the rancher got to go into town.

All alone after his first wife and son left him, the rancher promised to raise Devon as his own and take care of them both. Devon was excited to finally have a dad.

When his mother married the hard, silent man, Devon hoped for her happiness. Instead, he watched as she withered away for a decade, then slipped as quietly into death as she’d lived each day with the man who crushed her spirit.

Devon begged her to leave with him. After all, he was a hard worker too. He would take care of them both now that he was grown. Instead, he’d been forced to stay, desperate to protect her from the red-faced, miserable man he was forced to call his father and life passed him by.

He had failed.

Little by little, her light dimmed and the bottle spent more time in reach.

The rancher yelled more and smiled less. Mother slipped more whiskey into her coffee, until she stopped brewing coffee at all.

Devon shouted, cajoled, wheedled, bribed, begged, sobbed. Finally, Mother agreed to leave with him. He packed her things and stole the keys to the rancher’s rusted out Chevy.

Just inside the old oak front door, Mother collapsed. She was so frail it was easy to carry her and her bag to the truck. He drove her into town and straight to Doctor Crane’s.

Liver failure, Doc said. Full systemic shut-down.

There was nothing they could do.

He buried his mother with only the priest standing by his side. The rancher took watch of the flock for the morning only, warning him that he could still have him arrested for stealing the truck if he didn’t return promptly.

At the edge of the woods, a few feet beyond the last gravestones and the weathered little picket fence Devon saw a pair of wild, golden eyes staring back at him from the undergrowth.

Wolf.

The wolf peered at him with a sort of detached curiosity. No malice or fear, but a sort of neutral caution he was often face to face with when he watched the rancher’s sheep all alone in the wild. The priest intoned about Mother’s immortal soul in a reedy, wavering voice.

Dev stared into those curious eyes, his heart thumping strangely in his chest as the wolf met his stare, unblinking.

The digger broke the spell as he tossed the first shovel of dirt on the plain pine coffin, the best Devon could afford from the meager pay he received from the rancher. With each shovelful of rich loamy soil, Devon buried a memory of his mother.

Thud. The last time the rancher walked out as she cried into her bathrobe.

Thud. The empty vodka bottle on the nightstand and the full one in the drawer.

Thud. The lost look in her eyes at graduation when he told her he was staying to work on the farm.

He kept the happy memories. Swinging at the park on Sundays and dinner at his grandparents little condo in the city. Mother reading to him at bedtime, stories about witches and goblins and changelings who carried children off to live in fantastical fairy kingdoms.

The coffin was hidden and the priest and digger gone by the time he’d separated the good memories from the bad and let the bad go. The space freed by burying the dark times immediately flooded with the dull ache of missing her.

The wolf remained, watching from the fence.

“You should go before someone sees you. They don’t take kindly to your kind around here.”

The wolf dipped his head, turned, and loped off into the trees, leaving Devon gaping after him.

“That—did not just happen.” He glanced down at the long narrow strip of freshly turned earth. “Well, Mom, maybe something of you is left, after all.” His heart still pounding, back soaked in sweat under his cheap black church suit, he trudged back to the Chevy and headed home.

Home.

It wasn’t his home. It was the rancher’s farm, the rancher’s house. Dev changed into overalls and a long sleeved thermal and grabbed his walk stick. His chest ached with grief warring with relief for the pale ghost of a woman he’d watched be beaten to hell by life.

The rancher wouldn’t remember to come out and feed him. Devon filled his pockets with jerky and dried fruit from the cold cellar, careful not to fill them full enough to alert the rancher to the stolen food.

The house held its breath, waiting for the end. The walls were yellowed by time and pipe smoke and the beams sagged lower each year, pulled toward the earth by the weight of a century of gravity, neglect, and unremitting wear.

He took in all the sadness, the pain, and the unrelenting horror of the quiet decades of a kind of abuse no one protected people from or had compassion for. The kind of abuse that sucks the light out of your eyes in teaspoons, slowly, diligently killing you from the inside while everyone around you watches you slowly fade away and never asks why.

Devon released his memories of the house. One by one they fell to the warped floorboards.

Thud. The rancher yelling.

Thud. Mother weeping in the bathroom.

Thud. Bottles breaking against the wall.

Thud. His mother’s head breaking against the wall.

Into the void left by releasing the memories of life in the miserable old house rushed loneliness and helpless shame. Devon slammed the base of his walking stick into the floor hard enough to splinter the termite-riddled hardwood and leave a dent. He strode towards the grazing pasture, leaving the bad memories to the house they were created in.

As he closed the last gate, he glanced up to see a set of wild, honey eyes staring out at him from a cinnamon face. The wolf stood in the yard between the pastures and the house, stiff-legged and ready to bolt. His tall, furry ears twisted like antennae as he glanced up at the farmhouse, then back at Devon.

“You should run. The rancher doesn’t like wolves. You’re not safe here.”

No one is.

The wolf stared at Devon for a few more seconds before loping off between the barn and the main house.

What the hell does that idiot think he’s doing?

The wolf stayed on his mind almost the entirety of the three-mile trek to the high pasture. The animal was gorgeous. Not mangy and thin like the few other wolves he’d see hanging from the rancher’s fence over the years. Bigger too, impossibly big.

Like a changeling.

He laughed to himself. If only they’d been able to escape into his bedtime stories. If only they’d stayed in what he now knew was a shitty walk-up on the poor side of town, where the playground was more gravel than grass. Devon started to release those memories, tainted with the newer understanding of age. Instead, he turned them over in his mind looking at them from every possible angle. His mother’s smile as he swung higher than her head. Kraft macaroni and cheese every Friday night and ice cream at Leatherby’s on payday. Lying in her bed and counting the stars out her window because there were no lights on the back of the complex.

Falling asleep to stories of adventures in dark forests and boys who were brave.

Devon tucked his memories away and kept walking.

The sheep pressed against him as he waded through the flock toward camp.

As soon as he was in view, the rancher climbed on the four-wheeler and headed back to the farm.

“I hope you got away boy,” Devon muttered to himself. “And don’t ever go back there.”

The sheep stayed close the first night, which suited Devon just fine. The moon hung over his head when he was awakened by a gunshot.

Fuck.

The sheep startled, then calmed down and went back to sleep. Dev worried until exhaustion hung like lead weights on his eyelids.

Before it was light, he was awakened again, by a sharp kick to his leg. “Get up, damn you, there’s a wolf.”

Devon turned over and gave the rancher a bleary look. “The sheep have been quiet all night. Are you sure you didn’t get it?”

“I said, get up. You keep both eyes on the flock, day and night.”

Dev ignored the warning in his voice. “They’re your sheep. If you care so much, how about you stay out here with the gun and I’ll go home.” He knew better than to be surprised when the butt of the rifle met his chest. But somehow, the fiery blast of pain blooming in his ribs shocked him.

“Boy, you don’t do your goddamned job, you don’t have a job. Ain’t no one gonna make things soft for you anymore.”

Soft.

Like the thin, ancient, moth-eaten mattress he’d been sleeping on since he was eight. Or the frosty pre-sunrise showers because the rancher didn’t believe in a water heater for the tiny bathroom Devon used, but he did believe in being up before dawn for chores. Or the willow lashes, the nights of no supper, the dirt he ate every time he was pushed to the ground for a mistake.

Devon balled his hands into fists.

The rancher noticed.

“Try it, Boy. I will put one in you as easily as I will in that mangy wolf.”

“He’s not mangy at all, you know.” His fists emptied, hands up to protect his face in an instant as the rancher raised his gun again. “I’ll watch the sheep. All day, all night. Any chance you’ll help by leaving me some coffee?”

The rancher nodded and headed back down the hill, leaving Devon shaking and breathless. He never returned with the coffee, but Devon kept his eyes open for dust on the dirt road all day and listened for the sound of the old truck, well into the night.

When the full moon was nearly set behind the grove of trees on the crest of the hill, Devon was awakened again, not to a gun shot, but the slow, steady breathing of a warm furry body, pressed to his side.

King, he thought and drifted back to sleep. King would watch the flock.

In the morning, a sharp bark and a growl alerted him to the rancher’s approach. Devon scrambled up and poked the dying embers of the fire to life, scrubbing at his face with callused hands to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

“Aye. Did you bring coffee?”

The rancher growled at him. “Boy, if I find out you stole the venison from the smokehouse, I’ll turn you over to the sheriff before you can think of a lie.”

“What are you talking about? I haven’t left the hill.” He gestured around him. “One flock of sheep, safe and accounted for. Not a single missing lamb, just as you ordered. Did you bring the coffee?”

The rancher huffed. “Don’t think I don’t know you slept at your post.”

Devon scoffed and shook his head. “Well, that’s the funny think about human beings. We can’t actually stay awake indefinitely.”

“Just don’t leave your post. I see anything moving around inside the gates, I’m gonna shoot first, ask questions last.”

“You can’t shoot me for coming home.”

The thin, craggy man smiled thinly, sending a bolt of ice through Devon’s heart. “Do you really want to take the chance?”

Devon glanced out at the dark clouds gathering on the horizon. “Will you at least bring up a tent?”

The rancher ignored him and turned away, spitting into the meager fire on his way back to the truck. He made a dark cloud of dust on his way down.

He didn’t return.

Despite his best efforts to ration himself, hunger won the battle. He ate the last of the jerky, chewing slowly to make it last. It did not fill him, but it was enough to silence the painful reminders of his stomach for a few hours.

The sky turned gray and the wind picked up. It was nearly shearing time. When the sheep huddled together, the lambs lying between their mothers’ feet, they looked to Devon like a ball of dirty cotton, the gray of their wool still lighter than the clouds beginning to sprinkle on him.

Sprinkling rain soon became a torrential storm. Drenched and freezing, Devon backed into the trees, calling the sheep to him. As they hunkered down to stay warm, he used the hatchet his mother gave him on his thirteenth birthday to cut low boughs off the nearby trees to weave together in a windbreak. After creating a dry spot, he built a small, sheltered fire to stay warm.

With the sheep calm and the tiny, warm fire contained, Devon fell asleep to wait out the storm. The rancher wouldn’t bother him when his own chair and fire were out of the cold and wet. When he opened his eyes again, stars winked down at him from a cloudless sky and strips of freshly smoked venison lay inches from his head.

He glanced around for sign of his benefactor. All he saw was a pair of eyes shining at him under the starlight, round and yellow as harvest moons.

“You can’t stay. He’ll kill you. I think he’d like to kill me. I can’t protect you.” Devon thought for a moment. “Please, you have to find a new home.”

I need to find a new home.

Devon took a thick slice of smoked meat and tore it with his teeth, tossing a chunk away from the sheep, nearly in the trees. “Go on now, take it and go.”

The wolf sniffed the meat, then swallowed it, working it down his throat without chewing. It blinked once, then slunk away into the woods.

Devon found some soft young pine branches and opened them with his knife, peeling them down until there were enough thin, pulpy strips to wrap the remaining venison in. He tied the bundle together and climbed a nearby tree, shoving the pine-wrapped deer meat into a crook in the lowest branch, for hiding and safekeeping, thinking about the rancher’s gun.

He checked the sheep, still sleeping soundly, all packed together, the rain droplets on their wool sparkling in the light of the full moon. He lay back on his bedroll, hands behind his head, thinking about the mysterious appearance of the rancher’s stolen venison and the giant, solitary wolf who didn’t hunt sheep. Then he recalled thinking King was with him the night before.

It’s not possible, though. It couldn’t have been the wolf…

Chewing his lip and with an eye on the trees where he’d last seen the creature, he poured his little tin of damp dirt over the fire, then repeated it until it was buried and extinguished.

His heart nearly beating out of his chest, he tugged his sleeping bag up over him and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. Minutes turned into hours. Feeling foolish, he finally gave up and let himself fall asleep.

It was in the dark space between the stars going out and the sun rising that he felt heavy fur press against him, musk filling his nose. Devon was so excited he could barely breathe. He kept his eyes closed, but slowly reached back and ran his hand down the fur pressed against his hip and thighs.

After a few strokes, he braved a movement, slowly rolling onto his back, then toward the creature lying behind him. Staring down at him were two round, golden eyes.

“You’re a tame wolf, then.”

The wolf snorted and looked away.

“Uh, friendly? Is friendly better?” Devon felt foolish, but the wolf turned its snout back to him and sniffed his forehead, lifting the feathery hair that always fell in his face.

He continued stroking the length of the wolf’s back, from shoulder to haunch, as the wolf closed its eyes and slept, or made a show of sleeping.

He couldn’t sleep. Not now.

His hands full of the impossibly soft, thick fur, his pulse thrumming, mouth dry, Devon felt like he’d fallen into a story, worried he’d wake and it would have been a dream. Eventually his hand tired and he settled for wrapping one thin arm around his bedfellow and drifted into a half sleep, enough to dream of the wolf becoming a man, not much older than himself, who stroked the hair off his forehead and kissed him before standing, naked and dirty, and disappearing into the trees.

Devon woke up hard and irritable, to the sound of the rancher.

More checkups in days than in the years before…

He wondered how long the rancher had been trying to catch the wolf.

If the wolf is even real.

He built up a fresh fire as the rancher bounced up the rutted track faster than he thought the truck could go. The rancher shouted and shook his gun at the skittish animals to move them out of his path. Devon calmed those nearest to him as the rancher strode across the field.

“Good morning.”

The rancher snarled and stormed past him, tossing the makeshift lean-to and the bedroll. “I know you’ve got it. When I find it, I’m gonna lay a beating on you and drag you to the sheriff to deal with.”

Devon took a deep breath. He watched the uneasy animals stomp the shelter he’d made into splinters as the rancher nearly threw his blankets on the fire. He nudged the blankets safely from the flames just beginning to lick up the sides of his kindling and grabbed the rancher’s arm.

“Stop. Just stop. I’m not my mother. You don’t get to do this. Not anymore.”

The rancher’s eyes bulged out of his head with rage. His face turned almost purple, the veins on his head and neck pulsing. “You little fucking shit. I’m going to fucking end you.” He swung, the gun he still clenched in his fist driving into Devon’s face.

The blow knocked him to the ground. He scuttled back and held a hand to the flap of skin torn off his cheek. “Watch your own sheep.” Hands raised, his palms outward in resignation, Devon backed a few more steps out of reach before turning to walk away. He’d managed less than five steps when two things happened at once. The butt of the rifle connected with the back of his head, and a rush of air over him and a blur of ruddy fur flew over him.

Devon spun to see the wolf and the rancher grappling; the gun clenched tightly in the wolf’s jaw’s.

Fuck.

The gun went off and the wolf leaped back with a yelp.

“No!” Devon threw himself on the rancher, holding the gun against his chest with his left hand, beating the man’s face with the other. He pounded the man’s face over and over, remembering his mother’s bruises, and his aching ribs and the pity in his teacher’s eyes at school. Before long he was pummeling mush, the rancher’s face unrecognizable, his lungs no longer rising and falling. He was pulled off by his shirt, looking up through the blood spattered into his eyes to see a concerned canine face staring back at him.

Just run.

Unsure if he’d heard the voice or it was in his own head, Devon ran.

As he bolted into the woods, he brushed blood and tears from his eyes. Still, he didn’t see a small drop before it caught him and sent him tumbling.

The wolf pivoted and circled back, standing over him until Devon sat up and brushed himself off.

“I’m okay. It’s okay. He’s dead and no one will look for him for days, if ever.” He gently stroked the wolf’s head. “Why are you here? What did I do to deserve you?”

With another quick scan of the trees around them, the wolf backed off a few paces. He shuddered violently as fur rippled across his back. In seconds he changed from a Lycan to a man, only a couple of years older than Devon.

Shit.

“My name is Loki. I know you’re Devon,” the wolf said quietly. “I could change you too,” he offered, the softness in his voice belying his massive build. “My pack is up north. You could come with me.”

“You—you stayed with me. You slept with me.”

“You’re like me,” the wolf shrugged.

Devon picked at the pine needles scattered around him. “How did you know?”

“How did I know what?”

Devon sighed. “How did you know I’m like you?”

Loki let his eyes travel over Devon from his long, tousled hair to the bulge in his jeans. “I can smell it on you.”

Devon squirmed uncomfortably. “Oh.”

“If I change you, you’d smell it on me, too.”

Devon’s eyes grew to saucers. “Oh—and I’d be a wolf with you?”

“It would hurt the first time…”

Devon squirmed again. “It’s not my first time.”

Loki’s eyebrows shot up as he laughed in pure delight. “I meant the change. It would hurt the first time you change into a wolf. But after, it just feels good. Almost as good as, you know, the other.” He cleared his throat and blushed.

“I want it. I want to come with you.” Devon took a breath and released it. “I want—both.”

Loki nodded and glanced around. “No one will bother us here.” He closed his eyes and shifted, his skin changing like dominos falling. In moments he was almost more wolf than man, well over six feet if he stood, his mouth lengthened to a canine snout, hands and feet clawed. “Now undress for me and come here,” he growled softly. “If you want it.”

Devon’s dick jumped in his pants. He was terrified and aroused. Both feelings hit so fast it stole the air from his lungs. He tore off his down vest and his flannel, almost crawling on his hands and knees to him.

Impatient, Loki helped, tearing the pants as they both struggled to free Devon from the confines of his clothing. Loki laughed and dragged his long tongue up the inside of Devon’s thigh. “God,” he hissed, the words drawn thickly from his muzzle. “You smell of sweat and smoke and sheep and taste like sex. I want to devour you.”

Loki nipped gently at his nipples before flipping him over and grazing his teeth over the skin of his neck, raising his hair and making him shiver. He dug his claws in enough to make Devon cry out in pain, his dick impossibly hard and throbbing already. The wolf forced his knees apart drawing a gasp from his throat.

Don’t, he thought, followed instantly by, don’t stop.

Fingers gently squeezed his balls and slid into his yielding ass. A voice growled low and throaty in his ear “You need this as much as I do, don’t you?” Loki’s claws gripped his hips without biting into his flesh and the wolf man groaned. “You make me desperate for you.”

Devon glanced over at the clothes on the forest floor. “I know. I just don’t know what to do with a werewolf.”

Teeth sank into the curve of shoulder to neck, followed by smaller bites across back flesh. Each smaller bite distracted from the pain of the first and the fresh blood trickling down his chest. Loki-the-wolf took a fistful of his curls and rubbed his massive cock over Devon’s ass. He held him face down and pushed against Devon’s tight, quivering hole.

“You terrify me,” He him in a rough, agonized whisper. “Scared I’ll take too much. That I’ll turn into a mindless animal and I’ll hurt you.”

“I want you.” Devon’s voice stayed low. They were in church. This was sacred, holy fucking and sacrifice for a new life. He could already feel his blood changing, running molten through his veins. The suddenness of the pain dragged a sharp cry from his throat.

Loki-the-wolf pushed the head of his cock even harder against the tight unyielding asshole. “The sex will help with the change. It will still hurt, but the pleasure will ease the pain. Push back onto me. Pull my cock into you. Control us.”

“Fuck I want you.”

“I want you,” Loki echoed.

The almost begging tone of the wolf made Devon’s cock throb. He pushed back and gasped as the thick tip spread him open. Inch by excruciating inch he took in Loki’s huge cock, until his ass met with fur. He shuddered, another wave of volcanic fire pouring through his body, demanding his bones to break and reknit in animal form.

“Shhhh. Not yet. Don’t change yet. Patience.” Loki pulled Devon’s head back with his fistful of hair and leaned over to nuzzle him. “You feel so fucking good, little one.” He pulled back and slowly filled him again—and again—and again. With each long, slow thrust, Devon acclimated to the pain of entry and reveled in the pleasure building inside.

His body spasmed again and he drove himself harder onto the cock nearly tearing him open. “Harder. I need it harder.”

The wolf obliged.

Devon filtered through his memories as his ass met Loki’s hips and chose. With each thrust, he let go of the bad memories of his life before.

Thud. Lonely nights worried about his mother.

Thud. Lonely weeks on the hillside wondering if he would ever know friendship or love.

Thud. Heartache as the only people who loved him passed away and left him to a life no one would choose.

Thud. The sound his fist had made against the rancher’s bones until they were nothing but mush.

Devon released his former life. His mother, his grandparents, the rancher, he breathed them out in desperate gasps of pleasure and pain. The space left behind by releasing his old life filled with possibility. A new life of acceptance, love, and above all, freedom.

The wolf pounded Devon, claws biting into him, any pain from it drowned by the change and brutal, primal fucking. Guttural, animal noises filled his ears and he realized they were his own. The wolf took his hand and wrapped it around his own cock, forcing him to stroke it in time to the thrusts. Devon lost control, spine contorting and pulsing against Loki’s hairy chest as he came, his skin splitting, coating them both in scalding mucus and cum.

Loki followed, allowing himself release only when he held a soft, damp, ebony wolf in his massive arms.

Devon collapsed into the embrace, spent. A puddle of sweat and tears. Cum dripped down his ass to his thighs, coating his new fur. Together they sank to the soft, loamy earth and rested until Devon’s panting abated and the fire cooled under his skin.

Loki joined him in full Lycan form, still half again his size, even after the change. He licked Devon’s fur clean. Still in that form, he aroused and mounted him again before collapsing against him in a puddle of cinnamon fur.

Lazily, Devon wondered if his mate was sated.

Not even close, came the silent reply. But I’ll let you rest.

With each word of silent communication, Devon’s tail twitched, tears leaking from ice blue wolf eyes.

Thud.