Unfamiliar Territory - Chapter 24 (Early Access) (Patreon)

By the time dinner was served, Tove had been forgiven. She hadn’t intended to scare or upset her mate, and she was very apologetic… it was just… her face found it hard to look it.

Tove directed her grin at the fire she was cooking over while Chloe set out their blankets in a dip dug into the earth. She grumbled a little as she did, it was sweet. Apparently some bugs had hit her when Tove had taken them at top speed towards the water, and now she jolted every time she thought there was something stuck amongst her long, blonde braid - it was usually fluff or a shred of leaf. The one occasion it actually was an insect, she bestowed it to Tove on the tip of her finger with a quivering lip. Tove flicked it into the lake.

Chloe ate supper with her toes touching the furthest reach of the water, and Tove ate on her belly beside her, digging holes in the pebbles with her bony elbows.

"We have to start being careful as we get closer to the cabin," Chloe said to her bowl.

"Careful?" Tove repeated. Chloe did not need to worry about anything with her, she was perfectly safe.

"In case there are humans or magic folk about.” Said as though they were something to be scared of. “They can't see you swapping bodies the way you do."

"Shifting," Tove corrected with a grin. "Why not?"

"Well, we can't let anyone know what you really are."

Tove tilted her head in question.

Chloe generously whispered, "A werewolf." It sent a waft of the steam coming out of her bowl into Tove’s face.

It tickled, and Tove smiled up at her mate as she clarified, "Why not? Would they hurt me?"

"No, you'd be fine. I would be in social ruin."

Tove laughed. "What do you mean?"

"I made a fellow person my familiar!" Chloe confessed, as though expecting Tove to scold her for it. "Which is already beyond magic folk comprehension and would probably get me shunned and thrown out of school.” She sounded utterly scandalised by her own story, it was highly amusing. “But then I fell in love with the person I magically bound to me."

Tove giggled at the word love and Chloe gave her an exasperated look.

"I don't see the problem, personally."

"Imagine you didn't take a liking to me.” A liking was quite the understatement. Tove adored her. “Imagine you were bound to someone you couldn't stand with no means of escape. It's evil, it's a form of slavery, it-"

"Was an accident, Chloe." A most wonderful one at that.

"Yes,” Chloe sighed. They ate in silence as a dragonfly zipped past. “But still, we must be careful.”

They had already agreed that Tove should be known as a human and a wolf to Chloe’s brother and father - sharing their story with her mother only first. However, Chloe had not seemed so afraid when they discussed it before. The situation not yet so dire to her.

“I thought we were concerned for what to tell your family, why do strangers matter?”

“Word spreads,” Chloe murmured. “You are the first werewolf they will have ever seen, it’s not something they won’t share. The moment someone connects the dots of our situation I would be known as a disgusting pervert across the city!”

“You are not,” Tove reassured her with a chuckle. Her mate was incredibly innocent in that regard, actually.

“Tove.” Said with love, but also warning. “Please, you have to understand what this would do to me and my family’s reputation.”

“I understand, my mate.”

Chloe winced. “You can’t call me that inside the walls, either. I’m sorry.” She put her cleared bowl aside. “You need to act like a human.”

Tove pouted. “I don’t know all that much about them, but I’ll do my best.” Only the ones that had tried to kill her, and that was mostly the stink rather than the culture. Not that she thought they could be that different…

“They’re like us… but they don’t have mates and they sleep in beds and-” Chloe nodded at Tove’s tits. “-they cover up a little more.”

Tove blanched.

“Please, my mate,” Chloe cooed.

“That is not fair,” Tove laughed. She snatched her mate closer by the front of her dress, their noses almost touching.

Chloe joined in with her laughter, flushed pink.

Closer, just a little closer, giggling into each other’s mouths, and they met in a clumsy kiss. Even pressed together, the humour couldn’t be contained. The seal was broken with another laugh - who cracked first was not important - and Tove sat up proper.

She released her hold on the modest material and Chloe no longer had to hunch. “Come, let’s wash our worries away.”

“I think I am the only one who ever worries about anything,” Chloe admitted quietly. Tove tried not to giggle again.

They waded into the water, naked and armed with soap cubes stuffed into drawstring pouches of fabric.

As Tove scrubbed Chloe's back, half-sat and half-floating like otters, she decided it was time to come clean about the bond overspill. "Can you feel the bond? The tether itself, I mean," she began.

Chloe made a little questioning noise. "No, it's not a physical thing."

"I can feel it."

Chloe glanced over her shoulder, her face framed in blonde wisps slicked down under the weight of water. "I can't tell if you're teasing me."

Tove smiled softly. "I'm not, I can reach out and touch it like a rope.” She traced a finger along Chloe’s skin: over her shoulder, down the centre of her chest, through her breasts and to her belly button barely keeping above the lapping line. “Only it doesn't tangle."

Chloe rolled over in the water, using Tove's forearms to steady herself and keep her face above water. "I've never heard of anything like that before!”

"I've been thinking... that maybe the familiars can all feel it but they've not got the ability to say so."

"That's fascinating," Chloe breathed. Her eyes glanced away over Tove's shoulders, a little glazed, as she calculated possibilities. "I know of some varieties of birds that can speak, but I think they can only repeat phrases that they hear..."

"There's something else."

"Hmm?"

"Sometimes, bits of you get sent down the rope, and I don't think you realise."

"Bits of me?"

"Your dreams, your feelings, your aches and pains."

Chloe flushed. "You can see my dreams?"

"It's not like reading a book,” Tove assured her. She’d raise her palms calmingly if Chloe weren’t using them as her personal flotation device. “There are bursts of sights and noises and most of it is nonsense to me." She shrugged, and Chloe bobbed with the motion.

"And everything else?" Chloe’s pretty round face was alight with both excitement and concern at this development. She loved to learn, her little mate.

"When I pull on the rope, it's like a plug in a barrel," Tove explained. "And a little... sprinkle of your wellbeing is released before it's sucked back into place."

"How often are you stealing sprinkles?" Chloe asked, half-teasing and half-mortified.

Tove kissed her pink forehead. "Only a couple of times. Once I realised what it was, I stopped."

"How strange..." Chloe let her chin drop to the water, deep in thought once again.

Tove braced her legs into a squat and pulled her mate into her lap as though sitting backwards on a chair, a safer position for her to think big thoughts in. "If you were willing…” she began, hesitating to check she had Chloe’s attention again. Sparkling mossy green eyes found her again amongst the clamour of concentration. “I'd like to use it to check on you, especially if we are apart."

"Well, what kinds of things does it reveal?” Chloe asked, pulling her posture straighter to float on the points of Tove’s knees, delicate and elegant. “Does it tell you if I need to pee or if I have an itch?"

Tove laughed, loud enough to scare a fish that had been edging towards them. Chloe hadn’t noticed it, she’d probably squeal if she did. "No, it's more... feelings. If you are feeling tired or frustrated or you have a hurt knee." Her little mate was notoriously clumsy.

Chloe took the soap pouch and swiped it along Tove's collarbone. "Do it now,” she ordered. “Let me see if I can sense it."

Tove watched her for a few moments. Her lovely little mate’s face was expectant, then crumpled in concentration, searching for the feeling of the bond. Tove gave the connection between them a pull. Not a twitch from Chloe when she did, and the revealed information was physical: her feet were growing cold. Tove announced the revelation aloud and Chloe jerked back with a blink.

“Did you guess that?”

“No,” Tove chuckled. She slipped the soap pouch back out of Chloe’s grip and scrubbed her pale body with vigour. The sooner her little mate was clean, the sooner her little mate was warm again.

They had a fire, and plenty of blankets, and nothing to concern themselves with - for tonight at least. This, Tove assured Chloe as she carried her free of the lake. She dried her mate, then herself, and tossed a handful of dry sticks into the flames. It should outlast their coupling…

A bite-worthy bottom was pointed at her when she attempted to slide into their sleeping dip. Chloe was digging through one of their bags. Before Tove could ask what she searched for, she sat up and held aloft a small jar of oil.

Chloe beckoned her closer and unscrewed the lid. “Let me, please.”

Tove grinned. Her mate was as unexperienced in being demanding as she was at sex.

“Do as you please.”

Uncalloused hands massaged the floral-scented oil from her feet to her hips, over her mound, wide-palmed across her belly and breasts, down her arms to play with her fingers, allowing them to slide in and out of her mate’s, when they reached Tove’s throat, they halted at the cupping of her jaw.

Chloe hesitated, glancing between Tove’s lips and eyes from under fluttering lashes. Tove fought the grin, but the grin won. Chloe flushed, and kissed her.

Tove took her plump hips in her hands and guided them down into the bedding, pressing her tongue into Chloe’s mouth and shivering every time the vibrations of her mate’s moans shuddered around it. The kiss broke and Chloe gasped. Tove chuckled, refusing to take her lips off her mate fully; she trickled kisses down her neck, over her breasts, and through the centre of her navel to the soft folds waiting to be peeled apart by her tongue. Through her body-length journey she shared the oils back, offering them both a bright sheen under the moon and firelight.

She began with a cluster of kisses to her mate’s clit, then latched her mouth in against her inner lips and licked her from hood to hole. And again. And again.

“H-how am I feeling?” Chloe gasped.

Tove detached with a wet sound to rival the lake’s laps. “Perfectly soft and slippery as always, my mate,” she declared and dove back in.

“I meant- ah! The bond, Tove!”

Tove laughed through a mouthful of cunt. Pale thighs were pressing in on her so tightly it was hard to focus on reaching out for the bond - breathing and eating simultaneously was slightly more important. She managed to catch the rope, just as her mate fell apart. The rush of orgasm hit Tove like a wall to her entire body. The harder she sucked and ground her tongue, the more incredible she felt, Chloe’s pleasure pulsing parallel up and down the bond. They shared the climax, one screaming into her blanket-covered fist and the other groaning against slick-soaked folds.

They collapsed in tandem and the bond finally broke.

“Goodness, I-”

“I shared your orgasm,” Tove gasped.

Chloe blinked up from the dip. “What?”

“I tried to check on you, and it was like I got stuck connected to your feelings… and when you came…” She flopped onto the blankets beside her mate. “That was amazing.”

“We’ve studied familiars and the bond since the dawn of magic… and you have revealed more in the last hour than most researchers discover in their entire careers.” Chloe shook her head.

“None of it was intentional,” Tove laughed, still breathless. She’d never come like that before.

Chloe lay in a daze for a bit. Tove watched her.

“I never would have thought I’d be comfortable having sex outside, but seeing the stars through my knees while I came was incredible,” she said to the covering Tove had propped up over their sleep dip. An overhang to keep away falling leaves and bird droppings.

“Enough to change your magic specialty?” Tove teased.

Chloe hummed with humour. “No, thank you. The stars can’t compare with all of the plant species: buds and blooms and herbs…” She yawned.

“Go to sleep, my mate, and dream of your beloved weeds.”

Chloe curled into her side, mumbling. “No requests. You’ll get whatever sprinkles out and make do.”

Tove formed the other half of their sleeping circle with a grin and stroked her mate’s damp hair until the dreams came in spurts and sparks.