When the Moon Shines (Patreon)

A commission for JC Wolfcub

By Pappy Wolf

(Warning: heavy grunge)

Brewster Carrington was in a rotten mood that morning. Bad enough that his dim bulb frat brother Trent had forgotten to get gas on the way to the lake. But with the needle close to “E,” they had to stop at the first available place – a backwater shack so crowded with dust-covered merchandise that it looked more like a flea market than a proper convenience store. It was beneath them. A sign advertised live worms, for God’s sake. Worms!

Just like every other bottom-feeding gas station, this one had a grimy bum hiding from the cashier by posting up on the far side of the ice machine. Today’s specimen was of the redneck variety, reeking of stale cigarettes and unwashed underwear. His appearance was almost as repulsive as his odor. He had to weigh close to four hundred pounds. Between his overgrown gray beard and his low-slung straw cowboy hat, the only visible portion of his face consisted of his oily cheeks and a bulbous, pockmarked red nose. Despite his obesity, he had the effrontery to wear his sleeveless flannel shirt unbuttoned nearly to the bottom, so that it cradled his furry beer belly like a sling. It was almost like he was showing it off on purpose. He was chugging a plastic bottle of cheap whiskey, but he let it drop to his side as Brewster and Trent approached. As they neared the door, he loudly and raggedly sniffed the air, licked his lips and muttered an incomprehensible but clearly lewd invitation.

Inside, Trent tried to distract Brewster by debating the proper order of pubs for their bar crawl that evening. But Brewster had trouble concentrating on their conversation. He lobbed perfunctory answers back at his buddy’s inane questions and made a beeline for the first twelve-pack of light beer he could see. After grabbing it, he took a moment to check his reflection in the cooler’s glass door. A few hairs in his glossy black slick-back ‘do had slipped out of place. He smoothed them down as best he could and thrust the carton of beer into Trent’s arms.

Trent observed his clenched jaw and angry countenance and turned pale. “Aw, Christ, Brew…! Can’t you just let this one go?”

“I’m not going to make a scene,” Brewster countered. “I just think the owner should know there’s a bum hanging around outside of his establishment. These guys always appreciate info like that. He doesn’t want the fucker to drive away business, right?”

Trent shook his head but kept silent.

As Brewster described the bum in detail, the proprietor listened, seemingly bemused. The old man didn’t seem to comprehend the import of his words, so Brewster continued, describing the utter disgust the vagrant had inspired in him, and of the various dangers a filthy, drunk beggar could present, such as public indecency, physical or sexual assault, vandalism and even the spread of small vermin such as bedbugs.

As he spat out his words, the memory of the redneck’s stench came back to him, so intensely that he could almost smell it for real. Oily snickering sounded from behind him just then. Spinning around, he saw the unsavory blimp standing mere inches away with his flabby arms crossed as best he could manage.

“Sweet Jesus,” Trent gasped.

The hillbilly bum’s absurd attempt at intimidation only made Brewster angrier. Looking the asshole directly in the eyes, he snapped, “I’m not apologizing, if that’s what you think. Somebody needs to tell you the truth. You’re fucking gross--!”

The redneck looked past the frat boys, at the owner. “Get these candy asses out of here,” he growled. His breath was unholy.

Before Brewster could say another word, the owner broke into gales of laughter. His ruddy, weathered face glowing like a campfire, he said, “Beer’s on the house, boys. It was worth it just to see your faces! You go on now, scoot.”

Wordlessly, Brewster and Trent took their would-be purchases and fled. Brewster could hear the old man saying to the bum, “Ratfuck, you done scared off more customers this week…!”

“Ratfuck.” Brewster stewed on the vile name while he and Trent tore across the lake on rented jet skis. At times, he thought he could even catch a hint of the bastard’s stink and catch movement behind the tree line that could have been a person. It was just his imagination, of course. Why would a dumb redneck whale even bother trying to follow him around? Anyone could tell just by looking at him that he didn’t have enough ambition or self-control for a revenge scheme. Doubtless, the nasty fuck was rooting around in a garbage pile out by the gas station, housing snack cakes and bottom shelf liquor until he either passed out or fell into a diabetic coma.

He kept thinking back to his run-in with the redneck while dining on sliders and buffalo wings with Trent back in town. Even after he sullenly joined his frat brothers on their bar crawl that night, he imagined seeing the bastard moving through faraway crowds, like a garbage barge among a fleet of yachts. The specter of Ratfuck refused to grant him a moment’s peace.

Hanson, one of the senior brothers, pulled Brewster aside at the fourth bar they’d hit. Fixing him with a dubious glare, he said, “Are you going to be a buzzkill all night, or…?”

“Maybe,” Brewster sulked. “I don’t know.” He looked down at the floor.

Hanson clutched Brewster’s chin and forced him to maintain eye contact. “Well, knock it off. You’re making everything awkward with your Adam Driver intensity, bro. If you’re not in the mood for this, don’t force yourself to stay. You get my meaning…?” His tone was friendly but firm.

With no other choice in the matter, Brewster relented. “You’re right, man. I’m sorry. You guys go on ahead. I’m going to hang out here and figure out what to do.” Hanson slapped him on the shoulder and rejoined the rest of the group.

Rubbing his shoulder, Brewster remembered how grotesque the bum’s shoulders had looked. The fatass was extremely hairy, but his shoulders were especially so, with the hairs assuming a coarse, straight texture more like animal fur than anything human. It was an odd detail to recall, but it had disturbed him on a subconscious level, the way people feel dread at the suggestion of inhuman faces in a wall. He could only imagine the level of inbreeding necessary for that kind of depraved mutation.

He drank by himself for over an hour, his thoughts muddled. The way Ratfuck had licked his lips… was it meant to be a playful threat, or was he truly attracted to them? The idea of that stinking blob putting the moves on him made him nauseous. A chill rattled through his bones. The only thing he knew for certain was that he couldn’t deal with crowds tonight. He moved from the bar’s interior to its sparsely populated patio. The moon was full this evening, bathing everything in a cool, calming light. The September air was mild and fragrant with the scent of the crape myrtle trees that lined one side of the nearby alley. Campus was around a mile away; he reasoned he could walk back, saving him from suffocating in a mob while waiting for a car service. It would be good exercise, besides. And the fresh-smelling alley would be a helpful shortcut…

A few minutes later, he was strolling down the shadowy passage. On his left were the brick walls and back doors of the commercial district; on his right were the fences and overhanging trees of the adjoining residential neighborhood. The sounds of partying twenty-somethings and the thumping bass of cruising cars blended with the din of barking dogs and a radio broadcast of a football game.

When it happened, he had no time to react. A stench like a wet dog walloped his senses, one second before he was knocked to the ground. Something sank its fangs into his neck and dug its claws into his chest as it dragged him deeper into the shadows.

Brewster thrashed and writhed beneath its tremendous bulk, but the animal anticipated his movements with keen intelligence, using its limbs the way a wrestler employs his arms and legs to overcome an opponent. It shoved him into the dirt repeatedly as it clawed his clothes and flesh into ribbons. Pain made every movement agony, and he felt his body go limp under the beast’s assault. The thing rudely arranged him into a crouching position with his ass in the air. Besides the grimy fur and hot, rancid breath of the animal, he could feel the cool night breeze caressing his skin. His ass was exposed to the air. He had only a moment to consider the consequences of that before the beast rammed its moist, unforgiving baton of a cock into his virgin hole.

The next few hours were a blur. A police car found him wandering through town in the nude, holding his wallet and house keys. After affirming that he was indeed from an Important Family, they draped a blanket over him and deposited him at the frat house. There were no wounds to be found on his body. After enduring a gauntlet of jeers and high fives from his brothers, he retreated to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom he shared with three other guys and shit blood until he passed out on the floor.

Three days later, he was still in bed. The frat had an understandable suspicion that something terrible had happened to him, but they didn’t know what. Because he wasn’t talking. His friends and fellow frat brothers offered generic sympathies between gently prodding questions that he steadfastly refused to answer.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what the giant animal had done to him. Not the injuries – there was no evidence, even though he remembered the lacerations of its claws and teeth with crystalline precision – but the sex. That was how his brain kept classifying it: sex. Not rape or molestation or assault. But like it had been something thoroughly normal. More than once, his hand had crawled onto his crotch as he reminisced about getting violated by the beast, squeezing and pulling at his cock, tickling his hairy balls, while his other hand clawed at his stomach and his neck, raising crimson welts.

His roommate, Derek, gave him what he craved: silence and distance. The lanky blonde offered a respectful greeting whenever he entered but spent the rest of the time quietly, studying or scrolling on his phone. Sometimes, he would glance at Brewster, a shadow on his pretty face, and Brewster would wake up from a daze, sensing that he had done something to upset him. But he never knew what.

The chapter president, Gareth, and some other top guys like Hanson and Walden covered for him with his classes as best they were able. After a week, Brewster shook himself from the deepest depths of his stupor but still didn’t feel very sociable. He haunted the frat house in boxers and flip-flops, eating alone and staying on the periphery of games and conversations.

That first week, he hadn’t dreamed at all. But now, dreams came to him whenever he closed his eyes. They were wet dreams, all of them, and unlike any he’d had before. They were violent, vivid in a startlingly tactile fashion, and they were gay. Before the… sex… he’d have the occasional fantasy about some of the voluptuous sorority girls he flirted with at their mixers. But now every object of his increasingly predatory sex dreams was a guy. And not even a cute guy. They were all dull-eyed rednecks. Most of them were hairy and most of them were fat. And all of them were younger than him, because he was far older in his dreams. He’d catch glimpses of his swolen, liver-spotted hands with their gray-furred knuckles or see the wild gray bush that overhung his greasy, wrinkled cock. He’d hear his labored grunting as he humped cowering truckers and farmhands.

His brothers began to complain about the looks he was giving them. They told Gareth they didn’t feel comfortable around him. And they complained of his odor. He needed to bathe, he knew, but it didn’t seem important anymore. First Hanson and then Walden took him aside for concerned lectures. He needed to pull himself together, they said. He had to see someone about the funk he was in. And he needed to bathe. Brewster realized he was staring at Walden with a detached, almost feral glare, like he wasn’t even the same species. He felt hyperaware of all the sounds and smells in the house and was struck by a conviction that it didn’t smell enough like him. In that moment, he had a powerful urge to pee. And so, he did. Right through his boxers, soaking the couch and causing Walden to jump up and shout in disgust. He had trouble understanding what the fuss was about. That night, he was asked to leave the frat.

His parents arranged for movers to take his things to a studio apartment they’d rented for him on the west side of the campus. Brewster pulled a bathrobe over his sweaty, unwashed body and stood outside in his boxers and flip-flops, drinking bargain tequila from the bottle and surreptitiously fingering his crotch as he ogled the burly moving men. He undressed them with his eyes and redressed them in overalls, trucker caps, and sleeveless flannel shirts.

At the apartment building, a few concerned neighbors eyed him with concern. He eyed them back as he shambled around the lawn in a wrinkled t-shirt and pajamas, tippling tequila and drunkenly ordering the moving men about. He spotted one doughy young man on a balcony with a horseshoe mustache and a t-shirt advertising a local rodeo. Brewster licked his lips and winked at him. The young man hurriedly retreated indoors.

He didn’t do much unpacking. He threw his bedding in a pile in the corner of the living area and slept in that. The dreams were more intense now, and he regularly awoke with a raging boner, spurting more cum onto the sheets and himself that seemed possible. Wiping it off his cock with the back of his hand, he lapped it up and eagerly went back to sleep, hungry for more dreams.

He rarely looked in the mirror these days. When he did, he saw a scruffy, bearded, grimy man with a bit too much fat on his muscular body. He looked tired all the time. Shadows crowded about his eyes and fine particles of dirt insinuated themselves into his flesh, highlighting the wrinkles and making him look a decade older. He didn’t mind. When he bought tequila and cigars and gay spank mags now, the clerks didn’t give him a second glance.

Weeks passed. He didn’t bother to go outside very often. He already knew what was out there. He could hear every bird and each crawling thing on top of the ground and under it, smell the musk of raccoons and stray cats and wayward foxes, taste the traces of exhaust and coffee and illicit sex floating in the air. He attended classes rarely, preferring to hole up in his studio and indulge in his base desires. He pissed in the corners of the room and marked the air with rank farts. When his drunken binges loosened his bowels and cursed him with a case of sharts, he scooted his bare ass on the carpet like a dog.

Ravenous hunger tormented him. He had no intention of cooking anything, so he had food delivered when he wasn’t scooping the contents of soup and ravioli cans into his mouth with his fingers. Mostly, he subsisted on tequila and processed snack foods. Cookies, cakes, donuts… anything sugary. His abs began to sink beneath a layer of flab. While he gorged himself, he watched endless amounts of television. CMT, monster truck rallies, rodeos, wrestling. He’d never taken any interest in those things before, but now they comforted his agitated mind. He watched them while he engaged in hours of bodyweight exercises. Push-ups, lunges, chin-ups using a bar mounted across a doorframe. He had to stay strong so he could defend himself. From what, he wasn’t sure.

The moon waxed as the days passed and became a brightly shining disc once more. Brewster paced his studio, bedeviled by jittery nerves, his thoughts more disordered than ever. His boxers and socks felt tight. Something was building within him, crawling beneath his skin. The moon pulled his gaze to it, growing larger in the sky, its cold, merciless light burning everything it touched. The trees, the houses, his apartment, his flesh…

He was running. The world was streaks of color rushing past his huge, naked, furry body. Dirt dug beneath his claws as he relentlessly propelled himself forward on all fours. His long tongue lapped at his fangs as his snout scented the prey all around him. Squealing, skittering, scuttling things, tiny things, rightfully fearing the alpha predator who had invaded their world. The kaleidoscope of colors shifted and turned to red as he scooped the creatures into his dreadful mouth, feeding himself until his huge, round belly was nearly bursting. He kept going past that point, relishing the sharp shock of his gut tearing open and depositing a smaller and more human form onto the floor of his studio.

Brewster sat up and looked around, trying to get his bearings. He had just been outdoors – he was sure of it – but now he was back home with no memory of entering it. One thing he knew for certain: he was full at last, his endless appetites finally satiated. And he was a mess. A thick film of blood and saliva coated his naked body. Cursing, he resigned himself to an unassailable fact. He needed to take a shower.

He didn’t bother with soap. In fact, he wasn’t sure he owned any. But hot water did the job of washing the gore from his plump and muscular form. Certain aspects of the real world no longer caught his attention – chiefly, his own appearance – but with his hunger temporarily tamped down, he saw how much weight he had gained in the last month. Fifty pounds or more, he was sure. His body was hairier, too. He used to shave his torso to highlight his gains. He’d only had a thing treasure trail and a sprinkling of hairs on the lower half of his pecs. Now, his entire torso was covered in a lush, dark pelt. Even his shoulders were hairy. But the texture was different there. Instead of the normal curls, the hair was straighter and much thicker than the rest. Reaching behind himself, he felt even more of the strange hairs on his upper back and even on his ass.

Ratfuck.

It had to be a coincidence. He hoped it was. The elder hick hadn’t occupied his thoughts in weeks, but now the memory of him came crashing back into the forefront of his mind. The gray-bearded tub wasn’t so bad, he thought. He just hadn’t been able to appreciate him before. Ratfuck didn’t GIVE a fuck, and he respected the hell out of that. He imagined running into the guy in some honkytonk and buying him a beer. And they’d talk some and hug out whatever differences they had. After the hug, they’d kiss a little, maybe, huffing each other’s musk while undressing. They’d smash their furry bellies together and…

Cum splattered on the tile wall, jolting Brewster back to reality. Scolding himself for climaxing early, he finished rinsing himself clean and went back to his inventory of his changing body. His hair and beard had grown with inhuman speed. He’d been clean shaven the day he’d encountered the beast, and in less than thirty days his whiskers were over three inches long. Similarly, his medium-length hair now hung nearly to his shoulders. He noticed these things with surprise but not alarm. He felt that it suited him.

Steam had turned the mirror cloudy. He wiped the condensation away and tried to make sense of his reflection. He had assumed a shower would remove the dirt from his fine wrinkles and make him look younger again. It had and it didn’t. The wrinkles were clean but deeper and more pronounced. Creases marred his forehead and a spider’s web of wrinkles lurked at the corners of his eyes. And the chin of his bushy beard was peppered with gray. He was aging at an impossible rate. Baring his teeth, he saw that they had yellowed considerably in the last few weeks, as if he’d neglected them for decades. His canines looked longer than normal, but he supposed that could be an illusion caused by his receding gums.

After looking himself over for a minute, he felt a fresh tingling in his balls. The look was turning him on. His hair and beard recalled not just Ratfuck but all the outlaw country singers, hillbilly wrestlers and reality show hicks he’d jerked it to in the last few weeks. He wanted to stroke himself off right then, but he knew it would be more intense if he looked even trashier. After rummaging through the moving boxes, he found his beard trimmer. Feeling hornier by the second, he shaved off his mustache and reduced his three-inch-long beard to a set of broad mutton chop sideburns that went down to his jaw and an untrimmed goatee. He winked at the scuzzy daddy in the mirror. “You need a trucker cap, sweet cheeks,” he purred. His voice had acquired a backwoods twang. While it made him feel even sexier, he thought he’d better try speaking without it. This proved impossible. The idea of being stuck with an uncontrollable hillbilly accent made him shoot his load right away. He was disappointed, but his cock reared back up immediately, ready for more action. Perfect. He spent the rest of the night rubbing out boner after boner while downing tequila, puffing on cheap cigars and romancing his own reflection.

Brewster officially vanished the next day. He withdrew thousands of dollars from his bank account. Before he hit the road, he sold his Lexus and bought a battered, boxy little 1975 Ford F-100 in a putrid shade of gold. The truck was completely rebuilt under the hood l—a high-performance vehicle that looked like garbage. Just like him.

Pretending to be someone else was easier than he’d anticipated. His own driver’s license had changed, altering his last name from “Carrington” to “Cardy” and showing him to be roughly fifteen years older than the college boy he’d been back in September. Even the description of his eye color had changed from “brown” to “amber.” The tiny photo of him in the corner showed a fat, hairy redneck with yellow eyes. Checking his reflection in the rear-view mirror, he discovered that his pupils had indeed taken on a lupine cast. He wondered if Brewster Carrington still existed. Maybe he’d split off from the boy like a dividing cell. Or maybe things had changed so much that the college boy had never existed. Maybe his parents were childless. It didn’t matter much, he guessed. He had what he wanted. He was free. With no clear notion of where he was going, he hit the road and drove south. Toward the lake.

By November, the gray hairs had overtaken half his six-inch-long goatee and forged broad streaks in the temples of his foot-long locks. He tamped down the hair with a trucker cap he rarely removed and groomed the goatee with a little plastic comb, using the greasy food particles that typically caught in his stubble as a kind of styling aid. His weight continued to increase, concentrating mostly in his gut and his ass. At three-hundred-plus pounds, he’d adopted a swaggering waddle. His face grew round, with a bullfrog neck and puffy features that squeezed his yellow eyes into a perpetually suspicious squint. He favored loosely fitting clothes, scavenged from thrift stores. Unless he had to be inside a business, he liked to roam the streets shirtless. On cold days, he threw an unbuttoned plaid barn coat over his furry shoulders and called it good. In his room, he usually wore nothing at all.

His new home was a dilapidated motel along the old highway. His neighbors were drug dealers and whores. The walls vibrated with arguments, orgasmic cries, and thumping bedframes. The lowlife population of the motel never messed with him. They could see something horrible in his wolfish eyes and they kept a respectful distance.

His unkempt appearance and lack of hygiene barred him from most jobs, so he fell into a position as a bouncer at a nearby cowboy bar called “The Last Stand.” The owner asked him to stay outside until he was called for, on account of his stink. He didn’t mind. He felt more comfortable outside than in. Especially in a spot like this, in the middle of nowhere. The grunts of bobcats and bears serenaded him, and he could smell their musk on the bone-chilling winds that reddened his filthy cheeks. The slurring drunks mangled his name into “Bruiser.” Neither the owner nor he bothered to correct them. It became his official handle.

Bruiser stayed away from the gas station. Thoughts of Ratfuck were so frequent now and so potent, he worried he’d behave like a silly lovestruck girl if he ever saw the guy again. Once, he made a wrong turn and found himself sailing past it. He could see that a new bum had taken Ratfuck’s place. He was as rotund and hairy as the old fart, but much younger, with a mighty brown beard instead of gray. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Every full moon, the light would swallow him whole, and he’d end up in the woods in a lupine shape, scarfing down every living thing he could lay his paws on. By April, the fur on his back and ass – and it was fur now, he could accept that – went completely gray. So did his hair. He looked close to fifty now. If the owner and patrons of “The Last Stand” thought this was odd, they never said so to his face. At this point, Bruiser had seen enough people prematurely weathered by hard living that it no longer seemed unusual.

Life went on. Bruiser topped four-hundred pounds and kept on eating. His ragged, heaving breaths sounded like the growls of a wild animal. He’d stopped bothering to groom his beard and the previously shaven parts grew out with lightning speed, transforming his former goatee and sideburns into a leonine beard that draped over his sagging, spreading, furry man-tits. For fun, he arranged it into a crude braid by binding it with a series of rubber bands. His hair, which stretched halfway down his back, was typically kept in a thick, greasy ponytail. His nails grew dark and quite thick, with pointed tips like a predator. His gray eyebrows were a single bushy thatch meeting at the bridge of his nose. He became a familiar customer to the local delivery drivers, since he was now eating almost constantly. His musky stench permeated the motel room’s air and soaked through the walls. The ceiling, never the cleanest, turned a sickly yellow brown from his cigar smoking. At last, people dared to complain about him. With a trembling voice, the hotel manager informed him he had a week to collect his things and find another place to stay.

The next night was a full moon. Bruiser paced his room, fists clenched, swearing and muttering in his raspy growl, his monstrous cock streaming pre onto the carpet. His smoldering rage was interrupted by a knock at the door. Nearly ripping the thing off its hinges, he tore it open.

He found himself looking at the young, fat bum from the gas stop. The kid was even younger than he’d thought, looking no older than twenty-five. The two porcine beasts stared at each other, nostrils flaring as their individual musky stinks met and merged in the hot summer air. The young vagrant eyed Bruiser’s boner and gently reached down to stroke it. A diabolical grin formed beneath Bruiser’s gray walrus ‘stache. “Just get the hell in here, boy,” he grunted, firmly clutching the kid’s arm in his claws and yanking him forward. The door closed.

Their love was brutish and violent, with the young bum teasing Bruiser until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Retribution was taken with fangs and talons as well as his punishing shaft. They savaged each other’s bodies between bareback fucks. The younger ate out the elder’s rank hole and sucked the smegma from his uncut cock. Bruiser dominated his boy with his superior size and strength, pinning him down and “forcing” him to drink tequila, much on snack cakes and puff on cigars.

With an hour until sundown, the pair collapsed on what was left of the bed and spooned. The young bum moaned, “You’re even hotter than I’d dreamed you’d be, daddy.” Bruiser held the kid tighter and kissed his furry back.

“Must be you noticed when I passed the gas stop in my truck,” Bruiser mused.

“Naw,” the kid said, his voice a husky purr. “I noticed you the day you and that other frat boy stopped there for beers. I looked a lot older then. But I could tell you were the one for me. I don’t know if it was your face or your smell or maybe your ‘take no shit’ attitude, but from then on, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

It seemed impossible, but then, his own body seemed impossible to him these days. Wonderingly, Bruiser gasped, “Ratfuck--?”

“The one and only,” the boy replied. He arranged his bulk so that they were face-to-face. “Name used to be ‘Radford’ but you know how the curse changes things. Didn’t used to be a redneck, neither, but I like it better this way. I guess I can’t complain about none of it. You ain’t mad about me turning you, are you daddy?”

Bruiser knew that if he thought about it for any length of time, he’d be pissed off. But he wasn’t much for thinking these days. Just feeling. He grabbed Ratfuck’s furry cheeks and planted a long, deep kiss on his putrid mouth. “That answer your question?”

“I heard about your living situation, daddy. That’s why I had to come over here and see you. I got me a place over in a trailer park with a couple other guys like us. Well, it’s a whole pack if you count our neighbors. You’d be the alpha for a while, if you’re into that.”

The thought of ruling over an entire group of hot, nasty werewolf bears like Ratfuck made Bruiser hard all over again. “Don’t have to ask me twice, boy,” he smiled.

“Best as I can reckon,” the kid continued, “the most recent bastard to get turned is awarded the role of daddy. That was me and now it’s you. It’s why we aged so damn quickly. I was daddy wolf for… fuck me, I guess it’s been something like thirteen years! Like me, you’ll stay daddy until you meet another guy who triggers the need in you. This unstoppable lust, this… obsession. Yeah, I followed your fine ass back to town and I turned you in that alley. I couldn’t help myself if I tried. Same thing will happen to you, daddy. Could be next week, could be twenty years from now. No way to tell. When that happens, you’ll get your youth back. And we’ll all get a new alpha. And the pack will keep growing. Ain’t such a bad life, is it?”

Bruiser nodded, scratching at the fur on his chest. A familiar itch was starting. But on tonight’s hunt, he’d have a partner.

Moonlight crept through the dingy glass and touched them both. Soon, two obese wolves would bring the door of the garbage motel crashing down and they’d disappear into the pine trees. Together. And forever.