Feral High, Ch. 9 (Patreon)

Ashleigh's Hummer ground to a stop in front of the police station.  There were several squad cars of various sizes parked in the appropriate spots.  Safely nestled against the opposing curb, Anon could not resist a shiver going down his spine as he faced the granite-grey building.  The entire thing looked more akin to a stone fortress, its construction rounded like a bomb shelter rather than matching the usual, uniform, square-shape of the various other shorter buildings around it.

Still, Anon wasn't here to admire the architecture.  His eyes hardened and he swallowed past the lump of tension and anxiety that he had thus far been unable to dispel.  The entire ride over from the mall had been quiet between him and Ash.  He'd barely been able to do much other than pondering the event previous, as if they had stretched out over months rather than just a handful of minutes while they circumnavigated the metropolitan web of inter-connecting city streets and stoplights.

With his hand tight on the handle of the car-door, he readied himself to exit Ash's oversized, monstrous vehicle.  Just before he could, however, a large paw reached out across him and stopped him.  The pawpads were rough on his skin, contrasting perfectly with the thick fur.  He blinked in surprise at the golden-haired paw gripping his knuckles, enveloping them from view, before he looked up that muscular, scarred limb to its owner's shining, huntress eyes.

Ash stared at him for several seconds, face inscrutable.  Then she cracked a smile, lips curling up into her usual toothy grin, although it didn't touch those yellow orbs much beyond a slight crinkling of her dark eyelids.  "You okay?" she asked, voice softer than it had been earlier.  Her harsh tone towards her now Ex-pride was gone completely as she gazed down at him.

Anon's eyes heated up and he looked down from her face at his slightly dangling feet as they hung an inch or so from the floorboard.  He almost felt like a kid riding in the front seat of the Anthro-built vehicle.  He thought about just shrugging it off, playing it as him being confident or letting his determination overrule his fears, but he wasn't that kind of guy to sell such an act.  Inside, he was terrified for Kenzi.  The look in her eyes as she had been dragged away... he'd never seen her so scared.

"No," he admitted.  "I'm not."  His lip quivered and he had to fight back a wall of tears that he had thus far been successful in abating.  He couldn't get the vision of her frothing at the mouth out of his head.  All of that suffering, drowning in her own Fury, for him.  Because of the antics and cruelty of Ash's fellow Leonids.

That huge paw lifted from his knuckles and stroked the back of his head, retracted claw tips just barely grazing through his thick, short and messy hair.  It felt like the world's strangest but softest scalp massage, and, despite his tension, he couldn't help but close his eyes.  It stole a small moment of calm for him.  "I'm sorry..." the Leonine girl murmured then.

Anon blinked his eyes back open and looked back up at Ash in surprise.  "Why?" he asked.

"Because none of this would have happened to you if it weren't for me."

His eyebrows furrowed at her response.  "I don't see how you could have had anything to do with those..."  He faltered, not wanting to let loose the vitriol stewing inside of him when he thought back to the faces of her fellow Leonids.  The vile, cruel actions they had taken to try and cause him and Kenzi trouble were nothing short of evil.  Even so, they were...had been...Ash's longest-living friends.

"You can call them what they are," she told him, as if able to sense what he had been holding back.  "We Anthros have names for the kind of cowardly backstabbers that they were.  Jerks is a good one too."  Her scratching massage halted for a moment, although she didn't remove her paw.  "Still...they wouldn't have done it if not for me."  She looked away from him then.

"I still don't see how that's possible," Anon argued.  He glanced out the window again towards the station, a thousand thoughts racing through his head before he returned his gaze to the Anthro.  "It's not like you asked them to do what they did."

"No..." she agreed but not sounding very confident.  He looked up at her confused, concerned.  Her entire expression seemed torn between distaste, sadness, and a desperate, furious longing as she finally looked back down at him.  "But...when an Anthro feels something...it's not like just an emotion.  The stronger it is, the more we affect other Anthros around us.  It's worse for an Alpha...like me."

Anon continued to listen, uncomprehending.

"When an Anthro is especially happy, it makes the Anthros around us feel happier, more content and peaceful.  When one of us is struck by profound sadness or depression, our fellows can tend to start exhibiting more melancholy emotions.  That's how it works...it's why Aggression is such a serious condition, even if it's just part of our bodies."

"You make Anthros sound like a hivemind," Anon joked weakly.  He blinked when Ashleigh didn't shoot him down on the description.

"Less a mental consensus and more an empathic link.  We have a saying.  'Anthro is a community'  We feel what others do and we try to mirror those emotions so that they feel accepted and loved.  Close-knit groups even more so.  Rage, sadness, joy...jealousy..."  She looked away from him then, ears folding down against her close-shaven skull.

His eyes went wide.  "Jealousy...?" he repeated, looking up at the Leonid as she finally withdrew her paw.  "Of...who?" he asked.

She shook her head, her tail curling up between them.  The bristles on the tip just barely brushed his hand.  "It's stupid.  Wrong," she half-whispered.

Despite everything, all of his pent up worries, Anon couldn't help but reach out and touch Ash's big paw.  She started, ears jerking and fur bunching up across her body before she looked back into his eyes.  "If I've learned anything since moving here," Anon told her firmly but gently as well.  "It's that emotions are never stupid.  You feel them whether you want to or not, but it's up to you whether you let them take over your life."  He saw her earnest honesty shining from her eyes, the way her ears remained folded back ever so sadly and shy as he spoke.  It didn't fit the confident air she always exuded before today.  "Who were you jealous of?" he probed.

She shook her head again.

He cut her off, squeezing her paw.  "You won't learn to forgive yourself for whatever it is you're punishing yourself for unless you open up and admit you're not evil or wrong for feeling it."

Her paw gently folded in around his.  Her eyes blinked rapidly down at him, tears lingering in her eyes.  "I...I wanted...I want...what you two have," she breathed.  He stayed silent, letting her mull over and allow what she was feeling to come out.  "Ever since I met you...I couldn't help feeling just a tinge of it any time I heard about or saw you and Heen hanging out.  I always figured it for school rumors...but today...when I saw you two so happy together, not caring what others around you said and choosing to define your...relationship all on your own...I wanted it.  I wanted what you two have so badly."  Soft tears, like drops of liquidized crystal, fell from those golden orbs, brushing down her bronze furred cheeks and plopping onto her jeans.  One splattered against the hem of her sleeve, lightly misting his skin.  "I wanted..."

Anon realized that Ash was leaning down toward him.  Her eyes had become more heavily lidded, her pupils dilating just slightly more than they had been, and her trembling nose and bottom lip were like personified hesitancy warring with open desire.  He remained frozen in place as her other paw lifted and brushed his cheek, tracing the line of his jaw.

He took a deep breath, lifting his own opposite hand and cupping the paw against his face, trapping it there.  It paused her iceberg-pace leaning toward him, barely a foot between their faces now.  He brushed the soft fur, saw how her ears twitched, her eyes glinting with a more feral light than before, shining through the teenage despair.  "Ash..." he breathed.

"Yes Anon?" she asked, breath hot at this distance as it brushed his lips.

"I...only can ask you one question...about all of this...  If only to lay what I feel like needs to be said to rest."

She nodded.

"You...want...me," he breathed.  She didn't have to respond, the answer was obvious in her eyes.  His cheeks were hot in a way he'd never known they could be.  Since when had he ever been so desirable to women?  If the situation had been different, he would have believed he was dreaming to have not only one example of perfect Anthro womanhood adamantly desiring his company, but two.  Even so, his own conviction would not be swayed.  He had to challenge it, to know, to make her aware of what he already knew.  "Why?"

Her expression furrowed slightly.  "Because...because," she faltered, no longer leaning towards him any closer.

"Because I'm here?" he asked.  She shook her head at the implications of that.  "Because I'm new, different?  Exotic?"  More tears brimmed her eyes as she fervently denied his questions with how her face twisted, bottom lip quivering more.  He would never have before today believed such a strong, confident, beautiful woman could ever be so torn up over someone like him.  "Or is it because...you know that what you saw in the mall today was something you want?  Not me specifically.  But what Kenzi and I have itself."

Her gaze fell from his face.

"Ashleigh..." he breathed out, stroking the fur of her paw.  "I'm flattered.  Really.  I am."

Her brow furrowed more and he heard her starting to make a small growl, as if to deny it.  He didn't need her to answer or respond to know what she was feeling.  She didn't want his pity.

"No," he stated, more firmly now, cutting her off.  She looked back at him.  "You're a wonderful, amazing, beautiful girl, Ash.  Any guy would be lucky, beyond lucky, to have you interested in them.  If things were different...I'd leap at the chance to have someone like you interested in a do-nothing average guy like me!"  She gave him a withering look, obviously condemning him for talking badly about himself but he didn't give her room to speak.  "As it is...I'm blessed to have you in my life.  I don't blame you for feeling what you did, what those two did and said is on them, not you.  Whether they can feel your jealousy empathically or not, it was wrong.  But right now...I don't have time to hate them, and I certainly don't hate you.  I don't know if I have it within me to hate anyone.   All I do know is that, right now, Kenzi needs me."

Ash met his eyes, her ears slowly lifting from her skull as he spoke, fixating her entire attention upon him.  It would have been an intimidating look in any other circumstances, but right then, it wasn't.  If anything, he almost could have sworn he felt...pride, bubbling over from her and flowing out between them like a wave of soft, warm honey.  Her tail twitched at her side and her paw tightened its grip on his cheek before she closed her eyes.  One more tear slid down her cheek, soaking into her fur, before she leaned back and away from him.  He let her go.

"Spirits..." she breathed, pawing at her face, using her jacket sleeve to dab at her damp cheeks.  "I'm a mess..."  She looked back at him then once she had finished drying her fur, and her smile could have melted snow for how warmly she gazed at him.  If respect was a look one could convey, she all but shone it at him like a beacon.  "You're right, Anon.  It's exactly why I like you so much...but you're right.  I think...it really is just jealousy.  But I can't let it define how I look at you, or Heen, or especially myself.  I could never forgive myself, or you, if I let what I've been hating myself so much for to take over how serious this situation is."  She reached down and squeezed his hand in her paw.  "I'm lucky to have you in my life, Anon Ymous.  Even if it's just as a friend.  Especially just as a friend.  You don't need to date someone to treasure them being apart of your life."

He beamed up at her.  "I'm lucky to have you as a friend too, Ashleigh Prydel."  A muted door closed with a heavy slam nearby and he looked finally away from the Leonid towards the station again.  A familiar face had just exited, short muzzle creased in concern as Suri the Meerkat opened the door of his squad car and began to climb up into it with all speed.  "I have to go," he said, hurriedly unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the Hummer to climb down and out of it.

"Text or call me if you need my help," Ash called as she leaned across the passenger seat to snag the door-handle for him.  "And let me know how she ends up or if you need someone to testify for her!"

He waved gratefully as he dashed away from her, glancing back only once as he heard her monstrous engine fire back up.  He watched his friend drive off down the street before he set his eyes firmly forward again toward the just then brightening taillights of the police vehicle about to do the same.

"Officer Suri!" he called.  "Wait up!"