Belladonna

He was alone again. 

The rain saturated his flesh as he looked down at the good Ser who had taken him in all those years ago. Ser Arlan had been a true knight, a man willing to take in a beast such as him without want or need from the young lad ‘side a set of good strong hands. 

He remembered Rafe’s words.

“You’ll always be alone, Dunk. Nothing but a beast to them.” She would spit. She’d move on with other topics of conversation and mischief. 

Rafe was gone. 

Ser Arlan had followed in time. 

It must be true. A monster such as him was never meant to have family, a true home, true love. The man could not tell any longer if it were the rain or his own tears soaking his face. He supposed it did not matter. No one ‘side the horses to see him weep at the life beset before him. 

That’s all he had, the horses who still were weary of his presence. They shifted about some, but Dunk was always kind to them when the change could not be tamed any longer. He made sure he was far enough away so that he would do them no harm. Perhaps it was their very natural instinct that saved them where Rafe and Ser Arlan could not be saved. 

Her throat. 

His arm. 

Dunk’s canines. 

Dunk’s claws. 

He tried not to remember that he had held the ones he loved too close and made them bleed. The man looked down at Ser Arlan’s lifeless form once more before deciding he could not linger on his past actions any longer. 

He buried the past along with the knight. 

***

Dunk had wanted to be good. 

Ever since the day he had learned what a knight was he desired to be just that. A savior was better than a monster. It was why he decided to head to Ashford. He would like to do some good after the harm he caused. Sounds, smells, and sensations were no bother to him. Growing up in Flea Bottom had taught him not only to remain small, but to focus his senses on his own self. 

A wolf such as himself had a certain odor. If he focused on that he could remain tamed in perplexing situations. The change only nagged at him after a long stretch of no hunt or shifting from flesh to fur. Since the accidental death of his knight, Dunk did not feel the pull to shed his flesh. He was sure he could remain in this form until Ashford was over. 

If he lost, if he was ruined, that would be the end of it. 

He’d run into the wilds abandoning hope for human connection. 

The tankard held fast in his hand as he ventured toward a tent. The lingering scent was faint, embers, smoke, and . . . something stranger. The voice wafted through the air calling him forward. He was too tall for most entries. The tent was no different. A crowd was gathered to watch a performance. A grand puppet dragon hissed before him with a knight holding fast a mirror shield in defense. 

It was not any of that that struck him. 

The odor was not his own. The scent smelled of the sadness he had held in the rain, tears and loneliness. It was the heavy scent of an animal, sharp and strong. It drenched from the pours of the girl narrating the show. 

All worldly creatures before him melted away. 

He had never known there were others. 

Yet, here she stood before him, hunched and performing as if she were not the most beautiful being he had ever set his eyes on. 

He had thought he was alone. 

His flesh pulled. It itched. It hungered. Saliva pooled at the corner of his mouth. It was more than excitement. Truly how had he not expected this? In all his travels with Ser Arlan they had never stumbled upon another wolf, yet she was creating goose pimples across his flesh and a growing heat across his cheeks. 

When she looked upon him, a shy gaze that turned knowing with wide beautiful brown eyes Dunk knew he could not stay in the tent any longer. He fled as was customary for him to do when his eyes were set on a young maid he wished to devour. 

She was different though. 

“She’s like me.” He muttered to no one. He wished for Sweetfoot to witness his shock. He smiled in disbelief looking behind him. “She’s like me.” 

Why had he run? Why didn’t he stay? If she were a wolf too Dunk was sure he could not hurt her like the others, not in a physical sense. 

“She was tall too.” Like him. Just like him. 

Someone called out. Dunk turned to see the dark haired young man he had met earlier greeting him as if he were a lost friend. It was nice to feel as though he had that sort of closeness with someone. When Raymun offered food, Dunk could not say no. 

The wolf was always hungry. 

***

“You eat enough for four men, Ser Dunk!” Raymun laughed as the knight continued on. 

Dunk looked down at the turkey leg in his hand. He chuckled to himself not noting the eyes that were sorely set upon him in the tent. He tucked a piece of skin into his mouth, swallowing it down sharply. 

“It has been some time since I’ve had food this good.” His voice was soft and forgiving in itself. Raymun patted him on the back. 

“You are amongst friends here.” His new friend assured him. Dunk could not help but be satisfied by the way the young squire had said those words. It was as if he knew what being invited here meant. The air was thick with incense leaving Dunk’s nostrils a bit overwhelmed. 

As the night and dance grew on, Raymun abandoned him for other prospects. Instead Dunk found the desserts never quite satisfied in his hunger especially on nights when the moon was gloriously full. He felt his limbs stretch and crack with each lumbering movement. It was then that he noticed a man motioning to him from Lord Lyonel’s table. 

Dunk was unsure what a lord of Storm’s End could want with a man such as him. He would rather not upset a lord upon meeting him. Therefore he lumbered to the table. Dunk watched Ser Lyonel sit relaxed. He moved about a rather fine dagger until his nostrils flared. He gazed up at the man. 

“Well, what do we have here?” A grin threatened to overtake his face. 

“Beg your pardon, Ser Lyonel.” He watched the lord’s eyes scan him over. 

“To think I thought you only tall and quaint, yet here as I live and breathe you are much more than meets the eye . . .” He searched for a name he did not know. 

“Dunk. Ser Dunk, Ser.” He watched Lyonel laugh. 

“Right, of course, your kind do not have the luxury of names. Orphan than? Hmmm? Abandoned at birth, a story like that? Or was it a bite that brought the beast upon you? Something in your travels, strange and unusual lingering in the hedges?” He pointed the knife toward Dunk then away. “Not a threat. I know not my own habits.” Lyonel let it clatter before wiping his hand over his beard. “Come now, boy. I do not have all night.” Dunk swallowed processing the information. 

How could he know of his affliction? 

“I have been myself for as long as I have . . . been myself.” He was so taken aback by his own revelation that he could not form words. Lyonel paused to look him over once more before he let out a long chuckle. 

“It is such.” He nimbled his lower lip searching him up and down. “I suspect given your demeanor you have not met other creatures such as yourself.” Dunk simply shook his head. “The incense. It’s meant to help dull senses for creatures who need it. The moon is full and we need not for unwanted change before the time comes.” 

“Time comes?” 

Lyonel simply smiled leaning forward. 

“Do you like dancing?” 

***

The music sang on as the night grew closer. The itch tore at him to shed his skin as the incense died on the wind. 

How had he not smelt it? How had he not picked up on the odors and presence of the otherworldly? Ser Arlan had always called him thick as a castle wall, but he had never known that to be true when it came to his senses. Dunk always relied on instinct yet now among the overwhelming sensations of the evening he could not recall what was real and what was imagined. 

His dance skills were lumbering at best. The large lad was unsure what to do with his arms, moving them in an awkward fashion. His attempts to keep time with the music made his heart quicken. He felt himself swung about, the scent within the spin was horribly unfamiliar and welcoming. 

He heard Lyonel Baratheon call out. It was an animalistic sound as he moved. The crowd rumbled and growled in response. Dunk felt his muscles tightened to restrain himself from letting out a howl buried within his chest. He tried to calm himself as the beast threatened to break through. The itch burned his skin. 

He would not last the night. 

That Dunk was sure of. 

Lyonel nearly collided with him. The stare he invoked let Dunk truly see Lyonel. His eyes were nearly blackened from excitement. He let his mouth taste the air, aggression mixed with utter glee. It came from Lyonel. Dunk could feel his body heat mix with the lord’s own heat. Perhaps there was lust there too as Lyonel sized him up. 

He felt the hard foot smack into his. 

No. 

Dunk looked down to see it. 

The leather had burst slightly revealing the tips of a hoof. 

Dunk learned from his mistakes. He trusted his reflexes as Lyonel attempted to smash his foot again. He felt his body tense ready to avoid the antics of this unfamiliar beast. The more Lyonel Baratheon moved the more Dunk saw how inhuman he was, how inhuman everything about the evening was. Fur bristled across the back of the lord’s head. His skin began to break and blister at his forehead, peeking sharp antlers that seemed to grow with each movement. 

By the end of the dance, Lyonel no longer wore shoes. 

When Dunk crashed his foot, still of flesh, into the older man’s he felt the crunch of a hoof.

He heard the throaty sound of a wounded animal colliding with the hurt sound of a man who had lost at last. Despite the Baratheon’s monstrous change to a beast, Dunk had stepped on the hoof of a lord. Fear and panic held tight in his chest until Lyonel looked up, utterly pleased. 

A friendship formed in that moment. 

He spun, letting himself feel free for the first time in a long while. 

Dunk felt as if this could be home. 

His demeanor changed when he saw her. 

The young woman with an affinity for puppets sipped shyly from a wooden goblet. It made her lips wet and red. He could smell the sweet notes in the air that allowed his mind to become still in the thick heat of bodies. The thunderous wave of music and the beating muscle of his heart echoed around him. His nostrils flared as she dipped her head catching her finger in her hair. 

Her hair. 

Each strand pressed to her fingers made Dunk stalk forward. A crave to be near the she-wolf bubbled in his belly until he could see the wolf eclipse her eyes. They brightened yellow in the moonlight. He was close enough to reach out for her if he so desired. 

Gods did he desire. 

There in came the roar, a near animalistic screech in the air. Lyonel cried out, stretched out distorting his cracked and broken back. The antlers came quicker now that the night’s light caught in the tent. The other's eyes glew a fiendish yellow. 

Monsters gathered here in Ashford. The beast was not far to follow for the orphaned boy from Flea Bottom who never found a true home. 

Others joined in with the call including his new friend, Raymin who has cat like green eyes. Dunk turned to the young woman. His teeth were heavy in his mouth, fangs growing pointed and hungry in a jaw that cracked slightly Her fingers curled against her forearm leaving crimson stains until the skin peeled away freeing fur, a beautifully delightful dark brown. 

His cock grew heavier too. 

Before he knew it instinct took hold. 

The man grabbed hold of the tall she-beast’s head enveloping her in what many might call a kiss and what others might call animalistic lust. 

**

When the wolf roamed free, Dunk only remembered flashes.

Tonight was more than flashes. He could recall senses. How she smelt. How she felt against his body. How so fuckin good it felt to bend her over and fuck her from behind. She was like him, wolf, beast, an unbridled needless lust monster. He could still feel the pain subside into desire as his flesh burst and his fur broke free. 

Every moment in that state had never felt so free. 

His nose was at the crook of her neck, lingering in the scent of her. Fingers padded against his scalp as her wolfish whimpers did not subside even in a form that was too familiar. 

He sometimes hated the flesh. 

It felt too confining. He nuzzled her. He felt the ghost of her lips against his. 

“I don’t know your name.” 

It was a realization he would have hated saying  if he had felt human in that moment. Instead he let his eyes remain closed remembering how good it had been to finish inside a beast as himself for the first time. 

How many times had he rutted into her that night? 

He had never thought of caring for her name. 

“Nor I you,” Another kiss. Another memory burned in his mind. 

“It’s Dunk.” He let one wolfish eyes open. 

She was soft, pretty, nude, and smelt like him. 

She smelt like herself. 

Beast.

“Mine is Tanselle.” 

In that moment he let human nature subside and let instinct take over. He desired her in this state as well. It was the first time he felt joy in hearing a woman scream his name, the first time he heard those lustful cries.