#zackraymonth2018

Zack woke the next morning, warm and comfortable. Something was strange. It was usually just a bit chilly when he woke in the mornings, and it was certainly chilly this morning too. But he was underneath a blanket and that was far from the norm.

Without realizing it, his tail began to thump on the soft fabric covering the floor of his cave. Soft fabric? Where had that come from? It wasn't terribly concerning, so Zack made a semi-conscious decision to ignore the oddness. Instead, he tried to go back to sleep. But there was something else stopping him – something that felt very nice.

It was his ears. The fur was being scratched, short nails scraping the skin underneath. The points of his ears flicked, responding instinctively to the stimulus. He whined a bit, realizing vaguely that this was what was causing his tail to thump.

Oh, it was heaven.

He burrowed his face down into something soft to get more of that wonderful scratching on his ears. When it stopped, a small whine escaped his throat and his fingers flexed into that nice, warm pillow. Suddenly, there was a squeal, causing his ears to perk up once again. The pillow began moving underneath his hands and consciousness flooded back into Zack’s mind.

 Oh.

Shit, right.

Zack sat bolt upright, banging his head on the top of his little cave. As he gingerly rubbed his head, the curses came spilling out.

“Satan's cock and balls!”

Oh right. That girl was still there. He cracked an eye open to find her sitting beside him, watching him with a sort of detached curiosity. Rubbing his head managed to dispel the ache from the bump, but his pride still ached just a bit. Who just went and petted a grown ass wolf's ears like that? Did she not know those were highly sensitive? She'd also unintentionally pricked at an unpleasant memory that he thought he'd forgotten.

He'd be lying if he said it didn't feel nice though.

“Sorry,” Ray apologized, her voice dull.

“Why would you even do that?” he grumbled. “Just for that, I oughta bite you.” She at least had the common sense to look somewhat embarrassed.

“Well, our dog liked getting his ears scratched,” she muttered, a finger next to her lips. That little admission raised his hackles. He didn't know whether to be flattered or offended. Instead, he decided on simply being irritated.

“I'm not a dog, dammit!” It was true, but why did it suddenly feel like a useless declaration? Frustrated, he moved to crawl out of the cave and out of Ray's mound of blankets. “I'm gonna take a bath.”

“Ah!” she called after him, leaving the blankets for a second before shivering and covering back up. “It's still too cold!”

As Zack stretched, he realized that it was indeed still very cool. The sun hadn't even cleared the hills yet and a frosty haze still hung over the forest ground. It was going to be a clear day, but until it was properly light out, it was probably safer for Ray to stay where she was.

“Not for me,” he replied. A grin cracked his face, his earlier consternation fading. What was with this girl? She was cold all the time! Well, whatever. He began walking towards the stream, frosty leaves crunching under his boots.

As he walked, Zack cracked his neck and reflected on his new companion. She didn't seem to smell quite so badly this morning; in fact, she'd absorbed a lot of his smell overnight. Since it wasn't as bad this morning, he might hold off on making her take a bath until it was warmer out. She seemed to get cold so easily anyway. Of course, he could always just wait a few days and she'd probably smell less sick and more like him naturally.

Either way, he was going to get his bath no matter what she did.

Rachel was colder when Zack left, but it wasn't unbearable. She didn't intend to sleep any more that morning anyway. Instead, she took some pieces of salted meat from the barrel and a few bites of spiced apples and made those her breakfast. He'd probably want to leave as soon as he returned, so it was better to eat before then.

It was still cold out, so Rachel kept the blanket wrapped around her, the wolf's warmth evaporating slowly. His scent lingered, though. It wasn't bad, really, and it did remind her of her family's dog. His reaction earlier was a mystery to her, though.

He'd liked having his ears scratched, hadn't he? His tail had thumped and he'd curled against her legs, just like a puppy. It was adorable and Rachel found her cheeks burning just thinking about how soft his ears were. But he'd admonished her once he woke up, so maybe he didn't like it after all? Or maybe he was just embarrassed? Rachel chewed the salted pork and continued thinking about it.

By the time Zack returned, she was up and about, gathering their things and rolling up her bedroll. His hood was down and his hair was still wet and sticking to his head and ears. He'd opened his jacket, presumably to help dry off, so Rachel also had a clear view of his chest and stomach. She had secretly expected his whole body to be furry since his ears and tail were. Instead, he was wrapped neatly in bandages, showing no skin or fur. As he shook the water out of his hair, Rachel cocked her head to the side.

“Are you injured?” she asked, slightly concerned. If he had injuries that massive, he might die before he could kill her. Something about that struck her as sad and unacceptable.

“Huh?” came the startled response. “What, the bandages? Old wounds.” His voice sounded nonchalant but Rachel noted how quickly he closed his jacket back over the bandages. If he didn't want to talk about it, she couldn't make him, though. She decided to drop the subject.

“Do you want breakfast before we set out?” She had set him aside some meat, along with some pickles; he probably couldn't live on meat alone either.

“What's that?” he asked, nose crinkling, pointing at the pickles.

“Pickled cucumbers.”

“Nah,” he dismissed them, “They smell like death.” He did take the meat, though. Rachel watched him scarf it down, quietly happy that she had been of some use. After a moment, she turned back to her bedroll and continued rolling it up.

Not a few moments later, Zack joined her in gathering their things. He lashed the meat barrels together with the bedroll. Rachel thought the whole contraption looked terribly cumbersome, but he lifted it with ease. He only stooped a bit as he loaded himself down; after he'd taken a second to adjust the weight of the pack, he was nearly walking just as normal.

“C'mon, let's get outta here,” Zack grumbled. Rachel retrieved her basket, latched her cloak, and followed him closely.

Surprisingly, the two made decent time.

Zack only knew he had to head “south" to find his old friend. Well, “acquaintance" would be the better way to describe him. The older wolf had taken him into his monastery when he was younger; Zack had chafed at the rules and restrictions that accompanied the place and had caused more trouble than he was probably worth. In response, he'd been politely dismissed. The brothers at the monastery pointed him towards the northern forests and sent him merrily on his way.

He had no intention of joining them or being subservient to them now. But the Father there was a decent sort and he figured if anyone would know the way to an unoccupied territory, it would be him.

Regardless of all that, he had to find the monastery before he could solicit their help. This was where Ray was proving her usefulness. Although the daylight hours were much shorter than in the summer, she was adept at finding their way with the aid of the sun and moon. For as long as he'd lived on his own, patrolling those woods and the surrounding mountainsides, Zack had never really noticed much about those sorts of things. Sure, he knew the sun tended to come up in the same place for most of the year, and the moon varied by time of month. But it had never occurred to him to learn in which direction those things happened.

Ray, on the other hand, seemed to be able to use that information to point them vaguely southward. Or she could have been leading them in exactly the wrong direction, Zack would never know the difference either way. But she had been honest so far, so it was worth trusting her.

In the blink of an eye, a week passed.

It was largely uneventful. They traveled by day, keeping off the main road unless the forest wasn’t passable. Ray had protested at first, worried that the forest was harder to traverse, but Zack was adamant: other humans would pose a problem, and neither of them wanted to be separated from the other.

That was provided they even saw any. The town Ray had left was deserted and they hadn't seen any travelers. Zack hadn't even been able to pick up their scent. In fact, Ray was the first human he'd scented in weeks when he came across her. That sickness he'd seen in her town really seemed to have culled the whole lot of them. It really was a miracle she was even still walking.

That also proved to be a bit of a problem, though. Zack was used to walking, running, and trekking through wooded areas; he'd been doing it since he was a little pup, after all. But it rapidly became obvious that Ray wasn't used to it. Maybe it was because she was recovering from that illness or maybe it was because she wasn't used to travel. Either way, she carried a sickliness and thinness about her that annoyed Zack.

It also made her slow sometimes, and Zack really couldn't tolerate that.

The first day or two, he'd stopped so she could take breaks. But that only made him frustrated and restless. The compromise they'd worked out was for Zack to simply carry Ray under his arm like a log. He was certain he looked a fool, stomping through half-frozen forests with a limp girl under one arm and two barrels strapped to his back with a blanket. His back was strong enough to carry it all, but he wasn't sure his pride was.

She never wound up taking a bath, either. It wasn't like she smelled bad; she was about average for a human, as far as Zack knew. It just became less irritating as the sickness worked itself out of her.

Aside from her weakness, though, she did seem to be recovering. He even gave her extra meat, all the while admonishing her to hurry up and heal, hurry up and keep up with him, hurry up and stop making him worry. Even as he scolded her that he wouldn't wait on her much longer, that was exactly what he found himself doing.

The worst parts for Ray seemed to be at night. The cold didn't bother Zack much; it was just a natural part of living in the woods. If it was cold enough to snow, he'd just curl into a ball and sleep until it was warm enough to move around. Not Ray, though.

She couldn't sleep in the cold, not even with that huge blanket of hers. Every night without fail, she'd curl under it and shiver until he crawled in with her. She never asked or complained, which Zack supposed was tolerable. But he couldn't sleep if he knew she was just going to be awake all night anyway. As soon as he pulled her tight to his chest, she'd fall asleep.

He would have been lying if he said it wasn't awkward to wake up holding a woman. The last female he'd been around for any length of time was the bitch that had given birth to him, and none of the males he'd been near had gotten that close to him. Most of his victims had been male humans, as well; the females didn't seem to get out into his woods quite as much, although their meat seemed just a bit more tender. In fact, before the man had gone into his cabin and expired, Zack had had his eye on the village doctor. That man was always going through his woods, narrowly escaping him every time.

He was fine when he was walking with her during the day. It was during those small spaces of time that Ray was asleep and Zack was not that his mind started doing weird things. Usually at night, he was too tired to do much thinking before falling asleep. But in the mornings when he woke, if she wasn't already awake, that was when the trouble came.

Sometimes he'd wake sweating because he'd dream of people he'd known – mostly the two humans who'd taken him in after that bitch had abandoned him. Ray's lingering human smell must have triggered their memory. The couple of times he'd dreamed of them, he'd spent the entire rest of those days reticent and unwilling to even speak to Ray. She must have been worried, but Zack tried not to think too much about it. It was for her own good.

Those were the days he wanted to eat her most.

It wasn't just because she was unintentionally pricking at something that rekindled his spark of hatred for humans. Those were the first humans he ever ate, and salted pork was a poor substitute. Waking up with her scent right under his nose made him miss it. But there was something else too.

That ugly human woman who'd adopted him had petted his ears, too. That was probably what made the connection in his mind. It wasn't fair to Ray, of course, and Zack knew it. Still, he couldn't help what he dreamed.

The other weird thing that tended to happen in the mornings was much more foreign to Zack. He could explain why he'd wake up hungry from her scent. What he couldn't explain was the weird feeling he'd get some other mornings when his sleep had been dreamless. He'd wake with Ray cradled in his arms, her head on his chest, little hands near her face, maybe her leg crossing his at the ankle – and with his dick uncomfortably at least half-hard between them.

Sure, that had happened a couple of times before he met her, especially first thing in the morning. But with someone else there, especially a human girl, it would just make things awkward. He had no intention of mating with a human like some deviant, and he wasn't even sure if she would know what that was anyway. Just the thought of it was something repulsive on its face, but… was Ray really like other humans? That was the thought that nagged at him and was also possibly the source of his weird feelings. Even so, the situation also made him feel an uncomfortable combination of embarrassment, shame, and frustration. So it was always a weird struggle on those mornings to sneak out of the blankets without waking her so he could take care of it with some cold water without her knowing.

The days they traveled together were far less eventful, though. They chatted a little on the days he hadn't had nightmares, and Zack found it pleasant enough. The girl rarely smiled and never laughed, which had the strange effect of being calming and irritating at the same time. Calming because nothing made Zack want to hunt a human more than seeing them stupidly happy; with Ray, that was never really a problem. It was irritating, though, because of the lack of stimulation. Most of the time, she was just there.

He didn't want to just travel with a small shadow.

But that was mainly how it went. Making time by day and resting by night. Most nights there was only the shelter of the trees, although one night they had found another small cave in which to sleep. The nights got progressively colder, frosts going from light, sparkly, merry things, to freezing the earth solid. He'd been successful in keeping her from making a fire thus far, but his body warmth wasn't going to be enough for her soon. When the snows came, she was going to need a fire, maybe even one of the abandoned cabins they sometimes passed. Perhaps when that time came, he'd just sleep far enough away that it wouldn’t bother him. But a nagging feeling inside his head told him he probably wouldn't be able to tolerate that.

Human farming was going to be the death of him, Zack just knew it.

It was on the eleventh day of traveling together that the forest began to change around them. It was imperceptible at first: a little bark stripped from a tree here or there, some human trash by the roadside, a depression in the leaf litter, or a few broken branches. Rachel noticed those things but didn't know exactly what to make of them.

Zack seemed tense, though. A bit after lunch, Rachel could sense a shift in his behavior. He could be quiet or moody, but this seemed to be something else entirely. After a couple hours, Rachel finally placed exactly what it was: he was on guard. As they continued south, he only grew more tense.

It was close to sundown when Zack put out a hand and stopped her.

“We need to go around,” he said quietly. “Maybe closer to the main road, o-or on the other side of the river.” Rachel stayed where she was, cocking her head to the side to watch him curiously.

“What's the matter?”

“It's not good,” he growled. He was distracted now. Rachel watched him sniff the air then scan the forest with his eyes, the setting sun reflecting off his pupils. His ears flicked atop his head, clearly trying to pick up any nearby sounds. Rachel certainly couldn't hear any noises as quiet as he could. She also knew his night vision was  much better than hers; they might need it soon, it seemed.

A murder of crows erupted from a copse of trees further into the forest, creating a racket that made Rachel jump. They both watched them fly into the sunset, knowing that there was a reason the birds wanted to escape.

“Shit,” Zack breathed, watching them go. “She's already close.” Rachel’s eyes slid to meet his. She could read something very close to panic there.

“She?”

He grit his teeth and seemed hesitant to answer. Finally, after several seconds, he reached over and grabbed Rachel. Tucking her safely under his arm, he began running.

“We're in a bitch's territory,” he huffed as he ran. “I met her once, when I was just markin’ out my area. We gotta --"

Zack was cut off by a long, loud howl. He froze in place, jostling his bedroll pack as he did so. The sound sent a shudder down Rachel's spine as well. It was something she hadn't heard since the night Zack hunted her in the woods. Just as he began to run again, there was a second howl coming from the direction in which they were running.

“What the hell?!” Zack hissed, digging in his heels. “She has a pack now?!” Rachel wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but she knew that if Zack was spooked, it had to be bad.

“You don't like her?” Rachel asked. Did wolves have kingdoms and factions like humans?

“Hell, no!” he barked in return, nearly dropping her. “That crazy bitch?! I never wanna see her again, and neither do you.” As soon as he stopped talking, he started running away from the directions of the two howls. When his footsteps began sounding throughout the forest again, Rachel heard something else, too.

It was a woman's maniacal laughter.

Something about it chilled Rachel right to her very toes. She wrapped her arms around Zack as he carried her, shifting her weight to be less like a bale of hay under his arm and more like a baby clinging to its mother's side. She buried her face in his chest and held on for dear life as he picked up speed.

Then, just as suddenly, Rachel felt him stop with a jerk. She managed to hang on tight to him with a squeal, but it was obvious his foot was caught on something. Only a fraction of a second more saw them both tumble to the forest floor. Zack broke her fall, holding tight and making sure she didn't roll away. With a crash, the bedroll pack he'd been carrying dislodged and broke apart on the forest floor; the barrels rolled across the leafy ground while the blanket tangled into a jumbled heap.

Rachel and her basket fared much better, though. When she opened her eyes again, she was laying on top of the wolf, hands clutching his hooded jacket.

“Shit fuck godDAMN!” The expletives poured out in a steady, hushed stream. Even so, Rachel knew something was wrong. She’d seen Zack stumble before; he always got back up afterwards. But this time, he wasn't moving from his spot.

“Zack?” Rachel breathed, pushing off his chest and supporting herself with her arms. His face was contorted in pain, but he still managed to acknowledge her when she called to him.

“I'm stuck,” he growled. Rachel looked down at his legs. One of them was caught in a metal clamp, the kind Rachel knew was used for hunting bears and deer. If her leg had been the one caught in that, she was sure it would've been bitten clean off. Zack's leg was at least somewhat protected by his boot, but Rachel could see that the teeth of the trap were digging into the boot.

Suddenly, the sounds of laughter and stomping were much closer. Rachel pulled at his jacket, trying to brace herself on the ground and pull him away from the trap. She slipped against the cold, wet leaves and couldn't get purchase, but she doubted it would matter anyway; she wasn't strong enough to be able to pull the trap out of where it was staked to the ground. Zack growled in response anyway.

“Stop it,” he hissed. “I can't avoid her now. But you gotta hide.” Rachel could see he was deathly serious. In response, she frantically scanned the woods. Dusk was falling quickly and her vision was nowhere near good enough to outwit a wolf.

“Where?” she asked breathlessly. Zack had sat up by then; with a great deal of effort, he then pushed himself to his feet. As soon as he was standing, he grabbed Rachel's cloak, pulling her to him. Then he hoisted her up by her waist. For just a second, he held her aloft and she went perfectly limp. It was strange, but even though he'd acted suddenly, she knew she could trust him.

Then, unsteadily, he braced himself against the forest floor and sent her flying. The next thing she knew, Rachel was lying draped across a low tree branch, her basket still on her arm. After a moment of shock, she pulled the rest of her body up onto the branch. Once she was better balanced against the trunk of the tree, she turned back to look at Zack. He was trying to yank the bear trap out of where it was bolted to the ground.

“Zack?”

“Just stay up there!” he barked back. “If she sees you, she'll kill you!” Rachel squeezed herself closer to the tree. She wanted to die, certainly, but she had promised her body to Zack for food. Strangely, she wanted to know he'd be okay after she was gone.

“She'll eat me?”

“No, stupid, she'll just kill you!” he huffed, still struggling with the trap. “We're in her territory, you're a strange female, and she's probably in heat! Now shut the hell up!” Admonished, Rachel fell quiet, clinging to the tree and trying her best not to move. The clanging noise of Zack struggling with the steel claw masked the sounds of anyone approaching.

It wasn't long until that was drowned out with the crazed laughter, too. Rachel huddled down against the tree, as still and quiet as she could possibly be. She couldn't see her yet, but she knew the wolf woman was approaching Zack in the dark. Finally, after what seemed like a small eternity, she could make out her figure.

She was dressed all in black, with a short skirt worn over a tight pair of breeches. Her neckline was low enough that even from her vantage point in the tree, Rachel could see her deep cleavage. And unlike Zack, whose hair, ears, and tail were all black, her ears and short bob were blonde, fading to pink at the tips. Her hair shone with what little light the rising moon gave off, sleek and glossy, as though she had taken great care of it. Worst of all, though, Rachel could see something that looked like a stiff, black stick held between her hands.

With a wicked smile, the wolf bitch regarded her prey. He'd stopped struggling by then and Rachel could hear his low growl.