The past four weeks operated as usual. Wise managed the video store, organized the archives, and did jobs related to Hollows with his usual, calculated precision. He tried to spend that entire month blocking off memories of what happened then, pretending that it never existed. And yet, a fever spiked in his bloodstream. The violent, uncontrollable shivering reminded him what he had tried to forget. What they needed to do exactly two hours ago. It mirrored the exact symptoms Belle suffered through for years, forcing them to leave Random Play and flee to the damp, isolated woods outside the New Eridu perimeter.
Wise navigated the dense brush alongside his sister once more, his breathing already coming in short, harsh gasps. The memory of their shared transformation last month brought some humiliation over the change. Witnessing each other degrade into feral, rutting beasts stripped away every ounce of his dignity. He later stopped walking and signaled his need for total isolation; Belle understood immediately. She turned and disappeared into trees, leaving him standing alone in a small, moonlit clearing.
Wise stripped his clothes off with frantic movements, stacking them neatly on a flat, mossy rock out of pure, desperate habit. He stood completely naked in the center, shivering and clamping his hands over his knees, bending forward.
The first bone fractured. His spine bowed backward against his will, forcing his chest to thrust forward. Muscles underneath his skin detached from their human anchor points and reattached with violent force. His shoulders broadened, sealing the gaps that had just formed instantly with patches of dark, coarse fur.
He dropped heavily to his hands and knees. His fingers lengthened in uneven spurts, and the knuckles popped, swelled, and burst through their human proportions to form thick, heavy padded digits. Sharp claws tore straight through his nail beds.
A wet, guttural cry echoed from the distant trees. It was Belle's; she was shifting too, and her sound managed to vibrate against his ears, which were currently elongating and migrating toward the top of his skull. Thick, jagged canines pierced his raw gums in their place, and he choked on the metallic, hot taste of his own blood.
The pressure on his back from his tailbone was already starting to overwhelm him. And yet, the boiling heat in his veins, ones that hosted the blood that he didn’t end up spitting out earlier, had instead pooled entirely in his groin. His human erection, forced full of blood by the massive surge of animal adrenaline and hyper-sensitive nerve endings, pulsed hard and heavy against his tightening thighs. The skin at the base of his shaft thickened rapidly.
A dark, muscular ridge formed inside, pulling the flesh upward. His testicles drew up tight, sinking into a newly formed, heavy sac covered in dense, protective fur. The skin of his shaft began to invert and swallow itself. A thick, muscular sheath constructed itself around his heavy erection, locking the dark pink, leaking glans away inside the musky, slick pocket of flesh. The thick ridge of the sheath pulsed, secreting a clear, slick fluid that dripped onto the forest floor.
His human consciousness splintered with the increasingly lupine seed that got pumped along with his increasingly barreling chest. Thoughts of the video store, of archive tapes, of his entire identity dissolved into vibrating instinct. His spine snapped into its final, hunched posture along with his tail that had been fully completed while all of his attention was forcibly drawn somewhere else. The muscles in his thighs inflated, bulking into massive, digitigrade hind legs. His jaw thrust forward with a sickening crunch; the mandible fractured, extended, and fused back together in a muzzle.
He threw his heavy, furred head back and let out a deep, booming howl.
The next day, the morning sun pierced his eyelids with agonizing brightness. Wise lay face up in the mud. Every muscle fiber in his body screamed in dull, throbbing ache. The scent of dried blood, stale earth, and raw animal musk clogged his nose. He forced his eyes open; he pushed his naked, human body onto his elbows, gasping for air. The hangover of the shift left him hollowed out, trembling, and entirely drained of energy.
Footsteps crunched on the dry twigs nearby; Belle stepped into his field of vision soon after. She stood perfectly upright, wearing her usual jacket and shorts, holding a neat pile of his folded clothes against her chest. Her hair sat in a slightly messy arrangement, but her posture showed little fatigue. Years of enduring the curse gave her a tolerance to the brutal aftermath. She stepped closer and dropped the clothes directly beside his head. The fabric smelled faintly of standard laundry detergent and her ow
n residual wolf scent.