BETRAYED BY MY DOOMED MATE

The guys from the second division of the New Shadow advertising company could not stay more than two weeks away from appearing in the CEO's office. Whether it was for a failure to deliver a job, or something similar. The fact was that there was always something to be solved, especially since they had a rival company called Lightning. Both companies were always competing with each other since they were in the same department and the same building. Unfortunately, something happened that drastically changed the future of both companies.

It was at a get-together between the two, that a crime changed everything.

When everyone at NS learned about the party to unite the companies, they decided that it would not be just any party, but an opportunity to put hatred aside and create strong and successful alliances.

Cassie was able to convince her boss to have the party, although no one knew how she had done it, and they ruled out any sexual way since she had one of the most beautiful faces in the neighborhood, a model, by her side. All the employees were euphoric. Walking down the halls with a giant megaphone, she was shouting for the company and announcing the date of the party and the beginning of the decorations. On that day, nobody cared to finish the work, not even the managers and directors, who by then were already receiving numerous requests for help with colors and party materials. The management even tried to calm the situation down, but as soon as they saw Cassie walking around the company with everyone's support, they gave up. The best thing would be to celebrate the whole thing. Cassie was practically the right-hand man of the head of NS, so she had strong opinions on the final decisions.

The NS marketing team consisted of about ten members, half of whom just wandered around and did little. The five official members consisted of two twenty-four-year-old men, two twenty-nine-year-old men, and one twenty-six-year-old woman. Jack was responsible for writing, producing about fifteen articles a day, on average. Kurt, his main partner, and his friend were responsible for photographing almost all the events that were published. Both boys worked hard, but they were the kind of employees who could never please their boss. Josh was responsible for them, so much of the work was supervised by him afterward, sometimes even during the process. If the content was too simple, it would go to the back pages or not be published at all, as a good fan of reporting he liked bullshit, which meant he was always after it. The other members took care of proofreading what Jack wrote and what Kurt photographed.

"I need that crap for today, Jack", exclaimed Josh, sitting in his favorite chair, at his favorite desk, in his favorite room. "I would rather not sit here and hear that you don't have time to write, it's your job."

"You should remunerate me for every time you cuss me out, you know," Jack retorted, expression indifferent. "I don't give a damn about your rush on this one, all the others are already in the revision, but this one will have to wait, do I have to remind you about it every week?" he asked.

The leader then questioned him, in an arrogant tone, saying, "Okay, Jack. Every week you show up out of the blue saying you don't have time to finish the job, do you have something more important to do?"

The other boy then replied sarcastically, "That's none of your business, man. This conversation is useless, you should be thankful that I still warn you, I could just leave without saying anything, you know that".

"I should kick you out," Josh retorted, in a tone that he would indeed be thinking of kicking him out.

"You need me," Jack said, laughing at the situation. "I'm going, see you tomorrow," and withdrew from the room.

"Damn kid, I hate this guy, every week it's the same thing, what a drag," he huffed aloud as he got up from his chair, heading off towards the review room, which was next to the red room and the club's exclusive computer room.

Their sector had only one girl. She had a good resume, which caught the company's attention when she was hired for the proofreading team, which she accepted immediately. Her work partner and she got along so well that within two weeks they had already been caught kissing by their colleagues. During work, no one would say that these two could even be close. Work for them was work.

"Sasha, how's that project Jack left you?" the supervisor asked, walking into the room.

"He didn't leave me anything today, this right here is yesterday's material," she replied. "And Nate is also reviewing yesterday's material, it's pretty extensive, we had to divide it up. Kurt took so many pictures that he spent the whole day editing them to put in the article," explained the girl. Next to her, at another computer, was Nate, who nodded in agreement with everything she had said.

"Right. Where's Kurt now?" he asked.

"He just left with Jack about three minutes ago," she stated. Nate agreed again. Josh made a serious, yet angry face and walked out of the room, slamming the door.

"He hates them!" laughed Nate, returning to work with Sasha.

The New Shadow company was open almost all day. The employees spent a lot of time there, due to the demand. In addition, there were about two cafeterias and bars in and around the building, which resulted in the staff often gathering at one of the locations for after-hours entertainment. However, the security there was not the best. For some reason, the cameras always stopped working or started to mysteriously fail and nobody knew why, and the security guards didn't seem to be interested in their work.

The map of the building was almost everywhere, as every day someone would show up asking for information. The marketing people worked together with people from other sectors, like administration and accounting. Josh made the partnership right from the start. After Sasha and Nate delivered the revised material and Kurt delivered the edited photos, everything was then reviewed one last time and then published.

Adding the two companies, New Shadow and Lightning, there were 1200 active employees in total. It was impossible not to have something to advertise in that place, and it was impossible for the two companies not to be known throughout the city. Cassie was one of the people that everyone tried to recruit, and she refused everyone because she didn't have time to deal with many problems, and the work she had was already taking up too much of her time.

The theme of the party was still open. There was a poll among the employees to decide what would be the best theme.

While arranging his work material in his briefcase, Kurt was talking to his partner, Jack. "Which option and theme did you vote for?" he asked.

"I didn't vote, we won't, you know that you know why," Jack replied, also tidying up his material. "I know we should participate, it's important and all, but we can't," he commented, as he closed his work case. "We're not in the condition to break the camera or anything else that can be broken, like anything in the building."

"Can't we even stay for a while? I know it's risky, but we work here," Kurt rebutted.

"Kurt, you know we can't. Stop talking about it, before we...", Jack didn't finish his sentence, he stopped for a moment and his breathing gradually quickened, Kurt watched him for a few seconds. "What time is it?", Jack asked slowly, keeping eye contact with his friend, who seemed as restless as he was.

"Holy shit, Jack. You always get an early start, let's go!", Kurt shouted, pulling his friend along and starting a race towards the nearest elevator to get down to the parking lot. Using the stairs would take too long. "Come on, I'll drive, get in the back seat," he ordered, already pushing his colleague through the car door, looking around to make sure no one was seeing anything. Kurt didn't have a car yet, so he often used Jack's. Sharing the driving of the vehicle was very common between the two of them, especially in this situation. Jack rebuffed his friend for a few seconds because he wanted to get in the front seat, but Kurt ignored him and kept pushing him out the back door until he finally made sure he was sitting in the seat. Then he ran and got into the driver's seat, starting the car almost immediately. The car still smelled as strongly as it used to. Their smell, the smell of wolf.

"Are you feeling anything yet?" asked Jack as he staggered around sitting in the back seat, quite breathless and struggling to speak. "My vision is pretty blurry."

"Don't you dare surrender now. Hold on, it's your fault, we should have left earlier, asshole," protested Kurt, behind the wheel, looking impatient and slowly demonstrating he wasn't as sure of himself as he would have liked, since his move wasn't starting that late.

A few minutes passed, and they were already halfway there when Jack simply threw up on the floor of the car and collapsed on the seat. Kurt made eye contact in the rearview mirror, and at that moment he knew he had to stop the car right there. There wasn't enough time to get to the usual spot. "Get out of the car, Jack," Kurt ordered, having already parked in the middle of a half-open thicket. Jack replied that he couldn't get out on his own, as his vision was even more blurred, and he felt that his body already had some internal modifications that made it impossible for him to walk without having problems. The friend then pulled him out of the car, with some difficulty, Jack was bewildered enough that anyone who saw him would ask if he needed help. Fortunately, on that late afternoon, on that avenue, there wasn't much traffic, also it wasn't the first time they had passed that way, nor that situation.

"It's going to be here today, Jack. I'm sorry, but in these conditions, you can't go on, and you're probably already losing all consciousness, I can already see some changes in you." Kurt supported Jack on his shoulder as he walked with him into the thicket that lay on the side of the Avenue. The city was full of woods, and most of them were so dense that almost all of them had prohibition notices. People even respected it, normal people at least.

"Kurt, here, leave me here, go!" gasped Jack once again. Now it's for real, you must be hearing the sound of bones breaking, right?" asked Jack, already trying to get loose from his friend. Kurt finally left him there and prepared to walk away, as he already felt his change. "I hate this part," Jack said to himself, before giving the first cry of pain from the change. The first stage was the breaking of the spine. Then the rest of the body, the feeling of the blood rushing through the veins at high speed, the heart racing, the heavy breathing, the pain of the bones breaking and coming together in different ways, the pain of the change of body and mind as he screamed.

Exactly ten minutes later, Kurt walked past where Jack had been before, at least when he was still Jack, in human form. Kurt was no longer human at that point either, and he didn't like to be too far away from his friend in that condition, he was terrible when he had to fend for himself. His animal side didn't know how to hunt well, and they were new at this yet, very new, it had only been a few months since they had started to transform.

When he assumed the form of a wolf, Jack had a ritual, first to find the nearest safe place, then to meet Kurt, and finally to hunt something. There wasn't much to do while transformed, so he let his instincts guide him, after all, he had almost no consciousness in the process, often waking up without remembering anything.

When they finally met, both wolves began the hunt. Jack had already learned to track his prey, probably his habit of observing everything around him at work had given him a certain experience with this, even as a wolf. Kurt, as a wolf, had an excellent memory, a fact that matched his human personality, since he had a shrewd and reasonably vivid memory than the others.

It was almost dawn when they lay exhausted and bloodstained after their meal of the day, an adult deer. They used to split the hunt every time, after all, it was not worth the waste. Whenever they fed, they needed to lie down for a while, to process the information a little. It was always interesting to realize that they were not humans at that stage, that they were animals, and that no matter how hard they tried, they would remain so, at least for a few hours, for a few days, or nights, sometimes afternoons.

They were figuring out how to deal with it because they didn't have much basis for it, the truth is that they knew almost nothing about that condition and avoided having to deal with it, they just hadn't been able to process the stages yet. Jack used to turn first than Kurt; it had always been that way. If Jack felt strange, he knew what it was, and Kurt knew that it would soon be his turn. Because of this, Kurt often ended up seeing the beginning of the process, which always haunted him: seeing what was happening to Jack and knowing that the same thing would soon happen to him.

The next day, the sun's rays penetrated the woods. To a normal person, it was just another day, just another ray of sunshine, but to the boys, it was beautiful. The way they learned to see some things were simply beautiful. Moreover, it was the moment when they came back to themselves. They had never seen the regression of the transformation, they always woke up human, and usually at different times. Jack, just as he was the first to change, was the first to wake up too. The routine was to wake up, and notice the level of dried blood in his body, if it were too much, he would have to clean himself first, if not, he would have to go back to the car - when unforeseen things like that happened - and get dressed in new clothes, then get the other clothes and take them to Kurt. It was no different this time. Jack, finding his friend already regaining consciousness, threw the clean clothes in his direction and asked if everything had gone well with the transformation, to which Kurt confirmed that he had at least managed to remove all his clothes before screaming in pain. Jack was frequently not so lucky.

"I wish I could understand when it starts and when it ends, I didn't want to always have to run off not knowing how long I have until I become a wolf," Jack said. Apparently, he had more trouble coping than he wanted to. "Let's be honest, the whole thing is horrible. I spend the full day afraid to feel this because if I feel something, I have to run away as fast as possible, and because if I do, it's probably because you're almost at your limit too," he blurted out, getting up from the floor, fully dressed in his new clothes. "Anyway, have you noticed any worsening?" he asked. Before he could answer, he noticed that Kurt already understood that there was something wrong with him, so he continued. "I've been having trouble controlling certain things. Occasionally, I do wolf things, even though I'm human," he confessed.

"I understand, sometimes I wake up with my sheet all torn and bitten, it's really weird," Kurt agreed, confirming that he went through some situations similar to his friend's.

"I growl," Jack said, avoiding looking at his friend, "It's happened that I've just been taking a shower and started growling. Sometimes in a conversation, I feel and need to get away from people, and sometimes when I sleep I know I'm making the sound. I also have this thing about tears, and I've seen them around my house during the day. And the car..."

"It stinks like hell, I know. It's animal smell, our smell, especially yours," Kurt confirmed as they got into the car. "We need to fix this."

The rest of the way followed with the two of them in silence. Kurt then parked the car on the second floor of the residential building's parking lot. The company was directly connected to a residential building. You could say that they lived at work in a way. The apartment of the two had a difference of two hallways. Still in the car, just after it had already parked, the two got out of the car. "Well, here we are. Home sweet home," Kurt debauched. "Remember to clean up that vomit you left for yourself. I could send it to the car wash, but you can't get around that strong smell," Kurt finished with a laugh. Jack grinned sarcastically, dismissing his companion's mockery. Finally, they reached the elevator and went up to the floor where they lived. Fortunately, at that time, you could hardly see anyone in the area, which made it much easier not to have to deal with embarrassing situations. Once in their apartments, they took care of what they needed to do since they still needed to help decorate the party in the morning, and try to find an excuse not to attend.

Jack liked Cassie, the most coveted woman in the sectors, and she was his target too. He had never dared to ask her out, mainly because she was engaged, but he was interested. The attraction he felt for her intensified even more when she turned for the first time. It wasn't normal to feel everything I felt. Sometimes it felt like he couldn't hold it in. He had had some sex dreams about her at times, but it helped that he woke up with a bed and a house full of hair and scratches. He thought that if he could do all that just by sleeping, maybe he should keep his distance from her, but he couldn't, she was constantly present in his life and thoughts. Not only that, but he would have to devour her at some point.

At the company, a giant shipment of decorations, sounds, drinks, and food had arrived. It was going to be a big get-together between the two companies at their official merger, as well as a celebration of new employees that would be joining the team in the coming days. Everyone needed to help a little in the organization, especially those who lived nearby, as most of them did.

Slowly, the employees began to arrive, some already dressed for the party. For some reason, the winning poll had been a mask; everyone should wear a mask and dress in plainer clothes. Jack and Kurt agreed, except for the masks, since they didn't plan to stay that long.