Biting Wild: Lycans of Grayville

Prologue:

It was just another hike in the woods for me, just another camping trip among my many camping trips. The thick wilds around me fill my lungs with the thick freshness of a world void of us humans. The lush forests of Grayville were, by far, the best I had ever entered. I had hiked many trails in my twenty two years of life. I grew tired of the normal trails now and I often just used a compass and a map to chart my own courses in the wild. I was a nature junkie to say the very least.

I moved to this small community of less than fifteen thousand people to attend a local veterinary school. I loved wild life and wild animals. I have been fascinated with wolves the most, since I met my first wild wolf up close at five years of age. He was a tall grey wolf and I had gotten lost in the woods near my old holm outside Portland. I remember thinking that this beautiful creature was going to eat me. I was scared and lost, he nuzzled my tiny chest and after I realized he was not going to eat me, I began to pet him and scratch behind his ear. I still remember his purr of delight every time she let me pet him.

He seemed to lead me back to the main road and less than a half mile from my house. I still remember his vivid blue and green mixed eyes. He was grey with white on his chest and tail. His four paws all had black, which made them look like black mittens on his feet. He was tall, but very lean. I would learn later that he was not even an adult wolf yet, from the shape of his build.

After that encounter I had made up my mind to become a vet and help save wild animals. Now at twenty two I was in my final semester of vet school and I had an assistant position here in a lush wild area. I never planned to move just north of the Canadian border, but this opportunity was just too much to pass up.

Now here I am on my weekend off in the deep wild greens and browns. I walk for about two hours, before I locate a large stream and I make camp on the banks. I pull out my fishing rod and I connect all three sections together and I go into my mini tackle and I begin to fish for my dinner. I know I am a survival and nature junkie, but at least I am not a barbie doll folks!

........

I had cleaned and de-scaled my fish and I enjoyed some open flame fried fish in my cast iron skillet. I tossed the remains into the water, so that no predators would come sniffing around my camp site. It was full dark now and I climbed into my tent and I began to read by my little battery lamp light. I was reading up on local varieties of wolves in the area. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of one before I headed back to my new house.

The other reason I up and moved here was, because my dad had died this year and I could no longer stand to come home to my childhood home. I felt like I was dying inside a little every day. I was always a daddy's girl and an unredeemable tomboy. My mom use to try to get me to go shopping and get into girly things, well until she left us for the big shot lawyer when I was fifteen. She even had the nerve to try to come sniffing around my inheritance once daddy died. I was heartbroken and I felt alone in the world.

The vets in this small wild area were said to be very busy places to work, due to all the dense forests and the farms that border on the opposite side to the east. The ranchers have to call us in Grayville to drive out to them.

This was the golden opportunity for a girl who felt more comfortable being around animals, than she did humans.

I heard a crack of a twig and I snapped to attention. I opened the front of my tent in time to see a massive light brown wolf snap its teeth into my foot. I did not know how the hell its teeth were long enough to break my flesh through my shoes, but they did and I felt like molten fire was poured in my veins of my foot and slowly traveled up the rest of my circulatory system.

I yelped in pain and surprise, this was not general wolf behavior at all. They never came up to humans and just attacked like this, my analytical mind was in full swing. I had been attacked before, not by a wolf, but by other wild life. I looked around me for anything that could be used as a weapon. I was about to give up hope, when the wolf drug me past my fire pit and I stretched out my left arm and felt like I was going to dislocate my shoulder.

I felt the cool cast iron of the skillet against my palm and I swung it with all the might that my small frame and my full fight or flight instincts would muster, then I smashed the wolf over the head twice more, before I was satisfied that it might be dead.

I leaned over it to inspect the wounds and I could feel the hot breath low and even from the wolf. Then I saw its eyes open and in a frantic manner I smashed it over the head twice more. Leaving nothing to chance I grabbed my map and my compass and I high tailed it out of the forest. Camping gear could just be damned for all I cared at this moment. I ran for hours and I felt like my veins were going to explode in my chest. I had felt it since the very moment the wolf bit me, but now that my adrenaline was leaving my blood, I could feel it with a renewed vengeance.

I staggered back to my car and I fumbled for my keys. I finally got my car unlocked and I swung into the driver's seat and I fired it up and pealed out of the parking lot to the camp grounds.

Chapter: 1

It's been three weeks since the attack in the woods. I have begun to think I am losing my mind. I woke up in my bed the day after the attack and I had just disinfected and wrapped the massive wolf bite on my foot. I woke and it was gone, except the tissue had scared over. I could see the scares of each tooth mark on my foot. I could not believe my own eyes and I went to the clinic and told the doctor what happened, but he said the tissue looked like it had been closed up for at least two years. I was not a human doctor, but I knew plenty about human injuries. My logical brain agreed with is assessment, but I knew that I had not imagined this whole thing.

I pulled my long bright red hair into a messy bun and I began to prepare for class. I opened my drawer and fished out a comfortable long sleeve tee shirt and a loose pair of jeans. I had never been much into the skin tight clothing trends, but now I hated feeling constricted. Thankfully I had no friends in this town, because there was no one walking into my house, when I got mad at my pair of skinny jeans and shredded them. The really weird part is that I just pulled the fabric apart, as if it gave me no resistance.

My pale green eyes looked over my appearance appraising it, I just shrugged and made for my front door. The scents of the forest hit me, as they seemed to do every day since the attack, but it was much more intense today. I felt my blood pound and my body become excited for something. I found myself licking my lips at the scent that was filling my nose. It was a buck, I don't know how I knew it, but it smelled male and juicy.

I wanted to go, what? It's not like I had a damn gun or anything. How exactly was I planning to take down a buck? More to the point, why the hell am I thinking about killing bambi's dad, when I am a few months from being a certified animal doctor? Aside from the wolf that may or may not have attacked me, I have never harmed a living creature. I do not count my fishing hobby either, because that is just natural selection at work there.

I forced myself into my car and I looked up to adjust my rearview mirror and I hopped in my seat at the sight before me. My pale green eyes, that I had all my life, were now crisp jade and they were faintly glowing. My heart rate shot up and I began to hyperventilate. I scrubbed my hands over my face a few times, as if I could will my eyes to change back. I looked in the mirror again and my eyes were back to normal. Just the plan old pale green I was born with, the color I had inherited from my daddy.

I finally managed to drive myself to class and the smells of the town were still plaguing me. I can smell the garbage cans at the side of my tiny college, but I am all the way at the front door now. I heart the thumping steady all around me, like many bas beats sounding at many different tempos at once. I am gagging as I enter the halls and the purfumes stick in my throat and nose. I can smell the alcohol mixed in so strongly and all the other chemicals, like my nose is breaking down every single layer of every single scent in the building.

I finally find myself overwhelmed and I burst into the bathroom in a blur of desperation, but the scents here just make it worse. I make it into a stall and I begin to heave and heave, the thumping is still all around and I feel like I am going mad! After about ten minutes of heaving and barely hacking anything up, I recover myself enough to clean up in the sink. The water on my face seems to block some of the incoming scent information and I take a gasp of air into my desperate lungs. I feel my veins lighting up on fire again, but even worse than the time I was bitten now. I feel a surge of power come over me and I feel anger churn in me.

I feel warm hands on me and I rip my head around in fear and anger. I was not going to be touched while I felt weak and sick. I was not about to look weak or sick to this intruder! I hear a snarl rip from my throat, like I am just an observer in the matter. I feel my hands burning now, like someone has poured acid on them and I look into the eyes of the one who is in front of me.

The little brunette flinches and her brown eyes light up like a Christmas tree. She takes two steps back and raises her hands in surrender, or submission, I am not really sure which of the two. I hear her speak for the first time.

"Easy there, alpha or not, you cannot just wolf out in the middle of a human building are you crazy!?" Her brown eyes glow brightly and she has a pleading look to her features. She just stands there with her hands up and says nothing for a long moment. Then her scent hits me and I recognize it as canine in flavor, but much muskier and stronger than a dog, or even any timber wolf I have ever smelt. There is an air of raw, primal power about her and it fills her scent. Oddly enough she is the only pleasant scent in the whole damn town right now! I had no idea what the hell was happening to me, but she smells safe to me so in a desperate gambit I decide to talk to her.

"Please... I need... help." I wheezed out and my voice felt strangled by something, like my throat was trying to constrict. The brunette girl nodded and came and wrapped and arm around me.

"Common, let's get you outta her, before you change in front of the humans."

I look at her and stop following for a moment, because that is the second time she has referred to both of them as something other than a human. The young brunette tugs on her sleeve and gives her that sad puppy pleading look again. She follows her and the girl helps her into her Subaru Legacy sedan. She feels her right arm starting to break and she screams in agony. The girl curses under her breath and floors the pedal and they zip out of two in record time.

She vaguely makes out the shape of the massive two story log building that the girl helps her into. She feels her legs give out halfway in the door and then both of her legs snap in the wrong direction and molten pain surges through her and she screams again. She feels like she is being twisted and bent out of shape. Her core temperature makes her feel as though she is being held directly under the sun's merciless rays.

Thirty minutes or maybe five hours later, time has already stopped meaning anything to her. She can no longer track time, because time is pain and pain is time now. She is nothing but the sum total of agony made flesh now. She is in the inner most depths of hell and she is either dead or soon to be dead. She coils into a ball of agony and she hears the voices around her now. They are talking, but she cannot make out the words. She hears the little brunette that helped her, now she is arguing with an older female voice.

"...Cannot trust her, she is an unknown..."

"She was changing... she does not even know..."

"No shit little sister, she smells of freshly bitten wolf. Thanks for dropping a damn fresh dominant female into my pack territory. Do you realize what this could do to the pack?"

"I don't give a damn right now Ang. She is suffering and she asked for my help. I will make sure I take her back to her own den in the morning, but you know her first change is going to be hell."

"Fine! Daemon you can give her the damn morphine now."

"Yes alpha, may I monitor her progress through the night?"

Sigh... "Fine, but don't let any of the pack around her. I will take them running in the mountains. You hold your human form as long as the moon will let you Daemon. I don't want a strange she-wolf loose on my territory."

"Yes alpha, I will stay glued to her side."

"I will too ang." Sigh, "Little sister you're going to be the death of me one of these days, you know that right?"

"I know you have been telling me that for twenty years now, but you are still over three hundred." Growl... "Fine, fine, geeze you are always so testy about your age."

"This is not a puppy Lacy, this is a fucking human turning into a were wolf. You know what happened the last time we let in an outsider, we are still paying for it, and mom did not survive to regret it."

Snarl, "With all due respect ALPHA, you do not get to play the mom card on me, at least you can remember her!"

"Sigh, whatever, Daemon sedate the bitch please and try to keep her the fuck off of my couch."

"Yes, alpha."

I felt something pierce my skin and I whimpered in fear. It felt cold and soon a fog rested on my mind and numbed my racked body. I could see the brunette girl clutching my furry left arm. I did not have time to pounder why the hell my arm was furry, or what the hell that argument had been about.

I came to and as the fog lifted from my mind, the pain began to settle in again. I felt more bones were breaking and I tried to scream, but my voice came out in a partial howl. I startled myself with the sound and it made me look over my body.

I was stripped naked now, with a sheet covering me. I lifted the sheet and I saw my ribs poking at the top of my skin and black patches of fur beginning to sprout. I saw my legs bent backwards and now deformed more like a dog's back legs. I freaked out and I felt my heart rate sky rocket, I felt molten hot again and I fell to the floor. I heard the crash of the bed I was laying in. It had smashed around me somehow in my motion. It was splinters of wooden bits on the other end of the guest bed room looking place.

A man I had never seen before comes and sits beside me. He strokes his hand through my hair in a soothing motion. He is tall, but everyone is, when your five foot three. He looked over six feet, maybe six three. He was built like one of my martial arts masters, all super toned lean muscles. He said, "I am doctor Daemon Williams, you need to calm down, this transition is not going to be easy for you. Fear and excitement are only going to make the pain worse. I gave you as much time to rest as I could little one, but you are going to have to shift tonight, the moon is calling to you girl."

I felt like I had just stepped into a Steven King thriller now. I could make out his scent, it was not threatening to me. I knew I could have his throat if I so desired to. I don't know how I could smell all of that, but considering half my body was turning into a damn dog right now, I was sure that was the least crazy thing going on!

"Listen to me little one, you need to stop fighting the change, and you must just let it happen. I know you are lost and confused right now, but you have to do as I say, or you are going to tear yourself apart."

I felt my fear spike at this new bit of information; I could smell truth in his words, like I could smell the scent of him. I knew he was not lying to me, but it did not make any of this more real to my human mind!

I heard him mutter to himself, something like, "Alpha is going to have my hide for the bed."

All the words seemed to spin in my head now. Alpha, Transition, Shift, Moon Calling.

I was a vet student, but I was also a healthy young woman, so I read plenty of were wolf books. I know the damn jargon. This man and the two others from earlier all talked like this was common sense to them! I suddenly thought back to the light brown wolf that bit through my shoe three weeks ago. I remembered all the strange, but excusable moments I had had in the past three weeks. I remembered the scare tissue on my foot and how the doctor told me it was over two years old! I remembered the murderous wolf that bit me and all I could do was get anger and snarl in my fury at him.

I felt my rage become a thing of physical reality to me as my bones broke more and more. I no longer screamed, I just focused on my jaws snapping around the throat of that damn wolf who dared to harm me! Fury became my salvation and pain baptized me into fur slowly, but surely I felt every limb, every square inch of my body shift, snap and morph.

After three more hours nothing human remained of me and I ran free from the room, with a tan and white timber wolf following closely behind me. I knew he was Daemon, because he had Daemon's scent, just multiplied in its intensity many fold now that he was a wolf. I saw a deeply chocolate colored wolf, with vivid brown and yellow eyes howl on a nearby hill. She smelled like the girl that drove me here and she was a wolf to!

I felt my head rear back and I returned her howl and I dashed off on four legs and closed the distance to her. She turned and ran as I approached her flank. I could tell she wanted me to follow her, so I did. I was curious and I was not human at the moment, so I did whatever felt right. I trusted the little brown wolf girl, because she had been nothing but nice to me. I vaguely remember her arguing with someone, who sounded like her leader and maybe a sibling. I was not sure how much of my memory was accurate; the pain had damn near fried me inside and out.

I followed the little brown she-wolf into the deep wild around us and she trotted the woods, like they were her own backyard. We came to a steam and she stopped and gulped down the water greedily and I did the same after she had finished. I just kept looking everywhere around me and I found that I could see perfectly in the night. I could feel the pulse of the full moon hanging low overhead. The words, 'The moon's call, ' replayed in my mind now and I felt like it made some sort of twisted sense to me.

I caught my reflection in the water and I saw a large black wolf with jade glowing eyes staring back at me. She was pure glossy black and her coat was thick and full. She was large, but lean muscled. I felt the power of this beast and it was my own power. I felt her need to hunt and I realized it was not her need, but my need. The taste of blood was what we craved now.

The little brown she-wolf yipped at me and I turned towards her. She gave me a wolfish smile and her tongue hung out. She yipped one more time then began to dash into the woods again. I bolted after her; the beast that was me knew we could catch the little wolf with no problems. Less than twenty seconds later I had indeed caught up to her.

She crouched and belly crawled to the edge of a clearing and I saw the deer and it's smell permeated the air. I felt myself lick my chops in anticipation, because this was a seven point buck and I wanted it. I saw the brown wolf nod to me in a very human gesture, to go first. I knew she was conceding the killing blow to me in this hunt. She was showing her submission or her respect, I was not completely sure, I just knew that was MY buck.

The human part of me had no clue what to do, but the wolf in me took over and cleared the tree line in a blur and launched herself into the side of the buck, knocking it to the ground. She jumped back out of reach of its pointed horns, and then as its head swung back, we launched like a bullet into his juicy throat and sunk our teeth in. I tore and ripped I finally felt a satisfying snap of its neck and it fell limp at my feet.

The little she-wolf threw back her head and howled in my victory and I joined her in a victorious howl. I saw her eyeing me, waiting for me to do something, and then I remembered that the alpha gets to eat first. I dug into the buck's chest and I tore into the ribs enjoying the meat on the bones, but I dug farther snapping the ribs and I tore free the heart and began to chew on it. After I had gotten some meat the little she wolf joined me and began to tare at the leg meat on the back legs. She tore a piece off and nosed it at my feet, for me to try it. I took it and it was fatty and delicious! She tore off more bites for herself now. She yipped at me through her bloody snout and I paced over to her now, she lowered herself more, so she showed herself submissive to me. I licked her nose and her face clean of all the blood and she licked my face in return. She was submissive, but she was friend and I could feel that clearly now.

I saw a massive chocolate wolf come over the far left hill side and she radiated power. I saw twelve other wolves of many colors in a V formation behind her. I noted that none of them looked like the wolf that I wanted to kill and trust me I checked thoroughly. She walked up to me without a care in the world and she came to a stop beside the littler brown wolf. The littler brown wolf yipped playfully at her and then brushed up to the bigger brown wolf. She nuzzled her neck and then turned back to me with a wolfish grim in place.

The large female stared at me leery eyed for a long moment, and then she nodded in a very human sort of way, then her pack came over and sniffed me. I saw her snap at a few of the males who wondered too close with their sniffing. I could practically hear her thoughts, 'Damn horny ass males!'

I tilted my head in confusion and she cursed to herself, then I heard her voice again, 'You heard me little wolf?' I nodded and tried to say, "Yes." She sighed in my head again and looked at the smaller chocolate wolf and said, 'Lacy you have stuck me with a huge pain in my ass this time!'

I heard the little brunette's voice in my head as she said, 'Ang, she is ok, you just need to remove that three hundred year old stick from your ass.'

The large female, Ang, I was guessing; snapped at the little wolf and growled a warning at her. I could have sworn I saw the little wolf roll her eyes, and then lower her head in submission. Since when could wolves roll their eyes like humans?

I do not remember anything shortly after that, I just know I felt very sleepy and the world faded from greys to full on black and I was out cold.