The Last Lycan

Chapter 6 - Groomed and Measured

A shrill and loud squawk snatched my slumber away, replacing it with a primal high alert. My entire upper body sprang upwards, supported by my forearms under me, and a gruff growl rumbled up from my chest to voice my threat that the interloper had better be swift on their feet.

‘Blow out your burners, loaf,’ Kirill slapped his muzzle in a wide yawn, unfurling his limbs. ‘It’s a chicken, not a life-threatening ruffian sneaking up on you.’

I remained silent, listening to the tranquillity punctuated by a rhythmic cackling signalling a hen laying its egg. I didn’t recall seeing any chickens yesterday, but I had far more dire matters on my mind than poultry.

There was nothing in the world, in this moment, I wanted more than to curl up on my side and wallow in Heather’s fiery scent. Her feathery pillow was saturated in it; the once butter-soft bed that had moulded my front oozed it on my every turn. Never had I slept in a bed so comfortable or so inviting. No matter how agreeable it was, something was missing from it…

‘Don’t say it, wolf.’ I cut off his bellyaching from being rehashed and flung about again like a tantrum.

‘You had the chance literally handed to you at that door!’

So much for my futile attempt at quashing an argument before it occurred. It was barely daybreak, and a headache was already forming.

‘Our mate led you by the hand to her bed. She lingered by the doorframe, fluttering her lashes. Did she have to lie spread-eagled on the quilts for the hint to seep into your virgin brain?’

Kirill hadn’t shut up once in his rants that I had let Heather leave the bedroom, more dour than he had ever been. He was overly enthusiastic to wag his tail and invite the woman in to fulfil his every last animalistic urge. Whereas I could barely hold Heather’s hand without losing a little sanity, let alone touch anything else of hers.

We had eaten after I had followed the she-wolf back to her abode, and she had led me back to her room, whispering words through an alluring smile. She left no subtlety in the exaggerated curves of her body, leaning against the doorway. I didn’t need to understand her words to know what she was asking. And I would be branded a liar if I said I wasn’t tempted.

But it was too much newness, too soon, and in a volume that left me dizzy. So I had turned my back to uncomfortably strip out of my clothing, knowing she had paused before she left. I didn’t know whether she had left because I wouldn’t understand if she spoke or was disappointed that I had turned around.

The potent charge prickling my back dissipated when I reached for my belt. Swallowing hard, I cast a glance over my shoulder to find the occupied doorway empty. The only evidence of Heather’s presence was the cloud of flame and spice perfume.

In the empty bedroom, alone with only my wolf, I had taken the opportunity to sleep as my instincts demanded, in nothing but my skin. For a lycan to sleep in any other way felt abnormal and restrictive. Life in the wilderness wasn’t exactly conducive to sleeping naked, especially in the depths of winter. Experiencing air against skin was a luxury unafforded to the likes of me, especially when it came with a silky, soft sheet that set my pulse beating.

‘Get your rear end up before our mate thinks we’re lazy.’ Kirill kicked me into moving. He couldn’t allow me one day to simply breathe.

I hauled myself to my feet, abandoning the warm comfort of Heather’s bed in search of my clothes; only, they were nowhere to be found. Where had they vanished to? I left them where they dropped on the floor.

‘That sneaky, slinky vixen managed to sneak in here without waking us,’ Kirill practically purred.

I ignored my wolf’s mooning over the she-wolf because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t make it past the threshold. I had no choice but to leave the bedroom in nothing but my skin, and as I wandered by the kitchen, a loud rumble came from beyond the wall at the end, followed by the sound of rushing water from an unknown source.

A red-haired figure caught my attention through the frill-lined window above the sink, and the bare skin of her long legs clad in nothing but a pair of small shorts held that attention captive. She tossed out handfuls of seed to four golden-coloured chickens in a wire coop, who happily pecked and scratched at the scatter feed. I forcibly pulled myself away when my good senses seeped through enough to take root. Staring wouldn’t find the clothes the she-wolf had hidden.

Through the beaded wall, the corner of a blanket hung from the small upper ledge, heavy in Heather’s scent. That was where she had slept, so where was she hiding the clothes she had stolen? The meagre stash from my bag was gone as well. Was I meant to wander the dwelling naked? Not that it bothered me much. Inhibitions surrounding nudity were lost rather quickly after shifting for the first time.

Heather had rooted through my belongings and stripped me of every scrap of fabric, so I flung my bag down. In my exasperation, I toppled a rectangular frame sitting on top of a dresser nearby and caught it midair before it could smash against the floorboards. The image contained within it depicted an uncannily real-like picture of a trio: a woman, a man and a child.

The child showed the same features as Heather: the same hazel eyes and vibrant gingery hair. The man and woman both looked like her in equal parts.

‘It must be one of those photographs,’ Kirill reasoned, his interest piqued. ‘They have to be her parents.’

In my birth pack of Fire Mountain, no one had ‘photographs’. The only way to capture a likeness was to sit with an individual who could draw. The only family portrait of my parents would likely be in whatever charred husk our home was. They now existed solely in my mind.

Spurred on by my wolf’s interest in seeing more of who this woman was without her stares on me, I inspected the various knick-knacks and small prickly plants. There were a couple more photographs of Heather. In them, she stood with a few other women who I didn’t recognise; friends, perhaps, because they didn’t look enough like her to be relatives.

A door rattled open from the far side of the kitchen, blowing a light gust of cool air through the house. A metallic clang, similar to a bucket, followed along with more sounds of further rummaging and rustling.

“Konstantin?” I recognised my name called out, but not the rest of her words. (“You up yet?”)

She walked straight past the beaded curtain, heading to the bedroom.

(“Where the hell did he go?”) she began muttering to herself, her footfalls heading to the room I occupied. (“I leave him alone for two seconds and—”)

Her figure burst through the strings of beads and froze mid-step and mid-sentence.

“—Oh.”

Her golden eyes, flecked in every shade of honey-green, dilated and stared the entire length of my bare body, settling on the lower half. A crimson hue dusted her cheeks and neck, and the oversized sweater she wore could never conceal the laboured breath of her chest.

Why was she blushing? Hadn’t she seen a wolf male before?

‘Perhaps we’re more impressive than the rudimentary males of this pack.’ Kirill waved his nose in the air with superiority.

(“Uh, h-here.”) She held out a fold of clothing that bore no trace of my scent on it. (“I borrowed these on my last patrol. They were huge on me, so they should fit you.”)

What she was offering wasn’t mine, and I didn’t want to be further in debt to this woman. Neither did I want to accept garments from her covered in her scent.

In lycan tradition, courting wolves would exchange an item of fabric or clothing covered in their own scent to gift to their intended love. Few in my pack found a fated mate, so it was a way to place an early mark and demonstrate their intent and claim of the other.

Exchanging scents with this woman was far more than I was ready to partake in yet.

‘Another lie you tell yourself,’ Kirill grumbled under his breath.

‘It’s the truth!’ I defended myself.

‘I share a mind with you. You are currently fantasising about her scent draped over you. All. Day. Long.’

With a frustrated sigh, Heather came closer, thrusting the clothing further in my direction and stirring my attention away from the quarrel with my ridiculous wolf.

(“Look, would you put these on?! ‘Cos if I have to stare at that thing”) – she motioning to my bare c**k – (“any longer, I’m gonna lose it.”)

An apprehensive growl sprung from my throat and I circled around to avoid her outstretched offering, seeing as I had nowhere else to escape to. Just because she and Kirill were game to proffer their scents about didn’t mean I was.

(“It’s just a pair of shorts.”) Heather continued to press, backing me up through the suspended hangings of beads.

My back hit a wall, pressing me to its cool surface and caging me for the heated she-wolf. She tried to shove the unwanted item at me again, but I’d had enough.

I snatched her wrist to stop her, snarling my frustrations in her face. The moment my skin touched hers, I was lost in the tingles that flowed between us, stronger than before and charged with an energy that throbbed my heart and nether regions to life.

Heather caught herself against my bare chest, the heat between us sucking the barrier away. Her silky fingertips traced my ridges and furrows of muscle, sliding around the nape of my neck. Her lips neared mine, and, like a moth drawn to its end at the mercy of a warm tongue of flame, I followed, driven by a need to taste the lips that hypnotised me.

Another world exploded in my vision, hidden behind my eyelids. Her warm, pillowy lips lured me further in, her fingers tangling in my hair and pulling just enough to shiver my spine. I let go of her wrist and wrapped my hands around her waist instead, palming her hips to seek the silky flesh beneath. The she-wolf’s tongue effortlessly wrapped around mine, guiding the way and teaching me the tune to dance to.

The tip of Heather’s finger followed the grooves of my stomach, travelling the path that led her south to trace the base of my shaft. A rumble of pleasure from my chest eased our lips apart, reminding me I needed air.

(‘So you liked that?’) She pulled away, the two of us equally breathless and quietly heaving.

She smoothed a finger along the underside of my c**k, which stood to attention, caressing its head agonisingly slowly and shuddering my body.

(“I don’t know Russian, but I think I know a couple of basics,”) she whispered against my lips, our panting breaths colliding. “Yes, da” – she spoke her language and mine, nodding her head to indicate the meaning – “no, net” – she switched to shaking her head and stopped her caress.

‘Say yes, you loaf! Say yes!’ Kirill demanded, lost as I was in this euphoria.

“...Yes,” the word in her language fell naturally without a rational thought behind it, so lost in her touch, her scent and her flames that seared me.

Before I knew it, the comfortable bed I had left moments ago had replaced the wall at my back, only this time, Heather was above me, straddling my hips and kissing a path carved by her tongue and lips. This was moving faster than I could comprehend. The lustful fog that had descended now slipped away as my panic grew about where this was heading: on a bearing I was naïve on how to navigate.

“Net,” I snapped, pulling away and growling for lack of any other idea of what to do.

There was a side of me, not just my wolf, that wanted to slap myself for stopping her. That same side wanted her to continue, to show me what the divine tongue of hers could do, and to tie me in more knots than was good for me.

(“You know what?”) Heather crept back up the length of my body, my growl leaving her undeterred. She placed her hands on either side of my head and gyrated her hips ever so slightly against mine. (“I’m beginning to think you’re all bark and no bite. But, if you insist…”)

She promptly leapt from atop me and sauntered away, leaving me lying on my back with no clue what had happened or how I let myself descend into such wanton abandon.

‘I was rather enjoying her.’ Kirill snapped, more concerned that we hadn’t gotten our d**k wet. ‘You have shitty instincts and shittier timing.’

‘I’m not whoring myself out to her just because she gave us a bed or a roof over our head... or because she’s pretty and smells good…’

He huffed, folding his arms to sulk. ‘You could’ve whored a little.’

The passage of time seemed like an illusion. The more it flowed, the less I knew what to do with myself except fluster and shudder at the vivid memories of my first kiss. Reality transcended any daydream I could have concocted, and it refused to leave me alone.

What I needed was cold, and the only places I knew I could find it were either the sea by the house, or the washroom opposite. To get to the sea, I would need to navigate past the she-wolf, and I wasn’t ready to face her while my blood still burned hot. So this left me with the she-wolf’s washroom as the only option remaining.

I collected the garment she had tried to push on me at the threshold of the bedroom, not because I wanted to accept her scent but because I needed a physical barrier between us to prevent a repeat performance. Taking a breath to steady myself, I quickly ducked across the hallway to the opposite door, flustering all over again when I heard Heather chuckle from the kitchen as I locked the door behind me.

The coolness of the blue-tiled room did little to calm what needed to be calmed, but I recognised the nozzle where water would emerge on the wall behind me through the mirror. That would do the trick.

I spun the valve and pulled the curtain to keep water from splashing about, standing under the deluge to allow the icy water to wash away the last traces of the aroused state clinging to my skin. On a porcelain dish mounted on the tiles, a block of translucent golden soap rested, which I hoped would scrub away all of the she-wolf’s scent on me that continued to play its games. Not once did Kirill quit his grumbles or pouts at the loss of Heather's natural perfume mingled with ours.

Shaking the water droplets from my skin, I pulled back the curtain and found a small stack I had previously missed in my haste. The stack consisted of a neatly folded towel, an unused bar of soap and a toothbrush laid on top.

Were these for me? It seemed dubious that Heather would keep such items she used regularly like this.

‘She is kind and thoughtful. Who else would they be for if not for you?’ Kirill said plainly, keeping to his foul mood. I distinctly sensed he wanted to add more name-calling, but he chose to stay quiet.

I had already used Heather’s soap, so I added the unused block to the dish behind the water wall’s curtain. I ended by cleaning my teeth and untangling my hair with my fingers as best I could. And, with my options for clothing lacking, I put on the shorts given to me, refusing to accept how right it felt to wear Heather’s roasted spice scent.

The smell of food wafted through the washroom door as I opened it, leading me through the beaded curtain with its trail.

She sat at a small square table tucked into the corner. I tried not to look as she readjusted her crossed legs, bare and glistening in the morning sun, and I failed completely to not follow the exposed skin up to her equally dazzling face.

A sheepish wave of embarrassment flushed my face with heat the instant our eyes met and the hint of a smirk flashed on her lips, and suddenly, Heather was the last thing I could look at. Simply being around her caused ripples of phantom tingles, as though her fingers were gliding across my body all over again.

She pushed out a plate towards me in silence, and I could feel her stare on me as I sat. I awkwardly ate, all the while avoiding her eyes and focusing on my meal, a crackling tension mounting in the air between us once more. I had never eaten the type of bread on my plate before. It was a dense circle with a hole in the centre and topped with a pleasantly salty, pink meat; a sweet, red jam that left a hot tingle on my tastebuds; and two eggs, most likely from the hens outside.

As I finished my last bites, Heather stood and vanished with a clatter of the beaded curtain. I glanced up, curious as to what she was up to now, and when she returned, it was with a small pair of scissors, a comb and a roll of tape in tow.

(“Now that I battled you into a pair of shorts, let’s see how much of a battle it’s gonna be to get you groomed and measured for clothes.”)