9 comments/ 30645 views/ 30 favorites The New World By: Cruel2BKind *All characters are 18+* The group of men had left the road behind, and were now wandering through the undergrowth of a thick black forest. They had left behind their horses, and their carts and their fire, and they felt small and inconsequential in the primeval darkness of the Romanian forests. Fourteen of the fifteen men were natives, they were led by the best huntsman in the land. If it had been any other then Gareth One-Eye, many of the guides never would have dared to go on this foolish deadly hunt. The fifteenth man was sorely out of place. An Englishman, and a city man, he looked lost in his fine coat and kid gloves. He carried a narrow tube of what looked like wood, with pale bands going up and down the sides. In his other hand he carried a small leather case which contained ten darts made of light wood and tufted with bright feathers. Where Gareth calmed the thirteen guides, the city man made them nervous. He blundered clumsily through the thick undergrowth, stepped on every twig, cursed the loudest when the thorns scratched his clothing. His presence was terrifying, considering what they stalked. Gareth and the guides knew how easily the hunter could become the hunted, an idea that the city man couldn't seem to comprehend. Gareth One-eye went up to the city man during a quick breather. The man was exhausted and taking a swig from a small metal flask. He protested loudly when Gareth knocked the flask away. "Shut up." He said coldly. "You are a very stupid man. The only reason I am doing this at all is for the money, and I cannot let you put us in danger because you wont shut your mouth." The man sat there, tight-lipped and furious. "We are close to the beasts, they are vulnerable now. They have young, and wounded. You need to have your wits about you if you want one alive. You better hope that your heathen toy will work." With that, Gareth turned and whispered curt instructions to the men in Romanian. The men sheathed their sharpened hunting knives, and picked up their crossbows. Each one looked terrified and aggressive and hungry for action. Even the city man, who only had a bamboo dart gun and a handful of tipped darts, felt the excitement. --- Her name was Agnes, and she was the Alpha. She was a short stocky woman with cropped dark hair and golden eyes. She had managed to hold her pack together, and keep them alive and healthy for fifteen years, but now she was afraid. There was no moon in a sky crusted with stars. Thirty ragged shivering individuals, not including babies and children under ten, were huddling near two small smoky fires. A baby briefly squalled before a young woman shushed her and offered her breast. The pack had fallen on hard times. The hunters were getting smarter and more relentless. The prey was scarce, and half a dozen had died from a brief outbreak of typhoid. Agnes got up and walked restlessly. A young man, young enough to be a child still, coughed wretchedly and Agnes put a hand on his bony white shoulder. The young man had wandered in a bare month ago, filthy, starved, and thorn-scratched. He had been babbling deliriously in a language that she recognized as French. He had become a bit of a pet among the pack, and he had been getting better, but by the sound of that hacking cough he was getting worse. They had sick, and injured and young, and the smell of men was on the wind. When the arrows hissed from the trees the pack was terrified and dismayed, but no one was surprised. It was utter carnage, and it only lasted a few minutes. Men came screaming battle cries from the trees, shooting their crossbows at everyone, man, woman, and child. The pack was unarmed and helpless and naked but for a few cloaks and animal skins. Within minutes two dozen corpses were lying prone, bleeding into the earth. Agnes made it, with four men, two women, and a twelve year old girl with a sobbing babe in her arms. --- The city man was furious. No one had listened to him, or even understood him. They went and shot every living specimen; they even sent arrows through the necks and chests of children and babies. He hadn't even gotten to use the exotic blowgun he had commissioned from Borneo. He was sulking on an overgrown root when Gareth One-eye came over. "Professor, two of the beasts... they are still alive." Charles Roderick eagerly leapt to his feet and ran over to where thirteen men warily surrounded two figures. He instantly knew that the man would not live. He had an arrow in his neck and another in his stomach. He was dead, his body just needed to catch up. The other however, the other was a boy with red hair and glassy eyes. He was crying and struggling and babbling weakly in French. The thick splintery shaft of a crossbow bolt jutted from his thigh. "This one will do." One of the guides hit the boy over the head with a bag half-filled with sand and the boy went limp. --- Matteo woke up in near-darkness. He was naked and cold and alone, crammed in a tiny crate that was shifting back and forth on the back of a cart. Other crates jostled near him, making the air inside stuffy and unbreathable. Matteo moaned softly, wracked with pain and claustrophobia. For a few moments all he could do was pant weakly for air as he tried not to suffocate. Cold air whistled into the crate from three long cracks between splintery boards. The chinks were about half an inch thick and a foot tall. He crawled to them, his wounded leg throbbing thickly. He could see the road receding behind the cart. Matteo had been born a French peasant. He had lived his entire life dirt-poor living with a gaggle of brothers and sisters that were always hungry. A lone wolf the size of a horse had savaged him one year ago, and he had felt the changes ripping through him. He had run when his own family saw him change and had attacked him, stabbing his cowering body with pitchforks and the sharp hoe. After the change had receded he had crawled back, bleeding and crying and so frightened of what he had become. They had attacked him and tried to kill him. After months of wandering through the forest and eating what he could catch and scrounge and steal, he had found a family. They had loved him and cared for him. They had nursed him back to health and he had slept during the day in the giant warm huddle of sleeping bodies. Now his family was dead or fled, and he was trapped in a splintery straw-lined crate. Matteo cried and nervously paced the tiny parameters of his prison. He had never felt so trapped, so panicky. He hated the small space, hated it and was so desperate that he threw his scrawny white body against the boards. His matted red hair covered his eyes. After exhausting himself, he curled up on the meager pad of straw, shivering and moaning softly. --- It was nearly a hundred years before Ivan Pavlov would conduct his famous experiment with canines and classical conditioning, but Charles Roderick knew how to train a dog not to bark. His goal (written in a neat copperplate in his notebooks) stated that he wished only to make the subject permissible and obedient. What he would do in real life, was to cow the young injured boy into submission. Using force, if need be. When the two supply carts stopped, the small expedition didn't even get off the road. The road was a tiny winding mud trail that often broke axels and wheels on the carts. They had already replaced two broken wheels, one axel, and had had to kill a horse with a shattered foreleg. The carts merely were settled at the side of the road and the animals tied to the sides with small piles of fodder and buckets of water from a nearby stream. The woods made the men uneasy, so the entire setup was to make a pocket of firelight and humanity. The animals and the cart made a thin veneer to protect them from the darkness beyond. Two men stood watch at all times with their crossbows while the rest slept and ate. The men hated that one of the beasts was with them. Sure, it was in a cage, but cages could be broken. The beasts were easy enough to kill when vulnerable, but nothing was more destructive than one during a witching (full) moon. So when the city man prepared for his encounter with the beast, the men subtly moved so they were near the cart, curious and anxious with their crossbows ready. Two men moved aside the other crates. The cage looked like a crate, but it had heavy bands of reinforced iron that surrounded it like wire around a haybale. The bolts that kept the cage door closed were locked, and as thick as a man's wrist. The two men opened the door and everyone leaned in to watch. Matteo woke up, and saw the group of savage frightened faces. He was small and weak and he had a deep wound on his thigh that oozed slow red streams. Straw filled his matted red hair. The city man stood in front of him, immaculate in his gray silk coat and vest and black kid gloves. Matteo knew Norman French. He knew a handful of German and Romanian both, and he knew a few broken words of English. "Please." The boy mewled, looking at all of the hateful faces. "Please...no." Roderick moved with catlike speed to take his left hand from behind his back. In his hand he held a long thin metal poker with the end shaped in a dull point with a second prong sticking perpendicular to the point. The entire L-shaped tip was a dull maroon color with heat. The point jabbed under Matteo's shortribs with a sizzle of burning flesh and a tormented shriek of pain. "NO!" Roderick snarled. "No talking! Bad!" He jabbed the boy two more times. When he withdrew the poker the men looked curiously into the cage, half expecting the beast to leap out with fangs bared. But all they saw was a shadowy huddle of pale limbs. All they saw was the trembling little heap that moaned and sobbed in wordless cries. Charles Roderick was taming the beast. --- Three more days and nights of slow stressful travel. Three more incidents with the poker. For two nights, Matteo weakly pleaded in French and German and Romanian. Every time the poor boy spoke Roderick jabbed him and left weeping burns on his pale skin. On the third night, Matteo was too weak and scared to speak. He hadn't had a drop of water or a crumb of food for three days and the straw under his cramped legs was wet and filthy and he was going crazy from lack of movement. Roderick waited for him to speak, even prompted him to speak, but the fragile beast had learned his lesson. He was rewarded with food and water and a quick raking out of the filthy straw. Matteo became an animal in that crate. Nothing to do but sleep and cry and nurse his aching healing leg. Every night after his 'conditioning' the crate was covered with heavy black blankets that nearly suffocated him and prevented the tiniest ray of moonlight from touching his skin. After a week of monotony, Roderick left the fourteen guides and took his cargo onto a ship that would take him to London. The voyage would skim across the shore, stopping often for trade and it would take four weeks. During those four weeks, the terrible purgatory of Matteo's cage became hell. Roderick had always had a cruel streak. As a child he had pulled the legs off ants and set cat's tails on fire and stabbed at worms with pins to watch them squirm. When he was twelve, he had fed an old dog a ball of compressed bread with shards of broken glass in it and watched the poor stray die a terrible death as it cried and vomited blood and ran in feeble circles. He told himself that it was further conditioning, but he knew better, and he didn't put it down in his notebooks. Every day, sometimes twice a day he would go into the stinking lightless cargo hold and open up the crate. He was not nearly as good at cleaning the cage as his guides had been, so Matteo would always be cowering in the back, scrabbling his legs in the filthy straw, mewling weakly with fear and misery. He would use the poker and jab the crying broken boy until he shrieked in agony. He had no sexual desire for the broken little bundle of limbs in his crate, but he left each session of 'conditioning' with a raging hard-on from the abuse. --- The weak sunlight burned Matteo's yellow eyes. The cold clear air seared his lungs and his nose, and he coughed in weak spasms. The cold air burned his spongy invalid's skin. He was kneeling on the dirty cobblestones in an ally of the University of London. Two assistants had carried his crate out and had now taken out its cargo. Matteo trembled like a wet puppy. He was cowed and afraid and at the same time the sensation of being out of the cage was exhilarating, even if his limbs were too weak and cramped to stand. He cried out with shock and pain when one of the assistants wrinkled his nose and dumped a pail of cold water over the filthy scrawny little teenager. The assistant scrubbed his body with a cloth and Matteo's body was seized with powerful cramps while he moaned and struggled weakly. The assistants dragged him inside to a room that Charles Roderick had prepared himself. The room had once been a greenhouse, and the ceiling windows had all been covered from the inside with heavy black blankets. One of the blankets had a rope dangling from it. Roderick was a theatrical man, and his plan was to pull away a swatch of the blankets to expose the moonlight. In the center of the room, sitting on a large pedestal was a very large cage. The cage was many times bigger than the tiny crate Matteo had been cramped in. It had a wooden floor and thick metal bars that were reinforced with crosshatching metal bars. The wooden floor had a thin layer of fresh straw on it. The assistant threw the young boy into the cage and Matteo used the free space to slowly stretch out his cramped body. He felt terribly naked and exposed on the pedestal. It was a measure of how badly he had been abused when Roderick covered the cage with a black cloth and Matteo felt relieved. --- Roderick had a reputation at the college, and it wasn't a good one. Several Professors had shown up, and a few of them had brought their wives. Charles Roderick had imagined this to be a serious event, where everyone would wait for the beast to be unveiled on the edge of their seats, but instead he got something close to a party. Several of the young Professors had brought card games and liquor. These men of science (and their wives) were huddled in small groups, laughing and talking and playing games and passing around flasks or bottles. By the time his small silver pocket-watch said ten o clock, no one was sitting in the benches, ready for his speech. Roderick was grinding his teeth softly as he stood on a smaller pedestal near the cage. "Gentlemen, please." His tone was quiet and pleasant, but inside he was furious. He felt the sudden desire to have a bit of 'conditioning' with the beast; that would make him feel better. Only two or three of the very young Professors even listened to him. After having to ask the loud crowd several times to calm down and sit Roderick was livid and barely controlling his temper. The last to sit was a large blonde man with a weak chin and a heavy blonde beard. His name was Professor Solstrom, and he had brought his mistress. The pretty young woman was getting more looks then Roderick. "Gentlemen, I have brought you all here to today to show you a specimen from a branch of zoology that has gone severely neglected for the last hundred years or so. The branch that I like to call Somatics, though I have not officially named them. These are animals that pretend to be human. The closest animal to my branch of study that has even been acknowledged is the mountain gorilla that was recently found in darkest Africa. Roderick scowled as his audience burst into giggles. "Do you have anything to say, Solstrom?" Solstrom was laughing so hard tears were falling down his cheeks. "Do you mean that you have dragged us all down here to show us some urchin in a costume? What is in that box? A stuffed mermaid? A satyr perhaps!" He roared with laughter, and others joined in. Roderick had to shout to be heard. "I have seen what you describe! I have seen humanoids that live in the water, with the lower bodies of giant water snakes, and I have seen creatures that pretend to be human and are burned by the light of day and subsist on human blood, and I have seen creatures in the high mountains with wings, and others with elongated lower legs and horns like goats!" His rant quieted them, for he was livid. His eyes were blazing and he was screaming at them. A few of the people in the audience were even beginning to be frightened, and Solstrom took a large gulp from his flask. "This is the first creature I have caught. It is a creature that plagues Romania, and while many of us thought that it was a legend, there it is an all-too-real threat! The radiation from the moonlight gives this creature the power to turn into a gigantic wolf. For three days during the new moon it cannot change, and for three days during the full moon, even with the slightest exposure it cannot help but change. I even plan on going to the new world in a few months to study them, for there they are supposed to have many of these creatures. I have dubbed this creature, Homo Lycanthropes!" He had been so angry that he had forgotten his original plan. He knew that the little beast looked wretched and pitiful, so he had planed to pull the moonlight-window first and then remove the black curtain from the cage. He paid the price for this mistake. The black curtain swirled away from the cage and a gasp rose up, but not of horror or fear, but of pity and anger. The plump round-faced wife of a botanist rose up with her hands clasped between her breasts and she cried out, "Oh you poor thing!" Matteo was doing his best to look even weaker and sicker then he already was, but really, he didn't even need to bother. He was so starved that his ribs and jutted from his pale body. His upper body was covered with a series of small burns, some old and puckered, some fresh and oozing. He had a half-healed wound on his thigh and his lower legs were covered with red sores from how filthy his cage had been. He cringed in one corner of the cage, trying to cover his weak body with his hands. The Professors and their wives stood up in a barrage of humanity. A young burly professor had found a hammer somewhere and was going to smash the lock. Solstrom was talking loudly on how men of false science like this needed to be evicted from the University. Roderick felt his plan falling to shambles around him and he desperately tried to calm them down. The burly professor merely pushed him roughly out of the way. The botanist's wife was at the cage, trying to soothe the young man, trying to learn his name. Matteo was afraid and confused and he didn't understand what anyone was saying, but they were furious with Roderick and for the first time in nearly two months, the ragged boy was daring to hope. Hope shone in his dark honey-colored eyes. Roderick heard the clang of the burly man's hammer on the lock and he saw his career smashing down around his ears. He got up and ran to the rope which dangled from the window. His hair hung in crazed disarray around his ears as he shouted. "All of you GET BACK!" He tugged on the rope and a swatch of curtain fell away, bathing the cage in a ray of silvery moonlight. Matteo cried out with anguish. --- The changes went fast, he tried to make them go faster as he writhed in the cage. All of the onlookers thought he was having some sort of seizure and the burly professor hit the lock hard enough to break it. Matteo's spine elongated with a painful creak and he moaned as his internal organs started to shift around inside of him. His ribcage extended into a narrow shape like the hull of a canoe. Reddish fur began to sprout from every part of his body and he cried out in agony as his skull elongated into a pointed wolf shape. The New World The reaction to my first two stories has been either vitriolic or sympathetic, depending on your own personal bent in the matter. I never thought it would get this kind of reaction. So it made me think a little more about explanations. First of all, it happened to me, so I'm not going to apologize for the decisions I made. As another famous author said, "I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. When I knew better, I did better." And keep in mind that I filled in details she couldn't remember. So she may not have been thinking those things at all. There are so many questions in my own mind about the 33 years we were married. I've had to fill in a lot of blanks myself. Yes, we are divorced now, but why did I stay in that kind of environment for that long? For one, it wasn't always bad. There were some very good times, too. Special moments we shared together. Like the three videos in "33 Years of Sex with Sandi." Second, 33 years is a long time to just cut loose and walk away from, without trying everything you can think of to make it work.. It is for me, anyway. A friend of mine has a habit of asking, when a tough situation comes up, "Is this the hill you want to die on?" There aren't that many for me, but this was one. I took her back after her affair, learning to bury the betrayal feelings over the year. Third was the kids. It's easy to make suggestions and judgements with someone else's life. And, granted, I'm probable laying it on a little thick about her hard heart because I need her to be that bad in my mind. Maybe a little self-pity there too. But, as a writer, I'm glad you feel something – anything. Isn't that what we're trying for? I will say that this next story is completely fictional. We never did this. But sometimes I wonder if this would've made her happy. If this is what she wanted all along. Is it true – "once a cheater, always a cheater?" It just takes the first two stories to their logical terminus. I'm just wondering out loud in this story about what would've happened if the situation had come to this point, and wondering what she would've done. It leads to some great stories in the future. "Do you need other men, Sandi?" The question was sincere. The look on his face was not one of anger, or hurt, or accusation. It was an honest question looking for an honest answer. You could see her brain working, trying to decide how to answer. He'd never asked a question with so much potential – destructive and spectacular. To her it wasn't the simple "yes" or "no" answer it seemed on the surface. You'd think it would be. But either answer would proliferate a dozen more questions she really didn't feel comfortable answering. It wasn't that she didn't know her answer either, she had decided years ago that she did need them. What she couldn't read from his face was whether he really wanted the truth or a lie, like she had always told him. Could he handle the truth now? What would happen if he couldn't? At the same time all these thoughts were swirling around in her head, a little seed thought nudged its way to the front of her consciousness. "What if he's serious? What if I answer 'yes' and he says 'OK.' Then what?" It was more that she could hope for. She had never even imagined he would agree to legitimize something she had been hiding for so long. Could it be? No more sneaking around, covering phone calls, no more lies. She could tell by the look on his face that this time was different than all the other times he had raised the question. All those had ended with her lying – again. He would get that look on his face that said he really didn't believe her, resigned to the fact that he had no proof to the contrary. She perceived that this was a pivotal moment in their relationship. Could she hope beyond hope he was asking with the intention of giving it to her? Part of her brain cried out, "You'll never get another chance like this, TAKE IT!" Another part screamed, "It could destroy your marriage, leaving you with nothing. It's too good to be true." In the end it wasn't her brain that made the decision for her. As she listened to the voices in her head she could feel the moisture gathering between her legs. She squeezed her thighs tighter, feeling that most desirable tickle beginning. Her mind made up, she blurted out the words, "Yes, David. I need them." Then she held her breath waiting for his next words. His expression hadn't changed at all. Then his eyes dropped to the floor in defeat and abject rejection. She didn't know what to say. She knew at that moment that comfort was impossible, at least not from her. What was she supposed to say? "Your dick doesn't do it for me. It never has." As painful as that would be, it was the truth. Well, at least a PART of the truth. The truth was that she would never feel the rush of an illicit affair with its taboo, dangerous aspects from him. She couldn't tell him that. But, it was out there now. She couldn't take it back. And from the look on his face, he already knew. He reasoned there would be no more pretending on her part, no more faking enjoyment he couldn't provide. "It's been this way our whole marriage, hasn't it? She decided to stick with the honesty theme. "No," she said softly "not until I had my first one besides you. Then, yes." "Why didn't you ever say something?" "What could you have done? You are who are." "There are things that can be done." "And all of them would have cost more money that we had. It was out of the question. We had kids, a car, a mortgage." "This is not my fault," he said. "It's nobody's fault. It just is." "I could always sense your disappointment." He paused, not sure he wanted to continue his thought. It sounded to him that he was whining. But he also recognized now that the truth was out, it was time to lay it all on the table. "But I always hoped our relationship was based on more the size of my dick. That happiness with each other was more than the measurement of a body part, whether it was my dick or your tits. How secure would you feel if I started having sex with someone because they had bigger tits, or weighed less?" "It is more, of course. We have much more than that. Can't you see that?" "Not right now, I can't. It's a basic need in a man to provide 2 things for his woman – her security and to please her sexually. If I can't do either one of these things, then I have failed you as a man. I am less of a man right now than I was 10 minutes ago. I can't please my woman sexually enough, through no fault of my own, to keep her from seeking the sexual gratification she should be receiving from me, between another man's legs. It's a massive failure on the most basic level of what it means to be a man. Can't you see that? It's like you would feel less of a woman if you couldn't have my baby." "You're not a failure as a man, David, you have always provided for me and the kids. It's just that..." she searched for the right words to diffuse a quickly deteriorating situation and get to what she hoped was coming next. "But you're not asking me to accept that you need a richer man. That you need a bigger bank book, but a man with a bigger dick? I can work harder and make more money, but I can't make my dick bigger." "No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying there's a lot of pressure on you asking you to do something you can't do physically, and you have no control over," she added quickly. He lifted his eyes to meet hers. She could see he was resigned to the situation as it was, and was now reaching for a solution. "It's you putting all the pressure on," he added. The conversation stopped for a minute. "Well, what do we do now?" he asked. But she couldn't think of any way to answer. This was going to have to be his decision. She didn't want to appear too eager, but she was hoping he couldn't smell her pussy as she rolled around the possibilities in her mind. She definitely knew what she wanted him to offer. Was it too much to ask of him to NOT toss her to the curb (she had fucked around on him multiple times – only one he knew about for sure) AND let her to continue to have her big cocks? It would be her perfect world. He sensed her hesitation. But he also realized the decision was his alone. Could he remain married to a woman who no longer respected him as a man; who was no longer faithful, and gave no indication she was going to stop seeing other men? He only knew about the one for sure, but he suspected it was just the tip of the iceberg. There were too many signs pointing to it – he didn't have the heart to pursue all the leads. He made his decision, "OK," he whispered, barely audible to her. She fought back the urge to scream out her approval, high-five someone and call her stud with the biggest, thickest cock and tell him to get naked, she would be there in 10 minutes to split her in two on his pile driver. But she held back, maintaining her serious expression. She didn't know what to say. So she said nothing. Finally, when she opened her mouth to speak, he interrupted, "I guess we can add that to our sex life." "Huh?" she managed to get out. He continued, "But we will have to manage some things before I can agree to it. That's fair. I'm giving up a lot in this." "Yeah, that's fair. I want you to be good with what we come up with together," she spoke cautiously, almost afraid of what was coming next." I spent some time thinking about this. First I want this to be a pleasant, fulfilling, exciting thing for you. I love you more than my own life, and I want you to be happy and fulfilled sexually because I love you. Since I can't give you that satisfaction, I'm willing to allow you to find that in another man. As long as you are sexually satisfied I'll deal with it without complaint. It is my gift to you. And that's only right since I am supposed to provide it to you. There are three or four basic guidelines I would like us to follow as a married couple to keep us a married couple." OK, like what are you thinking, dear?" she asked. "The first thing is: I want to have sex with you whenever I ask for it. I never want to be refused because you've been with another man and have nothing left to give me. You will never deny me, or turn me away" "OK, I can live with that. And I'll go a step further. It will not be mechanical, passionless sex either. I'll give you my best. "That makes it a lot easier, Sandi. Thank you. Next, any time you fuck another man, I will be there. It is for your safety these will be men you may not know. I would die if something happened to you because I'm not there to protect you. Plus, there is something else..." he didn't finish, as if he were reluctant to do so. "And that is..." she asked. His eyes fell to the floor as he said, embarrassed, "I want to see it." She paused with her mouth open. "What?"She asked, incredulous. He continued carefully, "Sandi, I've known I would never be able to satisfy you sexually for a long time. I could see the disappointment on your face. I tried to do things to help you enjoy it more. After a while I realized that no matter what I did would disappoint both of us. But, more than anything I wanted to see you writhing, squirming under a huge cock, your pussy stretched until it has no wrinkles in it, uttering unintelligible sounds, hearing you moan while watching you skim on the crests from orgasm to orgasm lost in ecstasy. To see you pass out from the intensity of your orgasms. If it's not gonna happen on my dick, I want to at least watch it happen on a dick worth of your body. To see you let go, to see you out of control. To attack that giant pole like there is nothing else in the universe, hungry, needy for any feeling his cock can give you, anywhere. To strip the skin off it. I want to see it ravage you in every hole, filling you with his cum till he can't fuck anymore. That's what I want." She would have to get accustomed to that, but she understands why. "OK, a little kinky, but it might be fun." "What? Like a big cock fetish isn't 'a little kinky'?" " Anything else?" "I want to film it, secretly" "Now, wait, David. That may be a problem with some guys." "Just hear me out. The camera will be hidden from view. The tapes are for personal use only. I swear to you it is only for me. I want to have a record of every dick that ends up in your pussy, mouth or ass. I am lucky to have such a beautiful, voluptuous wife who is desired by any man who sees her. A wife who could make a dead man cum. I want to have a record of every one of your conquests." "Wow. I never knew you felt like that. It's touching. I love you so much for doing this for me. I know how hard it must be." "That's putting it mildly, I'd say." His face flushed with excitement. She didn't really know how to answer. She looked down. "You're hard, aren't you?" "Damned right I am. Who wouldn't be? It makes me hot just thinking about it." "I can tell. You're making me horny just listening to you talk about it." "Well, what are we waiting for?" he said crossing to her. He held his hand out to help her up. But she hesitated a split second too long. In that heartbeat he extended his hand further, to the middle of her chest and gripped her bra through her shirt and tried to pull her to her feet. The sudden strain on the bra made the material give way tearing it in two. But the shirt held intact while the elastic in the now-torn bra snapped back uncovering her tits underneath her shirt. The nipples, in an obviously excited state, pushed out the fabric of the shirt like two bottle tops straining to break through. The buttons were pulled to their capacity but they held, at least for the moment. She screamed in surprise at his sudden outburst of passion. "Sorry 'bout that, "he said, "a little harder than I intended. But I liked it. Let's explore that a little more." As though he might hurt her a little before giving her immense pleasure. And with that he jerked forcefully down and out on the shirt, popping the buttons everywhere. Her tits, thrown in every direction settle back into their normal position, like two matching pendulums gradually settling back to equilibrium. She now caught up with his enthusiasm. She stepped back, unbuttoned her jeans and wiggled her ample hips out of them, tossing them in a heap on the floor. She stepped back, raised her arms above her head, thrust her pussy out lewdly, doing figure 8's with her hips. "You gonna finish the job, Tarzan?" He emitted a low predatory growl. But instead of ripping her panties like he did her shirt, he scanned the room looking for something. There, on the shelf, the sewing kit. He took 2 big steps back and retrieved something. He wouldn't show her what he had, but she could hear the "snip, snip." He had a mock crazed look in his eye as he approached her on tiptoes "snipping" in front of his face. She put her palms on her cheeks in mock horror. "Not that," she cried. He pulled the waist band out bunching the material and slicing through, repeating for the other side. The back and sides fell away, leaving only the tiny piece covering her pussy. Her abundant juices keeping it plastered to her, holding it in place. It was gone after a little jerk. She was naked. She planted her hands on both hips and issued a challenge to him. "Show me what you got, big boy." It wasn't meant to be anything but playful and it was received that way. He stripped and faced her, taking a football stance like a linebacker. "I'm gonna fuck you now," he said in his most lusty voice. She mimicked a fake scream, turned and ran to the bed. She jumped up and flipped over on her back. She had one foot on the bed leaning back on her elbows. She thrust her tits out, taunting him. "Think you can take me with that horse cock, cowboy?" Continuing the playfulness. "I can pack whatever pussy you got, Little Missy." He threw back in his best John Wayne imitation. "Oh, my, look at that," she said. "I told you I was from Texas. Think you can handle this?" He took his dick and waved it back and forth, walking toward her. "I don't know, hoss. Maybe I can, maybe I can't. Just don't hurt me." "I'll try to keep the damage to a minimum." He walked right up to her holding his hand in front at arm's length and kept walking until he ran into her, pushing her in the chest until she fell on her back. I was a better time than in a long time, sexually. There was no tension between them. The decision may have been the right one. He positioned himself between her legs with his dick at the entrance of her honey pot. Her pussy lips were aching for that glorious push. He leaned over, getting closer to her ear. Puzzled, she lifted her head. "One more thing, Sandi. If I ever catch you fucking another man without me there, we're finished. No second chances, no 'do-overs.' Do you agree to the terms?" The New World Ch. 02 *Sorry for the delay, I recently had to do a lot of studying and had very little time for Lit, but I hope I can churn out a few more stories now. All characters are 18+* * Brekken was the name of the Scots-Irish cook. He was a mostly strait man, but he had found out that he had a fondness for boys later in life. He liked to watch the younger sailors with their shirts off, and he often had visions of their sweet white buttocks in his sleep. The fragile boy that he kept in the anchor-chamber was the first boy he had ever fucked. Matteo lived in the tiny chamber. He never spoke to Brekken, not even to tell the cook his name. If Roderick had known how well his 'conditioning' had worked he would have been overjoyed. Brekken was not demonstrative, and the sex was frank and unappealing, but the cook went extra lengths to try and make his little prisoner happy. Every time he came down he tried to give Matteo a little gift. Matteo was grateful to Brekken, he stored the little gifts in a corner, and sometimes playing with them was the only thing that kept him from going insane. Brekken gave him little lumps of charcoal to draw on the walls with, and the walls were covered with clumsy drawings that steadily got better and better, and Matteo's hands were constantly blackened with it. He brought a little lump of the soft clay that was stored for caulking the hull. Brekken brought interesting fish bones, and feathers from sea birds, and twice he brought sharks teeth from sharks that bored sailors had gaffed. At least once a week he tried to bring an interesting morsel of food other then the stale water and hard biscuits that Matteo subsided on. A pickle, a scrap of bacon, a sip of wine, one precious time, an egg. Matteo learned to sleep. During his captivity with Roderick he had spent much of his time in a blank-eyed coma, occasionally moving to feebly scratch his healing wounds, or to relieve himself, feeling his body and mind atrophy. With Brekken he did a sort of exercise. He now had the strength to do simple exercises similar to squats and pushups. He didn't have the room to stand, but he found workouts that would exhaust every muscle in his body. He didn't know where the ship was going, and he didn't have the language or the courage to ask, but he wanted to be able to run when he got there. As a bonus, the exercise made it easier to sleep. He loved sleep, it could eat up the hours like no amount of doodling with charcoal or playing with clay could. He could sleep for up to sixteen hours at a time. It was established that Matteo did not enjoy their sex. Brekken knew that, and sometimes he felt vaguely bad about it. He knew that women loved sex when they felt good, but he just didn't have the know-how or the courage to try and make the little redhead enjoy it. One thing that Matteo loved, one thing that the frail beast needed, was the time after sex. After finishing his clumsy self-servicing little hump, Matteo on his hands and knees, the big Scots-Irish cook would gasp and collapse a little. Matteo would stay under him, loving and craving the feel of the big man's skin and warmth. Matteo desperately needed the man's touch. About two hundred years in the future, a man called Harlow would do experiments with baby rhesus monkeys. He was the pioneer of the scientific study of love, and he found that given the choice between a cloth-covered doll with no food and a wire-covered doll with a milk-giving nipple, the baby monkeys would always cling to the soft doll for comfort, sometimes for up to twenty-two hours a day. The big man gave Matteo nourishment, and gave him things to occupy himself with for the long hours of the day. He gave Matteo water to clean himself, and he daily cleaned out the pot he had left for Matteo's waste. In most ways he was the perfect caregiver of his rare little beast in a cage. But at times, Matteo would have traded it all for those few moments of intimacy. --- A month had passes. The little chamber was freezing cold despite the extra blankets Brekken had smuggled down, and Matteo spent much of his time in a warm little nest. It was loathe to leave the little pocket of body heat to eat or bathe or use the pot. Matteo had been in a blank state for the last hour, the kind of waking dreams that some call daydreaming, but absolutely nothing had been going through his head. He had been watching the faint mist of his breath waft up to the ceiling. He had taken to doing this recently, the boards of the ceiling had first become shiny with frost, and now small icicles were growing ever-so-slowly. He had perfected the act of perfect, mindless meditation, not thinking, or sleeping, but something between the two. The soft three-note knock woke him from his meditation, and a delighted smile split his face when Brekken came in. The chamber was too short for him to stand, or even to sit up comfortably. He crawled in on his knees and one hand, his bald head shining in the dim warm light from his candle. Normally the only light came from the hole in the wall where the anchor rope chafed slowly against the metal rim. At night, Matteo always stuffed this hole closed with rags to prevent the slightest ray of moonlight from reaching him. Brekken smiled at the huddled figure of the boy in all his blankets. He got in and sat down on the floor after throwing down a blanket. "Got a treat and some trinkets for you to play with, boy." He unwrapped the cloth bundle that he had been holding to his chest. Matteo sniffed the air and he could smell cinnamon and honey. Brekken gave him a cloth, which had a sticky doughy ball in it. The ball was of soft bread-like dough with the consistency of pudding. It was a treat that the sailors liked to call skilly and duff. It was bread dough mixed with honey and cinnamon and raisons. Matteo's mouth watered but he just took a little bite of the warm sticky dough before wrapping it and putting it aside. Brekken gave him his daily rations of hard bread and topped off his leather water bottle with a bit of water from his own. Today's little gifts included a massive white feather from a seabird, a blue marble, and a small wooden carving of a fish. Matteo thanked him in his customary speechless way, by taking Brekken's hand and kissing it softly. They had developed their rhythm; gifts, sex, snuggle, leave. Brekken couldn't have been more surprised when he took hold of Matteo's frail white shoulder and the boy pushed his hand away. Matteo was painfully bored, and he wanted something more fulfilling. He sometimes ached with desire and need after the clumsy bouts of sex. He wanted to make it good. He saw the beginnings of anger in the big cook's face, but he hastily reassured him in his strange speechless way. He cooed softly and gently put his own hands on the man's shoulders. He leaned forward and for the first time in the month of knowing the cook, Matteo kissed him. Brekken suddenly understood, with the boy's soft full mouth on his and his little nest opening up like a flower; he understood that the boy wanted good sex. He tried to be an attentive student. Moving clumsily in the small space, and shivering in the frigid air, Matteo maneuvered them so that the cook was leaning against the wall and the small beast-boy was straddling his hips with those slender thighs. The blankets covered Matteo's shoulders like a many-layered cape and his pale soft nipples had hardened into points as hard and small as birdshot. Matteo kissed him, their mouths clumsy and wet and slowly learning. With his small hands he clasped the older man's wrists and put Brekken's hands on his shivering body. Brekken groaned softly, feeling shivering warm skin that was pocked with large goosebumps. Brekken had always loved sex with women. Sex with the boy had been nice, but only a pleasant distraction on a voyage where he would see no women for a long time. Now it was different. His cock was hard and raging and he hadn't even touched it yet. The boy's body was yielding and willing and squirming to give him better purchase. Matteo groaned softly. It was better for him as well. Normally he didn't get hard until Brekken's long skinny cock brushed his prostate, and even then it was an accident. Right now his thick streamlined cock was bobbing, alternately bouncing against his stomach and the older man's shirt. Matteo's small clever hands found the seams and fastenings in Brekken's clothing and undid his shirt and unbuttoned his pants. It was too cold to get undressed, only to open up. And then their skin was touching. For the first time Matteo began to pant and moan with pleasure as he felt the older man's body rubbing against his own, felt his long slender dick rub against his shorter thicker one. Rub their nipples together and knead them gently with thumb and forefinger. The cooks body was not pretty, but with the exception of a shy older boy he had toyed around with, it was all Matteo had ever known. Brekken reached into the pouch of lard he kept on his belt and smeared the cold greasy stuff on his cock and more around the tender little pucker that he had fucked gently but carelessly for more than thirty days. Instead of flinching away like he usually did, the boy moaned lustfully and pushed his thin hips down so the cook's fingers went up his tiny asshole. "You like that do you?" Brekken panted. The boy vaguely understood the question, if not the words he was saying and he nodded, vigorously panting. Brekken began to jab his fingers in and out of the hot slick little hole, feeling the muscles clamp down and relax in waves. With every stroke the boy moaned and whimpered. Matteo's cries were real, but he exaggerated them so that the cook knew when he was doing something right. In a flash of inspiration the cook leaned forward and swirled his tongue around a tiny nipple, the head was as hard and small as the head of a pin. It was a trick that had made him mildly popular in the brothels near the docks, for very few of the men gave even a marginal effort to make the whores feel good. It seemed to work here as well. The little teenager cried out and rode his two stiff fingers harder, trying to make them reach the spot where he was so sensitive. Brekken removed his fingers and nibbled on the other nipple. He rested his hands on those slim blanket-covered hips and positioned the boy so he rode on top of his cock. He was so excited that he felt like he might explode. He had never been this hard, not even with a woman. He let out a raw gasp of surprise when the boy threw back his head in ecstasy and sat down on his cock. The cook was slender, and Matteo's hole was loosened from daily use, so Matteo was able to ride all the way down in one stroke. Matteo gasped harshly from the twinge of pain and the throb of pleasure. He rested for a moment, panting and laying against the cook's heaving body, and then he lifted himself into a squatting position and started to pump up and down. The cook rested one hand on Matteo's thin hip and with the other he kept his cock pointing strait up so it would keep going in and out of Matteo's hole without falling to the side. Brekken was panting and looking up at the gasping goosebump-covered boy riding him. No one had ever done anything like this, never rode him, or even been on top. It made his dick feel pressure in new ways and new places and the novel sensation was pushing him closer and closer to the brink. Instead of steadily rising, his pleasure was rushing in an exponential spike higher and faster until... "AH!!" It was a short bellow, cut short by the sudden remembrance that he was hiding a stowaway and the crew was sleeping. His climax sent a wave of heat through his body as he gasped and sweated in the freezing air of the hold. Matteo whimpered with need, he was still hard and aching and he had been near the edge himself. Brekken was too preoccupied with his orgasm so Matteo wrapped his fist around his cock and pumped with a desperate urgency. When Matteo came the release splattered on Brekken's rounded stomach and the cook's face wrinkled with disgust and in a moment of revulsion he smacked Matteo hard. With that open-handed slap all of the joy and heat and security disappeared. Suddenly Matteo realized how tiny the room was and his stomach ached with fear and nausea and the half-healed wounds on his buttock and the half-healed burns on his torso ached fiercely with remembered pain. Matteo cringed to the side and for a moment he had changed from the shy pretty boy that hid away in this room to a cowering animal with large feverish eyes in a cage. He moaned softly with fear and pain, and had a sudden urge so insistent that it was painful, an urge to see the sky, to see the moon. The cook looked down at the boy who was suddenly cowering and crying in the far corner, trying to wrap the blankets around his body more securely. He looked less like a boy and more like a badly treated dog. Brekken felt a pang of remorse and regret, and he felt sorry for the boy, but he had a stiff sense of pride, and that pride was too much for him to stoop so low as to apologize. He stood up, buttoning his pants, and he winced a little at the way the redheaded waif shrank into the corner. His voice still came out harsh and angry. "Don't come on me you little pansy. I take care of you, and I don't want you to touch me with your fucking spunk!" Matteo's eyes had become glassy and unhealthily bright, and he put his hand on the dull red weal that was beginning to show on his cheek. He didn't move from the corner until Brekken left in a huff. --- The days got warmer as they went further south. There were fewer treats as luxuries like honey and fruit disappeared. Matteo and Brekken had gone back to the usual routine of bad sex and little communication. Things had eased between them after the first few days, but Matteo still flinched when Brekken moved too quickly. One night, when everyone was drunk and asleep after having an extra dose of gin, (land had been sighted) Brekken gave Matteo the best treat of all. It was very dark, and they had already had their brief hump. Matteo watched him with concerned curious eyes as Brekken got up and opened the door to the room wide. Outside was a short hallway that was only four feet tall and ten feet long; less with a few coils of spare rope that took up some of the space. To Matteo, the tiny hallway seemed huge. His eyes had a hard time adjusting to see something far away. He stood fully for the first time in two months. Despite his exercises, his legs were weak and shaky and cramped. Brekken kept a firm hand on the back of his neck and let Matteo walk the length of the hallway three times there and back. Matteo was smiling and tears were coming down his thin face. When Brekken put him back in his room Matteo fell asleep instantly. The tiny hallway had exhausted him. --- They were in port for two days, and Brekken managed to explain, with exaggerated gestures and the few words that Matteo did know, why he wasn't going to let the boy run off the ship even though they were at land. They were at a tiny island that was nothing but sugarcane plantations and fifty acres of scrubby jungle. If Matteo was let go to roam on the island, he would be trapped and eventually starve or be enslaved or killed. To make things up to the depressed and stir-crazy boy, the cook came down with a special treat. Matteo watched curiously as the cook took a small bag of rough brown cloth and dipped a wooden spoon inside. When the spoon came out, it held a heap of what looked like rough large-grained brown sand. It was a spoonful of unrefined cane sugar. Matteo glanced at the cook incredulously when Brekken nudged the spoon at him. Why did he expect him to eat sand? Was he drunk? Brekken licked a few grains off his thumb and offered the spoon to Matteo again, insisting. The boy gave him another confused glance and grimaced a little, preparing himself for a mouthful of cold rocks. When he opened his mouth Brekken poured the little spoonful of grains onto the pink tongue, where they dissolved. Brekken watched with cool amusement as the boy's eyes went wide and round and hectic. The shock of the pure sweetness was enough to make Matteo spit out his first word since Roderick had beaten language out of him. "Sucre!" French for 'sweet.' They both looked at each other for a moment, surprise written on their faces. Surprise that he had dared to speak, and surprise that the boy could speak, and that he was French. "You could talk this whole time? I thought you were a mute for sure." Matteo looked down at his knees, his mouth still buzzing with that insane sweetness. Not understanding the words, but understanding the tone. His shoulders were starting to tremble a little with fear. Brekken had not hurt him, or frightened him since the one day in the middle of the ocean, but now he was afraid. Brekken could see the boy's fear. He was not a stupid man, and he knew that someone had beaten the shit out of this shy frightened boy. He sighed softly. "You don't have to talk." He mimed it out with gestures. "But I want to know your name." He pointed to himself and repeated his name, and put his fingers on Matteo's thin chest. The painful lock was back on his tongue, the lock that Roderick had put there. But he had already said one word, and the second word was easier. It came out after three tries. "M-M-Mat-Matteo." "Matteo." Brekken tasted the name, and that day he was very tender and careful when he heaved over the boy's slender frame. --- The journey north was swift and it got colder seemingly with every day. Brekken snuck an extra blanket down into the hold, and tried to exercise Matteo as often as he dared, for the boy was getting very thin and sickly and pale. Each time he was able to walk the narrow hallway it bettered his mood and brought a shadow of color to those pale cheeks and listless eyes. Brekken had planned on keeping the boy for the entire voyage, so he would have the tasty little stowaway on the journey home as well. However, now he could see that if he kept the boy on the ship that the little waif would waste away on the journey home. He had very little appetite, and was so listless that Brekken couldn't even bully him into finishing the increasingly stale and moldy rations. Brekken shrugged. Any lad with a strong back and enough brains to keep their ears apart could make a living in the colonies. With some food and fresh air in the colonies, the boy would live. After that, Matteo would no longer be his problem. --- Matteo moaned softly as Brekken shook his thin shoulder through the blankets. Feebly, not even opening his eyes, the boy rolled onto his stomach and thrust his naked ass in the air, shivering at the cold draft on his exposed skin. The expected intrusion did not come. Brekken kept shaking him. Sleepy and nearly comatose with inactivity, Brekken had to drag and bully Matteo to his feet. He dressed the boy clumsily in a pair of homespun trousers and the loose shirt he had worn from the beginning. He added a thick travelers cloak and Matteo blinked sleepily at the sudden warmth of the fleece-lined garment. Brekken took him through the tiny hallway and out through the deserted ship. For the first time in months, Matteo looked up and saw the sky. The stars burned his eyes like cold fire, and the moon sliced the dark cloth of the heavens in a silvery sickle. His cheeks were darkened with the cold and his feet thumped the earth in clumsy wooden clogs that Brekken had given him. Brekken led him down the thin wooden gangplank and onto a splintery wooden pier. Matteo looked down from the heavens long enough to see a black forest of virgin pines that reached fantastic heights and extended for hundreds of miles, ending at the dark jumbled lumps of a mountain range. The town had been hacked and scarred into the forest, and it looked infinitesimally small compared to the behemoth of the forest. The New World Ch. 02 Brekken nudged him onto the rough muddy road, but with sudden strength from the thin cold air, Matteo took his hand and pulled him into the woods. Their feet trudged through snow that was hard and grainy and crystalline. Snow that shushed around their feet like sand made of diamonds. Brekken let himself be pulled along, for he was filled with an insatiable curiosity. Was the boy dragging him off for a quick thank-you kiss? Would the boy try to thank him in clumsy English? Or in high fluting French? He was shocked when Matteo stripped off the cloak. He watched dumbly, shivering and clasping his bare hands in his armpits from the cold as the boy stripped quickly down to his skin. His body was cold and pale in the bright moonlight. The boy wrapped the clothes into a tight bundle about the size of a small bedroll. He tore a strip of cloth from the hem of the cloak with fingers that were trembling and starting to turn a delicate shade of blue. He used the cloth to tie this bundle tight, and leave a loop of cloth about a foot in diameter. Brekken shook his head with confusion and started forward, certain that the boy had gone utterly mad. He froze when the boy smiled at him and limped towards him on feet that were raw and red and bare in the snow. The boy kissed his hand with cold lips, and held his hand in fingers that were shaking and numb. "Merci." The strange boy whispered, his voice high and soft and fluttering, like bird, or the beat of a child's heart. Brekken watched, numb and uncomprehending, his eyes glassy with fear when the boy started to twist and change. He watched the skin distend and the bones lengthen. He heard soft hurt groans and cries and he heard the bones crackle and creak. He started to moan when he saw the long narrow jaw full of teeth and the quick growth of fur that was long and luxurious and warm on a body that was rack-thin and bony. When the massive, pony-sized wolf stopped shuddering and letting out whines of pain, it looked at him with huge eyes the color of honey. It wagged it's tail like an oversized puppy and licked his face. Brekken fell backwards on the snow and touched his face uncomprehendingly, too shocked to scream. He watched the wolf lower his head and nudge his snout through the loop in the fabric he had made, and when the wolf raised his head he was wearing a rough collar with the bundle of clothing hanging against that narrow chest like a dog tag. The wolf shook briefly and then started to move away, loping with an easy loose-jointed grace. A pace that ate up speed without eating up energy. Brekken fled back to the village, but as he entered a bar full of light and laughter and the smell of alcohol he heard the long wolf howl that was louder and clearer and fuller than any wolf sound he had heard in his life. Matteo was free. The New World Ch. 03 Matteo ran fiercely at first, but the raw and simple fact was, that he didn't have a lot of strength. The pads of flesh on his sides and flanks were wasted, and his ribs and hip bones were visible even through his thick reddish coat. The wind cut through his thick fur and froze his weakened body. The woods was alien to him. All of the scents were strange and new, and the cold bit into his sensitive nose. All of the humanity on this continent was clustered in small villages, some were filled with the white-skinned humans that Matteo had been familiar with his entire life, and he nearly ran headlong into a small hunting party of his first Native Americans. For a moment, Matteo froze, watching them. A massive red wolf with honey-colored eyes and a ruff that was sticking strait up from fear and apprehension. Three men. They wore strange footwear made from heavy hide that Matteo did not recognize with the fur inside (it was moose). They wore light-colored leggings and dangling breechclouts between their legs. Two had rough fur robes, and one was bare chested except for a sash. Their skin was a deep and weathered red the color of sandstone and their eyes were black and shocked. Matteo whimpered softly, and ran away. Each one of the braves had been holding heavy flint-tipped arrows and heavier bows. To his surprise, he could hear them speaking in a language heavy with guttural syllables, and they didn't seem fearful or surprised, but annoyed. The wolf was nothing but an overgrown puppy, and he felt exhausted and alone. He scrambled clumsily onto a bare knuckle of rock and howled at the cruel sickle of the moon. The night was slipping away from him faster then ever before, and Matteo was hungry and cold and scared. He knew that if the night slipped away he would freeze without some kind of shelter. He came to an icy stream that was still open despite the frigid air. It gushed and gurgled over the rocks. Matteo loped forward, thirsty and excited, knowing that other animals would come to the stream, and maybe he could hunt. If it hadn't been so cold he would have smelled the smoked steel, smelled the traces of man in the air. The trap was covered by about an inch of granulated snow, and the pressure of Matteo's large puppyish paw triggered it. Matteo screamed. His voice was high-pitched and panicked and agonized. He struggled and cried and ki'yi'd while struggling to free his foot from the smoked steel jaws of the cruel trap. After about a minute Matteo stopped moving, crying and panting, standing on three trembling legs. His left forefoot was red and oozing and pierced deeply by half a dozen steel teeth to and bottom. He whined and cried and struggled for the better part of an hour, then he dropped to his side on the trampled and bloodied snow, wheezing and whimpering with his furry side heaving like a massive bellows. Matteo's head jerked up, his eyes glowed in the moonlight. He could hear the three men, hear their guttural speech, smell the scent of their skin and sweat and furs. He mewed with pain and licked his foot, struggling weakly. The circle of snow around the deep buried peg was thrashed up and bloodied. The youngest man, no more then sixteen or so saw him first and cried out a warning to the other two men. Matteo looked up at them with glazed eyes and growled feebly. If not for his size and teeth, it would have been pitiful. He was obviously very weak and bloody. His ears were drooping and trembling, his tail pressed between his legs. He was crying and licking his wounded paw. He tried to stay on his uninjured legs, tried to face all three of the men at once as they spread out. His lips lifted to expose his white teeth, his eyes wide and frantic. He saw their bows, and he remembered how his own pack had fallen, weak and human and screaming as bolts from crossbows found their vulnerable bodies. The man wearing the sash was the oldest. His wiry black hair was streaked with pure white and his face was as wrinkled and shrunken as a piece of very old soft leather. He spoke to the other men in a harsh commanding tone and they obediently put their arrows back in their quivers, but the youngest one continued to touch the red-dyed feathers with his fingertips. The man neared until he was only about thirty feet from the huge bleeding wolf-puppy. Matteo made a low groaning sound and his good front leg collapsed again. He ki'yi'd loudly and just lay in the bloodied snow, panting and making those low groaning sounds. The grey-haired man began to murmur softly. The guttural words softened and became a crooning sort of chant. Matteo growled softly, but the growl turned into a whimper halfway through. The man inched closer, murmuring softly the entire time. Matteo watched him, noiseless except for his strained breath. The man halted again about ten feet beyond the reach of the short chain and he spoke softly to the trapped puppy. Matteo didn't understand the words, but he understood the compassion in them, the gentleness. His tail wagged feebly and went limp. The man fearlessly went up to Matteo, ignoring the way his fellows stiffened and called out panicky warnings. Matteo rolled onto his side and whined in what he hoped was a friendly way, wagging his tail a little. The man's hands touched the trap with utmost care and released the mechanism. He slowly pried the steel teeth from Matteo's chewed and bloody paw. Matteo gave the man's brown shriveled hand a small lick before gingerly attending to his own paw. The other braves moved in closer, and the hair on Matteo's shoulders stood up and he growled a little. The old man backed away as the red puppy slowly crawled onto his three good legs, holding his wounded paw in the air. He limped away, terribly weak and wounded and more frightened then ever. --- Matteo's progress was slow and halting. He was looking for shelter, any kind of shelter. A rotten log, a huddle of dead branches filled with leaves, a bank of earth that would provide some shelter from the wind. He had his clothes, and a thick heavy cloak. Maybe if he could find a sheltered place he could make a nest, and wolves healed more quickly than humans. Matteo licked his throbbing paw. He would still limp for weeks. Matteo sniffed under a pine tree. The sky was turning gray. The earth around the massive tree's knotted roots was still soft and sandy. He began to dig clumsily with his good paw. He managed to dig a three-foot deep shallow pit before hitting frost. He limped away and dragged back as many dry pine branches as he could find, preferably with needles still on them. When the sun peered up over the horizon, the change happened. He cried out with agony as his bones crackled and shrunk. the hair retreated under his skin with a massive itch over every inch of his body. His skin shrunk and felt too tight. His injured paw needled fiercely with pain. Matteo cringed on the dry freezing sand under the pine tree, naked and freezing. He got to work. He used the cloak to line the shallow pit and he fumbled on the trousers and shirt as fast as he could. He curled up inside the pit and wrapped the cloak around him in a tight nest, and then reached for the pile of branches near the entrance of the pit. He put as many as he could over the opening, shielding him a little more from the harsh elements. He opened his eyes in the darkness. He was surrounded by the thick cloak, and shivering. The cold earth pressed in all around him, and he could feel it against his arm and his back and his thigh. There was a little warmth in the middle, between his chest and his knees, and a little warmth in his groin and between his legs. He curled up as tight as he could, and held his hands (the injured one as gently as he could) between his legs for warmth. His breath feathered his knees and shivering chest with moist warmth, but whenever he inhaled a cold draft made them even colder. He could barely feel his feet. Somehow, frozen and hurt and half-starved, Matteo cried himself to sleep. --- He dozed feverishly all day long, and the wind was bitter but the icy fingers barely brushed his body, instead of freezing away his breath. He rubbed his numb feet with his fingers to try and keep them warm, and he breathed on his hands. He was so hungry. The pains stabbed at his belly in long waves, as if someone was drawing a hot razor blade up his stomach from the base of his groin to the hollow under his ribs. The pains wold briefly relent, and then start again. Somehow, some way, Matteo survived the long frozen day without frostbite. He nearly wept with relief when he felt the moonlight touch his frozen skin. --- As a wolf, Matteo looked up at the tiny sickle of a moon and moaned softly with fear. He had two days of moonlight left. Three, if he was lucky. He needed to find better shelter, and he desperately needed food. He licked his mangled paw, which was beginning to bear some of his weight, and limped off into the moonlight, quiet and watching. --- People have a common misconception of the superiority of predators. They imagine nature red in tooth and claw, but in reality many of the majestic predators starve to death. Matteo was afraid and slow and by himself. Even as a coordinated pack, the kill rate had been about one in five. Matteo needed to be clever, and he needed to ignore his lupine instincts, which told him how to hunt in a group. Matteo loped along and found a game trail, a thin path beaten through the underbrush by generations of hoofed feet. He also found small piles of deer pellets. Giving into his hunter's instincts and hiding his human disgust, Matteo broke the pellets apart with his paws and rolled in them, masking his scent at least partially. He rolled in several piles of deer pellets until his low pleasant (at least to his nostrils) lupine musk was hidden by the dumb grasslike reek of deer shit. Then he climbed a tree. Climbing was not instinctive, but he found a large sycamore tree with a lightning-blasted side and climbed carefully until he was on a branch overhanging the path. The bough was thick, and held his weight without creaking. He waited in that tree for two hours, silent, shivering to produce warmth, feeling the steely contractions of his needing stomach. His ears perked up when he heard them for the first time. He heard the soft heavy breathing and the small whickering noise that a doe made to her half-grown fawn. It was a small family group, two thin does and three half-grown fawns among them. Each of the full grown deer were less then a hundred pounds, and the fawns ranged from about forty to sixty. Matteo waited. Every instinct screamed at him to go for the vulnerable herd right now, but he knew that if he jumped from the tree his injured leg would collapse and these small deer would disappear like wisps of smoke. The first doe was walking side by side with her fawn, the heaviest one. They were only fifteen feet away from Matteo's branch when they stiffened and their delicate translucent ears flew into the air. Cold or not, hurt or not, exhausted or not, Matteo's reflexes were like a sun flash in their speed and intensity. The massive wolf jumped silently, his mouth gaping open and his large paws struck the doe's back, and he could feel the spine snap with a satisfying give under his paw. He cried out with the pain of his injured paw as he landed on all fours with the thrashing deer underneath him. He snarled and bit at the deer's slender throat. The doe let out a high pitched, womanlike death scream. The deer died with his teeth at her throat, and he could taste the warm blood against his tongue, and the hunger spasms had grown deeper and more intense. He had snuffled around her belly, prepared to rip it open and finally fill his aching stomach when he heard a low growl and jumped. Three massive grey wolves surrounded him on that dark moonlit night. --- Matteo's instinctive reaction was one of pitiful joy. Humans and wolves are both social animals. His very first joyful thoughts were memories from his pack in Europe. He remembered sleeping together in a huge warm wriggling mass like a group of puppies, he remembered the relative ease and increased surety of their kills, and most of all, he remembered the love and care and affection he had been shown. Even to a scrawny outsider, even to a sickly mouth to feed, his pack had loved him. He gave a whimpering joyful little puppy-bark and his tail wagged so furiously that his hindquarters were wiggling back and forth. His tongue lolled from his mouth and he limped towards the nearest wolf, ready to lick his face and maybe play a little. The nearest wolf snarled at him and snapped at his leg. Matteo yelped and cringed back. The three wolves started to circle him, and now Matteo could smell the bitter taint of rage and aggression. These wolves wanted to tear him apart. If he had run they would have caught him almost instantly, and if he had fought they would have torn him to ribbons. He made the right choice. The pitifully thin, wounded wolf collapsed to the snow and lay on his side. He looked up at the wolves and whined feebly, appeasingly. He groveled on the ground, turning onto his back to expose his vulnerable white belly and crying weakly. He turned himself into a puppy, and it was deeply against every wolf's inner rules to harm a puppy. One of the wolves snarled harshly with the sudden anger against Matteo's trick. It was as if they made a simultaneous decision, and suddenly they had all jumped on Matteo, biting and clawing, but not to kill. Matteo let out high pitched little cries of hurt as they nipped his shoulders and flanks and paws. He got to his feet and they snarled at him while he cowered, his tail pressed firmly between his legs. After what seemed like an age he began to run and they stopped nipping him. They weren't tormenting him, they were herding him, and at a breakneck pace that hurt his chewed up paw. Two of the wolves began to herd him away, a third lingered to drag the skinny doe carcass. They ran through the trees, the two grey wolves loping at his heels and nipping him hard if he made any mistakes. Blood oozed from a dozen red marks on his thin body. As the red wolf ran and yelped and sobbed for air he could smell the scents of another human village, one that belonged to those native men he had smelled, but instead of veering around the village the two wolves drove him right towards it. He burst out into the clearing of the village, panting and crying. The shelters were all rounded frames of young saplings and sturdy hides. The sky was starting to lighten, and several human women and children were in the square. They saw the small red wolf being hounded and herded by two of their own, and continued to go on with their duties. The children watched excitedly, some of the little boys were making howling noises and shouting encouragements. Matteo cowered on the hard-packed snow and gasped feebly for air, licking his paw. The two wolves circled him, making vicious snarling noises, nipping him if he moved. Matteo felt so scared and tired, and so hungry. He could smell some kind of thick mush made of corn and maple sugar, and he could see a child eating a breakfast of mush and cold slices of cooked venison. Grease dripped from the child's mouth while Matteo hadn't eaten any kind of meat besides a scrap or two of fish for three months. The third wolf came in dragging the scrawny thorn-shredded carcass of the doe. Matteo watched him change into a tall man with skin the color of cinnamon and a powerful body. He walked naked over to a woman who hugged his body and jabbered excitedly over the doe. The man was already stiffening and he dragged the laughing woman into their shelter. Matteo could hear them making love in quick harsh pants. The day lightened and wolves came from every direction. They came in bands of four or five, they came in pairs, and they came in singles. Every one came to snarl and nip and sniff the strange crying puppy in the clearing. They sniffed his shivering bleeding body and wounded paw. One wolf differed slightly from the others. Most of the wolves were varying shades of buff and grey and light brown, but one wolf came and he was furred a deep silky mahogany. His body had a leaner cast and he moved more quickly then most of the others. He loped over to where Matteo lay, miserable and panting, not daring to change while so many of the wolves were still big enough to tear a human limb from limb. The lean dark wolf sniffed, but did not bite. He even gave a deep bite on the puppy's shoulder a gentle lick with his pink tongue. Matteo looked up at the brown wolf and feebly wagged his tail a few times. One of the grey wolves snarled and nipped his flank hard, making Matteo flinch and whimper and cast his honey-colored eyes to the earth again. --- The alpha came at around dawn. The alpha was a light tawny color, and head and shoulders above most of the others in height, and about half again as heavy as well. He had a large proud head and intelligent yellow eyes, his legs were long and powerful and he had a deep powerful chest. His coat was thick and luxurious and sparkling in the weak dawn sunlight as he began to change. Matteo whimpered and cried as he began to change as well. Soon, a dozen naked shivering men and a few shivering naked women stood in the snow. Wives and children and family rushed in with fur cloaks to cover their sleek sweaty bodies in the cold. They all surrounded a frail white boy with a mangled hand and matted red hair, and their faces bore expressions of coldness and anger and hatred. A hand tangled in Matteo's hair, and the man half-led half-dragged him to a thick wooden post shoved into the ground, some ways away from the encampment. Matteo didn't struggle, he knew that his life was in the hands of this pack, and he didn't want to be hurt. The man was barely more then a boy, and he was so furious. Every touch from the young man was meant to twist or hurt. The young man bound Matteo's frail wrists behind him and tied a rope around his neck. He attached the rope to the post and left after kicking Matteo hard in the hip. Matteo shivered weakly, and wondered if they were going to leave him there to die. He remembered that warm thick cloak that Brekken had given him with longing. That little nest was still there, maybe a fox or a badger was using it now. He flinched when he saw men approaching out of the corner of his eye. He didn't dare look up, he only cowered. It was a youngish man with a muscular body and an expressionless face. He was different then the others; he had a slightly different cast of features, and slightly darker skin. His features were harsher and less rounded. He stripped away the cloak that had been covering his body and knelt so he was at eye level with the shivering cringing boy. He carefully wrapped the cloak around Matteo. He made sure that the shivering little redhead was sitting on it, and that it was wrapped over his crossed legs and folded tightly in front of his chest and that it made a little hood over his bright dirty hair. Matteo could feel a ghost of the man's body heat warming his frigid little body inside the cloak. "Merci." He whispered timidly. He started to cry a little. He was so scared and this was the only wolf in this strange cruel pack which had treated him with any sort of kindness. The man murmured something in a dialect that even Matteo could tell was different from what the rest of the men spoke. The words had a sort of rhythm to it, a low soothing rhythm. The man lingered for a moment, before touching Matteo's chest through the blanket and asking a soft question. "Matteo." The boy whispered. "Ahote." The man said softly. Matteo was so thirsty. "S'il vous plait, de l'eau potable?" The New World Ch. 03 Ahote sat there for a moment trying to think. Matteo tried again with all of the languages he knew. "De l'eau potable? Wasser? Apă? Water?" Understanding flooded Ahote's face when Matteo said it in English. "Ah, Water!" And he rushed off. --- Matteo drank clear cold water from a drinking container made out of a deer's stomach and a piece of reed for the nozzle. Ahote was attentive, making sure not to give him too much water, and wiping his mouth if he spilled any. Ahote tried to speak to him in English, for they both knew a little of it. "I not know that White man... be wolf?" His voice was low and throaty, and Matteo liked it. "Oui...Yes. Entire groups...home." They had barely spoken this when a group of men came from the encampment and Matteo moaned a little with fear. Ahote was trying to explain what was happening but he couldn't find the words, and the men were getting closer. The alpha was a massive middle-aged man with a body as hard as stone and a harsh intelligent face. His eyes were as cold and sharp and black as polished bits of flint and his mouth was a harsh frown scarred into the lower half of his face. "Ahote!" He spoke more, but Matteo couldn't understand a word. Ahote was suddenly furious and arguing, yelling in the alpha's face. If he was a wolf he would have been bristling and snarling. Matteo let out a weak startled cry when one of the nearby braves lifted a hatchet and walked towards him, raising it high to crash it down on the terrified boy's head in a killing blow. Ahote knocked the hatchet away and argued. Matteo moaned, his face was so pale against the fur wrap. The boy thought he was going to die, but whatever Ahote was saying, it was swaying them over, it was changing their minds. The men and women were talking amongst themselves and the alpha was looking at them both with that same frown. Matteo flinched when the alpha threw back his head and laughed long and loud. Ahote looked relieved for a moment, but then the alpha untied the end of Matteo's rope that was attached to the pole and held it in his hand. The chief uttered a command, and Matteo got up, shivering when the fur wrap fell from his naked body. The chief tugged him gently over to one of the shelters, and the others had dispersed, all except for Ahote. Ahote followed them, brow furrowed with concern, and that terrified Matteo. --- The inside of the shelter was small and cozy. A small smoky fire kept it warm while the smoke trickled out of a hole at the top. A lean wolf-wife with grey in her hair was weaving dyed porcupine quills into designs of black and yellow and red. She gave the naked shivering boy a disdainful glance and swept out into the snow. Matteo cried out with surprise and fear when the chief threw him facedown onto the pallet of thick furs. He saw bare flesh out of the corner of his eye and then closed his eyes tight. He tried to separate himself from his body, to not feel the rough sensations and the terrible hurt. The alpha was not like the young man who had done everything in his power to hurt Matteo, but the alpha was a strong man, and he was hung like a horse. It was an old ritual of emasculating strange males into the pack, a way to show them that they had no chance of overpowering the alpha. Matteo was very brave, and he clenched his teeth tight, determined not to make a single sound while it felt as if he were being torn in two. Matteo let out a very small whimper at the end when the alpha grunted and squeezed his skinny hips in powerful hands and thrust very hard into his tight little ass. He had only used saliva as a lubricant and Matteo could feel that something inside had torn, and he was bleeding. The alpha laughed hoarsely and gave Matteo a little pat on the shoulder. He called Ahote's name and the man came in, his face stony and emotionless. Ahote picked up the shivering little pup on the bed and carried him across the village to a small wigwam that he had built himself. Matteo shivered and buried his face into Ahote's warm chest. The wigwam was tiny, and undecorated by even a dreamcatcher. The pallet was small and rough with only one coarse bear hide on it. Matteo tried to speak but Ahote shushed him gently. Ahote fed him strips of cold cooked venison and flatbread, and he put the exhausted little beast on his bed. Matteo's eyes were already closed and dreaming. Ahote ran a calloused but featherlight touch over the numerous scars on Matteo's frail body. The small shiny weals all over his ribs and abdomen, burns. The three white puckers on the scant swell of one buttock, gunshot. A twisted dimple on one inner thigh, puncture. Torn and shiny lines on one shoulder, the original bite. That wasn't including the dozens of fresh bites and the mangled left hand. His thin face was careworn and pale and tired. He was so young, but he looked far older. Ahote eased in next to him and smiled a little when the fragile little pup huddled into his side for warmth. "You're safe now." He whispered this in the native language of the Nipmuc Indians, a tongue that was not his own." He certainly hoped that this was true. *Please tear this to shreds in the comments page!* The New World Ch. 04 *Right now I just need to do a huge disclaimer for my story. Now I KNOW that this is a fiction website, and I KNOW that ninety percent of the stories have many inaccuracies in them, and I KNOW that I probably shouldn't care so much, but I do. I know very little personally about the Nipmuc tribe, the identity that I chose for the setting of this novella. Many of the practices and clothing and crops, I'm just guessing. None of the names for the current characters and upcoming characters are actually Nipmuc, because I couldn't find any. Abequa is Chippewa, and Ahote is Hopi. I have had to put in these glaring inaccuracy because of time and research limits, and I hope that you forgive me. However, I actually did research moose for the hunting scene ^_^, and many of the little throwaway details are accurate, such as the need to immediately gut a kill so that the meat doesn't go rotten. Anyway, any errors are mine, and everything I got right is thanks to Jean M. Auel, wikipedia, and my crazy redneck uncle. All characters are 18+ Please enjoy!* Matteo was dreaming, and he could feel the warm body of another man near him. He moaned softly, and huddled in further. It was a good dream. It was good to be warm, and to be stretched out on a bed instead of curled up into a tiny ball in a dark dank hole. It was good to feel another man's body against him, a pleasure that he had briefly tasted with Brekken, but hadn't fully enjoyed since his short time with the pack. Ahote shifted in his sleep and turned so he was facing Matteo. Matteo gasped a little as the sleeping man embraced him loosely and he was pressed against his chest. Matteo could feel Ahote's limp cock against his thigh. After the initial shock, Matteo relaxed his shoulders and rested his head against Ahote's hard brown chest. It felt good to mingle his scent with another of this strange pack, maybe they would accept him easier once his smell changed. It was late noon. One of the aspects of animals that the wolf-men had inherited was the ability to always know what time of day it was. Matteo was hungry, thirsty, and he had to relieve himself. He tentatively got up, trying to squirm out of those strong protective arms without waking Ahote. Ahote groaned softly and put an arm around Matteo's thin shoulders, pulling him down. Matteo let out an annoyed little grunt and struggled out of Ahote's arms. Ahote rubbed the sleep from his eyes and smiled up at the slender redhead. Matteo gave back a shy little smile. He was shivering, and the little fire in the wigwam had burned to ashes. Ahote looked over the boy's slender body. He wanted to touch Matteo, to feel that strange pale skin and fondle those tender pink nubs on his chest and to feel that hair like red cornsilk between his fingers. But first he needed to take care of the fragile boy. Ahote rose and yawned. Matteo shyly glanced over Ahote's body as well. Ahote had a lean dark body, darker then the others in the tribe, and with an angular frame. He had long black hair which was very dark and coarse. He tied it behind him with a band made of woven grass. It fell to mid-back. Ahote's hair was different as well, all of the other men in the tribe that Matteo had seen had heads partially or fully shaved. Ahote slipped on a pair of leggings, the leggings were only tubes of soft worked buckskin that tied shut at the upper thigh with a drawstring of buckskin. Ahote covered his crotch with a breechclout of very soft pale rabbit skin with fur still on the outside. He put on a pair of moose-hide moccasins, and threw a warm shapeless hide covered in fur over his shoulders in a cloak. The clasp at the throat was made from two small interlocking segments of antler. Ahote looked at Matteo, who stood there looking at the strange clothing with interest. Ahote held his empty hands in front of him as if to say that he had nothing. He gave Matteo a spare cloak like the one he was wearing and used thongs to tie a too-large pair of worn moccasins over Matteo's small white feet. "Not have... furs. Abequa, woman will make." Matteo nodded and fumbled with the clasp on his robe, which was made from a small predator's jawbone. Matteo blushed a little. "Ahote?" When the man was looking at him he knew of no other way to signal his need but to put his hand over his crotch. Ahote understood. "Come, Matteo." Matteo followed. --- The wind was fierce, picking up snow and making the walls of the wigwams flap. Matteo tried to hold the fur cloak tight around his body, but it flapped against his thin legs. First Ahote took him to the latrine, a short walk out of the camp, a deep trench dug in the soil. Ahote waited, looking the other way as Matteo shivered and fumbled his way around the latrine. The wigwams were small personal homes, but there was a longhouse made of whole longs with a roof of homemade shingles and thatch mixed together. They went into the longhouse, where all of the communal meals were served. Women bundled up in cloaks came in with supplies taken form the raised platforms in the village. With each animal hunted, a hunter got to keep the hide and a share of the meat, everything else went to the storehouses. As they entered the warm smoky longhouse, everyone sitting on their mats and low log benches turned to stare at the pale half-naked boy in the doorway. Matteo could smell the hostility coming off of them in waves. Instantly the good feeling that Ahote had given him, as well as the hope that they would accept him suddenly dried up. Matteo looked down at the hard dirt floor and shivered. Ahote hardened his mouth into a small slit and led the frightened boy forward, bearing the hard looks. He had dealt with them for far longer. He sat Matteo down around one of the three fires on a mat made of reeds that had been dried and dyed and braided in a pretty round spiral pattern. "I will... bring food." Matteo nodded and curled up, hugging his knees, cringing under the weight of those hostile glances. Ahote was gone for what seemed like an age. The three women at the fire with him were eating something that smelled delicious from bowls. It was some sort of mush, but Matteo had no idea what was in it, other then some deer fat that had been melted in for flavor. Ahote came back. "Succotash." He murmured, giving Matteo a heaping bowlful. The succotash was a dish made with ground boiled corn, three kinds of beans, and a shred of venison fat melted in. Matteo ate it with a scoop made form a clamshell with a rounded edge. It was wholesome and filling and delicious. While he was eating it was easy to forget the uneasy hostile stares of the human villagers, but then a trio of wolves came in, two men and a woman. They were different then humans, Matteo could tell that even without the musky smell that rose from their lean bodies. They had golden eyes and a kind of loping grace. Their bodies were hard and lean and moved in hunter's rhythm. They loped over to the fire, their eyes narrowed. Ahote stiffened slightly and put a protective arm around Matteo's shoulders. Matteo was grateful to him for that, and compared to the hell he had gone through up to this point, he could handle a few stares. He bit his lip and leaned into Ahote's warm body. At least with Ahote's help he could. The oldest of the three wolves leaned forward, his eyes harsh and lined. He spat out words coated with venom, and Matteo flinched with the harshness of those words. Ahote tightened his grip possessively, but said nothing. His eyes tightened with anger and fear, and Matteo felt weak with fear. The older wolf was smirking. So were the woman and young man at his side. Ahote snarled the Nipmuc work for 'no', and he took Matteo's slender wrist and got up. "Come!" He said harshly, and Matteo ran after him, looking with terrified glances at the wolf trio, which had gotten up and were pursuing them. His robe flapped open in the fierce draft of the snow, chilling his warm skin. They ran clumsily across the snowy clearing, surrounded by rings of wigwams. Matteo stumbled and cried out as his knees scraped bloody across a rough patch of ice. He cried out as the older wolf's rough hands grabbed his scrawny hips, dragging him towards a wigwam. Ahote was struggling and fighting with the other wolves, swiping his foot under the woman's leg, throwing the young man over his shoulder by the armpit and knee. It was a strange style of fighting mostly involving holds and kicks. Matteo squirmed around and sunk his small white teeth into the swell of muscle on the man's shoulder. The older man swore and clouted him hard around the head and face. Snow stung on the tender welt on his forehead. Then a familiar musk filled his nostrils, a smell that had burned into his memory. The Alpha clouted the lean older wolf, and with his inhuman strength and immense size it knocked the wolf away instantly. Matteo scrambled to his feet in the blowing snow and looked up at the Alpha with wide, fearful, thankful eyes. Conflicted eyes, had the Alpha saved him because the older wolf was doing something wrong, or because he was the Alpha's new property? The Alpha snarled at the younger wolves to get off of Ahote, and they skulked away, slouching and not daring to look their leader in the eyes. Then Ahote ran over, his cheek swollen and blood leaking from a bruised and split place on his cheekbone. "Come, Matteo." He whispered, urgently. Then he repeated the same thing in Nipmuc. Matteo tried hard to understand, he didn't want to be ignorant of their ways and customs and languages for any longer then he had to. Matteo followed Ahote to a nearby wigwam that was not theirs. All the time he could feel the Chief's eyes burning into his back. --- The wigwam belonged to a widow who spent much of her time treating hides and making elegant clothing which she traded for her tools and belongings. The tribe would never have let her starve, but this way she kept her independence. She had suffered through one abusive husband, and she never wanted to depend on a man again. Her name was Abequa, and she was used to being treated like an outsider. She had been there with everyone else when a small bleeding wolf had been herded into the village and treated like a dangerous criminal. When her good friend, the outsider Ahote, came in with the little white boy clinging to his arm for dear life, she accepted them into her home and started to make a hot drink of chamomile leaves that she served in beautiful clay bowls. Matteo drank the hot soothing tea in small sips, holding the cloak around his naked body and warming his chilled hands on the smooth surface of the bowl. Ahote was bartering the price of warm winter clothing with Abequa. Moonrise was in less then an hour. Abequa was a woman of about thirty, with a gentle, graceful sort of beauty. Her face was round and plain, her body fit but gently curving. Her cheekbones and eyes were striking and she had exactly five strands of pure white hair twisted from her left temple down the the thick knotted braid that fell halfway down her back. She had already borne two adult sons, one who had become a wolf like his father and died after being gored by a settler's ox, the other who had married a woman and lived in a human village far away. Her cruel husband had made her pregnant three other times but beaten her into three miscarriages. It was not allowed to interfere in a marriage, but when a perfectly strong healthy wolf got a brief sudden illness that ravaged his healthy body into something as frail as a rotten reed before he died, no one seemed to consider the possibility of poison. The council had kept their backs turned for the good and the bad. Adequa's eyes were sharp, and though Matteo was covered by the cloak, she could see some of his injuries. When Ahote gestured for the boy to stand and remove his cloak so Abequa could measure him, she saw the rest of them. When she wrapped a thong with neat markings around Matteo's thin shoulders, he saw her brown eyes flicker and tear up slightly. Her eyes were on the silvery scars from the crazed and half-starved wolf that had turned him in the first place. She touched the old wounds gently. Not even half a year ago, Matteo had been a simple human farmer in France. Matteo saw the look on her face, and he knew that he had another friend; a rare and precious commodity in this strange new world. --- Matteo could feel the moonlight as surely as humans could feel the sun. The power was instantaneous and immense, flowing through him like a milky umbilical chord connecting him to his other; no, his true form. All he needed to do was reach out to wrap his mind in that brilliant chord. Ahote felt it too, Matteo could see his eyes glowing hungrily in the dim light of the tent. Abequa watched them warily, and she could feel the wildness in the air. Perhaps that wildness was a whiff of the strange and intoxicating hormones mingled in their sweat, or perhaps the smell was like the hot ozone smell of lightning. Maybe it was just a feeling, but she could sense the wolf in them, it was in the air, as thick and heavy as cloth. Matteo shrugged back his skinny shoulders from the slumped and protective position they had been in. He kicked off the old footwear and loped into the dim moonlight, his bare feet sinking in four inches of freshly fallen snow and his pale skin writhing up into a rough hide of goosebumps. Ahote followed, both naked, both starting to change. The night was filled with alien cries, grunts and moans and sobs that were animal, but just human enough to send the camp dogs and cats barking and mewling and howling and hissing with fear. It sent the game in the woods trembling and fleeing from those bizarre painful shrieks. When the human cries stopped, the wolf howls began. Pure primitive wolfsong shivering and stabbing into the icy night air, a sound to make the bravest hearts cringe. Then the pack began to run. --- The pack ran as one, thought as one, hunted as one. They ripped through the game trails beaten down by hundreds of paws and thousands of hooves, running through the ancient virgin forests like a river, separating and splitting and weaving together but never stopping. Within the tide of fifty-seven massive wolves, a small red wolf and a lanky brown wolf ran with the others, panting out silvery clouds that whipped behind them and blinking snow from their golden eyes. With the signal, a howl from the alpha, the solidarity of the pack shattered and the fifty-seven wolves split into twelve groups, the smallest being hunting pairs and the largest a band of five. All of them except Matteo knew what to do, but he just followed Ahote. Their hunting group had one other member, a hefty she-wolf with deep furless scar down one shoulder and a fur that was a beautiful pale tawny color. She led the way, while the males followed silently. Matteo was limping and panting with the pain in his hurt paw, but there was no way he would let himself fall behind. --- Many human women lived in the wolf village, admiring the power and loyalty of wolf-husbands, but the only human men in the wolf village were those disgraced and outcast by their own who sought protection and amnesty. The wolf village was a sort of exile. Men (and a few women) came for protection and redemption, for in the village your past life meant nought, and all of the surrounding villages had made a pact never to war with the wolf village. Many of the men in the village felt disgraced, for they could no longer hunt. The loud, twice-daily transformations scared the game from miles around. Only wolves had the power to run far enough to get game in one night. The storehouses were full of corn and beans and squash from the summer, but getting meat for the hungry wolf-men was a year-round undertaking. Matteo caught the trail first, nose in the air. He whined for the other wolves to follow him. He could smell traces of a strange heavy animal that was vaguely deer-like, and he recognized the smell from the moccasins he had been wearing, but he had never seen the animal before. The she-wolf growled low in her throat with annoyance and grabbed Matteo by the ruff. She was irritated with this strange pup, and thought that he was trying to undermine her authority. Little did either of them know, but Matteo had a longer snout, and more highly developed olfactory chambers then either of the American wolves. The American wolves were stronger and heavier then any of the European wolves he had ever seen, and the Alpha was far more massive, but Matteo's hearing and sense of smell and even his sight were marginally better. Ahote growled and nipped the she-wolf in the shoulder, and she growled at him. Matteo had the lowest status of all of the wolves in the tribe, and Ahote's hard won status had mostly been lost when he started sheltering the little white teenager. The she-wolf was outraged at the behavior towards her, which in her eyes was little better then outright mutiny. Then fortunately the small group of female moose moved close enough for the less sensitive noses of the American wolves to detect. The she-wolf put her nose in the air briefly, and then stalked off in their directing, keeping downwind and pretending that it had been her idea all along to save face. Ahote gave Matteo's large floppy ear a rough lick and the two outsiders followed her. --- Moose are mostly solitary creatures, occasionally herds develop, but this was just a seven-year-old cow moose and her twin female yearlings. She had given birth to them nearly ten months before and in another week or so she would be ready to drive them out. As far as moose mothers go, she was an evolutionary success, giving birth to twins all four of her sexually mature years and pregnant again. Healthy adult females were usually about 700-900 pounds, but because of a scarce winter, she was a little underfed. Either way, she was still six hundred pounds of breathing, eating, groaning meat, and both of her gawky yearlings were almost five hundred pounds. Ahote and the she-wolf hid in a close thicket of young birch while Matteo loped in a wide circle around where the moose were nibbling at young willow shoots. Matteo was terrified, and he wanted to help. Perhaps if he could hunt and pull his weight the awful hateful looks would end. He paused briefly to lick the ice from his wounded paw and continue on. The moose were getting nervous. Matteo burst out of the underbrush with a long wolf-howl. The moose panicked, and ran away from him, straying in the wrong direction! Matteo ran through the thorny leaf-bare shrubs and snarled at the listing group of panicked ungulates. They turned, lanky legs moving in all directions. Moose were nothing to laugh at, those stick-like legs were powerful and tipped with sharp spreading hooves that had ended the lives of many regular wolves, and even a few of the massive man-wolves. Ahote and the she-wolf burst from their hiding spot and the cow moose bellowed and charged at the she-wolf, furious and terrified and ready to fight. Matteo rushed in and grabbed the moose's flank with his sharp teeth, whipping his body back and forth to tear the flesh before leaping away to dodge those massive flying hooves. Ahote rushed in from the side and jumped up onto the cow's broad back. The moose was strong, but two hundred and fifty pounds of wolf was enough to make her legs buckle briefly. The calves had long since fled, their mother-bond broken by survival instinct. The she-wolf leapt in and ripped at the cow's loose hairy throat. The cow was strong, but with a wolf tearing at her flanks and a wolf breaking her spine with his strong jaws and a third wolf tearing out her throat, she finally gave up, and as the swatch of hair and flesh tore away in the she-wolf's jaws, the cow's blood soaked the snow and the spark of life snuffed out of her eyes. The New World Ch. 04 --- Ordinary wolves would have gorged the innards first, and this was an intelligent instinct to stop the rest of the meat from spoiling. The moose had to be opened so trapped gasses couldn't bloat and ruin the meat. Ahote tore at the cow's belly and the slimy bloody ropes of her intestines spilled out. Matteo felt a deep aching hunger and all three wolves closed in to have a still-warm meal of her soft perishable innards. The she-wolf had mellowed out, and wasn't quite as aggressive towards the two outsiders, though she still insisted on getting the lions share of the tender liver. Matteo licked Ahote's jaw and nuzzled into his thick furry ruff. After the cow had been drained of blood and innards, the three started to howl. Even without the innards, the cow weight too much for all three to drag home without tearing up the hide too badly. The nearest hunting group came within moments, a pair of young males who had tried and failed to catch one of the panicked fleeing yearlings. One of them was the boy who had dragged Matteo so roughly to the post. Both of the young pups bristled and snarled, and both were heavier and stronger then the cringing red pup. Ahote snarled at them, and even the she-wolf bristled. The pups were not happy, but they were outnumbered. With surprising neatness and fastidiousness, the wolves dismantled the cow. Matteo gnawed at the joints, separating the sheets of muscle fibers and popping the ball of the shoulder joint out of it's socket. Matteo was the first one with a piece ready and he ran toward's the camp with the heavy moose leg in his jaw and his head tilted slightly with the uneven weight of it. Another hunting party of three wolves joined in and the seven remaining wolves were enough to break up the moose into manageable pieces. --- Matteo was exhausted. The huge bites of steaming viscera now seemed like a mere nibble, and he hadn't yet built up his strength. He stopped, panting to catch his breath and Ahote came right behind him, with a heavy hind leg in his jaws. He dropped the leg and gave the small red pup a reassuring lick between the ears. That was another difference, the American wolves had ears that were small and slightly folded and furry, while Matteo had large trembling triangular ears that twitched and focussed in on every little sound. They made him seem nervous. Matteo got up and clutched the leg to make another run with it. Ahote kept pace with him, though he probably could have run for hours. Ahote's body was lean, but the muscle was strong and thick and swelling under his glossy coat. Matteo's body was still scrawny and lanky, and the coat was matted, and not shedding the water from the snow very well. The sky was lightening, but thankfully they were getting close. Matteo was panting and his ears and legs were trembling with exhaustion. He was cold. His large paws were tender and not used to running long distances, and his limp had come back with a vengeance. Ahote was urging him along, nudging his skinny flank and nuzzling his neck. Ahote dropped his leg as another empty-handed wolf ran by. Ahote managed to bully the other wolf into carrying Matteo's share. Fortunately the other wolf was a relaxed elder that was nearly toothless, and glad for the chance to carry something in to fool them. Matteo limped along and the change started just as he could see the wigwams a few hundred yards in the distance. His skin shrank and itched and his bones twisted and broke and healed. His spine creaked and his skull compressed. His mouth opened in a tortured wail that was half howl and half scream. Then it was just a frail shivering teenager slumped in the snow with a lanky muscular man next to him. Ahote was strong in human form as well. He ignored the moose leg he had been carrying in favor of picking up Matteo. The teenager slumped his matted red head against Ahote's strong chest and Ahote ran barefoot through the snow to bring the little one to the wigwam. --- Matteo fell asleep instantly as soon as Ahote dropped him on the pallet. Ahote looked at the exhausted trembling little beast with a wry smile. He felt possessive, and aggressive whenever anyone looked at the pup wrong. Looking at Matteo's vulnerable back and tender buttocks awakened a deep hunger in him, and he felt the sudden urge to mount the slender redhead. He knew that Matteo wouldn't fight him, maybe whimper a little, maybe cry a little. Ahote gritted his teeth. These were bad thoughts, and it wasn't just lust he felt for the little pup. He felt a certain kinship, both being outsiders, and the little pup had a weakness in him, a vulnerability. The pup had been through hell, and Ahote could see it in his every movement. He could see it in the fearful cringing movements, the way he curled up in his sleep, the devoted gratitude in those pretty honey-eyes whenever Ahote was kind to him. Ahote put a clay pot of snow over the fire, and kept adding snow as it melted. When the water was warm he took a very soft piece of rabbit skin that had been scraped paper thin and translucent and semi-absorbent. He soaked it and started to clean the dirt and sweat from Matteo's thin little body. Matteo groaned and gave him one of those pitifully grateful looks. He rolled over so Ahote could reach his back easier. Ahote enjoyed cleaning the pup, especially when the tired boy moaned or sighed with pleasure. Matteo turned over again and Ahote cleaned his smudged face. He traced his sensitive fingertips over those elegant pale cheekbones, stroking a little where there was a light tracing of pale freckles. Matteo looked up at him, looking vulnerable and sweet and needful. Ahote moved slowly, feeling a dull red-hot heat build up in his groin. He wasn't even getting hard yet, but it was the slow excited heat of foreplay. Hardness would come later. Ahote moved slowly, he couldn't be forced to go faster. He ran those sensitive warm fingertips over the well-shaped, almost feminine curve of Matteo's red eyebrows. He touched the hollows of Matteo's temples, and then Matteo parted his lips and let out a needful little moan as Ahote ran his fingertip down pink softness of that full lower lip. Ahote leaned in and held his face less then an inch away from Matteo's. Their lips were a fraction of an inch away, and they could feel each other's breath. Their noses were touching lightly. Ahote waited for Matteo to make the next move, kneeling by the pallet and feeling his cock stiffen and grow new life. Matteo whimpered softly and leaned in. Their mouths collided and opened, hungrily tasting each other's breath until it was hard to tell where Ahote ended and Matteo began. They were only touching with their mouths, Ahote's hands were gripping the edge of the bed, and Matteo was holding his body up with his arms. Ahote gently broke the hungry kiss. Matteo's hair was newly mussed and his cheeks were rosy and blushing. Ahote found this feature adorable, and unbelievably sexy. Matteo's lips were wet from the kiss, and parted and gasping. Ahote shushed him gently, amused and smiling, and immensely enjoying the calculated denial of the ferocious heat baking from his groin, denying the need only made it stronger. Ahote pushed him onto his back with a gentle brown hand. He wrung out the cloth and gave Matteo a dazzling and mischievous smile. Matteo smiled back shyly, his eyes glowing with something like worship. Ahote was not a virgin. He had experienced two lovers in the pack, both brief, both in the heat of the moment. There were fifty-seven wolves, forty nine of which were male. Only thirty women in the village, and many of those were with human men. Brief flings with other men were common. He had never just played like this, and he deeply enjoyed it. Matteo squirmed a little an let out a mewling little cry as Ahote roughly mouthed his neck, sucking to make a deep red mark, marking the boy as his own. Ahote picked the cloth back up and rinsed the thin torso, following the rag with his eager questing mouth, tasting Matteo's tender white skin and lingering whenever Matteo let out a sexy little cry of pleasure. Ahote was enchanted by Matteo's soft tiny pink nipples. They were so small and pale and sensitive. Pinching those tender pink buds between his teeth was enough to make the pup cry out and thrust his hips in the air. Ahote put his arms around Matteo's slender waist and raised him up to mouth and suck those sweet little buds. Matteo put his hands on Ahote's shoulders and wrapped his legs around Ahote's torso, crying out with arousal as Ahote growled softly and nibbled. Ahote could feel something hard and moist and insistent pressed against his ribs. Finally, lust broke through his careful denial. He threw Matteo to the bed and lunged forward, holding his body between Matteo's sprawled legs and trying to find the pup's asshole with his fingers. "No! No!" The surprised but firm command cleared away some of the red lustful fog around Ahote's head. Suddenly, Matteo's hands were on his slick muscular sides and Ahote was too surprised by the sudden denial to fight back, or even to be angry. Suddenly he was on his back and Matteo was straddling him, kneeling on his lean abdomen with those slender white thighs spread. Ahote looked up that beautiful strange body, from the mane of wavy hair to his pretty pale face, and slender white chest marked with red suck- and bite-marks. A long slender cock bounced perkily from a tuft of golden-red pubic hair. The head was red and swollen and peeking from a pale foreskin, the head part was shiny and overflowing with precome. Ahote watched a droplet spill over and land among the clear pearls of sweat beading his ridged stomach. He watched a small flicker of fear in those golden eyes, before it disappeared and Matteo clumsily spoke. "No, still hurt. Leader." Ahote felt a pang of guilt like an icicle in his gut. What the hell had he been thinking? It had barely been a full day since the boy had been roughly used by the Alpha. Matteo's expression was sultry and warm and experienced. "This instead." It was Ahote's turn to gasp when Matteo lay his thin body so he was pressed chest to chest with the other wolf. He moved his body slowly and sinuously, rubbing against Ahote's muscular body, lubricated by their sweat. Then Matteo moaned and used his small pale hand to hold their cocks together and hump his hips slowly and shallowly against Ahote's hips, feeling the heat and hardness of each other. Ahote roughly and possessively cradled the back of Matteo's neck with one hand and with the other he pressed down on the small of Matteo's back, forcing their hips to rub together harder. Their mouths pressed together and Matteo was uttering frantic little cries while Ahote let out rough pants and their bodies writhed with a feverish intensity. Matteo climaxed first. He let out an excited cry into Ahote's chest and thrust his skinny hips extra hard. Ahote felt hot droplets smearing all over his groin and abdomen and went shooting deliriously towards the edge. Both were exhausted, and both went to sleep almost moments after their release. Their breath went from quick and urgent to slow and raspy. They didn't say a word to each other. But they fell asleep with Matteo nestled in Ahote's arms. The New World Ch. 05 *Hey everyone! I want to apologize because this chapter is gonna be pretty short, even by my standards. I just wanted to post it because I'm busy and I haven't posted for NW in a while. I just started college, plus I'm trying to finish Boy from the Sea and work on Tenderness. I even have another Bottom Tier chapter I'm working on. I'm so busy! and I never should have started so many threads, but I can promise that BFTS and NW both only have one chapter left. I'm gonna wait until only Tenderness is open before I even THINK about starting another one. -_-' Enjoy, all characters are 18+* When Matteo woke up, it was late afternoon and his stomach was raw and aching for food, and every muscle in his body was sore and stiff and shrieking. He rested in Ahote's arms for a moment, loving the warmth and gentleness of the man who had saved his life. Then he feebly tried to get up, without much success. His muscles were too weak and sore, and Ahote had a firm grasp around him. The walls of the wigwam billowed with rough winds. Matteo gave Ahote's arm a playful little nip and Ahote got up with a growl and a playful nip of his own. Matteo could feel the stiff prong of Ahote's morning wood in the cleft below his buttocks. Ahote was ready for the morning, but both of them were starving and sore. Ahote leapt up and left the wigwam, explaining very slowly in Nipmuc that he was going to get food. Matteo was trying so hard to learn the new words that his forehead was wrinkled with effort. Matteo wanted to settle down for a few minutes, but he was sore and the pangs in his stomach couldn't be ignored. Also, he had to use the latrine. The slender boy got up and started to stretch. He moved slowly and jerkily, like an old man. He slipped out into the bitter winds with the cloak wrapped around his shoulders and quickly pissed into the snow. There was a huge driving snowfall, and his bare feet sunk in about eight inches of fresh snow. After taking care of his bladder, Matteo ran back into the wigwam, shivering. He huddled on the bed in the warm spot that had been made by their bodies. The fire was burned to coals, warming the wigwam to about fifty degrees and adding some light. Matteo huddled under the heavy bearskin covering, stretching his stiff legs under it. Matteo put a few thick branches into the fire from the little pile of wood outside the wigwam. The flames flared up a little and sent warmth into Matteo's shivering body. The wigwam lit up slightly. Ahote came in with two wooden bowls in his hand. Succotash, with slices of fatty delicious moose over the top. Ahote smiled warmly and murmured something in Nipmuc. Matteo reached for a bowl. Ahote wrapped them both in the bearskin wrapping and they ate the filling succotash and tender moose with their hands, licking grease up from their fingers. With careful gestures, and a mixture of English and Nipmuc, Ahote told Matteo that they would be going to a special bathing lodge. A place to get warm and clean. Matteo looked at his smudgy skin ruefully, and nodded eagerly. Ahote wrapped him carefully in the cloak, and helped him put on the pair of oversized moccasins. When Ahote tied the clasp under his chin, he gently kissed Matteo's hollow cheek. Matteo kissed him back, on the lips. Ahote felt a surge of lust for the slender boy in his bed, but it was time to warm up. Matteo was so stiff and sore from last nights exertions. At this point, the sweat-lodge would be medicinal. Ahote made the kiss gentle and chaste, and led Matteo out into the blowing wind. --- The sweat lodge was a small room that was underground. It had been dug in the summer, and there was a roof of small logs chinked with mud, and the opening was a flap of deer-hide. It was only visible because of the churned and muddy snow around it and a wisp of warm sweaty smoke that escaped every time the flap opened. Ahote dragged the half-limping Matteo underground, and they were in the two-room sweat lodge. The first room was merely warm, still separated from the main room by another tent-flap. It was an annex, and the floor was covered with bundles of clothing that had been shed, and tightly woven baskets filled with melting snow. The two men stripped. Ahote put a possessive, protective hand on Matteo's thin shoulder before entering the steam room. The hot air hit their lungs like liquid lead. The steam room was a tiny circle of mats to sit on, around a deep pit of glowing coals. There were tongs made of wood to reach into the fire to grab a stone and drop it into an earthen jug half-filled with water. When all of the water evaporated, the lowest-ranked man in the sweat room would dump the stones back into the fire and refill the jug from the melted snow in the annex. Matteo froze a little under the hostile, curious stares of the men in the sweat room. He felt vulnerable, and was glad that Ahote was holding him, claiming him. There were six other men in the sweat room, and they all stared as the two foreign wolves picked their way around the fire pit to an open spot. The six men stared with open curiosity. Matteo's body was very pale, and turning pink in the moist heat of the steam room. His hair all over, even the tufts under his arms and the patch above his penis and the fuzz on his chest was all that same bright red as the hair on his head. He looked skinny and small, almost like a child in comparison to them. It was stiflingly warm, but Ahote could feel Matteo trembling next to him. Ahote put his arm around the boy's frail shoulders, and Matteo gratefully leaned into him, closing his eyes so he could no longer see the stares of the men. The stifling heat was soothing, and soon Matteo was dozing. All of his limbs felt warm and relaxed. His breathing was shallow and soft. Sweat dripped slowly down his slender white body. When Matteo was flushed and panting, Ahote and he got up and left the steam room. They plunged into the snow, naked and gasping. They ran naked back to the wigwam and dried off inside. --- Matteo felt more then clean, he felt invigorated, limber, whole. The steam bath had been a rough stimulation of his sore body, but now it felt so incredible. He lay on the bed, feeling simultaneously exhausted and invigorated by the experience. Ahote built up the fire with a few sticks and then he slid into the bed. Matteo moaned softly with excitement when Ahote took the young man into his arms. Ahote was slower now, more careful. Matteo tilted his head back in a soft moan when the other man gently flicked his tongue against his tiny pink nipple. Matteo let his eyes fall shut and he buried his hands in the damp thick silk of Ahote's long hair. Matteo guided his lover, and Ahote let himself be guided. He lapped and sucked and gnawed on those tender little nipples as Matteo moaned and writhed. Matteo led the older man's head until their lips met in a hungry kiss, full of teeth and tongues and breath. Their lips were bruised and tender from the kiss, from the passionate intensity of it, and from the rough love bites to each other's cheeks and lips as their naked bodies rubbed together in a sensual slow dance. Ahote's hips thrust his thick cock between Matteo's thighs, and Matteo squeezed his legs together to provide friction and pressure. Ahote groaned and bit Matteo softly on the chin, fucking the tight sweaty rift of Matteo's legs. Matteo whimpered whenever his cock was crushed between their stomachs. His arms clung tight to Ahote's neck as the other man fucked faster and faster. Ahote groaned when Matteo bit his ear, Matteo whimpered when Ahote scraped his teeth along his neck. They bit and nipped and scraped, making each other snarl with sensation. Their eyes glowed like honey in the dim light. Ahote raised himself and pressed the swollen head of his cock against the bright red head of the younger man's cock. The flesh was hot and slick and wet, and their precome mingled and dribbled down the sides of their cocks in thick sticky streams. He stroked the tips with his fingers, mingling the precome further and bringing it up to his mouth to taste. Matteo hungrily sucked on his fingertips. He started to stroke them together, snarling softly under his breath and biting Matteo's soft sensitive neck. Matteo whimpered joyfully and bumped his hips softly, eagerly into his lover's hand. Ahote came first, with a growl and a whimper. He kept stroking Matteo, who bit Ahote's shoulder as he came. The two men went limp on the bed, and fell into an exhausted slumber. --- Tonight would be the last night anyone would be able to change for three days. The moon had been a tiny silver tracing the night before, and this night it would be nearly nonexistent, and it's power would fade at any given moment. The sun was visible in a break in the clouds, and it made the fresh snow glitter gently. Matteo yawned inside the wigwam and peeked out to see. The cold air made his face feel very warm. He ducked back in and jumped up on the bed where Ahote still dozed, giving his ear a playful bite. "I... hunger." He said the Nipmuc words slowly. The tense was wrong, and his pronunciation was terrible but the sleepy Ahote roused himself and gave the boy a fierce hug. "Excellent Matteo! You are doing well!" He spoke slowly and carefully, so Matteo could pick up some of his words. They both got dressed, Matteo in the cloak and moccasins. It was warmer then it had been in several days, and Matteo nudged his pale face out of the hood to feel the cool air. They entered the eating lodge, and it was filled with families and couples and friends eating their evening meal. All heads turned towards Matteo, and he felt the familiar sick feeling start up in his stomach. Ahote put a protective arm around him. Dinner was roasted moose meat dipped in maple sugar, and succotash on the side. Matteo ate until his stomach was a tight drum and his lips were smeared with grease. He felt so good after eating, that the stares didn't bother him as much. That was, until the Alpha came in. Ahote went stiff. The Alpha was ruler of the wolf clan, and he had the right to claim any mate as his own, for as long or as intimately as he wanted. The Alpha normally never bothered anyone, his wolf-wife kept him happy. If it had been anyone but Matteo, the Alpha would be crossing lines. But Matteo had no family line, no prestige, no background, no power, and his only friend was an outsider himself. The Alpha sat in the circle and a young girl leapt to bring him a trencher of succotash and moose. The Alpha's golden gaze rested on the lowered head of the trembling new pup. Matteo couldn't help all of the submissive gestures he was making. He was small, submissiveness was in his genes already. He was in a hostile place with hostile wolves and he was new and small and strange. He couldn't help the way he looked at the floor, with his arms crossed defensively across his chest and his eyes darting around and his hands trembling. He couldn't help the clammy sweat on his hands and under his arms that was thick with the submissive reek of fear. Ahote was different. He had lived as a wolf on the wild plains. He knew that he was faster and more vicious then most of the wolves in this room, who had never had to run hundreds of miles to attack fast huge buffalo with no pack-mates or other hunters. He had never been part of a pack until he joined this one, and he wouldn't let this big smug old leader fuck his fragile little puppy just because he could. The smell coming off them was tremendous for every wolf in the room. The Alpha smelled of confidence and strength, but aggressiveness was coming off of him in waves. Ahote was a lean bundle of thorny aggression and protectiveness. Under the tense hormone-charged smells of the two bigger wolves, there was the sick fearful smell of the pup they would fight over. Matteo looked back and forth between them, trembling and feeling his eyes sting with tears. All he had ever wanted was a pack to run in, why couldn't the new world be more like the effortless, close-knit pack that he had belonged to in Romania? Matteo clung to Ahote's arm and whispered in his ear. He spoke in a clumsy mishmash of French and English and Nipmuc, hoping that Ahote would somehow understand. "Please Ahote, please no fight. He kill you, he strong!" Ahote trembled with rage, but the puppy was begging him. Begging him not to start trouble. Stone-faced, he got up and walked Ahote to Abequa's wigwam, feeling the eyes of the Alpha following them. --- Abequa had pulled through. The clothes she gave Matteo were not decorated, but plain and functional. They fit perfectly. Matteo pulled on a pair of soft well-worked buckskin leggings. They fit very well. Abequa already had the buckskin, and she had worked through the night with her measurements to get them just right. She also gave him a plain buckskin loincloth, and a bearskin cloak with the rough warm fur on the inside. Matteo paraded the clothes around the wigwam, smiling shyly when Ahote and Abequa complimented him. --- The Alpha was outside, Matteo could smell him. The thick masculine musk of the Alpha reached Ahote, and the young man looked at the entrance to the wigwam and growled low in his throat. Matteo went to Ahote and hugged him tight around the waist. "Please. Please not make angry. He hurt you." The pain and emasculation showed in Ahote's furious black eyes. Abequa realized what was going on. "Ahote, I thought that he preferred women. Why is he harassing you and the boy so much?" Ahote's eyes glittered with rage. "He... He likes how small Matteo is. He likes how Matteo submitted and did not fight back or cry out. He likes Matteo's coloring. We need to leave! I will not share him!" Ahote was throwing off a bitter alkali scent of jealousy and rage. Matteo could understand the basic gist of what he was saying, and he hugged Ahote harder, his nose wrinkling at the rank bitterness of Ahote's scent. "Please Ahote." He whispered, not even really knowing what he was asking for. The door flap was pushed aside and the Alpha strode in, his upper body bare and crusted with melting snow. Abequa stood, furious. The Alpha had just entered her home without permission, a startling breach in trust and etiquette. Abequa had been about to scold him, but then she saw the dangerous look on that seamed stony face. The two wolves could smell the waves of dominant pheromones pouring from the Alpha. Matteo flinched and held on tight to Ahote. He didn't want his lover to get hurt, and he didn't want to submit to the Alpha again. The waves of scent made him dizzy, and brought out the submissive impulses in him. Ahote was behaving oppositely. He was standing up, his lean impressive body bristling with muscle, his teeth bared and his eyes furious. If the moon had risen, he would have changed into a wolf in an instant. He would protect the frightened puppy huddling behind him, protect Matteo at all costs. "If you leave, you may never come back. If you take someone with you, that is treason, and you will be hunted down. The pup will stay here with us." "He is my mate!" Ahote raged. "And you are hurting him. You will not touch him again!" The tension in the room was thick, and silent except for the crackling of the fire and their breathing. Ahote was taking a dangerous stand, proclaiming himself as a minor alpha, in control of his mate, and obliged to share with no one. The Alpha was physically stronger and faster and larger then a human, or even a wolf. When he lunged for Ahote, the young brave swung at him but missed. Matteo shrieked with fear and Abequa put her arms around his thin chest, dragging him away from the wrestling warriors. The Alpha got in close, ignoring the way Ahote struggled and clawed and bit, fighting like an animal. The Alpha smothered Ahote with his superior strength and size, wrapping the writhing young man in a bear hug that would have shattered the ribs of a normal human. Ahote struggled and wheezed for air. When his movements got weaker, the Alpha threw him to the ground and roughly yanked off Ahote's loincloth. Matteo had been cringing with Abequa in the back of the wigwam, but when he saw what the Alpha was trying to do, he went insane. Nothing could have prepared the Alpha for what came next. It was beyond any of his experiences or foresight for the smallest weakest and lowest ranked member of the pack to attack him. It was against all of their laws, the rules that were deeply inbred in every wolf. The Matteo that had the courage to fight the Alpha for his mate, that Matteo was entirely human. Matteo went for the head, clawing at his eyes and mouth. A pair of small even teeth sunk deep enough to draw blood into the Alpha's shoulder. A foot collided with his vulnerable kidney. The sudden and unexpected weight of the boy on his shoulders threw him off balance. He fell, shattering a fine clay pot that had been in Abequa's family for generations. Clay shards cut both of them, adding metallic blood to the mishmash of aggression and fear and jealousy in the room. The sound that escaped the Alpha's mouth was a roar of pure rage. He twisted around, agile as a cat. Matteo let out a feeble cry as the Alpha forced him onto his stomach on the clay shards, cutting him over and over, yanking and tearing the seams of his new clothes. Matteo let out an anguished cry as the Alpha tried to force his massive cock into the pup's ass, barely penetrating an inch because he wasn't fully hard yet. Ahote rose and smashed the Alpha with a thick log of firewood. The blow struck the Alpha on the forearm and shattered the bone. The Alpha howled. "We must go!" Ahote snarled, pulling the sobbing bleeding pup to his feet. They ran out just as the tiny sliver of moon rose. They changed, moaning and grunting with the pain, hearing the cries and calls of men running to find their wounded Alpha. Two wolves, one brown and one red, fled into the night, sprinting as fugitives away from the village. The New World Ch. 06 *This is a short pitiful chapter, I realize. But I got caught up in my classes, and I feel I should compensate for how long I was out of the circuit. All characters are 18+* Matteo and Ahote only had a few minutes of a head start. Soon the entire pack was howling after them. Howling for their blood. They had injured the Alpha, and they would die. The night was eerie and dark and full of shadows. The moonlight was weak, and the stars winked like cold diamonds. The trees seemed stark and menacing, and the snow crust was treacherous, holding their weight at times and at other times letting them crash through. The only sounds were of their panting breath and the angry howls of the pack. They had a chance, a single solitary chance. If they kept moving and stopped for nothing. Ahote was lean and fast, used to running great distances across the plains. Matteo was even faster, a quick little thing. They just needed to keep running, and they did. They ran west, towards the distant mountains that blotted out the stars. They ran, and the howls faded, but that meant little. It just meant that the pack was saving their collective breath for running. They found a game trail and followed it, Matteo in front of Ahote. Ahote refused to let Matteo out of his sight, even while running for their lives. Breath plunged from their open mouths in white clouds. The tiny moon was cold, and the stars even colder. --- They had drawn themselves a lead of about a mile. It was a margin of safety, they still ran at breakneck speed, but they had at least one mile. It was Matteo, speedy, exhausted little Matteo, who smelled it. He veered to the right, and Ahote followed him, confused, but trusting his lover. Soon, he could smell it too. It was a large flat clearing, and the skeletons of old wigwams stood out of the deep snow like dead trees. They had almost no time, but they did have Matteo's supersensitive nose. Matteo snuffled in the deep snow, gasping for air, his thin matted sides heaving. He fastened his teeth around a large ruined hide. The hide was stiff and old, chewed by mice and at one point, a fox. It was thick, and it was heavy. Matteo nudged the frozen stiff hide into a sort of ball, and Ahote picked it up. After another precious moment of sniffing, Matteo picked up a discarded spear from the snow and they started running again, this time laden with the things they needed to survive. --- They splashed through streams. Ran until they could no longer hear the baying of the wolves that pursued them. Ran until the great power slipped away from them, and they fell in the snow, their bodies trembling and steaming and naked in the deep snow. They were exhausted, but they had to keep moving. They were in a rocky area. Low rocky hills cut by countless streams. Boulders jutting from the frozen earth like the knucklebones of giants. The huge evergreens had given way to birch and aspen and maple. Matteo and Ahote were blinded with snow, and utterly exhausted. Ahote looked around, holding Matteo's tiny slick body in the freezing cold. He saw the cave. The cave was a tiny crack at the base of a gigantic split boulder. The rock rose in a craggy triangle from the stony ground. Ahote dragged Matteo and the hide and the spear to the crack, and slid inside. The inside was dark and tiny. An irregularly shaped chamber, narrow and tapered. Filled with rotten nuts from some squirrel that had used the crack to store their cache. The bottom of the cave was soft with clumpy dark loam and dead leaves, little snow had reached the inside. Ahote was frozen. He had to start a fire, this place was small, if he could start a fire, then they would survive. Matteo was barely concious, shuddering weakly in his arms. Ahote curled him up, and wrapped the filthy stiff hide around his tiny body. Ahote ran naked into the cold, knowing that he only had minutes until they froze to death. They were naked and their energy reserves were depleted. They were soaked with sweat, and they were so weak. He only had this one chance to save them. Matteo shuddered in the cave, the hide held in enough heat to revive him, he felt as if his energy was just leaking away, like water from a sieve. He tried not to fall asleep, he stared at the entrance numbly, shuddering and struggling not to let his eyelids droop. He was so cold. So cold that his limbs were burning and numb at the same time. Ahote ran in his face crusted with snow that wouldn't melt because his skin was too cold to melt it. He had a handful of birchbark, the thin outer sheets of it that were powdery, and filled with a natural combustable oil. He had a strait stick and a thick log in the other. He crouched on soft cave floor and made his firedrill, shaking with cold. Matteo crawled over to him and draped his tiny shaking body over Ahote's icy shoulders, wrapping the hide around them both, trying to transfer any scrap of energy or warmth to his lover, to help him. Ahote groaned. The cold was like a physical pain. He stripped the bark from the log in several swift deft strokes with the sharp stone spearhead from the weapon that Matteo had taken from the village in his jaws. The spearhead was broken, but still very sharp. He made a flat wood surface, and gouged a small notch in the flatness. He shredded the birchbark into fine hairs with his shaking hands and gathered the thin papery bark in a ball of fluff near the notch he had carved. With that, he sharpened the stick he had brought in with a few scraping strokes of the spearhead and started rolling the stick in his hands. Making fire with a drill was a long laborious process, and Ahote fumbled several times, forcing him to start over. Matteo was barely conscious when Ahote crowed with delight, and Matteo smelled the tiny wisp of smoke. The tiny red ember was precious and fragile. Ahote blew on it, and prodded the finely shredded birch bark towards the tiny dying ember. A tiny flame took hold. The wisp of blue was no larger then the nail on Matteo's littlest finger. Ahote fed shreds of birchbark into it, and it grew. Ahote put dead leaves in it, and finally, a handful of thin twigs. Matteo opened his eyes and saw the tiny fire, burning gamely, but with almost no fuel. Ahote got up and ran back out into the snow, snarling at the cold. Matteo huddled around the fire, scrabbling along the ground for dead leaves and twigs. The fire was life, the fire was their only chance. Ahote came back with an armload of thin sticks, and a heavy pine bough covered in green needles. He blocked the thin entrance with the branch, and it did a little to block the drafts that kept whistling in. Ahote fed the little flame with twigs, and then slightly thicker twigs. He ran out to get more firewood, and Matteo ran out with him. They gathered up a stockpile of sticks and branches in the front of the cave, to block the entrance and the icy winds that came through. Ahote and Matteo huddled together, the stiff and curling hide around their shoulders, the fire's heat warming them. They sat so close that they nearly singed, but their backs were frozen. "We made it." Matteo whispered, softly, and in French. Ahote didn't understand the words, but he thought he understood the gist. He lay down on the soft bed of dry loam and crunchy leaves. Matteo lay in the curve of his body, as they curled around the fire. The hide was wrapped around them. The exhausted wolves fell asleep. --- Matteo woke up, shivering. Ahote was gone, but the place occupied by his body was still warm, so he didn't panic. He shoved a thick dead bough into the fire and sat up, huddling under the stiff hide. He watched the fire lick around the damp bark, making it steam. He watched the wood singe, and steam, and finally, reluctantly, catch fire. He was hypnotized by the warm orange tongues of flame. Those flickers of light, and the ragged hide on his shoulders, were the only thing keeping him alive. Ahote lurched in, shuddering, his skin shiny and dull from the cold. Matteo jumped over to him, and wrapped his body and the hide around Ahote's shoulders, gasping at how cold his lover was, and trying to transfer his body heat. Ahote dumped an armful of branches and twigs near the fire, and shuddered. They were both weak. Hunger gnawed at their stomachs. Their fast hot wolfish metabolisms were the only thing keeping them alive, but it would also kill them. They would be very weak if they managed to survive for the three moonless days. Ahote eventually stopped shivering so badly. He built up a wall of snow near the entrance. Matteo blinked at the sudden warmth. Drafts still whistled through the bare hole near the top of the snow wall, but more heat was retained. He let the hide slip a little from his shoulders. Matteo knew what he wanted. He gave the hide to Ahote and scraped together armfuls of leaves over the softest bit of loam. He took the hide back and threw it over the pile of soft sand and leaves. It was warm enough so they both shivered, but the fire warmed their naked bodies. Matteo shivered. He was still sore, but he wanted to know his lover, and know him fully. He didn't know if he would live or die. He lay on his back on the hide, and beckoned his lover to him. "Ahote." He whispered, spreading his slim creamy thighs. His genitals were soft and limp, but as he spoke his lover's name, his cock twitched. Ahote was crouching a little ways away. His golden eyes glittered. He crawled forward, and Matteo shivered when he caught the young brave's scent. Strong and musky and dominant. Just the scent of his lover made his muscles relax and his cock twitch and his asshole loosen. Matteo turned over. Ahote growled at the sight of that long pale back, those tender vulnerable buttocks. The lustful, submissive way he held himself, the naked need in those soft honey-colored eyes. His red hair was matted, and still the color of a sunrise. "Take me." Matteo whispered, trembling. Ahote wasn't touching him. Ahote was so close that he could smell the thick dominant musk and feel the body heat on his skin and feel Ahote's eyes on him. He breathed in small puffs, and flexed his body sinuously. He slowly, luxuriously stretched his body so his back and buttocks pressed back into Ahote's taut chest. Ahote lunged, pressing Matteo's body down, dominating him with nothing more then his body and his scent. Matteo shuddered with delight. His man was strong, and dominant. He demurely spread his legs and lowered his chest to the ground. He turned his head to the side, his cheek against the rough stiff hide. He looked back as his man leaned forward, pressing the long muscly whip of his body fully against Matteo's skinny back and buttocks. Matteo whimpered as he felt Ahote's thick length grinding between his buttocks. He leaned back, shivering and moaning at the feel of Ahote's strong body. The fire snapped and flickered, and Ahote growled softly in his ear, before nipping the tender lobe. Ahote spat in his hand and slathered his cock with the simple lubricant. He spat on his finger and reached into Matteo's spasming little asshole. Matteo hissed softly, and relaxed. He worked hard at relaxing the muscles that Ahote was prodding and massaging. He writhed as Ahote jabbed his prostate, sending a wave of warmth through his body and making his cock throb. It wasn't enough. Ahote lowered his head and grabbed the pale taut globes of Matteo's buttocks and pulled them apart. Matteo let out a gasping snarl of surprise and arousal when Ahote drew his tongue from the base of Matteo's scrotum, up the perineum, and across the tender knot of muscle that spasmed at his touch, and ending with a swirl and a nip at the dimple above his buttocks. Matteo gasped and trembled, clutching handfuls of the hide in his fists. He pushed back, groaning when Ahote stuck his tongue inside his tender asshole. Ahote's mouth was wet and insistent and probing, slicking him up. His tongue plunged inside, loosening him up. With every brush of his prostate, Matteo felt his anus relax, felt himself become more open to Ahote. Ahote raised himself, and spat on his hand to rub more saliva onto his thick cock. Clear liquid, precome and saliva, dripped from the fat head exposed by the withdrawn foreskin. "I love you." He whispered. First in Nipmuc, then in English. Matteo whimpered and repeated the Nipmuc words before thrusting back, impaling his slick little opening on the tip of Ahote's cock. He gasped, and Ahote growled with pleasure and thrust his hips gently. Matteo squealed with a mixture of burning pain and pleasure. Ahote snarled and trapped Matteo under him, nipping and sucking on the side of his neck. Matteo gasped and pushed back, tears streaming from his eyes as Ahote's cock slid into his bruised and battered asshole. He yelped when Ahote's cock scraped across his prostate. Ahote pinned him to the ground. Ahote was panting and gasping and pushing back into Ahote. He writhed back, making his man fuck him harder. The pain was huge and burning and intense, but Matteo embraced it, and it melted into the most intense kind of pleasure. His cock scraped against the hide, leaving a streak of moisture. It was a battle of dominance. Matteo was under, but he was aggressive. Ahote had to snarl and grab his shoulders, pounding his hips, trying to make Matteo submit, but the young red pup wouldn't bow his head, not yet. This was love, wolf love, with snarling and biting and bruises but a fierce loyalty that could never be contested. Ahote bit Matteo's shoulder, and the pup snarled, looking sideways and up at his man, teeth bared, but eyes hotly burning with love and need. His pale back bowed and suddenly Matteo's snarls softened into moans and gasps. Soft girlish submissive sounds. The fire left his eyes. Ahote snarled with victory and lowered his flexing upper body. Sweat dripped down their limbs, making their skin glisten. Muscles and tendons moved under the skin like living things, bones jutted, making them look gaunt and sinewy and fierce. Ahote pressed his chest to Matteo's white back. He could feel his lover's spine, feel the muscles writhing, they were lubricated with sweat. He moved his arms under Matteo's armpits, and clasped his hands behind Matteo's neck like a full nelson. Matteo submitted, whimpering with joy, arching his buttocks back into the repeated thrusting of his lover's thick cock. Ahote was over him fully, flexing his bronze buttocks in the rippling warm light of the fire. He had his small red lover pinned completely to the hide, with every long stroke forced Matteo's cock against the hide, making the pup gasp with need. Matteo gasped with need. "Ahote!!" He screamed. Ahote pulled back, and slammed his cock into Matteo's ass so fast that their thighs made a clapping sound. Matteo snaked his hand down to stroke his rock-hard cock. His hand was slick with sweat and precome. They came at the same time. Matteo screamed and arched his body to be pressed into Ahote as much as he could. Ahote bit Matteo's shoulder hard enough to bruise, marking him. The lovers went limp on the hide, Ahote had the sense to pull the side of the hide over them both. In a few minutes, the sweat on them would cool, and they would be frozen, but for now they each felt like they were suns, radiating heat and love. --- The pack found them at midday. The wolves were expert trackers. They had been scouring the banks of the stream tirelessly. They had brought a tent, and clothing, and food, and weapons. A fire burned merrily in their makeshift camp. They knew that the two fugitives were nearby, naked and helpless. After a number of hours, they were only looking for their bodies in the snow. But then they found Ahote's bloody footprints. They smelled the smoke and the sweat and the sex from the tiny cave blocked with snow, and the scouts ran back to get the Alpha. Matteo was wrenched from his deep exhausted sleep by a hand wound in his hair, yanking him outside. He fought, snarling and suddenly shockingly awake in the freezing ice-laden air. Ahote was subdued as well. The attack was too quick. They were too tired, too weak. Matteo cried out weakly as his arms were wrenched behind his back. The man, the young brave that had been so cruel to him when he had just entered the village, he was the one wrapping thongs around Matteo's thin wrists. The Alpha stood over him, looking down at his conquest. He didn't look pleased or greedy, just coldly satisfied. Matteo flinched away from the Alpha's stare, and tried to crawl to Ahote, his tiny body freezing in the dry cold air. The Alpha barked a sharp order, and the braves dragged the naked wolves away from the stream bed. Dragged them back to the camp. Ahote would be exiled for good, and Matteo would be taught his place. --- The tent was plain, four tent poles wrapped with a flexible hide and a flap for the door. It was wide and low, a glorified lean-to against the bole of a massive tree. A small fire kept it warm. It was a cramped place for the six braves that the Alpha had brought to capture the fugitive wolves. Matteo was thrown to the ground-cloth near the fire pit. The young brave, the cruel one, he took leather thongs and tied the frozen puppy's ankles together behind his back. Matteo whimpered with the pain of his sore muscles. His eyes were swollen and red from weeping. He shivered as the warmth of the fire washed over his naked frozen limbs. It was dry and warm in here, the fire's warmth filled the tent, unlike the cave where the fire had just kept the stone's cold at bay. Ahote was hogtied and thrown over to the other side of the tent. He didn't move. His eyes were closed, but his muscles were flexing, testing the soundness of his bonds. The Alpha stepped in, nearly filling the tent. Matteo flinched, and he smelled the bitter alkali stench of jealousy from Ahote. Matteo cringed when the Alpha knelt down. Ahote smelled his puppy's fear, and he snarled low in his throat, flexing hard against the thongs, so hard his skin chafed and broke. The Alpha stroked Matteo's cheek, and the pup cringed away. He looked away, feeling sick. He didn't want Ahote to see, not so soon after they had known each other, not so soon after they had become one. He let out a small noise of anguish and frustration and a deep-welling hatred. The Alpha looked at Ahote scornfully. "You are a poor mate. This pup is an outsider. He is weak, but you put everything on the line for him. You attacked me, and fled from your home. You are banished Ahote. If you are seen or scented within our territory ever again, you will be hunted down like a mongrel." Matteo did not understand all of the words, but he understood what was happening. He struggled against his bonds in a single heave. He cried out with the pain and anguish and anger. "Non!" He sobbed. "NON! No! Nein!" He screamed no in every language he knew, and struggled against his bonds. The Alpha and the other wolves stared at him coldly. In their eyes, his pain was childish. He cried out like a child, so they thought of him like a child. His meager status lowered even further in their minds. He wasn't the bottom rung of the ladder, he was under the dirt. Ahote nearly went into a paroxysm of fury. It didn't matter that he was being exiled, that had been the threat from the start. The Alpha was tormenting his mate, and the hot stench of his lust was filling the room. The Alpha wanted to take Matteo then and there. Ahote's bindings cut into his skin, and red trickles ran down his tense limbs. The leather thongs squealed under the pressure, but held. The New World Ch. 06 Matteo was crying. He tried to roll his hogtied body over to his lover, but the Alpha put a foot down on his shoulder. Matteo froze. The noises were unbearably loud, the smells unbearably strong. He could smell sweat and body oder and bitter alkali jealousy and hot lust and satisfaction and leather and wood and ash. But he could also smell something else. So faint, that he could barely pick up on it. A mixture of wool and exotic wood and sweat tinged with alcohol and hair oil and goatskin gloves. Ahote stopped his struggling when Matteo made a horrible noise. The little red wolf was utterly exhausted, and had barely been able to struggle and cry only moments before, but now he was screaming. The scream was a high-pitched keen of fear and alarm and warning. He was bucking and struggling like a fresh-caught fish, his eyes were wide and glazed with panic. "Run!" Matteo shrieked in Nipmuc. Then he switched to French, unable to recall a word of any other language. "He's here Oh god he's here he's gonna kill us we have run! Roderick's here he's going to put you in cages we have to RUN." Wolves have instincts, and something about the pup's sudden manic terror put a chord of fear in all of the wolves in the tent. Four braves ran outside, and one of them let out a high warning cry as the faint smell reached his less sensitive nose. Matteo had stopped screaming and was just struggling. His wrists were so small, so slick with sweat and snow and blood. The leather stretched, and suddenly one skinny arm and chafed fist was free. The tent was empty, the warriors were surrounding the tent with spears and bows. Matteo let out a low bawl of pain and effort as he freed his other hand. He squirmed like an insect over to Ahote, kicking his ankles, trying to get the thongs from his feet. He attacked the leather bonds on Ahote's wrists with his blunt human teeth, grinding and tearing with sudden panicking strength. Matteo tried to flee as he was, naked and panicked. But even desheveled and bleeding and insensed with rage, Ahote retained an iota of sense. He grabbed Matteo's arm and forced him to stay while he took two thick buckskin robes from the corner in which they had been carelessly thrown. Matteo took the cloak from him with barely concealed panic, and ran for the door, dragging his lover behind him with a wiry desperate strength. Ahote ran with him, feeling the urgency trembling in every line of Matteo's body. Outside, they ran. They ran through snow that sunk them up to their knees. Through the line of braves readying themselves for a fight with an unknown adversary. Matteo let out a broken cry of fear when the gunshots came. When the screams came. Darts tipped with sleeping poison hissed through the trees, released from blowguns. Matteo ran, his senses fogged with fear and gun-smoke and adrenaline. It wasn't until Matteo sank to his knees with utter exhaustion that he realized that he had been running alone. *I may do the same for Alone at the End of the World... I wanted it to be a nice self-contained trilogy, but I agree, It's been a while.* The New World Ch. 07 Roderick had gotten funding. The sight of the massive red wolf that broke out from the university had been more then enough evidence of his work. His dream, an expedition to the Americas, was finally realized. The Americas were better then he could have possibly expected. The wolves were all Natives, and they lived in a single tribe. The tribe was far away from real civilization, but there were plenty of savages for hire that would lead him to his prize. Plenty of savages for hire that would use his exotic blowgun and hunt the creatures for him. Savages that were tired of competing with the wolves for game and territory. The news just kept getting better and better, until the only thing standing in Roderick's way of gathering specimens, was the large numbers of wolves and warriors at any given time. And even that problem went away when one of his scouts told him that a handful of the wolves were going on some sort of raiding party. Just in time for the new moon! Roderick was pleased, things were finally going his own way. Now he had eight stellar specimens to bring back to the university. Each one was stuffed in a crate. He had one day left of the new moon, but he didn't take chances. The crates were all lined with blankets and straw, and on the heavy sledge they were covered with canvas to prevent the slightest ray of moonlight. His guards walked on either side of the sledge, leaving soft footprints. Roderick had wanted to ride his horse, but the horse had gone into the team of animals pulling the sledge, so he just followed in the deep track that the sledge left, feeling slightly dispirited at having to walk at the end of the line. The guards were a little tense and uneasy, but they were quick to reassure him that the moon wouldn't be full for another day or so. And Roderick planned to be within the town limits by then. Inside a walled and fortified settlement that passed for a city in this rough ungodly land. --- At the same time that Roderick's party pulled into the walled fort at the side of the ocean, a scrawny limping little pup staggered into the Nipmuc camp. Warriors gathered. The little redhead reeked of blood, and he was wearing a buckskin robe that still smelled like the alpha. The braves dragged him into the lodge. Abequa ran behind them. They dropped him by the fire and the little pup curled into a ball near the flickering flames. Matteo's eyes were swollen and red and his body was thorn-scratched and frozen and scarred. "All... Gone." He whimpered. He babbled in french deliriously. Abequa shoved through the braves and threw a trencher of succotash in front of him. Matteo fell on the food like an animal, shoving the warm mixture of beans and corn into his mouth. It was impossible to communicate. None of them knew English, and Matteo knew less then a handful of Nipmuc words. Instead, Matteo reached into the fire, regardless of the flames that singed his hands. He took out a stick with a nub of charcoal on the end and scrawled on the hide under his scratched and bruised knees. His drawings were rough, but surprisingly elegant. In a couple of scratches he scrawled a cave mouth and two figures within. He scrawled rough figures outside the cave, but pointed to the figures in the cave. He pointed to the smaller one. They understood. He and Ahote, hiding in a cave. Matteo shivered and coughed, his vision greying out as he did. A brave kicked him, not roughly, a nudge. He blurred the entire sketch with a few sweeps of his hand. The charcoal stick would no longer draw, he reached for another, his captive audience yammering with impatience. He circled the two figures of himself and Ahote, putting them in the center of a group of figures. It took a little longer to puzzle this one out, but everyone figured out that they had been captured by the Alpha. Especially when Matteo drew one of the figures large and menacing, with a wolf-head instead of the simple circles he had been making before. Now it was the hard part. He kept the drawing, and he drew a sketch of a wolf head on each of the figures. Just three lines, an open mouth and a triangle ear. Then he made other figures circling the wolves, and he pointed to his arm, comparing his pale skin, and pointing to the figures. "We need to save them." He whimpered, his yellow eyes glazed with exhaustion. "Roderick. Roderick has them." --- Ahote woke up inside a crate with his head pounding and his body shuddering with cold. He was in a tiny crate lined with straw. His sharp nose was filled with the alien stench of the white man's town. Unfamiliar animals and foods and metal and cloth and chemicals. He caught the thick fear-scents of his pack. He could identify the Alpha and a few of the braves. Wolf blood filled his nose. They were wounded. Ahote scratched at the side of the crate, and the wolf in the crate next to him scratched back. "Where are we? Where is Matteo?" The brave next to him was Ahmik, the young man who had been so cruel to Matteo from the very start. Ahmik had argued loudly for the little teenager to be executed. Now he could smell Ahmik's blood, and the pup was moaning softly. "No." The young wolf snarled through his pain. "They didn't get your bitch-puppy. We're in one of their cities... My leg is burned... The bastard burned me..." He didn't know if the boy was lying or not, but he couldn't smell Matteo. There was no light. When he jammed his fingers through the cracks in the crates, he could feel the woolen blanket with his fingertips. It was so small in the crate, and Ahote could barely breathe. He threw his shoulder into the wood. If the crate had been normal, it would have splintered under his assault, but the crate was bound with metal. It resisted his efforts. "Give up Plainsman." The burned pup spat. "It's useless. You'll just drain your energy. We need to attack these bastards when they least expect. You know a little of their tongue, so listen when they speak, and tell us what's happening." Ahote cradled his head in his hands. "Yes... Yes, of course." Matteo was free, but where was he now? A blue-and-ivory corpse in the snow? A bundle of sticklike limbs huddled in a cave? Prone in the snow with arrows jutting from his back? Torn by the bullets of the white men's guns? Burned. Ahmik said that he had been burned. He remembered running his lips and fingers over the shallow half-healed burns on Matteo's chest and legs. The pocked sores on his legs. Was this who poor scrawny Matteo had been running from? Ahote groaned and curled up, trying to stay warm and preserve his energy. He needed to be strong, needed to get out. Matteo might be alive, and he needed to find his little red pup before anyone else did. --- The town was surrounded by a wall of logs. The slim logs were sharpened to points, and though uneven, the wall was sturdy and reinforced with struts that dug into the earth. Dark shapes wove through the trees. A raid of this magnitude had never been done before. And that is why it would work. Matteo padded his bleeding paws through the snow, lifting his muzzle high into the air to smell at the cold wind. The alpha's wolf-wife sidled to his shoulder, looking at him, baring her teeth. The red pup looked up at her, she outweighed him by at least sixty pounds in this form. He nudged her shoulder and pointed with his nose towards the walled city surrounded by farms. Then he started to run, running in a wide circle in the virgin forests, going around to where the tree line met the ocean. The wolves followed him, a silent toothed swarm. --- The city had even higher walls facing the ocean, to protect against pirate attacks. What they also had were wide cargo doors. The scrawny wolf at their head loped to the wall, hugging his skinny body to the logs, far from where the lanterns cast their glow at the gates. He waited ahead of them, with the pack slinking in the trees. Matteo changed. He changed into a naked human boy. He ran to the cargo door and knocked on it, screaming for help in hysterical French. The wolves in the trees shifted and snarled, the redheaded boy was betraying them. The wolf-wife lunged from the trees, ready to fun forward and tear the little palefaced boy in half. The cargo door slid open. Matteo screeched a single syllable and suddenly he was changing. It had been a ruse all along to get the man to open the door. The wolf-wife changed her attack, she switched from running to the writhing boy in the snow and she darted into the cargo door, knocking the terrified watchman onto his back and tearing out his throat. The wolves came from the woods. A flood of them entered the town on silent feet. They followed Matteo, who's nose was more sensitive, and could find the subtle wood smells of their own kind in the midst of the harsh unfamiliar scents. Wolves who would never bow to the fragile pup under normal circumstances followed him, crouched with terror in the new and frightening environment. Matteo was confident. He led the pack through silent deserted alleys. It was the witching hour, and the only ones awake were those who guarded the gate, and the singe watchman that they had allotted to the sturdy cargo gate. He could smell them. He could smell wolf blood, wolf sweat, wolf scent. The others were starting to smell it too. The warehouse was a huge low building locked up with chain. The alpha and captured wolves were inside, but the wolves on the outside needed to find a way in. Matteo was the one who climbed the stacked crates on the side of the building, sniffing and scratching at the heavily thatched roof. It was made of a hundred tightly-packed bound sheaves of hay, surprisingly strong and weatherproof. But not wolf-proof. Matteo paced as others tore at the haywire with their teeth and paws, growling at the cuts on their muzzles and tender noses from the snapping wires. They dug holes in the tightly thatched hay, and scrawny Matteo was the first of them to squirm through the slit in the roof. The warehouse was packed with crates of tea and liquor and stacked timber. Matteo navigated the narrow maze between tall stacks of crates. Fat wharf rats squeaked and fled from the shadows that slid in through the roof and sniffed around the warehouse. Matteo felt himself changing into his human form. He was too far away from the moonlight that diffused through the gouge in the roof. He continued on foot, running naked through the warehouse, smelling his lover in the stale salty air. He came to the crates. Eight tiny wooden boxes, each filled to the brim with living cargo. He smelled his lover, and ran to the third crate from the left. "Ahote!" He gasped. "Ahote, Ahote." He clawed his fingers between the boards, trying to rip them out with sheer strength. Ahote kissed his fingers where they clawed through the crate. He glanced around, frantically. The wolf-wife ran to him, holding a sharp metal gaff in her hands. She prized the gaff between two of the boards in the crate and pulled up, making the square nails creak and squeal in the dry wood. One board popped off. Matteo reached into the space to touch Ahote, touch his lover, his face. The wolf-wife pushed him rudely away and prized away another board. Ahote squirmed out, his body cramped and splintered and bruised. He took Matteo and held the skinny pale boy tight to him, burying his face in the wild tangled mane of soft red hair. "You came for us." He whispered, leaving a gentle love-bite on Matteo's neck. Matteo whimpered and squeezed him all the tighter, he had Ahote in his arms, everything was going to be alright. The wolves convened. There was only an iron gaff and a harpoon between them to prize open the crates, so it took some time. The wolves in the crates were cramped and barely able to move. The alpha and Ahmik had been 'conditioned'. They had raw burns on their chest and arms. They moved slowly, in great pain. The group moved through the warehouse, and as they got into the light, they each changed into wolves. They leapt up the tower of crates to slip out of the hole in the roof. Then they slipped out of the city, as shadows. The only evidence of their coming was the giant footprints in the snow, and the mangled body of the unlucky nightwatchman. --- Many of the wolves that had been in the crates were exhausted, too weak to go any further. But none were as exhausted as Matteo. He limped badly, whining each time his healing paw hit the ground. He fell twice, each time to be nudged gently to his feet by the lean mahogany wolf whom he had given his heart. The alpha was also showing signs of weakness, and he led his pack to a village that wasn't their own. Matteo saw the fur on many of the wolves back's ruffling. They were all uneasy. As they got closer, he smelled the differences of the village, the slightly different way they had of tanning their furs, the differences in the way they prepared their food, a slight undercurrent of difference. When a scout spotted them, the alpha changed into a human and spoke to the man. Matteo understood a little of it. He was humbly asking for shelter. He was asking for charity, and it was killing him to do it. The scent of shame and discomfort wafted from his skin. Matteo felt a fierce joy for it. To see the alpha punished in any way for his crimes. The scout welcomed him and the wolves. The wolf pack had a relationship with the other villages that was strained to say the least. The scout was bringing the pack in not out of charity, but for politics. If this village aided the wolf pack, the pack would be in debt to them. Both parties understood this. Many of the stronger wolves went back to the main village. The wolves that were weakened by captivity, as well as a few of their relatives and spouses, limped along to the neighboring village. Matteo had lifted his wounded forepaw and was staggering on three legs. The people in the village came out to stare. Stare as the large wolves crumpled and shrank in on themselves. As bones crackled and fur retreated into skin. They watched with uneasy fear and loathing. For a while, the wolves had been close to gods, but now they were just another tribe with the strength to destroy villages. A tribe that scared away game and had caused a rash of activity from the white men. To see them like this, vulnerable, and wounded, it was dangerous for both parties. Matteo shrank from a limping wolf to a semiconscious human. He clutched his aching arm to his chest, mewling over it. Ahote was weakened and wounded, but he still had the strength to take the tiny wounded boy into the longhouse with the rest of the diminished wolves. The Chief appeared. He was surrounded by his friends and his two wives, both the older and younger. He looked into the lodge and saw seventeen wolves. They were naked, some were scratched and wounded. One of them was white, shuddering and huddling into the arms of an outsider. Matteo was so cold. His body had reached the limit of his endurance. For months he had been malnourished, cramped, abused. Here he had been wounded and abused. He had had two brief days of food and rest, and then his desperate escape. When he had gone to the village they had listened to him, let him lead them. They had only given him a single meal. His body was wasted and sick and slick with sweat. He looked around. Ahote's powerful arms warmed him, bundled him up close. The older man was shaking, too. Matteo saw the chief. Saw the man with the sash and the greying hair. Matteo tried to stand. He was too weak. Ahote stood with him, acting as a crutch. Matteo walked in small weakened steps to the Chief. "Merci." The boy whispered to the Chief, showing the man his mangled arm. Recognition flashed through the elderly Chief's eyes. The half-starved white boy was the reddish wolf that he had freed from the trap. Matteo was shocked and happy when the Chief spoke to him in moderately fluent French. "You are the puppy, the red one who had been captured by the iron trap. How is it that there is a white Wahyeh?" He used a word that meant wolf-spirit in Nipmuc. Matteo smiled. "You know my language. Across the sea, there are many like me. We lived in the wilds, persecuted, hunted. We were hated by all. I ran to a tribe far away from my own land, and they accepted me, adopted me into their family. Then a man from the west, Roderick, came and slaughtered my new family. I was the only one who survived, and he kept me in a cage. I escaped in the moonlight, and I hid on a ship that would come here." The Chief frowned as Matteo shuddered and nearly fell. The little red pup was nearly comatose. He barked a command to his wives. They ran to the storehouses. "We will talk more, but for now, rest." To Ahote, he said. "Take him near the fire." Ahote brought the skinny boy back to the fire, and tried to hold him close. Matteo curled up and nestled himself in his lover's lap. He rested his sweaty forehead against Ahote's chest. He felt the fire on his back and his eyes closed, and he fell into a state of semi-consciousness. The Chief's wives came back with more women. The women brought blankets and dried meat. The women started cooking big clay pots of succotash. Ahote shook Matteo awake long enough for Matteo to gnaw a strand of dried venison. As the sun rose, Ahote pulled a heavy fur wrap over them both and Matteo got to slumber deeply and undisturbed in his lover's arms. --- The wolves arose sleepily one by one. They nursed burns and bruises. It was late evening, but the moon had yet to make an appearance. The chief of the neighboring tribe didn't skimp in his hospitality. He made them a meal that could only be described as a feast. Dried apples and roots garnished an entire roasted wild pig. Succotash sweetened with maple syrup, and thick warm slabs of corn bread. The alpha frowned, knowing that the neighboring chief was trying to put him further in debt. Matteo ate, stuffed his face. He ate until he felt too heavy to move, and then he rested lazily on the reed mat, leaning into Ahote's arm. He felt sleepy and stuffed. He rested his eyes. He and Ahote had communicated. Through their limited shared words and through charcoal drawings. They knew what needed to be done. They needed to escape before the alpha tried to reassert his authority. There was always the chance that he would learn the errors of his ways, and try to live in harmony with them. But even if he tried to make amends, nothing could forgive what the alpha had done to them. The moonlight hit their systems and the wolves ran out into the snow, their bones crackling and fur pushing out of their once-smooth skin. --- Abequa was sad to see them go. She helped them. She rolled up supplies, mostly dried meat and clothing, inside two massive hides. One of the hides was a soft ground-cloth with fur on one side and the other was a low protective roof-hide made of tough moosehide. She fashioned the hides so they could be bound shut with a simple knot of leather thongs. She fastened the heavy bundles so they could be worn by wolves, the thongs would go around the front limbs and the bundle would rest behind the shoulder blades. She showed them how to tie and untie the bundles, how to put them on while they changed. Before they left, the skinny redheaded boy hugged her tightly, and Ahote thanked her. She tightened the last knot. "Will it be good Ahote, to return to your original hunting grounds?" Ahote smiled. "We will be alone. I am something of a freak accident. But as long as I have him, I will be content." Abequa touched Matteo's skinny shoulder gently. "What do you mean?" Ahote sighed. "I was bitten by a feral wolf. In the plains, wolves are feared and hated. They are hunted. But there are places with no people. There are places that we can thrive. As long as I have Matteo, I can go back." The New World Ch. 07 "Be safe." She murmured. "Farewell." The wolves changed, their backs humped with their cargo. Matteo licked her face. He was so skinny and small. His foot was still hurt, but he had gone through so much. He was ready to work for a little longer. The tribal wolves were strangely absent. The pair of outsiders were glad. In their first disastrous escape, they had fled to the north. This night, with the sliver of the moon high above them, they ran to the west. The snow was brittle under their feet, but their large paws kept them aloft, like snowshoes. When the morning came, they gathered wood in their wolf forms. When they changed Ahote swiftly started a fire with flint and steel while Matteo draped the ground cloth on the exposed earth on the lee side of a large submerged rock. Matteo propped the top cloth at a low angle, weighing down the edges with rocks and fastening the highest point to a natural protruding nub of rock on the stone outcrop that they were protected by. The fire burned at the side of the tent, heat baked through the hide wall. The shivering wolves gnawed on dried meat inside the tent. They rested on the soft fur of the groundcloth and Ahote covered them with a soft heavy cloak inside the tent. They're bodies heated rapidly. The temperature inside the tent was seventy degrees. Compared to the wretched survival in the cave, it was toasty. Matteo turned so his face was pressed to Ahote's chest, and he kissed the warm smooth flesh. He spoke a few soft words that he had learned. "Love me Ahote." Was what he whispered. --- Roderick was in the warehouse, looking down at the shattered crates. He sat on a bale of tightly packed wool and wrote in his journal by the light of a lantern. He needed to plan, he had ideas of how to capture new specimens for the new moon. He had ideas of luring wolves into traps during the last stages of the moon. He drew up plans for his traps... great spiked pits, running nooses, nets. His mind thrived with ideas. He heard a ripping sound. He looked up from his drawings, and suddenly there was a hole in the low ceiling. Right where the old hole had been repaired. Roderick paled as he saw dark shapes swarm into the warehouse. He got up and ran for the door, stumbling. He dropped his lantern and burning oil splashed all over the bale of wool, and spread quickly to the massive piles of cut timber that had been prepared to be sent back to England. The flames spread to the ceiling fast, and Roderick was lost in the smoke, it was a hellish inferno. He was surrounded by men and women. Tall naked people, with dark skin and dark hair. The men had their scalps partially shaved, had tattoos inscribed in their skin. Their skin shone with sweat, and in the light of the fire they glittered like statues of bronze. Roderick brandished a broken plank at them, panting and coughing. He gasped with relief when he felt a draft of cool air. The fire was burning through the roof. Burning bits of straw fell from the ceiling, and cool air rushed in. His relief changed quickly to horror as moonlight fell on the Natives that surrounded him. A truly massive man stood in front of him. Easily seven feet tall, with a body like that of a god. Roderick recognized the specimen that they had been forced to build a bigger crate for. The specimen that he had 'conditioned' with a red-hot poker. The man grinned, and Roderick screamed as he saw those square white teeth begin to change. --- As a man named Roderick was torn to pieces, Matteo was experiencing a different kind of death. Ahote was over him, crushing him to the ground cloth, warming him. His cock was buried deep in the little white wolf under him. His teeth were clamped on Matteo's shoulder, his hands wrapped around Matteo's body, holding him as close as humanly possible. With each stroke he ground his cock into Matteo's prostate. In french, a phrase for orgasm is 'le petit morte' or 'the little death'. Matteo snarled and turned around so he was on his back. He held Ahote tight to him as Ahote fucked him in deep powerful strokes. Ahote's stomach crushed Matteo's cock into his own stomach. The friction, the penetration, the heat and the lust and the sweat and the love all combined and Matteo arched his head back and wailed as he died the little death. --- When the two wolves woke up, it was nearing evening. Soon they would pack up and continue their journey, but for now they stayed close, held each other in the dark, enjoyed the closeness. Matteo rested his head on Ahote's smooth hard stomach, gently kissing a small burn. Ahote touched a burn on Matteo's shoulder. "Roderick?" He asked quietly. Matteo shuddered, and nodded. Ahote combed Matteo's soft red hair with his fingers, stroking his scalp. "You might not understand me, but this is a dangerous journey. But if we make it, we will be in the great plains. There are no other wolves, and we will have to avoid people. I don't care. I will have you. We can make a life out there." Matteo didn't understand a lot of it, but Ahote's voice was soothing, low and rhythmic. He snuggled closer to his lover. They had known each other for so little time, but wolves in general were both practical and pragmatic in a way that few humans could hope to achieve. Both of them were already in love. They knew that they were made for each other. --- JUNE --- The moon was full. It was huge and white and regal, shining down on the tall grass. The herd of bison was only a small part of the greater infestation that swarmed over the plains. It was small, only fifty individuals, dozing standing up. The smell of wolf roused them. They snorted uneasily, and started to mill. The bulls moved to the outside, while the cows and calves moved towards the center. The bulls had poor night vision, and they peered out into the tall grass, lowing uneasily. They were still shedding, and they looked ragged in the moonlight, with flaps of their winter wool hanging off of them in swathes. Their sharp hooves tore up the sod. A sleek red wolf darted from the undergrowth with a playful puppy-bark. He barked and snarled at the terrified bison, darting around them, nipping their hooves. The herd fractured, split, stampeded. Matteo's body was sleek and long. His reddish fur was lush and gleaming in the moonlight, though it was gone in the places where the skin was scarred underneath. His long scarred muzzle pointed to the moon as he let out a high excited howl. Ahote answered with a deep full-throated song. He burst from the deep, cornering a big bull. They weren't hunting. If they were hunting they would have gone for the cows, or a calf. They had plenty of meat back at the camp, and the two wolves were playing. The bull bellowed with terror and rage, swinging his huge heavy head with the deadly black horns. Matteo nimbly skittered away, his tongue lolling over his teeth, laughing in the dog-fashion, his eyes gleaming. Ahote jumped onto the bull's back, growling. He was massive, his fur was positively glossy in the moonlight. Ahote was more massive, deeper in the chest and shoulder, while Matteo was as lean and spry as a whippet. The bull got up to full speed and left the wolves in the dust. Matteo leapt onto a spur of rock and howled at the moon. It was a high joyous sound. They had nothing to fear, no one to run from. A pack of real wolves answered from a distance. Ahote tackled him, leaping onto the red wolf. The two wolves wrestled, nipping each other's ears and paws, rolling in the high grass, barking playfully. They roamed for hours before returning to their camp. --- The sun beamed down on a canopy. They had abandoned any traditional kind of tent during the summer for a canopy made of their tent cover. The ground cloth covered the flat dirt while their food was protected in a cairn of rocks from predators that poked around in the night. Matteo's slim back was tanned. He was one of those rare exceptional gingers who could get a tan. His hair was tied at the nape of his neck with a twist of twine woven from the fibrous inner bark of trees. He was dressed in nothing but a loincloth. Two individual rabbit hides, one in front and one behind, held around his waist with a bit of the same twine he used to tie back his hair. The river near their home had a copse of willows and underbrush that broke up the endless plain. He was foraging. He had a flat sharpened stick that he used to poke around in the muck around the river. For lily roots, and a small kind of wild potato. He raked berries from the bushes, and pulled edible herbs whole from the ground. When all of the pouches on his belt were full, he ran barefooted back to the camp. He was full of an endless energy. He was still lean, but his body was lithe with muscle, and the soles of his feet were blackened and tough. Ahote was sitting cross-legged on a patch of dirt in front of their canopy. He had a hide stretched out on a frame. A bison calfskin. He was scraping it with a sharpened piece of bone, to get rid of the fat and blood vessels and membrane. His broad brown back was running with sweat. He was naked, and sitting on a mat woven from reeds. Matteo knew he needed concentration. He unloaded his finds under the canopy, and brought the pouch of fresh berries. He brought the water skin. While Ahote worked, the slim boy held the water skin to his lips. Ahote drank, focusing on the task at hand. Then Matteo held a raspberry to his lips, and he ate with a little smile. The berry was soft and juicy, slightly crushed by it's time in the pouch. "The berries are ripe then?" He murmured. He was speaking in french. "Yes, they weigh the bushes down. I saw a bear nearby, but he didn't bother me. There are plenty of berries for everyone." He spoke in Ahote's language, Sioux. They had learned each other's languages, were still learning. Matteo had already learned so many languages, that he had a slightly easier time of it. Ahote loved how smooth and flowing Matteo's words were. Matteo liked the difference between Nipmuc and Sioux, Ahote's birth tongue was more rhythmic. Matteo put another berry on Ahote's tongue, and the young man sucked it from his fingertips, sensually massaging the tips of Matteo's fingers with the tip of his tongue. He tasted the sweetness and the tartness and the saltiness of Matteo's own sweat. Matteo dropped to his knees next to his lover, and leaned so he was touching Ahote's body. He pressed his chest to Ahote's back, resting his cheek on the side of his lover's head, resting his chin on Ahote's shoulder. He fed Ahote another berry. Ahote scraped the last bit of tacky skin from the corner of the hide, and then he turned around, sucking on Matteo's fingers up to the knuckle. They wrestled briefly. Not quickly, or rough, but a slow struggle for dominance. When they untangled, Ahote was on his back on the reed mat, and Matteo eclipsed the sun, making a corona of rays around his shaggy head. Matteo straddled Ahote's lean hips. Ahote tore away the rabbit-skin loincloth that Ahote wore, and his pale vulnerable genitals bobbed in the sunlight. Matteo leaned forward with a soft groan, and his cock rubbed against Ahote's cock. Matteo pinned Ahote down with his hands on Ahote's shoulders. He moved his hips in a slow sinuous rubbing motion against Ahote's groin. Ahote reached between them and took their cocks in the same hand. Matteo's cock was slim and long and as hard as stone. His was thick and bronzed, with a slightly paler head. He rubbed them together, and Matteo let out a panting groan. Ahote reached for Matteo's head, tangling his fingers in the fiery sunset locks. He pulled Matteo's head down to his own and touched his lips to Matteo's soft pink lips. There they lay in the sun, feeling the rays beat down on them. Sweat ran in trickles, and their passion bubbled to the surface. Their groins were sticky with sweat and precome as they rubbed and moaned. Matteo was the first to make a move. He started to slide down his mate's body. He slid down the bronzed skin that was both sticky and slippery with sweat. The smell of his lover was strong and pervasive, sunken into the web of nerves in his brain. He could have sensed his lover for miles. He lapped droplets of sweat from Ahote's oval nipples, sucking on them until they sharpened into points. He lowered himself, and crouched between Ahote's muscular thighs, slipping Ahote's thick cock into his mouth, feeling his lover groan. Matteo ran his tongue from the base to the tip, and then drooled all over, soaking Ahote's cock. Matteo sucked on his own fingers and reached behind him to slick his own asshole. He was ready for Ahote, always ready. He moved upright and looked into his lover's eyes. "Techihhila." Matteo whispered. "Je T'aime" Ahote replied. With that, Matteo knelt on Ahote's cock and let out a wild cry to the blue sky. The wind whipped the grass around them and the sun beat down on their naked interlocked bodies. Matteo sunk down to the root, and used his legs to move up and down, while Ahote grabbed his waist and moved his own hips to fuck his lover deep and strong. With every scrape of Ahote's cock against his prostate, Matteo let out a sweet high cry. He bellowed his love for everyone to hear. Into the blue bowl of the sky, and the wide everywhere of the grassy plain. Ahote sat up and cradled Ahote's body in his arms, helping the pup move up and down faster. The heat of their bodies met the heat of the sun and sweat steamed off of their skin. "Matteo!" Ahote grunted, thrusting his hips in a deep final stroke. He reached to stroke Matteo's throbbing member. The redheaded boy cried out as his come spurted between them, spreading to a fine glaze on their hot skin. The two of them fell back, and Matteo rested his head on Ahote's chest, panting and feeling his body rise and fall as Ahote gasped for air. He felt his lover kiss him tenderly on the top of the head, and he smiled. The wolves went to the oasis and washed the sweat from their bodies. Meanwhile the wind whistled through the grass, and the earth continued to make it's slow graceful rotations. THE END The New World He was only half changed when he fled the cage. Fur still needed to grow, his limbs weren't all the way changed and his tail was still forming from a strange skinless little tentacle, but he needed to escape. Finally the screams of horror and shock that Roderick had longed for were filling the room. Matteo let out a high-pitched yelp of pain and fear as he ran clumsily and changed. He broke the flimsy wooden door with stiff forelegs and ran into a moonlit hallway. He looked like a wolf the size of a horse with strange reddish fur. He burst through a window of thick bubbled glass, whining as the glass cut lacerations on his muzzle and chest. The wolf found himself in the middle of eighteenth century London. Carts and carriages filled the gaslamp-lit streets. The air was thick with the reek of humanity and horses and dogs and the whale oil that they burned in the gaslamps. Matteo yelped with fear and ran down the narrow cobbled streets towards the ocean. He was a strong swimmer, he knew that if he could get to the water he could escape. He had gotten to where he could smell the thick salty reek of fish and refuse from the sea when a member of the royal guard finally spotted him and aimed his big-belled musket at the huge apparition. The muskets were terribly inaccurate and it was amazing that he hit the wolf at all, considering the distance between them. Matteo ki'yi'd with agony and limped as fast as he could. His flank was now filled with half a dozen burning pellets of lead and blood splattered the cobblestones in drops the size of pennies. Matteo ran into the shipyards and leapt into the water with a clumsy splash. The water was filthy with trash and rancid oil and dishwater, and one of Matteo's legs was useless and spasming from the gunshot wound. He swam feebly, whining and trying to get away from the docks. The fog obscured his vision and the water stunk too badly for him to smell anything but dead fish. He swam in feeble circles until he knocked into the hull of a massive ship. The ship was moving; somehow the currents had swept him out to sea. Matteo knew he had to get on the ship, or die. He couldn't get on as a wolf, and he couldn't change into a human. A rope was dragging from the mooring on the side of the ship; some lazy or incompetent dock-hand had not rolled it up tight enough. With the very last of his strength, the scrawny wolf dog-paddled to where he could grasp the rope in his jaws. The ship tugged him along, and he only paddled as much as he needed to, enough to keep his salt-stung nostrils above the lapping waves of saltwater. --- It was a miracle that no sharks found him in that long night. He was wounded and bleeding into the water, and yet in the morning he was untouched. The sun burned through the fog to find a small redheaded boy who had wrapped the rope under his arms and was lying limp in the ropes cradle. The boy was malnourished and weak from loss of blood. The ship was full of factory-made English goods on their way around the Atlantic triangle. The first stop was England, where the ships imported goods from the Americas, such as sugar, timber, rum, indigo dye, and raw materials. Factory-made goods were loaded onto the ship where it would go to it's second stop in what is now Cuba. There it would drop off timber and textiles and pick up sugar and molasses and rum. Then on the last stop, in modern day Virginia. There they would drop off rum and textiles while picking up timber and dye and other raw goods. In this early hour, only four sailors were on deck. Two were in the sails like monkeys, checking and double-checking the ropes and rivets. One was mending a sail with a needle as long as a man's middle finger and as thick as a pencil. The third was the cook, and he was swabbing the decks. The cook looked over the side and he saw the small stowaway. Then and there, he made a decision that would save Matteo's life. --- Matteo woke up naked on his stomach in a tiny cramped room, and he wasn't alone. For a moment he was flooded with terror, but we was too weak to make any kind of uproar, and he realized that the other man was helping him. He whimpered feebly when the large cook dug around in his scrawny buttock with a bone needle, but a moment later a jagged lead pellet came out and he placed it in a tiny bloody tray. "Guess your awake now, boy." The man spoke in English, but it was so heavily accented that Matteo thought he was speaking a strange language he had never heard. The cook was a big Scots-Irishman, and he was also the ship's surgeon. Lucky for Matteo, he was one of the few surgeons at the time who thought that the practice of 'bleeding' a patient was utter quack. Matteo looked around, dazed. He was in a tiny triangular chamber with a massive roll of rope to keep him company. The roll of rope was wet and wound tight around a thick spindle. It was the slack rope from the Anchor, and on deck a lever would cause it to unspool. He was in the tiny chamber where the rope was kept for long journeys where the anchor was not used. On long journeys, no one would ever go in here. He realized immediately that for some reason, the big blonde man was keeping him a secret. "What's your name?" The boy looked at him uncomprehendingly. "Just settle down for a moment." The cook removed every pellet from the boy's ass and cleaned it with a shot of gin poured over the wound. At the alcohol Matteo spasmed with pain and had to bite his forearm to stop from crying out. The cook wrapped his thick powerful arms around him and shushed him quietly when he moaned from the pain. At first Matteo cringed a little from the man's touch, but then he realized how much he had craved it after months of being treated like a diseased animal. The cook wrapped a wool blanket around Matteo and gave him a leather water bottle and a chunk of hard biscuit. "Stay. Don't leave this spot." He gestured with his hands, miming not leaving the room. Matteo nodded, he understood. Before the cook left the fragile hollow-eyed boy took the cook's large hand in his small clammy ones. He kissed the cook's hand and looked up at the man with pure gratitude. "Your welcome." The cook said softly. --- Three hours later the cook returned. He came with his hands filled with small gifts. Gifts that made Matteo weep with joy. A small cake of soap, a comb, a biscuit, a shirt! Gifts that restored his humanity. "Couldn't find any pants, no one had a spare pair that I could take. It was hard enough taking the shirt without looking suspicious." Matteo didn't understand him, but his joy and gratitude were universal and he embraced the man, his savior. It was when the man began breathing heavily, and moved so he could pin Matteo to the floor that the young man understood. In the pack there had been a few male-male relationships. In a pack with twenty-two men and eight women it was inevitable. Some were real and loving, others were just an outpouring of sexual energy. Matteo was a virgin, but he had messed around with another boy in the pack. He knew it didn't hurt you, it wasn't poison. He remembered that Ivan, the boy who's thick cock he had stroked to a climax, had been one of the first downed by the arrows. Tears filled his eyes as the cook began to use his body. The cook had no finesse, he didn't seduce, but at least he was gentle. First the cook pushed him so he was on his back on the blanket. Matteo knew what he wanted, so he spread his slender thighs for the man. The cook looked surprised, but grateful that he wouldn't have to tussle with a frightened, uneducated boy. "Glad to know that you know what to do." He whispered, rubbing Matteo's inner thigh in a clumsy effort to make the boy feel good. Matteo had lost too much blood to sustain an erection, so he lay lifeless under the man, as he proceeded in a methodical way to take the young man's virginity. He knelt between Matteo's legs and stroked himself until he was hard. Then he greased his long skinny cock with a handful of lard. Matteo winced a little when the cold grease touched his sensitive little asshole. The cook was very slow and gentle when he invaded Matteo's virgin ass. His cock was pretty thin and well-greased so it didn't hurt other than a general soreness afterwards. After heaving over Matteo and swearing softly for about five minutes, Matteo felt a hot spurt of liquid inside him. He felt nothing but gratitude for the man, and a faint distaste for the sex, which had been bland and frank. They weren't anything but business partners after all. Sex for this tiny chamber. Sex for the blankets and stolen rations. Most importantly, sex so he would never have to end up in Roderick's cage. Bad sex was worth that. *I will be writing about three story lines at all times, right now I am working on The New World, The Boy from the Sea, and Shy Jared. Please comment on any mistakes I made. Thank you!*