Prologue

The dream woke me, jerking me upright on the old mattress and heavy quilts and blankets which made my bed. I was wide-eyed and aware of an ache in my chest. It took me a moment to realize I was holding my breath and I had to fight to let it out, wheezing as I drew fresh, cool air into my lungs. I coughed and closed my eyes and beside me I could feel one of my brothers stirring sleepily, lifting his great head and sniffing the air.

I felt his tongue on me. Bush. Licking at my hip, telling me to go back to sleep. He could sense my fear, but find no cause for it, and this was not the first time I'd had a bad dream. I sat there, pulling my knees to my breasts and hugging myself in the dark with all of my senses awakened. I could hear the spring night outside our room. The breeze through the barnyard and the trees beyond. The scratching of tiny claws in the rafters above us; a mouse repairing its nest. The sound of my three brothers, Bandy, Barley, and Bush sleeping around me.

I could smell them, rich and musky, and myself as well. The ripe scent of coupling with Bandy just a few hours before filled the room. Just as I was still full of him, although I'd been leaking steadily and my thighs were damp with our combined juices. I could taste him on my lips and tongue; the remains of the dog's semen in my mouth as I'd cleaned him afterwards while our brothers had watched from their pallet. It was a normal night and I could not say what month or day it was. I had no knowledge of such things. They were useless to me.

The days were growing warmer and longer, but it wasn't yet summer. I'd been there two years, perhaps, or longer. I couldn't remember the month when I'd arrived, was it April? Was it another April again so soon? It seemed I'd only just arrived, or that I'd been there forever. I felt both all at once and all the time. I put it out of my mind and moved off our bed slowly, carefully as I wished to go outside and pee. I might have used the small drain in our tiled bath area, but I rarely did that anymore. I was a dog, a bitch, and so I wanted to go outside.

I wanted to see if he was there. Urinating was my excuse and as I crossed the cool gravel towards the horse paddock and the unkempt fields beyond, I gave up all pretenses. My brothers did not follow. I could see well enough in the dark, moving by the light of a half-moon and a million distant stars. I sniffed the air and felt my certain way with bare calloused feet. I'd been a girl once, but no more. I was Onijwa, a person with the spirit of an animal inside her. I was a dog, a wolf, and I'd been mated during my Awakening with another and he was out there now, waiting for me.

He was close. I couldn't see him or smell him, but I could sense him.

I ran with my thick black hair billowing behind me. My small body, lean and hard, worked perfectly. I was strong and healthy, with soft doe eyes and caramel skin rippling as the muscles worked beneath. My small breasts, pierced through my dark nipples with delicate bone rings, barely moved as I darted quickly and quietly across the open ground. I was naked and most comfortable that way. It had been too long for me to remember since the last time I'd worn clothing of any sort, since I'd been ill with pneumonia and near death. That had been two winters ago and I was long since recovered. I ran swiftly for ten minutes, leaving the farm behind me as I entered the safety of the forest proper.

The wind was in my favor. I'd kept downwind of the hills and now I moved across it, seeking his scent on the air. It was a game we played, a lover's pleasure as only another wolf would understand it. The hunt was our foreplay and my heart was beating fast. I was breathless, but only with excitement, the physical exertion was nothing for me and I could run for an hour if I had to without tiring. I tilted my head, hearing a faint rustling to my left, downwind, and so I stopped, frozen in place, crouching as a shadow in those black woods. He was there and I caught the golden glint of his narrow eyes regarding me silently.

I hadn't run far enough or fast enough, and the beast was stalking me. He had the advantage and my body reeked of my earlier sex and the bed where I'd lain. I was easy to find and easy to follow and with that realization I laughed, which was a sound I found annoying for it was uniquely mine, and a reminder that I was still human in some small ways. My brothers enjoyed it, however, and they would tease me with their tongues to hear me giggle. Human laughter is a delight to a dog's ears; like a baby's smile or a mother's touch, laughter has a presence all its own.

So I laughed and I ran, past the place where my mate and I had first fought, where I'd taken him and in my victory given myself to him completely. I leapt across the stream there, fat and quick now with the spring thaw, and cold as I splashed through the opposite bank and up the short ravine. I'd made a den, a place for us beneath the heavy boughs of a large fir tree, and the ground beneath it was soft with moss and thin dry grass. It smelled of pine tar and earth. I'd gathered dried leaves the previous autumn and made a bed for us, lining it with hair, my own and his. It wasn't a proper den, but it was warm and sheltered and it had served us well through the winter.

He approached cautiously, and his footsteps were slow and light as I lay on my side, stretched out and smiling while he circled the tree. I offered him a sharp bark of happy impatience and my body was tingling for I was in love with him. With a deep throated growl his head appeared finally, pushing through the pine branches and he bared his teeth, staring at me until I lowered my eyes submissively. He took in the scent of my well used sex first, pressing his snout between my legs, forcing my thighs apart to his inspection, and jerked away as he smelled the dog semen inside me like a deep stain.

I reached for him slowly, clutching at his thick fur which was slowly thinning with the spring. He was dark, black and silver, and large. He'd been feeding well again and I was glad. I'd brought him food on occasion, when I was able to catch a wild hare which were plentiful, or the one time I'd come across a goat, lost apparently and wandering alone. I'd killed for him and at other times we'd hunted together, although only briefly.

My Master had named him 'Chance' after he'd become aware of the wolf's occasional presence. It is peculiar to humans that they must name everything. To me he was 'Mate' and we had our own sounds for that word; a soft pleasant growl from deep in the belly when we were close, and a long warbling howl when we were apart. The wolf was wary, of course, and careful to avoid my brothers, but he couldn't resist his instinctive need to be near me. Wolves mate for life and he'd left his pack to remain where I could meet him, sneaking into the night as my own instincts were loosed by his calling.

Above us, in the hills and mountain slopes surrounding the reservation upon which my Master's home was built, the pack was birthing their offspring now. I could hear their songs echoing at night and it was an emptiness inside me which I knew would never be filled. If it confused my mate, why he'd given me no pups to nurse with swollen milk-filled breasts, he gave me no sign of it. Perhaps there was some understanding within him, I couldn't know. The language of animals doesn't extend so far and it was a sadness inside me, but I was comforted by his continued attention and I lavished myself upon him when we were together.

We didn't mate immediately, but rather the wolf laid beside me, pressing his coarse back against my belly with his handsome head upright, mouth open with his long red tongue lolling between his sharp teeth. I spent some time grooming him with my human hands. At times I imagined them as a handicap, in fact my whole body was ill-suited to what I truly was, but I couldn't deny my fingers their usefulness. I pulled burrs from his coat and combed my fingers through his fur, feeling for ticks and digging them out of his soft skin. I often did the same for my brothers and it was a slow, pleasurable task and I enjoyed the intimacy of it.

After some time, in the last dark hour of the night, I slipped my hand down his heavy chest and soft belly, to the place where his hair was soft as silk, and I found my mate's cock, firm and resting within its sheath. I buried my face in his neck, stroking him slowly as I growled my desire. He turned his head, licking at my neck and shoulder, pushing his snout into my hair which was long and loose. His breath was hot in my ear and I felt the odd-shaped tip of his penis slipping out, the tapering head already growing moist with precum, and the smell of my own arousal surrounded us in our refuge. The musky odor of desire radiated from my pores and he didn't protest as I moved slowly, crawling over him, splitting my legs wide so I could mark his body with the moist scent of my passion, dragging my sex along his fur as I made to exit the den.

There wasn't enough room within and so I waited for my mate without, on my hands and knees, calling him with a high pitched howl, announcing my readiness to any who could hear and understand. Another wolf, probably young and in his first season as an adult, heard me and answered from some distance away. It was a tease and drew my mate out of our den quickly, as I knew it would.

I was telling him that I would couple with the first male who would claim me and it was a common sound in the early spring, females using it to spur their mates into action. It would occasion a fight if another male heeded her call too eagerly, but only rarely and fight is the wrong word. Contest is better, and the female's mate was invariably the victor in such events, for her attentions were ever meant for him alone and the newcomer would know that. The female would be punished for her temerity, of course, since she'd challenged her lover to prove himself.

So it was that my mate took me quickly, leaping upon my back with his chest high and head low, and wrapping his powerful forelimbs around my waist so that I was forced to bear his considerable weight. His teeth went to my shoulder as I gasped, nipping my soft flesh sharply and drawing blood, while his prick slipped free of its sheath completely and he stabbed at my sex, searching for the entrance to my womb. I moved myself awkwardly in an effort to help him and then I felt him suddenly, the length of his cock splitting my labia and thrusting fully inside my pussy all at once. I growled with the pain of it, but the pleasure followed immediately as he began to fuck me with urgent strokes.

I turned my head as he held his bony chin against my collar and I licked at the wolf's jaw, running the tip of my tongue across his sharp teeth. I was submissive to him when he took me, as I'd been since the first time we'd mated at the gathering place called Table Rock. That was where my spirit had been awakened and welcomed by the Native Americans who understood such things. I was a part of the tribe now, although I could only dimly appreciate that.

The wolf scratched my sides painfully as he fought for leverage and I had numerous scars already from tooth and claw, some old and faded white upon my skin, others fresh and pink and barely healed. Now I would have new ones and I wore them proudly, much as I wore the tattoo around my belly button and the piercings in my nipples, and the one lower, the bone ring through my pubis. My Master had arranged for those, and like the scars on my sides and shoulders, they were an indelible part of me now. I couldn't remember a time when I didn't have them, nor would I want to.

I lowered my head finally, both of us panting as we rutted hard beneath the sky as it began to grey in the east. His cock was large and hot, splitting my sex easily now, reaching into the depths of my pussy and I was long used to such things. I stretched around him eagerly and the soft muscles of my cuntal walls clasped to hold the animal tight, quivering with the useless effort as he withdrew time after time, plumbing my sex rapidly until the knot of muscle growing at the base of his cock demanded its proper place within me.

The bulb was large, but not fully ripened, and with a satisfied barking howl the wolf gave a final hard thrust to force the blood engorged knot into the mouth of my cunt. It grew quickly then as my mate began the quick short thrusting which would bring his final release. I was stretched now, and very full as the muscle trapped inside me grew even further. It blocked my sex completely, damming inside our juices, and the knowledge that we were locked tightly together brought me to orgasm as surely as the physical sensations that were quickly overwhelming me.

I clawed at the soft ground beneath me and strained to move myself against him, bearing my lover's weight breathlessly and desperate to feel his seed jetting into my womb. My heart was a hammer in my chest and my nipples burned ice cold with pleasure. My pussy spasmed as I had one climax after another, milking the wolf's impossibly hard cock for his living sperm. We were breeding and I should have been in season long before, as winter ended, and I had been, but only in my heart. In my spirit. It was a torturous knowledge and mercifully it was momentarily lost as I felt my mate cumming. His cock seemed to swell larger for a brief second before ejaculating his hot semen against the pillow of my cervix, spraying inside me to penetrate that curious bottleneck and find my womb just beyond.

It brought yet another orgasm of my own, the fourth perhaps, or fifth, and the best of them all as I joined in my mate's rapturous release. Our juices mingling inside me, seeping into the soft recesses of my body, bathing my lover's still hard cock as he continued to leak sperm for the many long minutes it would require before the knot would begin to shrink enough to slip from my sex. I always came with him, and with my brothers as well, but most especially with my mate. It was the one time, in those few precious seconds, when I could truly forget I was only a girl.

We were vulnerable then, after our sex when we were locked together with his cock trapped in my pussy. The wolf moved with surprising ease, turning on his hinged penis so that he could face the opposite direction, guarding us while we waited for his sperm to do its work in my womb. He would bring his head down occasionally, to sniff and lap at our union, perhaps pulling at me to test the strength of our physical bond. I would growl at him then, feeling lazy and happy, with my head down on my folded arms, keeping my ass high and watching as the sky grew light around us.