Born Wolf - 11. Chapter 6.1

Henry Tanner caught the ball easily, turned on one heel, making sure to slow his movements enough not to be considered the best thing since sliced bread, and shot the ball over to his human teammate. Willis had drilled into them from the moment they arrived at school none of them was ever to stand out physically. It was too risky. It was easier for Henry to let his friend score the basket and take the glory, although the wolf in him rankled slightly. Henry was neither overly dominant nor happily submissive, but it still hurt. He could have made the shot with his eyes closed, but that would have also been a problem. Henry shrugged inwardly. Unlike his brother he was fairly happy with his position. He knew he would probably not end up with a permanent staffing, but he was bright, he got on well socially and he was thinking of going into social work. What better way to keep an eye on the “unruly teenagers” which the humans saw as being a danger to society when really all that was happening was that the pack was keeping them home while they went through their first few changes.

They had a member of the human PE staff today. Willis was suddenly unavailable to take their lessons, because of Kurt Smi- no Kurt Ulrich. Henry let the game go on without him and turned to watch the pack beta instructing the boy who, up until recently, Henry had considered a skinny gangly freak. Four weeks of mated life and training had changed Kurt. As the dripping, shivery wet end of winter had blossomed into actual spring, Kurt had bloomed too. Anyone could see it. Henry watched him nod, the movement tight and deferential without being submissive, at Willis’s instructions before he went back to the punching bag. The poor thing had taken some serious beating over the last few weeks. Kurt had put on muscle and weight. He was still skinny, he would never be anything but. However now those long limbs were corded with muscles that sprang out in sharp definition when he struck. You could no longer see his ribs, and the sweat soaked t-shirt he wore clung to the obvious signs of a developing six pack. Jene had been keeping his hair short, but the wax had sweated out and Kurt’s slightly longer floppy fringe fell over his eyes. It made him look somehow dangerous.

“Tanner! Get over here!” Henry blinked from his reverie and turned back to the game, where their teacher had stopped them to go over the finer points of a good assist. Henry listened with one ear and went to stand next to Tahryn. The bigger werewolf smelt like sweat and musk and sex. He wasn’t even pretending to listen, and Henry tracked his eyes back to where Kurt was pummelling the bag. Willis held up a hand to call halt to Kurt’s pounding and the boy breathed deep, gave the punching bag one last parting shot and then accepted and drank the bottle of water the coach handed him. While Henry watched, one eye on Kurt, the other on his mate, Kurt peeled the tape from his knuckles and stripped off his shirt. Henry felt Tahryn’s heartbeat change from where he was standing.

His friend went from captivatedly interested to straining at the leash in the time it took for Kurt’s new sweat soaked glowing pale figure to appear. He threw the shirt to the ground and shook himself, and looked straight across at his partner. Brows low, he dipped his head, picked up his shirt and wiped the back of his neck. The air in the gym was suddenly thick with red lust and wanting. Willis threw another department polo shirt at Kurt and the dark haired boy caught it, turned and exited for the showers. Tahryn vibrated with need.

“Dude,” Henry kept his voice low, “you OK?”

Tahryn turned and pierced him with sky blue eyes full of…denial?

“Oh boy…” Henry knew he read the look correctly when Tahryn’s eyes snapped back to where his mate had vanished. There was a reason Tahryn smelt so much like lust and so little like happiness. “He’s still not putting out huh?”

Tahryn was apparently too tired or too strained to meet the words with a pithy, angry retort and simply nodded, shoulders sagging.

“Come on, let’s blow this lesson. We’ll go jog on the track and you can tell me all about it.” Henry waved to Willis, made the relevant gestures and was granted permission with a nod. Henry Tanner made sure when they left the gym towards the fields that he followed Tahryn. The poor guy obviously didn’t need anyone else stepping on his authority.

It was warm out now, so Henry stripped his shirt and tucked it into his shorts as they walked to the track. The girls from their year were doing cross country, but they weren’t using the asphalt running track. Henry and Tahryn started around the circuit in peace. For a long time they just ran. The smoothness of well-trained wolf muscles meant a good pace for them was no trouble, and they jogged quickly and easily, not showing any sign of real strain. Eventually Tahryn started talking as they moved.

“He still won’t let me go near him. It’s like being back at primary school, when all you’d do is hold hands.” Tahryn’s shoulder’s tensed when he spoke and Henry wished he hadn’t started the conversation. But Tahryn need someone to talk to, and Henry was the only other male werewolf their age.

“If I manage to sneak up on him I might get to kiss him in the showers, but it’s pretty much a look but don’t touch kind of rule.”

“I thought you guys were properly mated now.”

“We are, but not as humans.” Tahryn growled when he spoke. “He does not want to give in to me, even though he fucking promised.” Tahryn sped up very slightly. It was no problem for the two werewolves to talk normally as they whipped around the track in a manner that would have had humans dragging for breath. Henry considered his dominant friend’s words.

Tahryn was a dominant personality, it had been clear to Henry when he’d first joined the pack. It had made sense for the big werewolf to slip into their friendship group. He got on well enough with them so it made sense they would have the same school friends too. Henry had been top of the group, more by default of his wolfness than anything else. Koby hadn’t exactly been mini-alpha material. Tahryn was. He’d taken the top spot almost without consideration, as though it could be no other way. That first meeting hadn’t been tense like most. Tahryn had walked up to him and Koby and acted like their leader. Henry had simply bared his neck and allowed the takeover in peace. He wasn’t a leader. Now Tahryn ran as though he had a vendetta against the tarmac and Henry worried about his friend.

“So take it.” Henry had jogged another ten yards before he realised the bigger boy wasn’t with him. He stopped and turned.

“What?” Tahryn looked genuinely confused by the suggestion.

“Take it. You’re the dominant one when you’re human right? Just go ahead and tell him what you want.”

“You reckon that would work?”

“This is Kurt we’re talking about.” Henry shrugged. “He’s not exactly predictable. But if you do it somewhere he can’t turn he’s not going to have a great deal of choice in the matter.”

Tahryn rolled his eyes and smacked Henry upside the head as he jogged past.

“Easy to see why you don’t have a girlfriend Tanner.”

“Huh? Why’d you say that?”

“You just suggested I rape my boyfriend. What the hell is wrong with you…?”

*

Kurt stepped out of the shower into the deserted locker room and wrapped a towel around his hips, hanging another over his head to dry his hair. He was sorely tempted to change forms and just shake dry, but after the time Willis had found a wolf destroying his office he had laid down a rule that Kurt stuck to. Eight until four, human. After school, he could be whatever shape he wanted. So Kurt Ulrich towel dried his hair and pushed the fringe back over his forehead. He’d heard Tahryn’s inner voice the first time he’d seen him without wax in the new style Jene had given him. Oh fuck I’m lucky. He’d kept it even though he thought it looked silly and it fell in his eyes when he was working.

Working. College was working now. For the first time Kurt’s timetable suited him. He still went to tutor mornings and evenings, but his education was now being handled by Willis and a select few others of the PE department. Kurt trained every morning until he was wiped out; he ran, he lifted weights, he boxed. When all he could do was sweat and shake Willis had him do sit ups, star jumps, press ups until he saw stars. He would send Kurt for a shower, and Kurt would suddenly find he wasn’t tired at all. He would work with the younger children and pups, run lessons and small groups, picking up the practice of teaching by doing it, then spend the majority of the afternoon brushing up on his reading and maths skills. He still hated doing it, but now there was a method to the madness. Willis needed him to know this stuff well enough to pass a bunch of tests which would allow him to stay on and do the right sort of work for the pack. Everything was, eventually, all for the good of the pack.

Kurt liked his new role. The younger kids loved him for being older and strong and cool, the PE staff liked his enthusiasm for the subject. Kurt shrugged when they told him that. He didn’t love sport any more than he loved running. It was something physical you just had to do. Willis had also enforced a strict new diet. It involved vegetables, which Kurt was not keen on, and fruit, which he really wasn’t sure about at all. Willis was always feeding him, cereal bars and jerky and nuts and things, always keeping him hydrated and full. He wasn’t a great beta wolf for nothing. Kurt scrubbed at his hair, dried his shoulders and began to get dressed before he could stop to spend time looking in the mirror. It felt weird and downright wrong to actually like the changes in his human body. Damn, it felt odd to even care about the bag of skin and bones he inhabited during the day. But Kurt couldn’t lie to himself, it got harder and harder not to look, not to be proud of the new muscles, the hardening of his frame, the lack of visible ribs when he looked at himself. Only a day ago, Jene had felt his upper arm and whistled to herself in impressed surprise.

And Tahryn liked the way he looked. Kurt pulled on his department polo and finger-combed his hair out of his face. He couldn’t be bothered to wax it himself now, not when he would be sweaty and showering again in a few hours anyway. Tahryn liked the way he looked. His mate, lover, boyfriend, watched him the whole time, Kurt could feel his eyes on him, following him around. He loved to be in contact with the big wolf, the heat of skin on skin wherever their skin touched. And that scared him. No matter how he wanted to press himself up against Tahryn and never ever move away again, all his instincts told him he was wrong, and weak for wanting such things. It had been hard to see the split in himself he’d spent his whole life either denying or totally unaware of. He was split, just like everyone else. He had a wolf side, and a human side. But the human side was small and weak…and growing all the time. Every time Tahryn looked at him with husky blue eyes which shone with lust, Kurt felt another few grains of his resistance erode away.

He was returning from the changing rooms as the upper sixth boys were coming in from basketball. Tahryn wasn’t with them, neither was Henry Tanner. Kurt had never really felt one way or the other about the younger of the Tanner brothers. But Henry was apparently Tahryn’s best friend, so Kurt had needed to learn to get on with him. They managed to talk civilly enough in the car or at meets when Kurt was bugged to be human, but Kurt didn’t like Henry knowing his mate’s secrets. Those should be his.

“Coach?”

“Ulrich?” Willis had taken to calling him by his new last name when he was ‘working’. “You alright buddy?”

“Tahryn and Henry haven’t come back in,” it was a statement, not a question, and Kurt made sure he framed his next sentence the same way, “I need to go see him.”

Willis raised one dark eyebrow and folded his arms.

“Year seven girls track team will be out soon.” It was neither a request nor an order, but Kurt nodded.

“Yes Coach. I know.”

Kurt ducked out the back of the gym and used his nose. He always knew where Tahryn was, at least in theory, and he followed the shape of the twist in his mind that pointed to the big blond wolf. He was on the far side of the track, running side by side with Henry Tanner. Kurt loved the scent of his mate, something his wolf brain and his human brain agreed on. The spicy sweet scent clouded his mind and made him irrational. Kurt knew the moment his mate saw him as they came around the curve of the track because his mind was suddenly washed full of the hot yellow and gold ochre of Tahryn’s scent, his mate’s inner voice rumbling in his mind.

‘You came out here to see me? You care...’

Kurt folded his arms to wait for his mate to come across to him. The subject of whether or not Kurt cared about him seemed to be on the forefront of Tahryn’s mind a lot whenever Kurt made the active choice to listen in to his thoughts. Apparently withholding sex was causing the big tan teenager to doubt himself. Kurt knew he should give in; he just could not bring himself to do it. Waiting it out had worked so far, and now he had to push his dominant nature back as Tahryn slowed to a walk and approached him grinning like an alley cat. Kurt found he didn’t have to push quiet as hard as he had even a week ago.

“Hey.”

Tahryn’s eyes shone and Kurt realised about a second after it was too late to do anything what he was going to do. Big hands wrapped around the back of his skull and crept into the small of his back and suddenly all his senses were filled with Tahryn. The boy was as intoxicating as a fresh kill, impossibly warm and hard against him as their bodies came into contact. Tahryn tasted like salt and cinnamon and Kurt pushed back the snapping wolf in his mind and allowed his mouth to be very effectively ravaged. Henry Tanner coughed and Kurt pulled away and willed himself not to blush, he failed. Henry smirked and Kurt snarled at him.

“Wow!” Henry had his palms up in a heartbeat, “No no no. That’s not what I meant.”

“Easy Kurt…” Tahryn’s low voice rumbled through him and made Kurt’s ribs shake. It wasn’t a command, but Kurt felt his mind uncoil from the tension anyway. He moved a pace away and found Tahryn’s heavy arm curled around his waist, big hand splayed on his abdomen.

“I’ll leave you to it. See you later Kurt.” Kurt managed to nod at Henry, who managed to walk around and away from them without ever turning his back. He could feel his instincts pulling against his heart, and he fought to stay in the here and now where Tahryn looked at him like he was in love and kissed him like a man possessed.

It had not been easy, allowing simple touches to slip through the net of his defence and pretend it didn’t hurt him on some level. The first time Tahryn had unexpectedly put an arm around him at school it had taken all of Kurt’s self-control not to shift and rip into him for it. It was getting better, but Kurt still had to swallow down bile when Tahryn pulled him close and nuzzled into his hair.

“God I love the way you smell.” Tahryn sniffed loudly and Kurt covered for his nervousness with a laugh, pulling away neatly.

“You’re weird. I smell odd.”

Tahryn shook his head and grinned.

“Nah. You smell like nature and things growing. It’s awesome.” He tried to grab his mate again but Kurt twisted away from him.

“I have to go and take the track team for a run.”

“I’ll come pick you up if you miss tutor OK?”

“I won’t.” Kurt gave his mate a small close lipped smile. Apparently it made Tahryn happier to see him smile, but he knew better now than to try and skip out early and run home in his fur. Tahryn had been furious with him when he hadn’t shown up at the car. It was the first argument they’d had which hadn’t ended up with someone walking off. Kurt considered it a big step forwards, but he’d not pushed the issue again and let Tahryn drive him home every day.

He went back to the changing rooms to stand at the door of the girls and bark at them through the frosted glass for being late. Eventually all twenty two eleven and twelve year olds stood outside doing star jumps to warm up while Kurt moved through the lines, correcting and adjusting, nodding encouragement to those humans whose parents didn’t believe in exercise. Isla was out front, not showing off too much as she’d been taught, and as Kurt past her, her eyes shot up and locked on his. If she’d had ears, they would have pricked up. As Kurt got the girls sorted into a group and ran through the muscles you actually used when running, technique for looking where you were going before you got there and not just flat out sprinting, Isla shuffled herself to the back so when they started off she could easily slide in beside Kurt without anybody noticing.

“You smell like my brother.”

“Well hi to you too.” Kurt kept the girls going at a steady even pace; slow enough to let those who weren’t natural runners feel confident, fast enough to make them move. “What do you mean?”

“I can smell him on you. Ewww!” Isla pulled a silly face. “Have you guys been making out at school?”

“Isla!”

“I know, I know!” her voice dropped and she did a sudden, scarily good impression of her brother, “He’s my mate and I’ll kiss him wherever I like.”

“Tay did not say that?” Kurt grinned in amusement. He liked it when Tahryn got all possessive. But I shouldn’t, it’s awful…so weak.

“He did, to Dad too.” Isla was obviously happy with herself. She was going to be an interesting pup, what with spreading gossip the whole time. She’d be letting everyone know their business with her tail.

“Huh.” Kurt replied, he was going to have to think about this. “Come on girls, just two more laps.” His words were met by a collected groan.

Kurt dropped the exhausted year seven’s, and Isla, back at the changing rooms before the bell went and ducked into the main PE office. His appearance was met by a chorus of ‘hey’ from the assembled set of teachers and assistants checking on their timetables, doing admin and filing, and suffering down the phone to irate parents. Willis turned from the notice board full of detention rosters, parent’s evening’s slips and medication charts to Kurt.

“Site manager was looking for someone to go help with a delivery. You wanna go?”

“Sure.”

Kurt pulled on his school hoody and walked through the largely empty corridors to the front of the school at the side gate where the deliveries came in. There was a big dirty red delivery truck idling in the driveway. The engine shut off as he approached and then the door opened to reveal a short, stocky woman with brown hair even shorter than his, and messed into rough spikes. She exuded the scent of motor oil and grease, the hot red aroma of a fiery temper, along with the cool blue of independence.

“Hi Kurt.” Aliza didn’t grin openly when she spoke, but Kurt gave her a small smile in return. It was taking even the newer members of the pack time to get used to his new Tahryn inspired habits. “Look at you. Looking all happy and well fed. Being mated suits you then?”

“Sort of.” Kurt looked the other werewolf up and down. Aliza had been a fairly recent addition to South Sea, having joined just over a year and half ago. Kurt sort of liked the fiercely autonomous woman. She did deliveries all over town, but mostly worked out of Carson Davies’s mechanics garage. “We seem to be shouting at each other less.”

“Well that’s an improvement then.” Aliza shook her head and sighed, examining her clipboard. “It seemed for a little bit you two were going to ruin a good thing by trying too hard. Now what have we got for you...?” She scanned the list again. “What are you kids making in that workshop these days? Gears, wood, car parts….bits of engine.”

Kurt shrugged and mentally flicked an ear back dismissively.

“I have no idea. I just carry stuff.”

“Is Willis training you up for your new post?” Aliza asked him, handing out bits of wood, and what looked like a couple of engine pistons. “You’re certainly looking less like a sparrow.”

“Hey!” Kurt juggled the pistons in one hand while he got the thick ash planks settled onto his shoulder.

Aliza took the opportunity to poke his newly developing six-pack. Kurt tensed up his abdomen automatically.

“Yup, you’ll do. I expect Carson will get you learning to drive soon right?”

“Dunno. Doug Camra said something about his truck being his baby and I wasn’t allowed to learn in it for love nor money. You could teach me?”

Aliza patted the beat up van that was her livelihood and shook her head.

“You’d break old Bessie, you’re too strong. Can’t have you stealing my job and wrecking my van can we?”

Kurt growled. It was almost a bark, one short sharp noise or warning to show he had become unhappy with the conversation. When Aliza had joined the pack, deeply self-sufficient, all she had asked of Degan was a choice in who she mated with, if she ever did, and a staffing position. She was one of the lads in all respects. Degan had given her a reservist enforcer post that was title only. A pack like South Sea barely needed the three enforcers they’d had before Kurt had been added to the staffing roster. Really Aliza should have had the position if Degan was going to increase the number of enforcers, but Kurt didn’t felt much like being generous. After all, she hadn’t been on the verge of being kicked out of her only pack. Aliza dipped her head, but only just, and didn’t show her neck. Kurt jerked his chin in response.

“You’ll do great Kurt. After all, no one knows the forest like you huh?” Aliza took the opportunity to poke his abs again. “And I’ll bet Tahryn isn’t complaining.”

Kurt grunted a reply and headed back into the school with the delivery.