Trophy Cub - 7. In Which Many Things are Revealed in the Backroom

Gunnar walked into the Silver Bullet and scanned the room. Padded fuck benches in one corner with a group of lycans fucking on them, a St. Andrews cross over on the far wall with a sickly-looking thin wolf tied to it being flogged by a wereboar, sticky pool tables over in the bar area with bossy bottoms sprawled on them demanding cock, and a mysterious set of black curtains hanging underneath a charming flashing neon “Cum Bucket” sign.

“I suppose the black curtains are hiding the super-naughty stuff in the backroom that Hair Bear doesn’t want me to see,” Gunnar muttered. “That’s fine with me. Have fun at the circus, boys.”

He strolled casually across the room, picking his way around small groups of naked writhing bodies until he reached the bar. He signaled for a bartender and a short wereboar came over to take his order.

“What do you have on draft?” Gunnar asked the boar.

“Beer,” the boar said.

Gunnar blinked and gave the boar a sideways, look. “Ye-es, it’s beer, but what brands and types of beer do you have?

“Just one type of beer,” the boar said, already bored with the conversation, “The yellow kind.”

“Fair enough,” Gunnar replied. “One large yellow draft beer, please.”

The wereboar pulled a huge glass mug off a drying rack next to the sink and filled it to the top with a sparkling golden liquid. He slid the mug down to Gunnar, and said, “Your beer, sir.”

Gunnar looked at the mug, muttered, “God, I hope that really is beer,” and took a sip.

It wasn’t the best brew he’d ever had in his life, but he had to admit that it was the best generic ‘beer’ he could have hoped for in a place like this. He leaned back against the bar with his mug and continued looking around.

If he were the type who was really into wolf orgies, he’d be in heaven, but since he’d basically been ordered to keep his dick in his pants and stay out of the way, watching all of the activity going on around him started to get old, fast. He drained his mug and waved the empty glass at the bartender.

“Hey buddy, one more large yellow beer please!” Gunnar bellowed, loud enough for all to hear.

The wereboar rolled his eyes but took Gunnar’s mug and refilled it from the tap.

Gunnar began to take a drink from his second mug when a nervous-looking wolf suddenly burst out of the curtains from the backroom just as new group of lycans were going in. He practically ran past Gunnar on his way out of the Silver Bullet’s front door. As he fled, he dragged a variety of scents from the activity in the backroom along with him through the air. Gunnar took another sip of his beer and then sniffed at the scent trail left behind by the wolf…

Something very wrong was going on in that room. Gunnar picked up the overpowering smell of sex, but with an underlying aroma of fear. Not just any fear, human terror. Gunnar focused his mind and leaned in, trying to see if he could distinguish a specific human’s scent from the rest of the lycans in the room. It was very faint, buried under the smell of dozens of wolves, but the scent was unmistakable. The terror was present, but there was also something specific about this human’s scent that Gunnar found immediately intriguing. There was no way for him to understand why unless he got a much closer smell of him.

Gunnar thought about the She-Wolves’ tales of the humans that the fundamentalist packs around here would kidnap to use as sex slaves for the males, but if they had one of those “pets” at their pack house, why on earth would they bring him along with them to a place like this where the closeted lycans came to escape the restrictions of the pack for a night? It didn’t make any sense.

He downed half of his mug of beer in one swallow, and glanced back toward the black curtains, weighing his options. Tolerance for his presence in this place was tenuous at best and who knew what would happen if a grizzly suddenly crashed the party. If he went through the curtains to the back room, he would likely have to tussle with Hair Bear the bouncer, and he’d most likely get his ass handed to him on a platter.

On the other hand, Gunnar felt a moral obligation to the mystery human behind the curtain who he could tell was in distress. At the very least, Gunnar needed to get a closer look and a better smell of him to determine whether he was a willing participant or needed some assistance.

“Fuck it,” Gunnar growled, and downed the rest of his beer in one gulp. He banged the empty mug down on the counter, making the wereboar bartender jump, and then stood and stomped over to the black curtains of the backroom.

Stepping inside, the curtains closed quietly behind Gunnar. He could tell by hearing and smell that there were a large number of lycans in the room with him, but the only light was a narrow spotlight shining directly on a human in a sling. The human was dressed in leather bondage gear, and his wrists and ankles were cuffed to the chains of the sling. The crowd around him were all in the dark, but Gunnar could see that there was one lycan fucking him in the ass, and another at the other end, face-fucking him through a leather hood with the human’s head bent backward at a dangerous angle.

Gunnar muscled his way through the crowd in the darkened room until he was standing directly behind the one who was buried balls-deep in the human’s rump. He tapped the lycan on the shoulder, and said, “Excuse me, may I cut in?”

The lycan began to turn his head to tell the intruder to fuck off, when a large hand grabbed him by the shirt collar and tossed him backwards across the room.

Gunnar stepped up to the space in between the human’s spread legs over the objections of several other lycans who had been waiting in line, and bent over to get a good sniff of the human’s bare torso.

A light flashed in Gunnar’s brain when he detected a specific odor from the human. It was one that he hadn’t smelled in an exceptionally long time, not since before he and Nils left Norway, and his eyes went wide as he looked back up at the human’s head.

Gunnar reached forward, not caring that the front of his pants was smearing against the copious amounts of wolf semen leaking from the man’s ass and placed his big hand on the chest of the wolf who was currently face-fucking the human. When the wolf looked up in confusion, Gunnar gave him a forceful shove, sending him stumbling backwards and knocking down several other lycans as he fell. The human snapped his head back upright and looked directly at Gunnar.

He looked at Gunnar with his ocean-blue eyes.

Good God, Gunnar thought. Those are Nils’s eyes.

The bear growled, extended sharp claws from his fingertips and shredded the lacings from the back of the leather hood hiding the human’s face. Pulling it off, Gunnar saw a mop of unkempt dirty-blond hair and a bushy beard that needed some trimming. It was not Nils’s face, just the same beautiful blue eyes that Gunnar remembered fondly.

But, there was the issue of the human’s scent. Gunnar leaned forward and pressed his nose right against the human’s bare neck to confirm his suspicion. He stood back up straight and roared a mighty grizzly roar to bring all other activity in the backroom to a halt.

“This human is bear kindred!” Gunnar bellowed so that all in the Silver Bullet could hear. “By the law of the lycans I claim him as kin and Clan. If anyone else touches him, I will rip your beating heart from your chest!”

“I think not,” a commanding voice called from the shadows in the corner of the room. Gunnar reached above him to grab the spotlight and point it over in that corner.

Two large and muscular lycans were in the corner. The one with the dark hair and heavy stubble on his jaw had the other wolf bent over and was fucking him in the ass. He appeared to be climaxing at that exact moment. The wolf being fucked quickly covered his face with one hand and desperately reached for his pants on the floor with the other.

The dark-haired wolf finished his orgasm, pulled out of his companion’s ass and casually buttoned his pants glaring directly at Gunnar.

“You cannot claim that human. He has already been claimed by me and my pack. He is our property, and I’m sure that you can smell that we have been ‘claiming’ him over and over for a long time now.”

“You barbaric bastards!” Gunnar yelled, “You have no right to enslave bear kindred. You must have known what he was before you took him!”

“I have no idea what the scent of a bear kindred human smells like, but if it’s anything like that human there, it must be a combination of old cum rags and boiled cabbage.”

Gunnar growled loudly and moved into an attack posture, but the dark-haired lycan raised his hand.

“If you won’t take my word for it, you can ask the human yourself. Go ahead and ask him how he feels about his life as the pack’s pet.”

Gunnar turned back to the human and looked at him directly in his blue eyes.

“Human, are you in trouble? Do you need me to take you away from these wolves and their pack?”

The human looked back at Gunnar with a face full of fear and eyes that brimmed with tears. “I love my life with the pack and would not trade it for anything,” he said with a trembling voice as a tear escaped and rolled down his cheek into his beard.

Gunnar turned back to the dark-haired wolf and his companion who had managed by now to get his clothing back on, and he uttered one word to them in response…

“Bullshit.”

He took one step toward the pair of lycans, but that was as far as he was able to get, as the big Kodiak bouncer stepped up behind him and put him in a headlock.

“Let me go dammit!” Gunnar yelled to the bouncer behind him as he struggled against the hold. “Don’t you understand what the human is? He’s bear kindred! He’s one of us!”

“I know what he is,” the Kodiak replied. “I knew that scent as soon as they brought him here, just like I knew that both they and you were going to cause trouble for me tonight. He’s kindred, but he’s not one of us. He’s a human and he belongs to the wolves, so it doesn’t fucking matter what happens to him.”

“You!” the Kodiak snapped at the lycan pair. “Take your human and get the fuck out. I don’t want to see him in here again, are we clear?”

“Crystal,” the dark-haired wolf replied with a smile and a slight bow as his companion quickly unbuckled the sling cuffs and threw the human over his shoulder before both made a hasty exit.

“You bastard!” Gunnar yelled, “You’re letting them get away!”

“Quiet now, Yogi,” the Kodiak said, “It’s time for big bears to calm down. Let me show you a little trick that I taught to some professional wrestling friends about seventy years ago. It’s called the ‘sleeper hold.’”

The bouncer shifted the position of his arms and tightened them around Gunnar’s neck. Gunner continued to struggle, but his vision began to grow blurry, and the world faded to black.

****

Gunnar opened his eyes, shook his head, and struggled to remember where he was. He was laying on a sticky pool table, and there was a short wereboar staring at him from a few feet away.

“Hey boss!” the wereboar shouted, “The bear’s awake!”

The front door to the bar opened, letting sunlight stream in across the dingy interior. A massive, tattooed Kodiak werebear trudged inside and headed over to Gunnar.

Hair Bear, Gunnar thought, and the memory of the previous night came rushing back to him. He was still in the Silver Bullet, and that asshole had let a pair of psycho wolf lycans get away with a human who was bear kindred.

He sat up and tried to take a swing at the Kodiak as he got close, but his body wasn’t working right, and his movements were slow and sluggish.

“Take it easy, Yogi,” the Kodiak said with a grin, easily blocking Gunnar’s sloppy punches. “My sleeper hold knocked you out, but then I gave you an injection of a little somethin’-somethin’ to make sure you stayed asleep and didn’t cause us or our clientele any more trouble during business hours last night. You’re still feeling the effects, and probably will for another half-hour or so.”

“You asshole,” Gunner growled, “You let them get away.”

The Kodiak sighed and said, “Let me buy you a cup of coffee, Yogi. On the house. You’re obviously a stranger and I need to let you know how things work around here.”

The big bouncer went behind the bar and poured two mugs of steaming black coffee. He took Gunnar by the shoulder and led him from the pool table over to a spot where they could sit and talk.

“Hey boss,” a young-looking wereboar interrupted before the Kodiak got a chance to start talking to Gunnar, “The backroom is a total mess. There’s wolf cum all over the floor and walls and even the ceiling in there. It looks like somebody set off a bomb full of mayonnaise.”

“Yes,” the Kodiak said, “And…?”

“Well, I mean, who’s going to clean all that up? I did it the last time.”

“And you did such a good job that I’m having you promoted to full-time jizz mopper,” the Kodiak replied. “Get a bucket and a mop and get fucking started.”

“Ok, boss,” the young wereboar said with a dejected look on his face, not convinced that it was much of a promotion, and trotted off to find a mop.

“Fucking pigs,” the Kodiak muttered shaking his head, “They aren’t the best employees, but who else am I going to get to work in a shithole like this?”

“Sorry for your personnel troubles,” Gunnar grumbled, “But I think you were just about to explain to me ‘how things work around here.’”

“Right,” the Kodiak said looking at Gunnar. “Look, my name’s Axel, and before you tell me again, I know your name is Gunnar, not Yogi. I’m sorry for what went down last night but that’s the way it had to be. You aren’t on the East Coast or in the Appalachians or California or the Rockies, or wherever it is that you came from. You’re in fucking Wisconsin now. The wolves own this state and Minnesota too, and they are not the lycans you want to go messing with.”

“Yeah, I’d heard that the wolf packs up here were operating like some kind of fundamentalist cult,” Gunnar said, taking a sip of coffee and trying not to hate the bear sitting next to him.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Axel replied. “It’s like if Communist-era Russia and the Afghanistani Taliban had a three-way with the Republic of Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale, and all of these lunatic wolf packs are their little bastard offspring.

“This bar, such as it is, is owned jointly by a consortium of pack Alphas across the region. Its purpose isn’t to make a profit. It functions as a release valve for the male wolves who like the forbidden fruit of man-sex a little too much. It boils down to whatever happens at the Silver Bullet stays at the Silver Bullet, and those crazy-pack males can keep getting their jollies here while keeping their noses and cocks clean back at home and nobody has to be killed or banished.

“That guy you were trying to start the fight with over the human last night…”

“The human bear kindred,” Gunnar growled angrily.

“Fine. The guy you were fighting with over the human bear kindred. The lycan with the dark hair. He is an Alpha of one of the Wisconsin packs, and his musclebound fuckbuddy is his Enforcer. Technically, he is part-owner of this place and by the loosest definition of the term, one of my ‘bosses’. Those two used to be regulars in here up until about a year and a half ago, showing up late at night so the dark-haired one could fuck the other one all sexy and lovey-dovey like, but they were just anonymous wolves to me at the time. I didn’t know their rank or titles in their pack until just last night. If I hadn’t let that Alpha walk out of here with his human pet, bear kindred or not, he would have returned for retribution tonight with an army of religious lycan zealots from his pack, burned this place to the ground in the name of the God of the Moon, and murdered everyone inside. Simply because he could. Do you understand me?”

Gunnar looked down into his coffee cup and nodded his head grimly.

“Now, I don’t know that human, and neither do you. He may be kindred but he’s the slave of a wolf pack, and that means that he’s out of reach for you or me or anyone in the lycan community to save. You can plead your case to the Lycan Council, but you know as well as I do that werebears don’t have much of a voice there, and the Council isn’t going to risk keeping the peace with the Wisconsin wolf packs over one human bear kindred.

“So, tell me what it was about that particular human that got you so worked up you were willing to start a war over him. It’s obvious he has the bear genes in him or else he wouldn’t have survived the kind of abuse he was getting last night, but just because he can be turned into a werebear doesn’t mean that he would ever want to be turned into a werebear. Last night’s gang-bang activity was probably over the line, but maybe he really is content being sheltered and fed in return for a daily injection of wolf cock. I’ve seen it before.”

“I saw the look in his eyes,” Gunnar said, still staring down into his coffee cup. “He’s being tortured in that pack and his life is a living hell. But even more than that, I looked into his eyes, Axel. He has the eyes of my Papa. They were the eyes of a true werebear, and they were suffering. If I don’t do something to help him, I dishonor my Papa and every werebear who came before us who has died doing their duty as the protectors of others.

“Now,” Gunnar said, looking Axel directly in the eyes, “Do you understand me?”

Axel tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “The wolf you are looking for is named Alpha Kane. I wish I could give you more information to go on, but that should be enough for you to get started. I am intentionally kept in the dark about the names of the packs and Alphas who are part of the consortium, so it’s only because the arrogant asshole announced his name and rank for the whole club to hear that we know that much. I wish I could help you more, but I have my own family of sorts here to protect.”

He glanced over at the wereboars who were busy scurrying here and there, sweeping and mopping, polishing glassware and getting ready for that night’s business. Gunnar watched Axel’s face and realized that under his tough exterior, he really must feel like a Papa Bear to his herd of piglets.

Axel stood and extended his right hand to the other werebear. Gunnar stood as well, and they clasped each other’s forearms in the traditional werebear greeting.

“I wish you luck, Gunnar. Happy hunting.”