Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He’s still too young to be sent out on his own, but he knows the mother across the den will be hoping he’ll decide to go. Her pups crawl over her forelegs as she lays with them in the hollow, tiny needle teeth snagging at her jowls, little tails whipping back and forth rapidly.

Her ear flicks with each swipe of a stubby forepaw that grazes over it, with more irritation each time, but she doesn’t snap at them. She’s watching Tommy. He knows, should he ever approach close enough to swipe at her ears, it might cost him an eye or worse.

The real wolves know there’s something wrong with him. They aren’t… unkind, really. Not cruel, just wary. And Tommy doesn’t blame them. There is something wrong with him, after all.

It’s cold outside by this time of year, but Tommy goes anyway. He’s getting tired of being leered at.

Sure enough, the chilled stone against his paw pads sends a shiver up his frame. It’s not snowing now, but the sky looks suspiciously gray. And it’s certainly cold enough for it.

Tommy trudges across the stretch, giving the wolves lounging in the rare winter sun a wide berth. His tail glues itself to his belly every time a pair of yellow eyes stares too long.

But no one bothers him. One pale wolf curls her lip warningly at him as he passes too close, shuffling backwards, but she doesn’t even growl. Tommy is allowed to make his way to a quiet corner without any trouble.

All of the sunny spots are taken, so Tommy curls up in the chilly shade beneath an outcropping of rock. He can still feel eyes on him, can hear the unsettled shuffling of claws on stone, but at least he isn’t so caged in out here. Tommy flits an eye open to check his escape routes from here, or maybe just to ensure they’re still there. They are.

He can also see all the clusters of wolves around the clearing from where he is. They lay together in groups of two or three, grooming or lounging or huffing at each other. Two lanky–limbed juveniles are taking turns bowling each other over, sneezing and play-bowing as they dart back and forth. Something twists painfully in his chest. Tommy closes his eye again.

The alpha pair of this pack won’t be out to ask anything of Tommy until late. Winter hunting demands larger parties, and they’ll move more swiftly under the cover of darkness. Tommy won’t ever go out during the day, though, not even when summer comes around, assuming they tolerate him until then.

He twists his head around to study his golden pelt reproachfully. It’s turned an awful sort of mustard in the shade of the outcropping, but out in the open, he’s as bright as a dandelion.

No one really likes hunting with Tommy. Not even night hunting.

Tommy can’t say he blames them. The experience isn’t all that great for him either.

When a great brown head appears from the shadows of one of the dens, Tommy heaves a sigh through his nose and pushes himself to his feet. Many others in the clearing also rise, and he lets them take the lead towards their alpha, trailing behind a good few meters. He’s had enough of snapping teeth for a lifetime.

Time to earn his keep.

The hunting party is large; Tommy can’t see anything over all of the taller haunches and shoulders moving through the snow ahead of him. They move as a unit; he trails after them. He doesn’t really care; he can walk through the trails they leave in the slush and keep most of his forelegs dry.

It’s twilight, still early yet, but they must be having a lucky night, because the wolves ahead of him are dropping into crouches while there’s still some light in the sky. Usually it’s well past dark by the time they find something.

Tommy drops too, shivering as the snow immediately begins to cling to his belly. As he moves forward, the clumps tug at his fur, and the melt is a cold shock against his skin.

He shivers again. Tommy hates hunting. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing . Isn’t instinct supposed to kick in or some shit for stuff like this?

The wolves ahead of him are making a good pace, and Tommy struggles to keep up and stay as low to the ground as they are. He’s not too young to be hunting, apparently, but he’s much, much smaller than any of the other wolves here, and dragging his legs through the snow drifts is hard for him.

He’s panting quietly by the time the group begins to fan out, surrounding whatever it is they’ve found. Tommy doesn’t recognize the scent; he’s not gotten very good at that yet. It was another one of those things he’d just expected to know automatically when he’d been bitten, but it hadn’t turned out that way.

All in all, Tommy’s made a pretty lousy wolf so far. It was probably stupid of Dream to choose him.

The hunting parting is circling around a patch of hedges. Tommy cautiously pushes his muzzle through the undergrowth, winter-dead sticks snapping quietly under the force of it. A small cluster of elk are stripping the bark from the aspens in the valley.

Something in Tommy still grimaces at the prospect of such a meal, but more and more now, he just doesn’t care. He’s hungry , they’re all hungry, and the wolf now constantly yipping at the base of his brain is very excited about this potential kill. All they’ve been catching lately is rabbits and rodents, and Tommy’s low ranking and general uselessness has netted him only scraps of those meals.

Their party leader is slinking forward, and Tommy clumsily tries to follow his cues. He slips in with one of the groups moving to flank the elk, trying not to step on anyone’s paws. He doesn’t, thankfully, but it doesn’t matter. Hunting is a silent activity by necessity, so no one growls at him for being too close, but they don’t need to. He knows what flashing teeth means, and he falls back to the back of the group again.

He feels like whining, isolated even during the hunt, but he doesn’t. Tommy knows how important this is. He just anxiously licks his lips and tries to keep an eye out for any further instructions.

He can’t really see their patrol leader from this far back, though, so maybe it would be okay if he just inched up–

There’s a root hidden beneath the snow, and it catches him on the foreleg, just above the paw. Without even thinking, he goes down with a yelp.

All three heads of the elk lift, swiveling this way and that. Big brown eyes inspect the shadows with a desperate kind of fear. Tommy immediately presses his belly as hard as he can to the ground, cold be damned, and his party members slink further back from the lip of the hill, but it’s too late.

It’s not dark yet, not completely, and any light is enough to reflect off his bright-colored fur. They spot him. The biggest one begins to bark, but they’ve all already seen him and are turning to dart deeper into the woods.

A big black shape—Tommy’s party leader—crashes through the bushes, tearing after the elk on frenzied paws. After a moment, they all remember to take off after him. There’s no point in being quiet anymore; there’s snarls and snapping teeth on all sides, and Tommy knows the aggression is in part pure annoyance thanks to his…contribution.

They run until Tommy’s legs are shaking beneath him, following the hoofprints and scent when the elk inevitably disappear out of view. Tommy feels just about ready to collapse by the time their party leader calls them off with a bark. They’re all winded, all growling and upset, but no one is as shaky as Tommy. He hopes they’ll go home after this. He’ll happily go to bed on an empty stomach if at least he can sleep .

Then his party leader rounds on him with a snarl, and the hope dies. The rest of the group is quick to join in, circling around him with their lips curled up from their teeth. Tommy, blue eyes wide, drops back down to the ground on trembling legs. He whines and cries frantic apologies, licking his lips anxiously. The big black muzzle only grows closer, teeth flashing in the half-light, gums pale against his dark fur. His growl ramps up, and the wolf at the base of his skull wails.

Bad-bad-beenbad! Bequiet-bestill-packangry!

Tommy’s own whines ramp up with the other wolves’ snarls, and they begin to drown him out with proper barks, warning barks, furious barks. He twists onto his back to show his belly, tilting his head back to expose his throat so far that his nose brushes the snow.

The barks turn impatient. Tommy’s instincts—his shriveled, useless instincts, capable of only this—shriek louder: notfovigen-bad-bad-bad! Tommy’s heart is racing, beating so quickly it hurts. He can’t tell even quite which fear is worse: being gored by his pack members, split open and left for the crows, or having to live in such awful stress for a moment longer. He feels trapped, drowning in the rapid beat of his heart and frantic panting of his breathing.

The patrol leader lunges at him and the spell breaks. There’s a sharp sting in his right ear as Tommy scrabbles to get his paws under him. The other wolves crowd around him, snarling and growling, encroaching in, eating up the distance with every step Tommy takes away. There’s no let up from any of them; whatever tentative place among them Tommy once had, it’s gone now. He turns and bolts, too-large paws clumsy, churning up the snow in his wake. He’s still so, so tired, but the stress hasn’t yet waned, and one of these problems seems far more urgent than the other.

No one chases him. His racing heart doesn’t get that memo until he’s long since crossed the border out of the territory.

He doesn’t know what’s supposed to happen when a wolf is kicked out. Tommy doesn’t actually know that much about wolves at all. There was never a reason to know until he was bitten.

What a stupid thing to have to regret.

He figures he’s probably safe enough here. He’s been plodding along all night, limping as fast as he can with one twisted paw and bone-deep exhaustion. He’s still hungry, getting a little dizzy and nauseous, and he’s been moving all night.

Everything hurts. He has to keep swallowing the petulant whine that wants to build up in his throat. It’s a distinctly pup urge, to cry for somebody to save him; it’s something a normal wolf would have grown out of by the time they’re out hunting, Tommy thinks, but he’s not sure the urge is still there because he’s a werewolf, or because he’s just especially pathetic.

Scared-tired-lonely-packwhere? his instincts demand. He quickly squashes the self-pity; it’s fueling the wolf at the base of his skull that’s demanding comfort and speeding up his heart rate again, and he’s not sure how much more of that he can take.

He pauses, lifting his nose to the breeze. He can’t smell anything. Maybe… maybe it’s okay to stop here and regroup.

His instincts want him to find shelter, find a den (and preferably a caretaker–), but Tommy doesn’t care. He’s just going to rest for a moment, let his legs stop throbbing so badly, and figure out what to do.

He flops down right on the ground with a sigh, trying to ignore the wailing of his instincts that it’s tooopen-tooexposed-danger-packwhere! Lying down hurts as much as it feels good. Suddenly he’s a little worried he might not be able to get going again, now that he’s stopped, but it’s too late now.

A quiet scared-lonely-packwhere-help whine escapes his throat, and he doesn’t have the energy to stop it. What is he going to do ?

He can’t– he can’t just go be Tommy again. Tommy, with his two long legs and sticky fingers and city street . He’s– human Tommy is as good as dead. He doesn’t even really know who that is anymore, or if he could ever approximate him again. He’s bitten now, he’s wrong . There’s no place in the city for human Tommy anymore. Tommy is– something different. He can’t go back. People were disgusted enough by Tommy before the bite—he doesn’t even want to wonder how they’d treat him now.

But–

Tommy isn’t a person anymore, but when he had been, he’d been outnumbered on the street almost 3 to 1 by the stray dogs . Tommy is about as good as a dog now. And sometimes people had actually treated the dogs better than they’d treated person Tommy.

Tommy doesn’t really want to be treated like a dog, even from those kinder few. He knows he is one, now, and that he probably deserves to be treated however real people see fit, but he doesn’t want it. But he also doesn’t want to starve to death in the wilderness, or, worse yet, be mauled to death.

The city might be his best bet. And he’s heading the right direction for it.

Probably. He thinks.

He manages to lift his head, turning his muzzle in the probably-direction of L’manburg, but his legs won’t get the memo; they remain limp below him. Well, at least he tried. He’s far too tired to fight them; he just sets his head down on the frozen earth beside them. They can take their time—in the meantime, he’ll just rest for a little bit. Not for long, just until they decide to cooperate.

The sleep that comes is probably inevitable, but Tommy doesn’t see it coming until it sweeps over him.

His limbs aren’t any less sore when he blinks awake, but he hasn’t been murdered in the night, so that’s something, anyway. He squints; the sun is bright overhead, and he’s back to dandelion status. He whines frustratedly. Everything sees him from a mile off with his golden fur in full sun like this, and he’s a lousy hunter even without that. There won’t be any breakfast today.

All the more reason to get moving to the city. He won’t have to hunt for a dumpster behind the grocery store. He’s already familiar with how to find that.

Tommy’s entire body protests when he stands. His ankle has swollen more overnight, or maybe it’s been swollen this entire time and he’s just been too exhausted to notice. It’s throbbing sharply with every heartbeat, but Tommy doesn’t exactly have the luxury of time to rest it. The sun is already high in the sky, and he’s hungry and tired and his instincts are whining unsafe-exposed-danger and it’s definitely past time to get moving.

So Tommy walks. Or, limps, really. His face is twisted in a determined grimace—or as much of a grimace as a wolfish muzzle can make—and pathetic whines spill from his lips with every shaky touchdown of his good forepaw as it jostles the bad. He doesn’t care. This is wilderness, no-man’s land, pressed between a true wolf territory and what he’s really hoping is L’manburg; there won’t be anyone out here to hear him anyway.

There’s nothing out here. Truly. No roads, no people, no prey. No movement in the foliage except that of the wind. No scents but the snowmelt seeping into the soil and the sap of long since elk-stripped alder trees, and his own misery-scent.

Until, suddenly, there is something.

The sun is beginning to set, Tommy’s whines have been increasing steadily and carelessly in volume, and the change of the wind brings a new scent that halts him in his tracks.

He doesn’t even catch it for a good several steps, because that’s his scent. Wolf-scent, and magic-scent. Werewolf scent . He freezes.

So. Important discovery number one: L’manburg, assuming it’s still actually in this direction, is much further away than Tommy thought.

Important discovery number two: Tommy may very well be mauled to death sometime within the next day or so, and there’s not that much he can do about that currently.

Werewolves are territorial. Very territorial, even more so than true wolves, and if there’s anything he learned from being bitten, it’s that no one likes turned Wolves . Dream had hated born Wolves, and he had hated Tommy even more. Tommy will never belong with either of them; Dream reminded him every day that he was no longer human, no longer a person. And the bite, crookedly placed on the side of his throat, means he will never have a place here either. Here or anywhere else.

They’re probably both as likely to kill him, now that he thinks about it. L’manburg and whoever lives in this territory.

He wonders which death would be worse, and then, with a shudder, promptly decides to stop wondering.

But no one likes the stray dogs, either, he reasons, and many of them are able to slip through the cracks. Plus, Tommy still has his human intelligence, whatever that’s worth. The city is still his best bet; at least no one will be able to smell him out like these fuckers will.

Well. No more than anyone can smell out a regular stray animal.

He’s going to L’manburg then. Even having made his mind up about that, that still leaves this current obstacle to figure out. Tommy paces back and forth along the border a few times, barely choking back anxious whines, befores he tires too much to even do that. He flops back on his haunches, panting from exertion, pain, and stress. He’s so tired . His mind wants to fog over, wants to let the wolf at the base of his skull call the shots for a little while, wants to whine and cry for help. Which is stupid , because the only help Tommy might get from anyone around here is help into an early grave:

Oh, hello there, strange puppy! Welcome to my territory. Tell me, how would you feel about being six feet under?

He shakes himself off, trying to dispel some stress. Okay. Okay. Think logically . The wolf in his skull hates logic. Logic is Tommy’s best friend right now. He forces his brain to re-engage with the situation, and tunes out the indignant complaining of tired-tired-hungry-lonely .

He can go around, or he can go through. Both are…not great options.

Trespassing is a crime, a serious crime, among werewolves. Territory is sacred, almost as sacred as pack. But werewolf territories can also span miles, and Tommy is losing steam fast. It could take weeks to slowly stumble his way around, and Tommy won’t survive that. Not with a busted paw, and maybe not even in perfect health. He’ll starve, or fall down into a ditch, or be discovered close enough to the border to be mauled anyway.

If he goes through instead of around, the chances of survival are just about the same level of abysmal. But Tommy is tired , and he doesn’t want to walk all the way around. At least if he gets mauled, it’ll hopefully be quick. Werewolves are vicious, and violently protective of what’s theirs, but they’re also efficient, and ruthlessly deadly. They won’t waste time torturing him, probably.

He shudders; he’s changed his mind about logic. Logic is stupid.

But logic is all he has, so Tommy shifts his weight anxiously from paw to paw for several moments, then carefully picks one up to place it down within the border.

He half expects that paw to burst into flame or disintegrate immediately, but of course it doesn’t. He crosses into the werewolves’ territory completely without problem (unless you want to count his heart beating frantically  out of his chest), and then he’s off again.

He doesn’t make it very far, all things considered. His new wolf instincts are at war with his human brain, as per usual. The constant battle raging behind his eyes is a whole separate level of exhausting. His instincts have been demanding he whine and cry for help, for comfort, for pack since the very first day, since they crawled in and made a home for themselves at the base of his skull, and they’ve only gotten louder every day. Tommy’s become well accustomed to tuning them out, but that skill is all but useless to him this time; they’ve been shrieking with an entirely new level of intensity ever since Tommy crossed the border. It’s giving him a headache.

Packwhere! Pack-lonely-scared-help!

He has to actively focus on clenching his jaw shut to keep the cries from climbing any louder in volume. The quiet whines are impossible to stop. His teeth hurt. Everything hurts.

His empty stomach is catching up with him too. The stupid twisted forepaw isn’t helping either, of course.

This sucks .

It’s nearing nightfall by the time he comes across any fresh scents. He’s made poor progress; a healthy wolf his size would probably have made two or three times the distance. A full-grown wolf could’ve easily done ten times.

His instincts have quieted a little, thank the gods, whining morosely but no longer demanding , but they pull at him with renewed intensity when he catches this scent. It’s a werewolf-scent, for sure. Fresh. Maybe from today, or last night.

Maybe. Tommy’s a pretty lousy wolf; he’s generally more likely to be wrong than right. He thinks sometime  sort-of-recently though, at least.

It smells… To Tommy’s brain , it doesn't really smell like anything in particular at all. It’s a strong smell, but there’s no parallel for it that he knew as a person. The closest thing he can think of is just a really fucking weird tree. Damp moss? Wet dog? But not... really any of those things.

Tommy’s instincts love this smell. Alpha-safe-pack-help! Another helpless, hungry whine slips out from between his aching teeth, a little louder this time. He freezes, then redoubles his efforts, molars creaking under the pressure. Stop. Fucking. Whining.

The forest around him offers no response. It’s as quiet as ever. Tommy nearly flops to the ground right there, dizzy with relief. Whoever’s scent this is, they’re not here now. They didn’t hear him.

Actually.

If the wolf is gone now, this might be a good place to take shelter, just for a little while. He’s never had to patrol one himself, of course.. but wolf territories are big, miles and miles; surely whoever patrolled this section won’t be back for at least half a day or so.

And now that he’s stopped walking, Tommy’s legs don’t want to get moving anymore. They’re shaking beneath him, sore, one of them still swollen. The whiplash of constant fear to relief and back to fear of this whole journey is wearing on him, and even though he’s only been awake for maybe half a day, Tommy wants nothing more than to just lie down for a few hours.

Surely he has a few hours before anyone patrols here again?

He won’t even sleep. He’ll just get off his twisted paw for a little bit.

Yeah.

There’s not much cover, but Tommy finds a spot beneath the bend of a fallen fir to wedge himself into. The ground is mossy and protected from the snow, and he sinks down into it with a sigh. His instincts have quieted; this is as close to another werewolf he’s been since he was turned, and they seem to be content, for now, to just soak in the scent. They still pull at him every so often, urging him to cry for help, urging him to call back whoever this scent belongs to, but they’re soothed enough by the scent alone for him to ignore them again.

He releases the pressure on his teeth with a pained intake of breath. For the first time today, his instincts don’t take advantage of his parted maw to bully any pathetic noises out of him.

Sore all over, his eyes slip closed. He’ll just keep an ear out instead, for a little bit.

This time, when Tommy pries his eyes open, cool midmorning light splotches the ground pale blue outside his makeshift den.

Well, it could be worse. Midmorning is better than midday.

Improvement.

He wriggles his way out from under the fir, trying to be mindful of his still-tender forepaw. Must’ve been a pretty bad twist; maybe it’s sprained? Fortunately, it’s been a pretty bad winter to be a wolf, and he’s thin enough to squeeze his way back out even accounting for the injury.

He’s so hungry. Scratch “fortunately;” his stomach feels like it's trying to eat itself.

He really shouldn’t hunt here, and he won’t , but his complaining stomach has him lifting his nose to the breeze habitually.

(Not instinctually, habitually . His instincts are whining again, insisting that his pack should be feeding him, that he’s little and he can’t hunt on his own yet. Stupid things. Weren’t they paying attention all winter, when Tommy was hunting for himself?)

He doesn’t recognize all of the scents in the area around him, but he can pick up a few things he has eaten before: rabbits and mice, mostly. The wolf scent is still there too, of course. Although–

It seems even more present this morning than it did last night. And newer. And–

Tommy twists around.

There’s a big blond wolf standing at the crest of his hollow. Or, rather, the wolf’s hollow. The hollow Tommy is trespassing on. He stares, frozen.

For a moment, they both just watch each other, Tommy completely stiff and wary, and the wolf standing passively, projecting ease.

Well. Naturally. He’s at least three times Tommy’s size, probably more, and much better built. Tommy can’t help but marvel that a wolf with a pelt so similar to his, only a few shades lighter, a few shades more muted, looks so much less starved than Tommy must.

Another reason for the fucker to look so relaxed, he supposes. He wonders what the wolf must be thinking as those blue eyes rove over Tommy’s own boney flank.

Finally, the wolf tilts its head at him, in a very aware fashion, the sort of aware that the true wolves had never behaved with. There’s a person behind those eyes, as much of a person as Tommy is anymore, anyway. It’s downright terrifying . Tommy hasn’t had to interact with anyone quite so sentient since Dream, and–

Tommy shudders involuntarily, and the wolf takes a step forward, ears half-pinning. Tommy flinches the same distance away.

He should run , he wants to run, but the wolf is blocking the way to the border, and Tommy doesn’t know what it would do if Tommy turned and trespassed some more . A scared-sorry-pleasedonthurtme whine slips between his teeth. For once, his instincts are quiet, maybe also unsure about the situation, and Tommy has to take the reins.

Great.

As soon as he whines, the wolf is moving forward again. Tommy drops, pressing his belly to the ground and shuffling backwards until his haunches brush the fallen fir behind him. His tail is tucked firmly beneath him, and a string of plaintive whines escape his throat in a constant stream, but he can’t bring himself to flip over and bear his underbelly, or twist around to show his throat.

Neither are an opportune position to book it the hell out if he needs to.

The wolf doesn’t seem to care about his efforts, still approaching on quiet paws. He reaches about a dozen meters away and Tommy’s quiet whines ramp up into a true cry: sorry-sorry-scared-terrified-sorry! And the wolf halts again.

Then a rumbling noise, a calm-peace-bestill noise, rolls out of the wolf’s throat from deep in his chest–

–And the uncertain quiet from Tommy’s instincts is immediately over.

They’re as relieved as they are desperate, wailing  pack-help-lonely and calm-safe-safe! in equal measure. The conflicting halves are dizzying, and in the time it takes Tommy to regain his bearings, the wolf has approached another several meters, and his rumbling is closer, louder, and Tommy wants .

He wants what the soothing sound promises him. He wants the wolf’s gentle posture to be honest. He wants to relax his crouch, splay out in the dirt and be calm, be still , and let the wolf come closer, come do as it will, and he wants whatever that is to be kind.

But it won’t be.

His instincts are soothed with every step closer the wolf takes, but Tommy is more afraid. And his instincts were always sort of pathetic things, whiny and childish and small, even when being as loud as this.

He scrambles at the dirt, getting his paws under him and propelling himself forward in the same frenzied movement. The wolf gives a startled bark as Tommy tears away from the hollow, darting further into the territory because no way in hell is he getting any closer to that massive fucker.

There’s a few rapid pawsteps for a moment, another alarmed bark demanding his attention, but the wolf doesn’t chase him once he crashes back through the treeline, and Tommy is too dizzy with relief to want to question why.

Chapter Text

Tommy loses steam quickly. The adrenaline has kept him going mindlessly for a blurry, indiscriminate amount of time, and it quickly begins to flee once his body registers that he is no longer being chased. It leaves Tommy shaky and sick.

His stomach is solidly empty by now, long-since empty, and his energy reserves are pitifully low. He can still smell the blond wolf by the time he’s forced to slow to a stop, wafting in the breeze from somewhere behind him, but he’s just too tired to keep running.

He needs food, and badly.

He’s already been caught trespassing, and he knows the Old Laws; they’re the only thing humans are taught about werewolves these days, really, to keep children from wandering off. The blond wolf is well within his rights to kill him for it, and he knows that.

Well. He’s already got a death sentence—might as well look around for something to eat, add hunting to his list of crimes. Not like the punishment could get any worse.

Tommy stops once he’s far enough from the hollow and stumbles into a hunting crouch. The snow is cold on his underbelly.

Tommy’s a lousy wolf on a good day, slow and stupid and lacking any kind of instinct that would actually be goddamn helpful . Mice slip back under the snow, and he doesn’t know how to sniff them out again. Squirrels scale trees, and Tommy’s not dexterous or strong enough to follow them up. His sore forepaw catches on the lip of a rabbit burrow while he’s chasing its resident, and the joint makes a terrible, sharp click , wrenched out of shape as he tumbles into the snow.

He whines, hours later, completely miserable, sitting in a heap on the frozen earth.

This… isn’t working.

Tired, hurting, and frustrated, Tommy gives up on breakfast. Or lunch. Or just food in general.

…He should probably consider himself lucky anyway, all things considered. He hadn’t caught anything, sure, but nothing had caught him either.

He never quite seems to be able to get the scent of the blond wolf out of his nose, though. It clings annoyingly like a burr, hooked and burrowed right into his nostrils, and his instincts never let him forget its presence.

He moves downhill, seeking water instead. At least his stomach will be full, even if it's not with anything caloric. Chemical energy is for losers anyway. Tommy should just learn to photosynthesize.

His misery-drooped ears perk up again as he moves through the forest; he can hear the gentle rushing of water before long, somewhere through the dense trees ahead. Eagerly, Tommy quickens his pace, trotting awkwardly on three weary paws and nosing through the underbrush–

–And there’s the pale golden wolf, lounging in the early-afternoon sun, staring straight at Tommy.

He still doesn’t look angry, and Tommy can’t fathom for the life of him why .

It’s a trap. It has to be. It’s camping the water . Godamnit, Tommy needs that.

He whines uncertainly, frozen as the snow.

The blond wolf shifts its weight, but doesn’t get up. Its tail thumps against the ground a few times, and the same rumble from before starts up a moment after.

Safe-calm-safe .

Tommy’s own instincts are soothed under the sound; he feels a little fuzzy in their wake, but not fuzzy enough to ease his stiff posture.

Fuzzy enough for his brain to lag as the blond wolf pushes itself to its feet, though.

The noise coming from its throat changes, shifting in tone into a low croon. It’s a greeting of some kind, the wolf at the base of his skull thinks , but his instincts struggle with anything more specific than that. He doesn’t even know intent .

This wolf could be warning him of the thin fucking ice he’s standing directly atop, and he wouldn’t even know.

Not that Tommy needs to hear that from it.

Then it’s making more sounds, barks and croons and rumbles, all deliberate and completely unlike anything Tommy had heard from the true wolves. His instincts are scrambling in the back of his brain, trying to scrape together the meaning of the vocalizations but coming up empty. It makes Tommy feel itchy and uncomfortable, like the answer is crawling around under his skin, just out of sight and far out of reach.

The pale beast is watching him closely, wolfish eyebrows furrowing with every croon or rumble Tommy doesn’t respond to.

It takes a step forward, and Tommy shies away, whining and lowering his head submissively.

The wolf’s blue eyes flicker to Tommy’s fucked-up paw as he shuffles awkwardly back, and its face falls . The next croon is softer than ever.

Tommy falters. The expression is…different, on a shifted werewolf, and probably not even possible on a true wolf, but no one has ever looked so saddened on Tommy’s behalf like that. It’s… It’s weird. He’s not sure how he feels; he whines again, backing up another shuffling step.

The wolf croons low at him: calm-safe-come-here . Come-here , the wolf insists. Gentle. Safe. Come-here .

It sounds so terribly kind, so terribly hopeful.

And Tommy wants again. Wants badly.

He stands still for a moment longer than the last time, long enough for the wolf to pick up its pace toward Tommy, rumbling that reassuring croon all the while, before his brain catches up and he bolts for the trees again.

Philza bites back a frustrated growl as the golden pup’s tail-tip disappears into the shadows of the canopy, again . He doesn’t chase the pup; it’ll only stress him out worse, and Phil doesn’t want him to push himself any harder on that busted paw. He’ll sneak around instead, keep an eye on the pup from afar and make sure he doesn’t stray too far or leave the territory. If he’s lucky, the pup will double back to the stream to get what he came for.

Fuck , Phil should’ve at least let the poor thing take a drink before he showed himself.

He’d been hoping the water would be worth it enough for the pup to overcome his wariness and approach; Phil had really wanted to get a better look at him. He’d seen the little thing stumble over a rabbit warren, and his paw had looked worse this time. Even injury aside, he was practically skeletal, bones poking out from his filthy, ragged pelt. Blood had crusted around one of his ears, a several day-old wound, Phil guesses.

His lip curls. Whoever had let this puppy get into such awful condition…

No wonder he was so wary.

Phil doesn’t think it was the pup’s alpha. The closest werewolf pack is miles and miles away; other wolves know to steer clear of Philza’s pack. No one has settled down remotely near them for decades. The pup wouldn’t have been able to make it on foot, not unless he’d been dumped here, but Phil doesn’t think so. No wolf would risk trespassing just to dump a pup in their territory when they could’ve dumped him anywhere else. No sensible wolf, anyway.

Still. Phil would be grateful for that wolf’s foolishness, in a way.

He knows how to be a competent alpha for his pack; this pup would never have gotten in this condition under Phil’s care. 

And now he won’t ever again.

A small part of Phil is a little bit annoyed as he slinks behind the pup, carefully out of sight. It’s solidly winter by now, and he has responsibilities that don’t exactly account for an abandoned puppy appearing near-starved in his territory. It’s a small part, though, just a spark of irritation that his neighbors apparently can’t look after their own damn pups for one season longer.

Mostly, though, Phil is just worried.

And, admittedly, a little bit pleased.

There's no pups in Philza's pack. His son is an adult now, not a hint of puppy left in him, and, well.. The little thing is cute, even while confused and overstressed and frightened. It’s been a long time since Phil’s had a pup underfoot.

The pup hasn’t doubled back for the water, unfortunately. Most of the other clean water sources on this side of the territory are frozen over.

Phil’s probably ruined the pup’s chances at water today.

He just hopes he won’t try and compensate by eating the snow. By the looks of things, he has no winter fat for insulation; he must be freezing , and snow in his belly could be the tipping point.

But no. The pup just slinks back to the fir he slept under last night. Phil’s heart twists, half fond and half worried. The poor thing—doesn’t he know he’ll be found there?

His eyelids drop quickly, clearly completely exhausted, and after several long minutes of keeping watch, Phil steps away. He’ll double-back to the stream himself, collect some food and water to leave for him to wake up to.

It’s nearing dusk by the time Phil climbs back up the wooden steps to the cabin. The pup is still asleep, or was when Phil left again, and he’ll have a decent meal when he wakes.

He shifts, robes swishing around his waist as they unfurl, and opens the door. He hangs his hat on the hook with a sigh. What a day.

Techno grunts a greeting at him from his armchair, brief and wordless, but fond, and lifts his eyes from his book to inspect Phil’s tired posture. “Workin’ hard today?” They’ve been splitting the winter tasks, the three of them. Techno eyes his empty arms; Phil was meant to be stocking up on firewood today, among other things.

Phil huffs a laugh. “Hey, mate.” He runs a hand over his head, flattening the hat-mussed hair. “No, actually. Not quite.”

Techno grunts again, but he sits up this time, shutting the book and setting it aside. He raises an eyebrow, gesturing with a wave of his hand for Phil to continue.

“I went to check the southern border again today, remember? You said you had a bad feeling. Well, I found something alright.” His son’s eyebrow raise becomes even more pronounced. “A pup. By himself.”

The eyebrows furrow. “Abandoned?”

“Looks that way. It was weird, though,” Phil muses as he passes through the living room, heading toward the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. “It was like– He didn’t understand me. Just– totally blank.”

“You talked to him?” Techno appears at the entryway to the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe.

“Vocalized, in wolf-tongue. Things he should’ve learned as a pup, known instinctually, even if he doesn’t speak English.”

Techno grunts again, this time dismissively. There’s something in his posture, something in the tilt of his eyebrows, that tells Phil that he’s piqued Techno’s interest.

But it doesn’t look like Techno is going to indulge the feeling; his son is ever-logical about these things.“What are you gonna do with him?”

Phil is quiet for a moment, and Techno stubbornly lets the silence sit, as if hoping Phil will prove him wrong. He doesn’t. “You’ve got to be joking, Phil.”

“He’s only little, Tech–”

“It’s winter and he’s another mouth to feed,” Techno growls back contemptuously. There’s footsteps padding into the kitchen, and then Techno is leaning on the counter beside him, hunched over and trying to make eye-contact. “Why is it  even out there, hm?” Phil opens his mouth, but Techno immediately cuts him off. “No one abandons a pup. If it’s here, then it’s got trouble following behind it. Guaranteed.”

Phil takes his turn to be dismissive, scoffing. “We can take on a couple of Hunters, mate.”

Techno curls his lip, but carefully doesn’t growl a challenge. He does growl, though. “It’s the worst season for Hunters and for new pups to feed. Absolute best case scenario, he’s a runaway, or he got separated, and his pack will want to know why we sheltered him instead of sending him back. Either way, that’s a lot of trouble we could easily avoid, Phil.”

Phil shakes his head, turning to address his son properly. “I don’t think anyone’s coming after him,” he admits quietly, keeping steady eye-contact. “Hunters or pack. I think it’s just him.”

Techno’s ruby eyes search him for a moment, eyebrows still furrowed. Finally, he seems to relent, albeit grudgingly. He steps back from the counter with an irritated but half-hearted growl. Phil was right; he is interested, if only partially. “So what do you want me to do?”

Phil smiles up at his son, reaching out to cup a warm hand around the nape of his neck. Techno leans into the touch with a soft deferential rumble. “Thank you, mate. Go find Wilbur, would you? I’d like the three of us to come up with a plan.”

They’ve started leaving food around everywhere.

When Tommy woke up six days ago to a rabbit split open and left at the crest of the hollow, he’d expected the forgotten catch to be a one-time fluke.

But apparently these wolves are incredibly disorganized, or just incredibly wasteful, because he hasn’t gone a day since then without finding something freshly killed and left to rot in the snow.

(Part of Tommy knows the prey must be left out for him . But that doesn’t make it any less frightening. Either it’s a mistake, or it’s a trap, it must be, and even Tommy isn’t dumb enough to fall for this trap.)

He hasn’t seen the blond wolf since he was cornered at the stream, but he’s smelled it everywhere.

And he now knows for sure that the blond wolf is not alone.

He’s thankful to have only seen one other wolf, on one other occasion—a brown one, two days after the first forgotten rabbit-kill, who came romping up, tongue lolling, play-bowing at Tommy (which was… weird. No one had ever play-bowed at him before).

Tommy had frozen, unsure, and then a sharp growl-bark sounded from further into the trees, loud and low. The brown wolf had turned toward the sound with a whine, and Tommy had taken the opportunity to bolt.

He hasn’t run into that wolf or the blond one since.

He’s only seen the blond one and the brown one, but he knows there are more. He can smell at least one other distinct pack member, he’s pretty sure; Tommy only feels safe moving under the cover of darkness, now.

And his paw is suddenly no longer getting any better since his second tumble, so progress is extremely slow.

…It’s not always so bad, though, really.

There’s a routine he can follow here, something stable and consistent for once , and he’s not– It’s not–

It’s easy to fall into that routine. He’s managing .

The other wolves are weird and frightening to Tommy , but his instincts are soothed by the constant scents of his kind always around him. Food is sort of a problem; he’s ignoring the forgotten kills (he’s not that dumb), and it’s still solidly winter, and Tommy still sucks at being a wolf. It’s mostly mice and voles he manages to snap up, the occasional scrawny squirrel, but really it’s enough . Something every couple of days, and plenty of water! Tommy knows what starvation feels like. And here he’s managing to scrape by.

More and more, he wanders circles around this corner of the territory instead of making any real progress through it.

He’s just– so tired. So tired, and the territory never seems to fucking end . He’s never not afraid here, never not stressed. His heart pounds with every waking minute. But he sleeps easier when he doubles back to a sort-of familiar spot that he’s been to before, so lately he’s been doing that.

And it’s been… okay.

He’s not stupid , he knows at some point the other shoe will drop. The wolves who live here will get tired of smelling him around, mooching off of their land, will decide he’s hung around long enough. Realistically, he doesn’t have long at all before they come to kill him or drive him off.

But the thought of sleeping somewhere new again, sleeping away from the other wolf scents and under a different canopy of trees, grates horribly on his instincts. The stress ramps up every time Tommy lies down somewhere new, panicking that he’s exposed-unsafe-goback and that there could be danger lurking in every new shadow, and his fluttering heart won’t calm until he slinks back to one of the old tried-and-true spots.

(They aren’t dens. They aren’t because making a den in hostile territory is punishable by death .)

His instincts have always been a pest, an annoyance, an irritant, since they appeared in his skull, pushing back against his rational thoughts, but they’ve never been so loud and demanding before.

So he’s trudging back to one of his not-dens as the sun sets overhead, three-legged and bone-tired.

His paws sink into the sandy soil at the edge of the creekbed. His instincts have only accepted two different spots so far, the fir-hollow and here, and this one is Tommy’s preference. The stream is close by, and Tommy can start the morning with a drink without having to go out of his way.

It’s the same stream the blond wolf had lain beside six days ago. Usually Tommy tries not to think about it that way.

But sometimes in the middle of the night, Tommy will wake and peek his nose out from the winter-brown fern fronds, and stare at the flat-topped stone where the wolf had been. There’s never been a wolf there again.

Tommy’s not sure how he feels about that, which is definitely odd and maybe a little scary, because he knows how he should feel.

Maybe he just doesn’t like not knowing where the wolf is. If it’s not on the stone, it could be anywhere, right?

Probably.

Tommy doesn’t even cast a glance at the stone this time, trudging forward without looking up. He’s tired, he’s cold, and his stomach is empty, and he wants to sleep.

A voice clears its throat from that direction, and Tommy flinches back violently.

“No, you stay put,” the voice calls, low and gravely and very unamused. There’s a wolf sitting there, perched atop the stone, a wolf in his human form. Even in human form, the man is massive , almost beastly. Long canines curl up from his lip, remnants from his wolfish nature poking through.

Tommy never wants to see what he looks like in his fur.

The man watches Tommy through eyes half-lidded with boredom and disinterest. The red-amber eyes are sharp beneath the lids, though; he’s watching critically and attentively, despite appearances.

Tommy stays put, busted forepaw tucked tightly to his chest, and the other three stiff against the ground.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you, pup,” the man says, standing up to poke at his campfire. A long pink braid of hair swings down as he leans over, and Tommy hysterically hopes for a moment that it might catch flame. “We all have.”

Those amber eyes flick back up, and Tommy shies back even more, lip curling, an uncertain growl slipping from between the clenched teeth. The man ignores the warning behavior completely.

“My pack has been exceptionally tolerant of you,” the man tells Tommy.

Which of course Tommy already knows .

There’s a beat of silence, broken only by Tommy’s weak growl. The man never seems to even blink, watching Tommy critically.

Finally, he speaks. “Come here, pup.”

Tommy barks, pulling his lips back further. He paces an anxious figure-eight at the edge of the clearing, licking his lips and snarling. He doesn’t want to go over there, he’s not fucking stupid .

He should run, but before he can, the pink-haired wolf’s own lip curls. He stands up, and Tommy moves to bolt–

The stranger’s growl overwhelms Tommy’s tenfold, twentyfold , and Tommy’s instincts hate this noise .

Bad-beenbad-apologize! Apologize! They scream in his skull; a headache blooms immediately.

Quiet-bestill-listen, the man snarls. He’s moving forward from his seat, towering over Tommy even from across the clearing “Come here,” he orders again, voice even more gravely with the force of the growl.

Tommy creeps forward, willing to do whatever it takes to ease the screaming from the base of his skull. The wolf’s growl doesn’t let up until Tommy is cowering only a few paces away.

When the man speaks again, his voice is quiet. But under no circumstances is it soft . It’s a dangerous sort of quiet, a threat, a promise. “A lone pup is an unfortunate thing,” he says, sounding a little like he means it, actually. “No one would abandon a pup. No one.”

There’s movement in the corner of his vision, and Tommy flinches wildly, whining high in his throat. The man doesn’t reach for him, though; he only stoops to poke at the fire again.

“Which means,” the man continues, unfazed. “Whatever happened to you, it’s gonna be trouble for us.”

Tommy’s eyes flick up, and the man is watching him directly again. He looks back down.

“Nothin’ personal,” the wolf says. “But you can’t be here if you’re gonna be bringing Hunters to our door.”

Ah.

Tommy is pretty sure now.

This wolf is going to kill him.

His instincts wail that he’s been rejected, that he’s been awful-bad-unloved , not been what his pack wants , and demand he try and fix this. Lay down and bear his belly, give his will-be murderer even easier access to disembowel him.

He’s pretty sure there’s no fixing this. And he’s pretty sure doing that will make it even worse.

But he doesn’t know what else to do . Tommy shakes his head, whining to himself and backing up a few shuffling steps. He presses his belly to the ground, unable to bear exposing it. But he does twist his head, showing the soft part of his throat, squeezing his eyes shut, and whining deferentially.

He doesn’t expect this to do anything.

He expects the sharp sting of teeth in his throat, and then he expects nothing.

Neither come.

Instead, impossibly gentle fingers brush the now-exposed bite mark that mars Tommy’s neck.

It had been a bad bite. Dream had said so, for all Dream had known about wolves and turning them. Tommy believes it, though. It’s a twisted, mangled thing, stretched awkwardly across the side of his throat instead of the back, where it’s supposed to be. Half-hidden in the patchy tangle of his winter mane, where the mats of fur tug on it constantly. It has been enough to turn him instead of kill him, but barely.

It had felt like it was killing him. The pain had been so bad that Tommy doesn’t even remember most of it clearly.

Even now, it’s still tender, never-quite-healed, and the nerves flare uncomfortably even at the lightest touch of the man’s fingers.

If trespassing wasn’t enough, this surely will be. Tommy shivers, feeling vaguely nauseous.

“You’re a turn,” the man says, his voice quieter and different in a way Tommy can’t discern, the change too subtle, but it’s a nail in the coffin regardless. Maybe he’s angry, maybe he’s disgusted, maybe he’s morbidly amused; it hardly matters. Tommy squeezes his eyes shut harder, twisting his muzzle further into the dirt on instinct.

Another hand comes up, slowly, so slowly, to hook its fingers in the loose skin of his scruff. Panic flares up, and Tommy whines, twisting away, but the man only readjusts the grip. His hand is firm, but no less gentle than the fingertips that are still inspecting the spattering of scar tissue.

Carefully, ever-so slightly, the grip on his scruff tugs upward. It’s not enough to lift any part of Tommy off the ground, but it is enough to trigger the flexor reflex that has control of his limbs spinning away. A thick fog descends all at once; Tommy blinks a few times, sluggishly, and to little result.

Some small, far away part of him is distinctly annoyed. He’s not a kitten , he’s fourteen, and a man . The contempt slips through his fingers like everything else.

“Stay put,” the man says, less growl in his voice this time. He must know he’s got Tommy helpless now. “Let me see you.”

The lift on his scruff disappears, but the hand doesn’t keep to itself for long. Tommy’s brain is still swimming in fog as the man runs the hand along his flank, feeling at his ribs. A thumb pulls back his lips, poking at his teeth, and Tommy wonders distantly how the wolf didn’t get enough of them already.

All the while, the man is grunting to himself, discontented, as though inspecting a rather poor cut of meat. Maybe trespassers are usually more impressive than Tommy. Most people are probably more impressive than Tommy.

Hands are squeezing gently at his atrophied muscles, sorting through his matted coat, then traveling down one foreleg. The man whistles lowly at the damage, fingers ghosting over Tommy’s busted paw, but not touching yet.

“Your pack wasn’t killed,” the man says to himself, then he snarls, low and furious . Tommy jolts in fear, but the hands do not turn punishing. There’s another stroke across his flank to soothe him back down, and the snarl quiets, but it doesn’t abate. “Damn.” The hand hovering over his paw finally touches down, the barest of brushes against the short fur of his wrist. “What’d they do to you, kid?”

Ha, ha. Stupid wolf. That one is Tommy’s fault.

Most of this is probably Tommy’s fault, realistically.

“I’m going to examine it,” the wolf warns. “Hold still. I won’t be long.”

The featherlight touch brushing his forepaw turns firm and deliberate. Pain sparks up Tommy’s foreleg, and he jolts with a sharp cry. His vision goes white, and when the forest floor swims back into focus, the fog in his brain is gone.

Tommy goes frozen stiff, panting, and the wolf goes still, too. His other hand stirs in the corner of Tommy’s eye, moving cautiously toward his scruff again. But this time Tommy is faster.

He twists, teeth snapping. Copper sprays over his tongue, and he scrambles backward, gagging on the taste.

The man is barking something at him, but the blood is pounding too loud in Tommy’s ears for any sound to make it through. He’s clambering away, paws clumsy under him.

There’s no thundering of pawsteps or footsteps behind him as he stumbles back toward the ferns and snowdrifts that wait up the bank.

For whatever fucking reason, he’s not being chased.

It’s not a gift horse he intends to look in the mouth. It never is.

Fuck , he’s gotta get out of here. Right the fuck now. Sleep or water or daylight be damned.

Chapter Text

All thoughts of sleeping have vanished in an instant.

The adrenaline has returned, and it pumps rapidly beneath Tommy’s skin; he wonders how his heart must be fairing, dealing with so much of the stuff lately.

He runs as fast as he can on three paws, barrelling through the snow and thorns carelessly and without thinking. No time to be unsure. No time .

He’s not far off from the border. An hour’s stumble, maybe. If the adrenaline can keep him moving at this pace. If his heart doesn’t give up before then. If he doesn’t have to pause to retch all his nerves away, gagging at the side of the trail.

If the wolves decide to respect their own border and let him disappear beyond it.

There’s no guarantee that they will, of course. But Tommy keeps running, as quietly as he can.

It only lasts so long.

There’s a thudding in his ears, a pounding in his skull. He can let himself hope, for a few minutes, while it’s still faint, that the rhythmic beats are the blood in his ears, the heart in his throat, the beating drum of fear.

It’s not, of course.

A scolding bark comes from behind him, and the bittersweet fantasies vanish into smoke.

Tommy stumbles, bad paw catching in the snow. He has no idea how far they are, how long the wolf waited before chasing him, how much of a head-start Tommy was given.

He never quite recovers his balance, and the thundering grows closer. It’s a cacophony of senseless noise; thrummings of paw-pads that match no familiar measured rhythm.

Well. The wolf must have given him long enough to go fetch some backup .

There’s three sets of paws chasing him. All touching down at different moments; the result is a near-constant droning, a warbling tone that swells ominously as it grows closer.

The scolding bark comes again, sharper this time. Tommy knows why. Ahead of him, the trees are breaking formation; the border is close.

He’s still stumbling, dizzy and sick with fear. He has to stop to retch after all. Nothing comes up, his belly long empty, but he feels even weaker when the nausea clears, limping along at a fawn’s unsteady gait for a few steps before he can find it in himself to take off running again.

Some small, traitorous part of him wants to lie down, roll over. Pretend the narrow snouts, the maws full of teeth, will be kind. Pretend that they will not be exactly what they are.

It’s been a hard winter.

Tommy knows hard winters. This one qualifies.

He’s so tired .

But he’s going to make it this time. He’s not going to roll over and accept whatever will come passively. He never will.

Never again.

The treeline breaks completely. Only a narrow stretch of open snow, now.

He’s not two strides away when something crashes through the bushes behind him

He’s across the border completely when teeth snag in his scruff and drag him back over.

No!

That’s not fair!

Tommy snaps and snarls, but the contempt washes out with the tide near instantly, leaving only fear in its wake. He whines high and frightened, sharp whimpers of apology and desperation. He got away! He left !

He wants to sob; his throat tightens in that way it would when he was human, but there is no oxytocin relief of tears, no shaking of a sob. Only another high wolfish whine.

He would have left them alone forever. He learned his lesson! He did!

It’s not fair .

There’s a soothing rumble from above him. Safe-safe-calm , it says, but it’s lying . The vibration is hard to shake off, though, and so are the teeth in his scruff.

The adrenaline drops off, the fight instinct vanishes, and Tommy’s body and mind give in to the scruffing reflex. His limbs curl up, tucking close to his body; every other muscle falls completely limp.

He feels shaky and sick, but the soothing rumble never abates, and it makes everything else seem far less important.

Safe-safe-calm-pup , the wolf croons; the sound vibrates through Tommy, he can feel it in his bones, in his skull. The fog thickens; each blink is slower than the last. Tommy’s quiet whining tapers off. Becalm-bestill.

Paws crunch over ice, and then a warm, flat tongue licks over Tommy’s eye. It’s only then that he realizes that they’re closed. It’s hard to pry them back open, but he manages.

Two blue eyes blink back at him, framed by sandy fur. Behind the blond shape, a darker brown one is perking up, craning its neck and snuffling as close to Tommy’s face as it can get. The sandy one turns sharply, snapping its teeth next to the brown one’s cheek, a short growl rumbling from its chest. It warns the brown wolf off, holding its ground every time its companion makes a move to slink forward toward Tommy again.

Tommy only blinks, slow and confused. Everything feels fuzzy. Why are these wolves fighting? Why is he here again?

Oh. Yeah. He’s here.

He’s not sure he wants that to be the case, actually.

He tries to squirm, but his limbs seem really committed to the current “limp and useless” status quo. They can only jerk uncoordinatedly.

 The wolf above him rumbles again, something soothing-safe-calm , and shakes him by the scruff, sharp and short, but only once; the need to get away becomes suddenly very intangible, hazy and far-off. Tommy stills with a plaintive whine.

There’s a nose to his belly, cold from the winter chill as it roots through the tangled fur. Tommy jolts, and a tongue rasps soothingly over one of his ribs, catching on the mats.

The muzzle pulls away with a worried-concerned-little-one rumble. Then its owner is barking sharply, short syllables that have no meaning to Tommy, and when he tries to lift his head to pay attention, the wolf carrying him shakes him gently again.

Be-still , it says.

Okay , Tommy thinks blearily.

The blond wolf starts barking again, and the wolf above Tommy rumbles urgently back. It stalks forward a step; Tommy’s limp body sways forward as it jerks its head out toward the smaller wolf, gesturing forcefully at something with Tommy still swinging from its jaws.

After a moment, the muzzle is back, sniffing delicately along Tommy’s throat. His head feels swathed completely in cotton by now, but the cold-pain sensation of that leathery nose against scar tissue is almost enough to bring him back to full awareness. He jolts again, phantom pain burning up his shoulder, up his chin, radiating from the mangled thing that mars the side of his throat.

The wolf above him snarls darkly, warningly, taking another sharp step.

The blond wolf snarls back .

Tommy stills again at the noise, frozen in fear. Oh shit.

Maybe the wolf will remember to put Tommy down before they maul each other .

But they don’t maul each other. The wolf holding Tommy grumbles, but leans down the great distance to the snow-covered ground and sets Tommy delicately on the ice. Tommy sits, as frozen as the earth that’s finally back beneath his paws.

He’s on the ground.

What?

Was that the warning? Was that it?

Are they done with him?

The blond wolf and the brown wolf stand in front of him, blinking down as he slowly sits up. Tommy twists around, but the way further into unclaimed wilderness is also blocked.

Ah.

Well, Tommy was right about another thing: he really did not want to see how big that wolf would be in its fur.

The thing is massive, hulking, broad enough almost to cover the same amount of ground all by itself as the other two do together. Its lips lay flat against its muzzle, but teeth still poke upward from its jowls. Not as noticeably as in its human form, but still there all the same.

Those must be some wicked canines under there.

Red-amber eyes stare down, framed in russet fur, and they don’t so much as blink as Tommy presses his belly to the ground, whining nervously.

There’s a hello-friendlyintentions-bestill croon from behind him, and then new teeth hook gingerly around his scruff. They drag him backwards to cage him between sturdy blond forepaws, crooning and rumbling in soft, sort of scolding tones all the while.

Tommy whines, blinking sluggishly through the molasses-feeling that follows.

Just looking at the russet wolf was enough to get his adrenaline going, and Tommy feels downright awful as it is forced to abate once more. His head hurts, his limbs tremble uncontrollably. He feels nauseous and exhausted, shaky and sick.

What do they want ?

Bestill , the blond wolf croons. Safe.

No-no-scared-help, Tommy whines back, high and desperate as the sandy wolf starts sniffing over him again. It rasps his tongue over the new slit in Tommy’s ear, crusted over with long-dried blood and gunk. It noses gently at Tommy’s forepaw, then brushes its chin over Tommy’s ribs.

Safe , the thing insists. Safe .

Tommy feels too ill, too fuzzy, to argue.

But he thinks the new feeling slowly appearing through the fog is actually annoyance . He’s not stupid , and he’s definitely not safe either.

Gods.

He gives one last ditch attempt at escape, but the russet wolf has crossed all the distance between them by the time he can get his sluggish paws underneath him. He’s lifted back into the air; his legs kick uselessly, and this time the wolf doesn’t even bother to respond to it.

He’s tiring quickly.

And they all know it.

They’re moving now, as a unit, eyes alert and sentient as they communicate lowly with each other. It’s more sounds Tommy doesn’t know. That same uncomfortable itch appears at the base of his skull, poking incessantly at the foggy haze, complaining loudly that he should understand, but he just doesn’t . A headache blooms in the same spot. He squeezes his eyes shut.

The russet wolf lets him kick and squirm as much as he wants this time, without any attempt to placate him. It growls a little every time Tommy’s paws clip its chest, but otherwise ignores him entirely.

Rude , Tommy thinks sluggishly.

 He struggles for as long as he has the energy, but that energy is flagging quickly. Soon he’s hanging limply, tongue lolling as he pants deliriously. He gives an uncoordinated little kick every so often, and eventually even that tapers off.

They’re solidly back in the territory by now. An area Tommy doesn’t recognize, by sight or smell, he doesn’t think.

The brown one is whining, he thinks. Complaining about something.

He doesn’t like that, he’s pretty sure.

Concrete thoughts feel very far away. He feels his larynx vibrate, but he’s not really sure what noise it’s making.

The blond one barks, sharpish, and someone else grumbles back. The russet one pitches in from above him, trotting a little faster, and then the three of them break into a full run.

The blond one sticks close. The brown one is somewhere out of Tommy’s field of vision, which is steadily narrowing anyway. Soon, all he can make out is the snow and the massive red-brown paws that sink into it.

And then, nothing.

He gasps awake when his nose slams into the snow; he’s dropped unceremoniously, face-first, back onto the ground. He’s already let an irritated growl slip by the time his memory catches up with him, and it immediately tapers into a whine.

The russet wolf stands above him, still in its fur, but there are two men standing behind it. The other wolves, impersonating humans now.

One is watching him intently, curiously. He can only see one eye past the curly mop of brown hair, but there’s something in his expression that Tommy doesn’t like. Like he’s sizing Tommy up, and Tommy knows exactly where he’ll be placed: right at the bottom of the pecking order. Lower than dirt.

The other wolf is shorter, standing with one hand on the russet wolf’s broad shoulder and one causally tucked in the pocket of his viridian cloak. Tommy can’t read this one’s expression, and he dislikes that even more. He whines again, crawling backwards on his belly, until his haunches brush wooden flats–

They’ve put him in a pen.

They’ve put him in a cage .

Tall wood-plank fences in a tight square, he can see them behind the wolves, they’ve put him in a cage with them –

–he’s stuck with werewolves, again , just like–

“Hey, mate,” the blond wolf says, and Tommy snaps himself from the panic to watch him approach. Both his hands are up, palms facing Tommy, placating. “Stay there, okay?”

Okay , and where exactly can Tommy go , he wonders a little hysterically. Please. He’d really like to know that information.

The wolf gets too close and Tommy curls his lip, snarling warningly. It’s a high, trembling sound, not nearly as intimidating as the noise the red-brown wolf makes at the first flash of Tommy’s teeth.

Bad ! the wolf snarls loudly, slinking forward towards Tommy. Bad-rude-stop!

There’s a frantic, instinctual apology on the tip of Tommy’s tongue, haunches pressed more firmly against the fence with nowhere else to go, but before he can offer it, the blond wolf is holding out a hand to the red wolf, stopping it in its tracks.

“That’s enough, now, Techno,” he says quietly, maintaining calm. And of course he would be; he’s got Tommy right where he wants him. “He’ll be frightened for a while, it’s okay. He’s a turn.”

Hold on. For a while ? What the fuck does that mean?

Are they gonna fucking torture him ?

‘Techno’ grumbles discontentedly, but it backs off, retreating to stand at the brunet’s hip. Neither of them look very happy to be all the way over there, but they stay put.

“Hey, mate,” the blond wolf says again. “Eyes here, okay?” Tommy ignores him. He knows people can be as awful as wolves, but he still doesn’t want to take his eyes off that mountain of muscle still leering at him from behind the curve of that green cloak.

“My name is Phil,” the wolf says anyway. “That’s my son Wilbur, and you’ve met Techno. We’re not going to hurt you.”

Tommy’s eyes snap over to Phil. His lip twitches, revealing the slightest flash of teeth, before he remembers there’s still a massive, deadly wolf just drooling for any opportunity to rip him apart.

“Why don’t you shift, and we can figure this all out?” His voice is coaxing but firm. This is not an ask , Tommy knows, this is an order .

Fuck that. He’s way safer in his fur than as a scrawny 14-year-old.

He snaps his teeth on empty air. Phil doesn’t even blink, but something displeased blooms in his expression. Still, he holds a placating hand out to Techno, who has resumed growling behind him.

“Do you think he can understand you?” the brunet—Wilbur?—pipes up from Techno’s side. He steps around the hulking wolf, despite the sharp warning bark, and moves to stand over Tommy at Phil’s shoulder. “Techno said he didn’t understand any of your wolf vocalizations.”

There’s a huff from behind them, and then Techno is standing up, shifting. “He can understand us,” he grunts, lumbering forward to Phil’s other side. “Talked to him earlier.”

Phil raises an eyebrow. “Did he reply ?”

“...Well,–”

Tommy risks taking his eyes off the three of them; they’re busy bickering back and forth about him.

He’s not in a cage like he thought, though there’s not much comfort that comes with the realization. Instead, he’s been dropped in a backyard. Fenced-in with tall, flat planks blocking out the forest, but the sky clear above him. The fence is worn, but there’s fresh boards nailed over the rotting sections. No openings left for him to squeeze through. 

There’s a squat cottage, cobblestone and logs mortared together. It’s a little dilapidated, and a little small for a long-term residence for three, really. The fence continues around it. If there’s a gate, it must be somewhere on the other side.

“-aybe he doesn’t know how to shift? Do turned wolves know that?”

“Yes, Wilbur, turned wolves know that . They’re still werewolves.”

“Yeah, but look at him, he’s not exactly–”

They’re still fighting. Even the blond one has stopped watching him, his hawklike gaze turned now toward the other two, irritated. Tommy’s muscles tense. This might be his only opportunity.

He bolts. Barrels between Techno and Phil’s legs where they stand next to each other, startling both but knocking neither off balance. The gate has to be on the other side. It has to be .

All he needs to do is get out . Everything else is a later problem. He’ll take cover in a rabbit warren, or climb a tree, or come up with another equally ingenious plan, but that can’t happen until he gets out.

There’s shouts behind him, then barks, but Tommy does not stop.

He’s already so tired, but he clears the side of the cabin by the time paws are thudding at his heels.

The far side of the fence comes into view–

There’s–

There’s no gate!

There’s nothing , just the same discolored stretch of wood, the same interspersed hasty repair jobs. No latch. No break in the planks.

Nothing.

Familiar teeth hook into his scruff. A familiar scolding growl rattles his skull. The wolf shakes him, sharply, and Tommy, already limp in its grasp, offers only a deferential whine.

“Alright, Techno,” Phil says, quiet again, from behind. “Be gentle.”

Techno snorts, peeved, but turns to approach his packmate. Wilbur stands behind him, shifted like Techno. His tail is lashing behind him, but Tommy can’t pinpoint exactly what he’s feeling. Maybe impatient. Maybe pissed.

Phil kneels to meet them, blocking Tommy’s vision of the tall brown wolf.

The blond man takes Tommy’s jaw in a careful hand, and Tommy blinks blearily up at him. “Hello, mate,” Phil tries greeting him for the third time. He’s firmer about it this time, more scolding. His hand is gentle, but the displeased lilt is obvious in his tone, and in the subtle furrow of his brow. “We won’t hurt you,” he says again, which, yeah, right. Sure . “But you aren’t safe in the woods. And I won’t allow that in my territory.”

This is the pack’s alpha, then. Not the massive prick holding him like he weighs nothing.

Fingers smooth over Tommy’s wolfish eyebrows, soothing the headache with practiced ease. Blue eyes meet blue eyes for several long, silent moments. Finally: “Bring him in, Techno. He must be exhausted.”

There’s a whining bark from behind Phil as he rises gracefully back on two feet. Between the gap in his cloak and sleeve, Tommy can see the brown wolf shifting its weight from paw to paw, tail lashing even more incessantly. Tommy shies back as much as he can in Techno’s grasp, but Phil just laughs. “In a minute, mate. Let’s get some food in him first, okay?”

Phil shoos Wilbur off ahead of them, and the brown wolf prances impatiently toward the cabin, paving the way through the snow. Techno sighs heavily through his nose, but trudges on after him.

The cabin is as small on the inside as it looks on the outside. A tiny kitchenette on one side, a fireplace and a beat-up sofa on the other, and two doors leading to two other rooms—a bathroom and a bedroom, maybe.

It’s warm, at least.

Tommy is plopped down on the shag carpeting just as the door clicks closed behind Phil. Tommy whips around, but before he can move, Techno’s teeth are back in his scruff.

They don’t bite down, they don’t lift him back off the floor. They just hover, grazing the flesh with purpose: you aren’t going anywhere .

Tommy swallows, frozen save for the pounding of his heart.

“Wil,” Phil calls, and the brown wolf halts in his less-than-stealthy quest back toward Tommy, turning his head to look at his alpha with a petulant huff. “Get some rice going, would you? He’ll need something easy on his stomach.”

Techno sticks close by, amber eyes watchful, but Tommy escapes the attention of at least two of the wolves for a little while as Phil and Wilbur struggle uncoordinatedly to share the tiny kitchen.

The portion of unseasoned rice and chicken is served not in a dog bowl, but a plain—but still human —ceramic bowl. Tommy’s vision tunnels as soon as it appears; he doesn’t care that Techno has flopped down at his back, curling around him to block the way to the door. He doesn’t care that Wilbur, still in human form, is watching him intently again from the table, near unblinking in his focus. He doesn’t care that Phil has disappeared somewhere and couldn’t be doing who knows what .

All he cares about is scarfing down the first full meal he’s seen in days as quickly as possible.

He doesn’t choke, but it’s a near thing.

It’s gone too soon. His belly feels uncomfortably full, even as his teeth itch for something more to dig into.

He flops onto the floor, too drowsy now to do anything more than grumble as Techno leans over to rasp his broad tongue over his nape.

Kind of feels nice, actually, until he thinks about how Techno is basically a person licking him , and then it just feels gross.

He’s crawled away just in time for Phil to reappear from one of the doors, a white case tucked under an arm. “Done already?” A rhetoric question; Phil doesn’t even sound surprised.

The man kneels in front of him, sliding the bowl across the floor toward the kitchen to make room for the case. “Let’s get you fixed up,” he says, and then holds out his arms.

As if Tommy’s just gonna crawl right in.

But then broad arms are lifting him from behind and placing him closer to Phil, right between his outstretched hands. Phil’s fingers find a loose hold on his scruff, and his eyes flick up to Techno, a tight smile on his lips. “Thank you, mate.”

Techno grunts.

Phil already inspected him when they caught him, but the man apparently feels the need to conduct the process all over again. He feels along Tommy’s ribs, palpates the muscles in his three good legs, holds Tommy’s jaw in a firm hand to look into his eyes.

Tommy tries to bite him all the while, snarling and terrified, and with no success. At every irritated and frightened snap of his teeth, the hand on Tommy’s scruff tightens a little in warning.

“That’s enough of that,” Phil reprimands after the third curl of Tommy’s lip, a little bit of wolfish bad-bestill-calmdown growl in his tone. “Stop fussing.”

Tommy’s instincts, hushed and confused until now, wail and cry loudly at the sharp words. They hit him like a truck, and Tommy quiets immediately, cowering in Phil’s grasp.

“Good,” Phil murmurs absentmindedly, focused now on pulling up Tommy's lip himself and inspecting his teeth. “How old did you think he was?”

“Dunno. Young,” says Techno, still sitting on the floor behind Tommy. “Not sure how aging works for turns.”

Phil hums thoughtfully. “No, nor me. He’s still got his puppy teeth in, though.”

Techno grunts in affirmation. “Young,” he says again.

“Poor thing,” Phil says, but he’s already moving on, fingers hovering over the bite in Tommy’s ear. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but Tommy flinches anyway. “Wilbur, grab me a washrag,” he says, appraising the gunk still crusted around the old wound.

Wilbur seems all too eager to have an excuse to approach. He watches Tommy with rapt interest, a seafoam towel dripping in one hand. He crosses his legs and sinks gracefully to the floor next to Phil; this time, the alpha lets him get close, a fond, if slightly exasperated, look in his eye. He just takes the washrag without another word.

“What are we calling him?” Wilbur asks suddenly. “We can’t just call him ‘pup’ forever.”

“Why not?” Techno grunts dismissively, at the same moment Tommy bears his teeth at Wilbur. Like fuck they’re gonna name him.

“No snapping,” Phil reminds mildly, squeezing Tommy’s scruff again. “Wilbur, he probably has a name, mate. He’s still a person. If anything, he probably gave himself a name.”

Where do they think Tommy came from ?

Of course he has a fucking name. And it’s a fucking great name. The best name.

“So, what, we’re just gonna wait for him to shift?”

Phil shrugs. “That’s the plan. Not that I encourage it for now,” he adds sternly, directed now at Tommy himself. “This paw looks worse than I’d hoped.”

He’s not touching it yet, still scrubbing gently at the nicked ear, but Tommy knows what paw he means. He tucks the limb further under himself, whining at the sharp ache it produces.

He’s gotten really good at not moving it these past few days. It’s even more sore now when he does.

Phil takes it gently, coaxing the limb out from under Tommy with both hands, but it still lights up with white-hot pain. Tommy’s vision grays out. He can feel himself twisting, shrieking and scrambling away, but then a new hand is in his scruff, and another two pressing down on his shoulder and his flank.

“Shh,” someone says as he kicks and wails. “Hush.” The voice rumbles gently, safe-calm , and Tommy’s struggling tires out, soothed instincts warring with the physical agony.

“It’s dislocated,”  the voice says from very far away. Tommy jolts as its fingers run up and down the swollen joint, palpating as lightly as they can. “I don’t think it’s broken.” The grip readjusts. “Hold him still, Tech. He’s not going to like this.”

The hand on his flank presses down firmer. Tommy panics, free limbs kicking out until more hands gather them, too, holding him completely against the floor. Someone is still rumbling calm-safe-bestill , but Tommy can’t, Tommy can’t –

The pain skyrockets into agony , and Tommy’s vision goes completely.

When he comes to, his head is resting on somebody’s thigh. There’s a hand massaging the headache away from his temples, and new pressure wrapped around his forelimb. The pain is still there, but it’s fuzzy, a dull throb rather than a sharp sting.

There’s something soft under him. His instincts are soothed by the three scents in the room. His belly is full. He’s warm. He’s exhausted.

Someone says something above him. He doesn’t stay awake to hear it.

Chapter Text

For the first time in weeks (months?), Tommy drifts awake instead of coming to consciousness violently and all at once. He sighs a great, peaceful breath of air. The criss-crossing of metal wires beneath him is far softer than he remembers, far easier to sink back into.

Or, wait. The snow beneath him? It’s snow now, isn’t it?

Sort of warm for snow. Weird fucking snow.

Then his brain logs on completely, and he jolts, recognizing the scents in his nose and the blanket underneath him for what it is.

His whole body jerks, an alarmed half-bark, half-snort startling from his throat. His busted paw bangs loudly when it slams back into the floor.

Oh. It’s wrapped in…something.

Some sort of splint, with plastic bits and elastic bands and bolts and a stupid plastic little boot cramping around all his toes. The limb itself is blessedly numb, but the plastic rattles a little with every move, and the bands rub and pinch uncomfortably against the strands of fur.

His ears pin. What the fuck kind of torture is this shit supposed to be?

Maybe these wolves are as fucking shit at torture as they are at not leaving dead prey all over their stupid territory.

Not that he’s complaining.

He kicks away the blanket, back into the pile that takes up almost two-thirds of the floorspace. The room is empty. It’s just him. There’s no windows, and only one door, and it’s closed. The floor is wooden planks, polished and difficult to grip. The blankets are much easier to traverse, plush and soft and textured, but they stink like wolves. He keeps away.

The door creaks partially open; someone must’ve heard him barking. He makes eye contact with Phil through the gap and freezes. “Hey, mate,” he says, just like the day before. “I’m coming in, okay?”

Tommy doesn’t know why he’s asking, it’s his fucking house. Maybe it's rhetorical. Dream loved a good rhetorical question too, just to rub it in. Bastard.

He skitters away to the far wall. Phil doesn’t look too happy about that, lips pressing into a thin line, but he steps across the threshold anyway. He closes the door again behind him.

He doesn’t get too close, instead sitting cross-legged in the center of the room. Tommy assesses him up and down, eyes whaling, but the alpha looks perfectly relaxed.

“Well. I’m sure you have questions, but you’re going to have to wait a bit to ask them, I’m afraid.” Phil tips his head at the plastic and metal mechanism wrapped around Tommy’s foreleg. Tommy tucks it up against his body, hoping it’ll hide the trembling. “That needs to heal before you can shift. It’s really not good to warp internal injuries.”

Phil scoots a half-meter closer, but keeps his hands to himself. “I’m going to have Techno keep an eye on it. Wolves heal faster than humans–” Tommy nods along. Dream had told him that. “–but neither of us are sure if your body will react to injury the same way a born wolf pup’s would.”

Well. It’s supposed to, Dream had said, but it hadn’t. It was one of the many things Dream had tested, and one of the many things he’d failed at.

Dream had been frustrated. The marks weren’t so carefully clinical after that.

Phil watches him carefully, appraising the scars that spatter his pelt. His mouth is that same thin line as before. “It should speed up a bit once we’ve got you better fed, in any case,” He finally says. Then he claps his hands together, marking the end of that conversation; Tommy flinches at the noise, but he’s relieved. “Until then, no shifting, okay? We don’t have the resources or the facilities out here for surgery to fix it if that bone warps incorrectly.”

Tommy shudders. Noted.

“Let me go grab your breakfast. Stay here.”

Yeah. Fuck that.

Escape time.

There’s not really any sneaking, per se, with this fucking thing on his leg—the plastic bit around his toes makes his leg several centimeters longer, and he keeps whacking it forcefully into the floor—but he moves as cautiously as he can.

He’s almost mastered walking at a normal volume by the time he crosses the room. It’s his first and last success.

Phil left the door ajar when he stepped out, and as soon as Tommy peeks his nose out into the hall, he’s confronted by a massive leather boot.

Techno is leaning against the doorframe on the other side. His eyes are closed, but as soon as Tommy rounds the corner, they blink open. He raises an eyebrow down at the golden pup, unimpressed.Tommy presses his belly to the floor, licking his lips nervously. He slinks back, and the bigger wolf gives an approving nod, rumbling praise.

Tommy catches the wolf leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes again before one of those massive, scarred hands reaches out to pull the door fully closed.

So much for that.

Phil comes back quickly. He can hear low voices outside the door before it opens. Phil stands in the doorway. Techno has disappeared.

There’s another ceramic bowl in the blond’s hands, and Tommy can smell the same rice and chicken mixture from last night. The alpha sits on the floor again, and slides the bowl across the planks toward Tommy. “There you go, mate.”

It smells normal. It smells the same as it did the last time. He digs in.

“I know you can’t shift,” Phil says suddenly, when Tommy is halfway through his meal. He freezes, stepping his good forepaw protectively over the bowl, nervously flashing his teeth, but Phil doesn’t even blink at the display. “But there are some things I’d still like to talk about with you.”

He smiles, but it’s sheepish. “I don’t know how long you’ve had to figure out this wolf stuff, mate, but just do your best to respond, okay? I’m pretty good at recognizing wolf communication, even from inexperienced pups, so don’t worry.”

“I’ll say again,” he continues, letting Tommy show his teeth all he wants. Dream would’ve walloped him for this, but Phil doesn’t seem to even care. “No one here is going to hurt you.” Speaking of. “No wolf would ever wish ill will on a pup like you. We just want to help.”

Well, now Tommy knows he’s a liar.

“You have a name, mate?”

Tommy snorts at him, licking his lips. That must mean yes in whatever “wolf communication” language Phil is so well-versed in, because the man just nods. “I figured. Well, we’ll wait until you can shift and tell us. I’m sure a nickname will develop in the meantime.”

Tommy curls his lip, but Phil only laughs. “Finish your food, mate,” he says, but makes no move to get up. In fact, he just leans back on his hands, getting comfortable on the floor.

Tommy’s not gonna say no,  and this is an easy order to follow. He goes back to wolfing down the rice and chicken. Hr can feel Phil’s eyes on him, but then the warm meal washes over his senses again, and he lets some of his focus go just to savor it.

It’s gone too soon; Tommy laps at the bowl in futility, unsatisfied even as his stomach cramps.

“What are you doing here, little one?” Phil asks suddenly, his voice hushed. Tommy’s head shoots up, and Phil is closer, a hand hovering over his nape. Tommy freezes. “What are you doing in my territory? Where’s home, pup? Why aren’t you there?”

The hand touches down, but it’s loose in his scruff, gentle rather than restricting. Tommy still flinches. Phil swipes a soothing thumb back and forth over the tangled fur. “What happened to you?” Tommy doesn’t reply, still frozen in fear.

“We’ve had trespassers,” Phil says, a low, soothing rumble beneath the words when Tommy continues to shy away. “But nothing quite like you.”

This is it.

This is how the penny drops.

He’s trespassing. And he’s the worst trespasser so far. Offensive in his very existence.

Phil is going to kill him.

Tommy panics, feet scrabbling on the floor as he scoots backward away from the alpha. What does he do?

Phil is still rumbling, sorrowful creases at the corners of his eyes. His hand has dropped back down to his lap.

No, no, it can’t be now. Why would it be? The plan has to be longer. He’s a turn, and these wolves hate him for it, and he deserves what’s coming to him, and Dream was right about all of it, but it just can’t be now. It wouldn’t even make sense! They just fed him!

Phil doesn’t look that upset with him yet. He’s not even moving. He’s just watching Tommy.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what reaction Phil is looking for, not from a wolf. He doesn’t know how to beg for forgiveness without a human tongue behind his teeth.

His instincts are silent. They think he is safe. They won’t tell him what to do.

He does the only thing he can remember from the true wolves, and from himself, when his instincts were in control.

It worked before with them, right?

He presses his belly to the ground, and then takes a deep breath and rolls over. His tail curls up over his stomach, his ears pin, but he keeps his chin up and his throat on clear view. The movements feel strange without any instincts to fuel them, robotic and detached, scripted but yet unrehearsed.

He licks his lips nervously, forcing a submissive whine and wincing at the wavering, uncertain quality of the sound.

This is the best he can do.

What if it isn’t enough?

The pinched look returns to Phil’s face. After a long moment, he reaches out a hand, and fingers wrap loosely around Tommy’s offered throat, hardly even gripping, just resting. Tommy can feel his pulse jump, racing against the wolf’s palm, but nothing happens. His instincts feel the same, still not clueing him in at all. There’s no pain, either. Then the hand is gone.

Tommy can’t help but flip himself back over, nerve completely breaking.

Whatever that was, it was freaky.

Phil’s face is still doing that stupid pinched expression. Tommy expects more questions, or maybe harsh words, or maybe some kind of reprimand, but instead he just says, “Get some rest today, okay mate?”

Phil gets up, gently shoos Tommy off from the food bowl, and takes it with him out of the room.

Escape Attempt Number Two occurs the moment Phil’s footsteps muffle into nothingness down the hall, and it lasts approximately thirty seconds longer than Attempt Number One. This time, Tommy’s head and shoulders have crept out across the threshold before those big leather boots step out in front of him.

Techno wasn’t standing guard this time. It was just shit timing, the massive bastard ambling down the hall at the exact wrong second.

Fuck.

This time, Techno apparently isn’t content to just shut Tommy in the room by himself. He shoos Tommy back through the doorway with one of those steel-toed boots, then steps in himself. He shuts the door behind him, just like Phil. Great.

“You thought we were gonna leave you alone after this mornin’? After last night?” The bastard laughs, a low, rumbly, wry thing that makes Tommy’s ears burn bright-hot with embarrassment. Techno sits on the floor like Phil, and beckons Tommy toward him. “Come here, pup.”

Tommy dares to curl his lip, but Techno only raises an eyebrow. “Phil’s a lot more tolerant with teeth than I am,” he warns, the words dark with meaning. “I’m sure you remember.”

Yes, Tommy thinks with a shudder. He remembers.

His lips fall back over his canines. Techno nods. “Good.” He snaps his fingers and points again to the empty stretch of floor in front of him. “Here,” he says. But somehow not like he’s commanding a dog, not like how Dream used to say it. Just concise, for efficiency’s sake; he doesn’t even seem to realize it might be rude.

Tommy’s still choosing to be offended.

When the pup doesn’t move, Techno rolls his eyes with a grunt and leans into the space between them to drag him there himself. Tommy squawks, nails unable to grip the smooth planks. “Just let me get a look at you,” he placates while Tommy struggles.

Despite his standoffish demeanor, Techno is gentle as ever as he pokes at Tommy’s paw and feels along his ribs and invades Tommy’s personal space to a frankly rude degree that he’s getting pretty tired of.

The big wolf unhooks all of the straps, meticulous, and slides the splint away. Careful fingers run up and down, pressing firmly in certain spots, and barely ghosting, tickling against the short golden hairs, between the calculated palpitations. Every so often he grunts, not really even words, just thoughtful noises. But he doesn’t sound upset.

The hand drifts down to Tommy’s paw itself, massaging the sore pads. It feels so nice after having them cramped overnight in a stupid plastic splint, and Tommy can’t help but heave a relieved sigh.

Techno nods. “Splint’s no fun,” he says. “But it’s better than riskin’ something worse.” Tommy nods along absently, still taking the opportunity to stretch out his toes before they’re crammed back in that hellish thing.

Soon, they’re crammed back in that hellish thing. Techno moves on.

“I wanna know what happened to you,” Techno says while he’s got his fingers all up in Tommy’s gums, doing some stupid shit with his teeth again. He keeps looking between Tommy’s mouth and his leg, as if they’re pieces to some confounding puzzle he hasn’t quite worked out yet. Finally he retracts his fingers, letting Tommy’s jowls lie flat again. “Pups like you don’t just appear, you know. Not these days.”

Tommy does know. He’s even more of a freak of nature than Techno is, or any of Dream’s wolves, or anyone else he’s ever met.

Not very nice of Techno to rub it in, though.

“Paw looks fine,” he grunts, patting that shoulder without much force. “Should be up and at ‘em in a few days, if your healin’ kicks in like it should.”

Good. Great. It won’t, but they’re done. Tommy can get up now, right? And this massive fucking bastard can leave him be?

Something must show on his face. Techno laughs his rumbling laugh, finally pulling his hands back into his own personal space. “You’re really not liking this, huh?” He shrugs, looking completely unbothered about Tommy’s continuous heart attack ever since meeting these fuckers, about everything he’s been through to get here, and everything they’ll surely do when they decide the time is right; in fact he looks amused.

“That’s what you get for wandering into Taken land.”

The other shoe doesn’t drop. At least, not as quickly as Tommy was expecting.

 In the three days since they dragged him and trapped him in this stupid cabin, they haven’t laid a single hand on him. Not a violent hand, anyway.

No teeth, either.

Not even when he’d snarled at Techno, trying to intimidate him away from the door. Not when he’d slammed into a window while Phil and Wilbur were distracted cooking, trying and failing to break through it and startling Wilbur so badly he’d spilled scalding rice water all over the floor and halted the entire operation.

Not when he’d growled whenever any of them came too close, or when he made mad dashes for the door whenever Techno left for the day. They haven’t been violent once.

They’re still fucking annoying, though.

He’s not left alone ever. And he doesn’t have anywhere to escape them to. (Which is probably the idea, really.)

The room he woke up in two days ago was their den, apparently, which explains why it stunk of them. He hadn’t known wolves made fabric dens like that, in houses, with blankets and pillows. None of Dream’s wolves had ever been given the luxury—Tommy included.

That first night (or second night?), they’d all crowded in there with him and expected him to sleep there. With them.

He’d taken an issue with that, obviously.

 It took almost an hour of ramming his forehead into the door, increasing the force until Phil had bodily shooed him away, fretting for his health, for them to finally relent.

Fucking weirdos. Dream would’ve never given into a tantrum like that.

But Tommy will always take what he can get. He’s spent every night since sleeping in the main room, on the couch, while one of them (usually Techno) leers from the doorway.

As if the entire set of deadbolts and padlocks on the door and on every window wouldn’t do a good enough job keeping Tommy in. Tommy who, currently, doesn’t even have thumbs.

“Get some sleep, pup,” Techno says. Tommy’s already curled up on the sofa, watching Techno reproachfully; Techno is stepping away from the door he’s just finished locking up. There are two sets of eyes on his back; Phil and Wilbur standing at the edge of their own den room, already shifted, watching Tommy as Tommy watches their third.

This time, as he passes by, Techno pauses at the edge of Tommy’s makeshift nest. “Got work to do tomorrow,” he says, like Tommy cares about what he does ever. “Wilbur’s gonna be keepin’ an eye on you tonight. You need somethin? You tell him. Got it?”

Tommy’s stomach pools with dread. Fuck, not that bitch.

They’re all fucking weird, but Tommy thinks Wilbur is the weirdest one. It’s fucking creepy that Techno just watches him at night, but at least Tommy is reasonably sure by now that he’s not actually gonna do anything.

Techno is distant, usually, except when he’s inspecting Tommy’s paw, or stretching out its range of motion. He barely ever approaches Tommy outside of those times. Every so often he’ll return home from wherever the fuck he goes during the day and trudge back into the house still in his fur, and he’ll wander over to groom the top of top of Tommy’s head, but even that is okay. It’s sort of nice sometimes, really; Techno will make that rumbling, hello-littleone-greetings-good sound that quiets Tommy’s instincts, and Tommy will get some peace from them for at least a couple of hours.

But nothing else. He’s consistent. Predictable.

Even Phil isn’t so bad, for a pack alpha, or at least has been incredibly lenient and patient for now. He comes up to Tommy far more often than Techno, but usually he just wants to talk at him. He asks questions like “how are you feeling?” or “did you sleep okay?” or “feel like talking today, mate?” as if Tommy could talk at all, even if he wanted to speak to Phil. 

Usually Tommy just tries another one of those submissive behaviors he remembers from the true wolves, and he’ll do a bad job because Phil will get that pinched, constipated look on his face again, but then the blond wolf will leave him alone anyway.

But Wilbur?

Wilbur is a wild card.

He’s lower on the hierarchy, Tommy thinks, because the other two will shoo him off when they spot Tommy trying to get away from him. Wilbur will throw a little tantrum, whining or complaining depending on his form, but he’ll reluctantly back off until Phil and Techno look away again.

And as soon as they do, he’s back again, sniffing at Tommy, or play-bowing, or talking at him about nothing and everything. He wants to be the one to feed Tommy, he keeps trying to brush him (and Tommy swears if that bitch doesn’t get that wire comb away from him–), he’s always hovering nearby when Techno checks up on his paw…

Honestly, Wilbur is a downright creep. A wrong-un. Tommy avoids him at all costs.

Tommy doesn’t know what motivates any of them, not in the slightest. But he knows what motives Wilbur least of all.

Plus, Wilbur probably holds the freshest grudge right now. He’s a turn and a trespasser, which is bad enough as is, but he’s also bitten Wilbur.

The brown wolf had gotten too close, too fast. Tommy had spooked, snapping and skirting away, and had twisted his head around just enough for his teeth to catch Wilbur’s lip.

Wilbur had yelped. In a split second, Tommy’s world had been flipped completely upside down.

Techno’s massive paw pressed into his flank, his snarling maw two centimeters from Tommy’s cheek. Bad! He had roared. Bad-apologize-submit!

His instincts, mostly floating passively beneath the surface since that very first day, had resurfaced in a torrential wave, wailing louder than they ever had before. They’d constricted his chest, squeezing his lungs; horribly nauseous and dizzy, Tommy had panicked so hard he’d nearly thrown up.

Then Techno had licked soothingly over Tommy’s eyes, coaxing them closed, and rumbling that good-forgiven-becalm rumble. And Tommy had realized he was whining and crying apologies, turning his throat up to the larger wolf. Techno had rumbled soothingly until Tommy’s cries tapered off, and then the russet wolf had lied beside him until Tommy stopped shaking.

Wilbur had disappeared by the time awareness resurfaced. Tommy has no idea what the brown wolf’s reaction had been. 

Tommy hasn’t bitten anyone since.

But he’s getting fucking close.

Do they have to draw this shit out?

Maybe it’s some stupid werewolf rule that they can only kill people during the full moon? That’s a wolf myth, right?

Good thing Tommy has no fuckling clue what the moon is doing.

“Theseus,” Techno prompts. Right. He hasn’t responded. Phil and Techno always want him to do that, even though he can’t speak.

Techno also keeps calling him by that dumb nickname.

Tommy turns his nose into his forepaw and closes his eyes. Either this is somehow a decent response, or Techno picks up far more graciously on the dismissal than Tommy expects, but there’s the soft swishing of Techno’s boots on the carpet as he walks away.

Nails click on the hardwood, but Wilbur doesn’t cross onto the carpet. Tommy will take what he can get.

“You don’t have to shift if you aren’t comfortable,” Phil says from beside Techno. Those scarred hands run up and down Tommy’s leg, loosening straps and undoing latches, and finally sliding the splint from the limb altogether. “But it’s important that you know it’s now safe to.”

Tommy’s ears pin. Yeah, right, old man. No thanks; he’d actually like to keep the modicum of self-defense afforded to him by things like teeth and claws. Tiny wolf is still better than scrawny person.

Phil only nods indulgently. “That’s okay, mate.” This time when he smiles, his face isn’t doing that pinched, forced thing. He’s just– smiling.  “Take all the time you need.”

“And take it easy for a little while,” Techno grunts, stretching out Tommy’s foreleg for what he hopes will be the final time. If he’s never manhandled by this fucker again, it’ll be too soon. “I’m not nursin’ you back to health again if you pull a stupid stunt and land yourself back in that thing.”

Phil laughs. Techno cracks a half-smile. At Tommy’s back, Wilbur’s tail thumps a few times against the ground.

Tommy scowls.

Wilbur must’ve pulled a few strings somehow. because he’s playing guard again tonight.

Usually Techno (or now Wilbur, apparently) just lays at the threshold of the room, paws sprawled out on a blanket, content to silently watch the night away. It’s unnerving, but it’s worse now that it’s Wilbur, decidedly not in his fur, sitting on the blanket.

It’s worse, Tommy decides. Being watched by human eyes.

Phil, already shifted, pauses on his way past Wilbur. He rumbles something, hushed, and far more than Tommy can follow. He sounds urgent, though. Firm. Maybe an order of some kind?

Tommy winces. That doesn’t bode well.

Wilbur nods emphatically, but waves a dismissive hand in the same move. Phil huffs, fond-exasperated, and leans down to butt his forehead against Wilbur’s shoulder. Wilbur laughs.

Tommy looks away from the exchange of affection.

Not that his captors deserve privacy from him, their kidnapee.

“Hey,” Wilbur whispers in the dark. Tommy sighs heavily through his nose and looks back over. Phil has gone, passed by with Techno and disappeared into their den. It’s just the two of them.

“You can shift,” Wilbur reminds him eagerly. “Techno gave you the all-clear.”

Tommy just levels him with a look, and the bitch has the gall to laugh. Tommy curls his lip, and Wilbur only laughs more.

“Who raised you, child?” he says, teasing, and then remembers. Tommy gets almost an entire minute of silence after that.

He uses it to curl up in his nest. He curls so tightly his tail tickles his eyelids; his own body heat is enough to be a comfort. Maybe if he’s boring enough, Wilbur will leave him alone.

“I want to know your name,” Wilbur says into the darkness. So much for that. “I’ve never met someone like you. Neither has Phil, and he’s ancient.”

Tommy snorts.

“Can’t blame us for being curious,” Wilbur says, a smile in his voice.

Ah.

That’s it then.

That’s why they’re waiting. That’s why they haven’t killed him.

And it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? A turn, in Taken land, a phenomenon unseen for decades, maybe centuries. A freak of nature, dumped on the doorstep of the Moon’s Favored Ones. He is a stain, a scourge, an affliction, marring her the ranks of Her beloved children. Of course they would want to know where he came from. It’s not enough to merely eradicate the footsoldier.

Dream had been right about everything.

Wilbur croons from the doorway. Pup-concerned-okay? Tommy’s lifted his head, he realizes, staring whale-eyed at nothing. He can smell his own fear-stench. 

Wilbur creeps a step closer, crooning again; Tommy drops his head quickly, curling up once more, stiff atop the blanket.

They can’t know. They can’t know he’s figured it out.

Wilbur makes an uncertain sound, but Tommy doesn’t hear any more movement.

Good. Good. He’s fine. He’s still fine.

They’ll get fed up with this game eventually. He already knew that, and he knows it all the more now that he’s figured out the rules. His heart jumps to his throat.

He just has to find a way out before then. That’s nothing, right? Piece of cake.

Chapter Text

“Mate,” Phil begins the next morning as he crouches to place a bowl of rice at the edge of the kitchen for him. “It’s alright if you don’t want to shift. But—”

“You stink,” Techno interrupts bluntly. Phil shoots him a glance, but then he’s nodding along. “You need a bath.”

Tommy ignores the both of them, wolfing down his breakfast. He’s not shifting to take a bath unless they make him, and that’s one thing they can’t do, unless they plan to threaten him to do it himself. Which, good luck, if they’re planning to kill him once he shifts anyway.

They’re quiet and patient with him for another thirty seconds.

“Mate,” Phil says, firmer this time. There’s a hint of a growl in his tone; they growl all the time at him, but Tommy still, always, flinches back, instincts and human brain lighting up in distress. Phil goes quiet again; Tommy doesn’t dare look up, trembling and hunched over his bowl. But then his voice comes out quiet when he continues: “This affects your health. That means it’s non-negotiable.”

Tommy shakes his head emphatically, even when he is still too nervous to look up at the two of them. It’s not that bad. Tommy’s been filthy for his entire life; every memory is coated in a variable layer of grime, he doesn’t have a single one without. And he’s still kicking. It’s fine.

Techno seems to disagree.

“You might be a freeloader in this house,” he says, which, what? Doesn’t he know Tommy would leave if he could? “But some of us have work to do today. Shift and take a shower, or I’ll have Wilbur break out the hose.”

“Aw, c’mon, mate. He’d fit in the bathtub,” Phil pitches in. Techno snorts.

“He’d ruin the drain.”

Okay, hold on, Tommy’s starting to feel a little offended over here. It’s not that bad, is it? He twists his head around, trying to get a look at himself, and Techno laughs at him.

“You would, pup,” he insists.

Tommy furrows his wolfish brows, ignoring Techno and really squinting at himself. Sure, his fur is a bit dull, and the mats are a little painful, and he’s kinda… itchy, most of the time, but they’re blowing things out of proportion!

“Hose is probably frozen this time of year, Tech,” Phil says. He flicks a fugitive glance at Tommy, eyeing his ribs and skinny stick legs in the way that makes Tommy want to curl into himself and disappear. “Not sure I’d want him soaking wet in the middle of January anyway.”

Techno huffs an annoyed growl, but throws up his hands in an exaggerated shrug. “Fine, fine. No hose. Destroy the drain with fur.”

“Or you can shift and shower,” Phil offers again, ignoring his subordinate. The alpha crouches down, and Tommy freezes when he reaches out a hand. It’s gentle as always, but Tommy still flinches, whining high in his throat, scared-help-don’t-hurt-me, as fingertips brush over the particularly gnarly matting behind Tommy’s ears. Phil croons soothingly back at him, like he always does, and Tommy tries to ignore that it does slow the fluttering of his heart.

“Don’t these hurt?” Phil implores, rubbing his thumb across the joint of Tommy’s jaw as his fingers graze the tangled fur. “You would feel so much better.” Even the feather-light touches seem to tug on the mats; the sore skin beneath lights up like it does every time Tommy moves.

The pain isn’t sharp; in reality. It’s always sort of there, a dull throb, but the beat of the pain skips into a higher tempo with every stroke of Phil’s touch. He tries to squirm away, but Phil is not done inspecting. The overstimulation that comes with being around them, breathing in their scents, fearing their reactions at all times, it compounds with the pain, and Tommy–

His head whips around, and he bites –

–gently.

He bites gently, despite being sure he was about to take this wolf’s hand off, barely closing his teeth around Phil’s fingers. He’s whining again, asking desperately for space, but not biting down –

Phil is frozen now too, but he’s watching Tommy analytically, curiously, rather than fearfully or furiously. There’s something sharp in his gaze, that same intelligent severity that had spooked Tommy of Phil initially, that very first day in the creekbed. Phil doesn’t look nervous of Tommy’s teeth at all.

Tommy is terrified of the way Phil is looking at him.

His muscles have all locked up; he can’t even bring himself to remove his jaw, or to cower away. The only reaction he can manage is an even more shrill whine.

Phil has his other hand lifted to Techno, palm out, willing his packmate not to interfere. The bigger wolf looks just about ready to disobey him, lip curling, a low snarl peeling from his throat. He looks furious.

But he obeys his alpha. Phil shakes the palm he’s got outstretched to Techno, just once, but firmly, reaffirming his command without even taking his eyes off of Tommy, and the snarl tapers off.

“Look at me, mate,” Phil says, but Tommy doesn’t want to. If he takes his eyes off of Techo, he won’t be ready when Techno attacks. If he looks at Phil, he’ll have to see that awful sharpness in his eyes.

Obey-listen-now! Phil huffs sharply, and Tommy’s wrenching his gaze away from Techno’s before he can even catch himself.

“You’re okay, mate,” Phil says quietly. He lets Tommy keep one hand between his teeth, and brings the other to stroke again at his jaw, on the other side now. This time, the fingers smooth soothingly over his eyebrow and down his temple, keeping to stretches of fur too short to be tangled. “You’re just trying to communicate, huh?”

The gentle words and Phil’s careful touch is already soothing away the headache; Tommy feels exhausted as the adrenaline drops off. His legs buckle just a little under his weight, and Phil guides him to the floor, pillowing his head with a cloak-covered thigh.

“No one taught you,” Phil says mournfully as he carefully reclaims his hand. He’s quick to put it back to use, bringing it to Tommy’s other temple. Tommy lets him.

“And I bet no one responded to you when you tried to communicate normally. Some of that communication is instinctual you know, even as a Turn. There are things you wouldn’t have needed to be taught. But no one listened to you, did they, pup?” Phil thumbs Tommy’s eyes closed, then massages carefully at the space around the sockets; Tommy’s headache lifts almost completely. He sags against the ground. “That’s why, isn’t it? Why you resort to such extreme behaviors even in normal situations?”

Protected, loved, cared for, his instincts murmur contentedly, lapping like the tide first at the edges of his consciousness, then rushing over it completely. Seen , they say. Wanted . 

“Techno,” Phil says from somewhere far away. Underwater? Muffled. “Use the tub, please. He’s not ready.”

What? No, Tommy is so ready, he’s always ready, he’s–

Techno grunts affirmation, sounding slightly cowed, and then new hands are carefully gathering his limbs together, lifting him, and Tommy is–

–out.

He’s not out for long, and he never dips into full unconsciousness. He just drifts in the gentle sway of Techno’s arms.

A far away part of him itches uncomfortably—it’s not safe to be unaware of his surroundings, even as his instincts purr that he’s safe, cared for, protected, that Techno is keeping an eye out for danger for him. But the itch only makes Tommy want to drift further, where coherent thoughts and stress aren’t so tangible.

Warm water laps at his feet. Techno loosens and tightens his grip a few times, testing to see if Tommy’s got his legs under him, and his brain catches up enough to realize he’s meant to stand on his own now.

He blinks awake. He’s in a bathtub; the inside is porcelain, but the outside is covered with wooden flats, like some kind of oblong, fucked-up barrel. Rustic, but probably expensive, like everything these wolves have. The water, warm where it cradles his body up to the hocks, is already tinged gray. Techo kneels at the edge of the bathtub.

They make eye contact. He thinks he sees something in Techno’s shoulders relax, but Tommy can’t be sure if he imagined it. “Back with us?” Techno grunts, quickly breaking eye contact to reach for a couple of soap bottles on the rim of the tub.

Tommy tips his head sideways.

“Dissociated on me for a bit there,” Techno tells him. “Not that unheard of for pups,  gettin’ lost in instincts, but you went down quicker than typical.” He’s still carefully not making eye contact with Tommy, so different from his alpha, and instead is inspecting the bottles in each of his hands, and then leaning forward to rummage around in the cabinet under the sink.

Tommy looks back down at the water. There’s no current, of course, no tide in a bathtub, but if he shifts his weight back and forth, the  water will slosh gently against his legs, against his belly. The quiet sensory input helps.

He never used to do this. It started after Dream—

Well.

He used to react, really react, when things became too much. He became explosive, standoffish, snappy. He would move, and shout, be noisy and difficult and quick, he would take action against his situation, or take action to get away from it. And he still does, most of the time.

Not all of the time. Not anymore.

There wasn’t that much he could do to fight his situation with Dream. Or any way to get away from it, not until–

New coping mechanisms developed. His instincts made it better. His instincts made it worse. He dealt with it both ways.

He’s still dealing with it.

“Let’s get this over with,” Techno says, straightening up from the cupboard. “I’ve still got other things to get done today.”

He’s got pet shampoo in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.

Tommy’s ears pin.

It’s not so bad, in the end. Techno with any sort of blade in his possession is an intimidating notion, but he’s as careful as he usually is.

When the conditioner proves fruitless against the worst of his matting, Techno loops a careful arm around Tommy’s midsection, uncaring and steady even when his rolled-up sleeve brushes the surface of the water, or when Tommy drags him further over the tub shying away from the scissors.

They snip startlingly close to his ears, cutting out the particularly painful mats behind his head.

Tommy refuses to let him touch his long winter mane around his turn scar for almost three minutes, whining and snapping his teeth on deliberately empty air. Techno is sympathetic but stubborn in response, an immovable object, all his usual stoic dependability turned against Tommy.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Techno repeats steadily when Tommy flinches at every snip of the scissors. “You’re almost done.”

Twenty minutes later, the bastard finally lets him clamber out of the tub. Techno stands up in a very ‘my-part-here-is-done’ manner, dries his hands off on the bathroom hand towel, and turns to open the door.

Wilbur is standing there, waiting with his fucking wire comb in one hand, and a fluffy green towel in the other. Techno squeezes past him, ruffling his hair like ‘good luck, kid,’ and disappears down the hall.

Wilbur hasn’t taken his eyes off of Tommy. His face flickers rapidly between emotions: absolutely crushed, heartbroken, one second, and holding back laughter the next. It’s not the same constipated expression that Phil gets. Honestly, it just looks like he wants to cry, but he doesn’t quite know why he’s crying.

He doesn’t cry. He decides to laugh, instead. “Nice haircut,” he says, like he’s really trying to be nice, but the last syllable is snorted out through a bark of laughter.

Tommy flattens his ears, affronted. Better than crying, at least?

When he twists around, confronting himself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, he realizes Wilbur is probably within his rights to laugh. Techno spent the better part of half an hour trying to condition and unravel as many mats as possible by hand, but there were definitely ones he had to cut out.

Techno is no barber, that’s for sure.

He’s patchy at best, the longer sections of his pelt choppy and uneven. Even in places where Techno was successful without scissors, there’s fully bald patches, where the mats twisted around each other and ripped themselves out of the follicles. The visible skin is inflamed; he can feel the dull throb of it, even though it feels better than it did before Techno chopped it all up.

Wilbur settles onto the floor beside him, sitting cross-legged in the driest spot, furthest from the tub. Pain flares a little when Wilbur leans forward to dry him off with the towel, scrubbing up and down Tommy’s back, but not as sharply as usual. Tommy still flinches, but does not move away, standing tolerantly. It feels good, actually.  It’s the feeling of scratching a slightly raw itch, a bug bite set to bleed: painful, but still worth scratching.

For the first time, Wilbur’s stupid wire comb moves easily through his coat.

The bitch laughs at every choppy section he combs through. “I would’ve thought Technoblade to be more trustworthy with a job like this,” he says smartly, a smile in his voice. “He does almost all of the animal care back home. Maybe scissors are trickier than clippers.”

Clippers? What, does he shear sheep or some shit? Tommy ain’t no little bitch sheep, not like Wilbur. He barks contempt, and there’s no way Wilbur knows what he’s thinking, but he laughs anyway.

Tommy sort of likes it when Wilbur laughs at him.

Phil is waiting when Tommy trots out of the bathroom, Wilbur, now four-legged, at his heels. He smiles—Phil is always smiling, he thinks—and crouches down to greet his shifted son, and maybe also to greet Tommy. He reaches out a palm to both of them, anyway; Wilbur licks his fingertips in greeting. Phil isn’t mad when Tommy doesn’t even approach the hand.

“Looking good, mate,” Phil says, even though Tommy knows he’s not. “You’ll be good as new next season, when everything grows back even.”

The alpha reaches back out to his coffee-colored packmate, running those same fingers over Wilbur’s ears. It’s sort of weird that they pet each other, isn’t it? Maybe it’s not that different from a pat on the shoulder—parents do that, don’t they? “Are you taking him out to stretch his legs?” Phil asks, and Wilburs barks, tail beginning to wag ferociously behind him.

Phil laughs, and Tommy’s own tail wags tentatively too. Phil has a funny laugh, wheezing or squeaking on every breath. “Okay, have fun you two. Wil, don’t keep him out too long, okay? He’s…” the alpha glances over at Tommy, and his smile widens. “Well, he’s half a pelt lighter than he was before.”

Wilbur sticks his cold wolfish nose into one of the bald patches on Tommy’s neck, huffing in amused agreement. Phil laughs, too.

They have nicer laughs than Dream did.

“Techno will be gone until late,” Phil says. He gets up off the floor, and Wilbur pads after him toward the door. “Holler if you need anything. And Wil, I’m serious. Not too long, okay?” The alpha levels a stern eyebrow raise at his son, then pushes the door open.

Tommy has been out in the yard since his…stay, with Philza’s pack. He won’t shift, so Techno or Phil will usually take him out to do his business in the mornings and evenings (which is a sacrifice Tommy has been willing to make), but he’s never been invited out to—

—Wait.

What are they doing? Wilbur hadn’t said anything, somehow Phil had just picked up that he wanted Tommy to “stretch his legs,” but—

His blood goes cold at the sheer number of things that could be alluding to.

Wilbur bounds immediately through the open doorway, taking a flying leap off the side of the deck to hit the snow running.

Tommy, however, stops in the door, whining anxiously. He paces in a tight half-circle, rationalizing to himself.

They probably…won’t hurt him, right? Tommy knows Dream’s idea of good exercise, but this pack hasn’t shared any of Dream’s ideas of anything so far.

It had been sudden then too, though.

“You need to learn, Tommy,” Dream had said, clipping a lead to Tommy’s muzzle. His jowls were bleeding past the wire mesh where a tooth had caught in his lip, jarred there by Dream’s fist when Tommy had tried to refuse going with him. The wound had ached when Dream tugged at the lead, another pulse of blood pooling in the well of his bottom lip. “And it’d be nice to stretch your legs, wouldn’t it? Really, you should thank me.”

As he’d stared down the feral werewolf opposite him in the ring, twice his size, saliva frothing at its lips, dripping from its maw, hackles raised and teeth flashing, thanking Dream had been the furthest thing from his mind.

Wilbur isn’t snarling, though. He’s looking over his shoulder, hackles smooth against his back. Where Dream’s wolf had circled, growled, and lunged, Wilbur tilts his head and doubles back a few trotted steps, calling out to Tommy with a come-here-good-pup-okay? series of whines and croons. He play-bows, yipping encouragingly, but Tommy doesn’t move.

Phil’s hand suddenly smooths over Tommy’s ears, just as tenderly as it had over Wilbur’s, but Tommy still flinches. “You don’t want to play?” he murmurs, crouching down to be as close to Tommy’s height as he can. “He just wants to run around a little, that’s all. Blow off some steam, maybe play some keep-away.”

Phil’s other hand comes up, caging in Tommy’s head, but it’s the gentlest prison Tommy’s ever been in. His thumbs begin to rub those soothing circles over Tommy’s wolfish eyebrows; his eyes flit closed. “That’s all that will happen,” Phil promises. “Go on, little one,” he encourages, but he does not remove his hands until Tommy moves his own head away. “You’ll see. He’ll show you.”

Phil leans down to press a kiss to Tommy’s forehead (his ears immediately burn a confused red, flustered, like a kid, inexplicably embarrassed, when their parent hugs them for too long while dropping them off to summer camp. It’s a feeling Tommy is sure he doesn’t know, shouldn’t know, but can identify nonetheless).

He rumbles a quiet be-good-obey-try , an encouragement that feels as natural to Tommy as it does foreign, and then the alpha straightens back up.

Phil blocks the door at his back. Wilbur waits for him in the snow.

Tommy goes.

Wilbur greets him with an excited yip, bracing his forelegs on the ground, darting sideways a few steps and then play-bowing again. He leaps forward, nipping at the empty space in front of Tommy’s face, then retreats back into a play-bow.

Tommy jumps back when Wilbur comes forward, but he finds himself bounding forward when his playmate retreats, nipping on empty air just like Wilbur had. Wilbur barks approvingly, tail wagging wildly behind him. Confidence boosted, Tommy jumps a little closer on his next turn.

They dance around each other for several minutes, yipping and barking and sneezing playfully, and it’s fun!

Tommy still startles when Wilbur comes too close. His playful barking becomes a strangled, high-pitched whine whenever a paw or a muzzle disturbs the air immediately next to his pelt, or when the dark-brown of Wilbur’s body spooks him from the corner of his vision. But then Wilbur will stop and move carefully in front of Tommy, rumbling reassuringly. He’ll lay down in Tommy’s full view, tail thumping against the snow, until Tommy feels comfortable enough to approach.

And then Tommy will kick up the snow in front of him, flecking his pelt with white, dart away, and they’ll begin again.

They don’t stop until Techno reappears for the night, leaping the fence in a single bound, landing with a thump on the far side of the yard. Tommy is secretly grateful for the interruption. Wilbur isn’t winded at all, but Tommy’s long since out of breath; heaving on the January air is starting to hurt his chest.

Techno calls a greeting to them, ambling over to touch his nose to Tommy’s forehead. Hello-pup-hello, he rumbles, sounding pleased.

Tommy ducks away, but Techno doesn’t even blink, moving smoothly on to his other packmate without remark. The greeting he throws Wilbur’s way is a lot more casual, a gruff, meaningless grunt more than anything. Wilbur snorts at him, affronted, then drops back into a play-bow. He growls challengingly; Techno only huffs in laughter.

They turn to face each other, each sneezing once to communicate their intentions: they’re only playing, but the tension in the roll of Techno’s shoulder blades, and the stiffness of Wilbur’s own gait as they circle each other, looks far more serious than he’s seen them since they kidnapped him.

Tommy had thought maybe Wilbur was just a wuss, but apparently the dark brown wolf had just been going easy on Tommy. Very easy.

They play like Tommy used to fight, a flurry of limbs and teeth and swiping paws. Their snarls are interspersed with playful yipping and lighthearted sneezes, but they snarl nonetheless. Tommy watches, wide-eyed and glued to the snow, tail slowly moving to tuck beneath him against his belly.

They’re just playing.

Every time they break apart, neither one is injured. Tommy can’t smell any blood. Nothing stains the snow.

But they look very capable of it. If they wanted. If that was Tommy on the other side of Techno’s snapping jaws, of Wilbur’s gleaming teeth. If he gave them what they wanted and they no longer needed to keep him around.

They aren’t, not this time. But if.

Wilbur twists away from Techno’s grip, darting backwards, his haunches now to Tommy. Techno prowls forward to follow him around, to face him head-on once again. But it’s not Wilbur that Techno looks at.

Those red-amber eyes flit instead to Tommy.

The pup goes even more rigid, tail pressing more firmly to his belly. He swallows nervously, but Techno’s posture is changing, too.

The russet wolf straightens up immediately, tail raising to a friendly, neutral position, parallel to his body. His hackles lie flat again. The playful growl dies completely in his throat.

Wilbur leaps toward him again, not intent on giving up the game, but Techno just bats him away. He’s so massive that Wilbur is sent rolling, and the russet wolf’s path to Tommy is clear.

He’s easy about approaching, but Tommy still whines anxiously,  pressing his belly into the snow. Safe-calm-be-still, the russet wolf rumbles, then leans down to lift Tommy by his scruff. It’s scarily reminiscent of the first time, of when Tommy was first kidnapped, and he struggles automatically.

Techno lets him. He lopes toward the deck, crossing the yard in only a few bounds. He sets Tommy on the wooden flats, then twists his broad head around to bark sharply at Wilbur.

Then he shifts, staying crouched next to Tommy and smoothing a hand over his ears. “Sorry, pup,” he grunts.

Wilbur’s footsteps crunch through the snow, four, then two, and then he’s standing beside his packmate, barefoot on the deck. “We didn’t mean to scare you. We were just playing.”

Techno is still rubbing over his ears, and then he’s cupping a hand over Tommy’s nose, feeling the scaly skin with his palm. It’s burning hot, and Tommy, despite himself, presses into the warmth. “Time to go in anyway,” he says, hefting Tommy up into his arms. “You’re too scrawny to handle too much of this weather. Bet Phil warned you and somebody didn’t listen.”

“Sorry, Tech,” Wilbur whispers from behind again. Techno grunts at him. Tommy, for the sake of his fluttering heart, can only assume that means that all is forgiven.

Phil sets him up in front of the fireplace and makes him sit there until the sky is dark outside. He sends Wilbur to bed early with a stern quirk to his eyebrow, and Techno to keep an eye on him, but he reassures Tommy that he’s done nothing wrong and not to worry.

Easier said than done, but okay.

Tommy scarfs down his dinner like usual. He expects Phil to take the bowl and disappear into the nest. He expects Techno, or maybe Wilbur now, to appear at the doorway to watch him sleep, like usual.

Neither of those things happen.

Instead of crouching down to retrieve his bowl, Phil sits down on the floor beside him.

Tommy stares. What’s he supposed to do with this break in routine?

Should he be running? Surely this can’t be for anything good. He should probably run, right?

But then Phil reaches out to massage at Tommy’s temples, and Tommy can only stand and drink in the gentle touch.

“Hey, mate,” he says, quiet, mindful of his son and his packmate trying to sleep in the other room. “Lay down for a second, okay?” There’s a little bit of that encouraging obey-be-good rumble in his tone, the same from earlier; Tommy’s own instincts echo the sentiment, pulling insistently at his consciousness, and soon he’s sprawled out on the floor with his back pressed against Phil’s thigh. The hand stroking his head moves down to rub his flank.

“Good,” Phil says. Good, Tommy’s instincts echo, already sluggish with contentment, the pushovers.

Phil is quiet for a moment, stroking absently at Tommy’s ribs. “The full moon is coming up soon,” he finally says. Tommy jolts, and Phil’s hand over his flank becomes insistent, demanding attention and time to explain. Tommy, frozen, can only grant it.

“It’s about two weeks off,” the alpha continues. “So we have to figure something out for you.”

Tommy jolts again, but this time out of shock, because no, they don’t. Dream had never done anything for his wolves during the full moon, and they had always been fine.

Or, rather, the next morning they would return to normal, to the way they’d always been.

None of them had ever been fine, not in the time Tommy had known them. Ironically, during the full moon, they were the most fine they ever were, and also, inevitably, the least.

It had been terrifying each time. Chilling.

That concrete room, wall-to-wall filled with cages of feral, mindless beasts, unthinking things, who gained back their souls for only one night a month. The Moon would call to them, even through Dream’s concrete walls, even if he covered every window, spackled every crack. She would make them sane for that one night.

And they would be confronted, through clear eyes, with what had become of them.

For one night a month, Tommy’s mournful song was a chorus. For that one night, Tommy had a pack. A raw, grieving, bleeding pack, drinking in its own splintered brokenness, but a pack nonetheless.

Complete strangers, they would bark and howl and cry together. They would ache together, and mourn together, and miss the Moon and Her wilds together.

Somewhere out there would be Tommy’s sire, maybe missing its pup, maybe crying for him. Maybe hating him.

And then the morning would come, and Tommy’s pack would be gone, splintered back into its collection of mismatching pieces, snarling thoughtlessly into the darkness. Snarling at each other. Snarling at Tommy.

Their one night together forgotten.

An endless, cruel, terrible cycle.

“You have no pack,” Phil says, and he’s right. He had no pack. In two weeks, Tommy’s pack will be there, somewhere miles away, but then morning will come and it will be gone again.

“I won’t allow you to spend another full moon alone,” Phil says. The way he says it…Tommy thinks maybe that should make him afraid. It doesn’t.

“You don’t have a pack,” Phil tells him again, as if Tommy needs to hear it. He’s gentle about it, that pinched expression back on his face, the one that tells Tommy he’s feeling sorry but trying not to show it. “No one is coming for you. No one was taking care of you before.”

No, but Tommy didn’t need them to. He did fine. They needed care far more than he did.

“You’re going to stay with us,” he says. It’s not a question. “I’m going to bring you into my pack this moon.”

He offers no other reassurances, no “you’re going to be okay,” or “you’ll like it here,” or “we won’t hurt you,” like he usually does. He just sits quietly for a minute, studying Tommy. Tommy studies right back, searching his face for the bluff. It isn’t there. Phil’s nostrils flare, maybe searching for fear-scent from Tommy. Tommy doesn’t know if he finds it. He looks sad, but he doesn’t change his mind. Instead, he just gets up, double-checks the seal on the window, rattles the locks on the door, and leaves Tommy alone.

It’s the first night he spends in complete solitude.

Chapter Text

Tommy sneezes awake into the down of Techno’s tail.

He can tell from the scent even before his eyes wake up enough to focus. The russet wolf is curled around him; Tommy can feel a broad head resting on his flank; he can feel the flat expanse of the underside of Techno’s tusks.

He must have come out to check on Tommy sometime during the night and never left. It makes Tommy’s skin prickle uncomfortably, but something lower, deeper, is warmed.

That’s…something.

Tommy ignores the newfound immediate instinct to sink back into the warm weight at his back and squirms away, leaping off of the couch. Techno, unbothered and apparently awake, only rumbles a low greeting at him.

Hello-hello-pup-greetings, he says, leaning forward to sniff at Tommy. Hot breath wafts across his face; Tommy scrunches his muzzle and whufs a short greeting in return, if only to get Techno’s big ugly muzzle out of his personal space.

A broad tongue rasps over his muzzle, and then Techno draws back. He looks funny, Tommy thinks, lounging in Tommy’s spot on the couch. He dwarfs it completely; it creaks beneath his bulk. His hind legs hang awkwardly off of the back, and his front paws dangle off the side opposite them. Unbothered, the great red beast rests his head back on his forelegs and closes his eyes.

Wilbur is here, too.

There’s a shifting of weight, the drag of fur against carpet, and then he trots up behind Tommy.

He invades Tommy’s personal space too, sniffing at him like Techno did, rasping his own tongue over Tommy’s pointed ears.

Tommy ducks away, snorting incredulously up at Wilbur.

He’s suspected they must sleep in their fur; they always shift before they go back to the nest. But usually when they come out of the den to say good morning, they’ve already shifted back.

Phil likes them to, at least for part of the day. He told Tommy once that he wants him to feel safe and be around familiar faces as much as possible. Human faces are much more familiar than wolves, but Tommy hasn’t been able to tell him that he doesn’t find their faces “safe.”

Maybe Phil doesn’t care about that rule anymore.

…Or maybe they came out here to sleep with him instead. Techno looks as drowsy as Tommy has ever seen him, and the fur on Wilbur’s cheek is flattened, sticking straight up on the side of his head, sleep-mussed and atypical of his usual careful preening.

Wilbur doesn’t seem to care today. He blinks fondly at Tommy, pauses to yawn and shake off the sleepiness, and braces his forelegs on the ground in a play-bow. He’s easy about it, lazy, almost uncaring. Ever since his fight with Techno, they’d both been careful about approaching games with him this way. But Tommy recognizes that competitive gleam in his eye.

His ears pin, and he sits down with a thump on the carpet in what he can only hope is a definitive no . He doesn’t want to play with Wilbur. He wants breakfast.

He used to be able to go days without food without even thinking about it, but his stomach cramps with hunger first thing in the morning these days. It’s nice to have a warm meal to wake up to, but the adjustment period once he gets away is going to suck , he’s sure.

If he gets away. He hasn’t forgotten what Phil said last night. The full moon is less than two weeks away now.

Wilbur huffs annoyedly. He slaps his paws on the carpet demandingly, whining pleadingly in a very wolfish way. (They don’t always sound like true wolves, they’re beasts of a different breed after all, but Wilbur’s complaining sounds just like those bratty little pups.) Tommy rolls his eyes.

Wilbur whines again, and suddenly Phil laughs from the doorway. “He said no, mate,” he tells his son, shuffling into the living room in a pair of fuzzy slippers. “Leave him be.”

Tommy twists around to inspect the alpha. He looks…he looks completely normal. He looks like he does every morning.

There’s no conflicted furrow in his forehead, no downturn to his lip. His eyes don’t squint with grim decision; he looks chipper, not at all the resigned reluctance from last night.

He smiles warmly at Tommy, like all is right in the world. He smiles at Tommy just like he always does.

Tommy can’t tell if he’s relieved to see that smile or even more unsettled by it. He feels warmed and chilled all at once.

“Let me get your breakfast,” Phil says, and Tommy can do nothing but follow him to the kitchen.

Everyone is acting completely normal.

Normally, Tommy would be relieved. But today it makes his fur prickle on end.

Phil’s threat hangs heavy over Tommy’s head all week, but it’s almost as if the three of them have just forgotten.

Phil laughs and feeds the birds and tidies the house. He cooks with Wilbur, and swaps stories with Techno, and strokes carefully over Tommy’s ears. Wilbur plays his guitar, and he coaxes Tommy into playing keep-away with him, insisting even when Tommy refuses, but only when Phil isn’t looking. Then Phil will scold him about “respecting Tommy’s boundaries,” and he’ll look so put out that Tommy will play with him anyway. Techno disappears in the middle of the day, every day, like he usually does, and he comes back with meat for Phil to cook, and news for them to share in hushed whispers. Once, he even brings back a perfectly round, smooth stone, pitch black, just for Tommy.

Tommy hangs onto it, tucks it into the folds of his nest on the couch, and isn’t sure why.

He would think they really have forgotten, except that Phil’s eyebrows will furrow thoughtfully at him for a moment before he remembers he’s supposed to be being normal. Techno sticks closer than he ever has, and he rarely even complains about it, either. And there’s something anticipating in Wilbur’s eyes when he looks at Tommy, something fond, but something darker, too, he thinks.

They all look at him like that. Fondly, but possessively. Protective, even familial if Tommy didn’t know better, but wanting . And self-assured.

It makes Tommy’s skin crawl when he thinks too much about it. It’s not all that different to how Dream looked at him, really.

His instincts are even wary, now. They liked being fed. They liked being around other wolves. They liked a warm bed and a roof over his head. They liked having their basic needs met, so much they never questioned the circumstances of why .

They protest insistently when Techno returns home and rumbles mine-hello-pup-mine fondly at him. Not yours , they say. Not pack .

Something is missing . Not yours.

They love Techno. They love Phil, and Wilbur. They feel nothing but fondness, but then will change on a dime as soon as any of them try to claim Tommy as theirs . 

They’ve never been so picky before. They’ve willingly considered these wolves as pack in the past, and without Tommy’s own consent.

Not that he’s complaining that they’ve changed their mind. At least Tommy and his instincts can agree on this one thing now. These wolves are bad news. They are not his pack.

But when Wilbur scoops him up from the floor to lie on the couch, to curl against his hip, with Philza keeping a polite distance on his other side and Techno lounging beside him, a shitty comedy movie blaring on the square CRT television screen, they melt at the easy affection.

Wilbur smooths a hand over Tommy’s forehead, and he’s got his eyes on the screen so Tommy doesn’t even have the chance to look in his face, to discern an expression. And the conscious side of Tommy’s brain wants to melt, too.

Wilbur scratches that hard-to-reach spot right behind his ears, now long since healed from the matting, the fur smooth and soft where Wilbur brushes it out every day, and Tommy does melt.

Techno is more affectionate, too. He goes out in the snow most days, doing some kind of work he refuses to talk about, and thus spends many more hours in his fur than anyone besides Tommy. He greets Tommy every single afternoon when he comes home from wherever it is he goes, grooms a cowlick onto his forehead, and then pesters Wilbur or Phil about making Tommy’s dinner.

Once, he even makes it himself.

It had been…a good day, Tommy thinks, despite everything. A nice day. He’s a big enough man to admit that.

Techno had come home earlier than usual, and he’d stopped in the doorway, all shaggy fur and frozen whiskers, and stared at Tommy. It hadn’t been a good day beforehand, he remembers, and Techno must have noticed. Phil had been looking at him pityingly all morning. His skin had been crawling, pelt prickling uncomfortably under the scrutiny.

Then Techno came back, and he’d stuck his big ugly muzzle between Tommy’s forelegs and nudged him up onto his feet, nipped at his heels until Tommy stumbled out into the backyard with him. Techno kept nipping until Tommy nipped back, driven to the brink of irritation, but Techno had just rumbled approvingly.

They’d played until Tommy’s legs shook, till the sun had disappeared behind the trees and painted the snow sherbert-orange. It was not until he was dragging his paws through the slush, exhausted but satisfied, endorphins thrumming in his veins, that Techno had let him stumble back into the cottage.

He’d finally shifted, standing tall on two legs, the frost on his whiskers manifesting into his beard, and carried Tommy the rest of the way to the kitchen.

“Got all that mopin’ out of your system, I hope,” he’d said, holding Tommy slung over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes (or a particularly clingy toddler ) while something delicious-smelling sizzled on the stove in front of him.

Tommy had eaten the steak Techno seared for him, cut carefully into bite-sized pieces, and forgotten all about moping, his entire backend wiggling with the force of his happiness. He’d never tasted food this good in his life, and Techno had let him eat the entire thing himself.

It had tasted less good later that evening, upchucked in a mix of bile and stomach acid, too rich for his digestive system to handle just yet. But when Phil had appeared in the doorway from the noise, he didn’t kick at Tommy for vomiting on the tile; he didn’t punish him at all. Even his complaining had been playful, lighthearted; colored blue with sympathy.

Then the following morning, Phil had forced them all into a “family meeting” to discuss “Tommy’s important dietary restrictions for the time being. No steak, Techno, not yet,” with a raised eyebrow and a smile on his face.

There’s been no steak since, but Tommy… doesn’t care. He doesn’t care.

It takes some doing, really, for a kid like Tommy, for a wolf like Tommy, a beast with the hunger of a beast, to let go of longing for a good meal. It takes some doing to wake in the morning with each limb stretched across the ground, to come to consciousness not coiled around an empty pit in his gut. To not feel his ribs like he always has, like limbs of their own, so close to the surface to have developed their own sense of proprioception, to not be so acutely aware of how they grind the interior of his flesh, and to feel that they improve, if only so little.

And they’ve done it. Gods, they’ve done it. God knows why.

So he wakes with his limbs sprawled across the couch, four mere days before the full moon, and… makes a decision.

Phil has his back turned, chatting cheerfully while he cooks Tommy’s breakfast. He’s started adding vegetables to it, and it takes longer to cook now, but Phil says he doesn’t mind. He says he’s happy to do it. He says it’s important for Tommy to have a balanced diet, and a few more minutes in the morning is a worthy sacrifice.

He’s saying it now. He always talks for Tommy, even when he knows Tommy’s wolf tongue won’t speak this language. “Looking like a beautiful morning out there today, isn’t it?” Phil asks to the air.

“Could be worse,” Tommy replies.

Phil freezes. His grip loosens for a second, the pan slipping before he remembers to catch it. His breakfast is, thankfully, intact.

Tommy hopes Phil will still let him eat it if he’s a person and not a wolf.

There’s a blond-haired boy sprawled, gangly-limbed, on Phil’s beat-up, retired sofa. There’s a teenager in his old cottage. There’s a boy in his territory.

There’s his pup, finally speaking to him.

He looks so much like his wolf, in the furrow of his brow, in the posture lined with tension, in the half-scowl on his face, that Phil can only smile.

The alpha sets aside the pan. His pup will still need to eat, but this is more immediately important now.

“Hello,” he says. It comes out an awed whisper. He can’t help it. He’s so very proud of his newest son.

His pup nods, a little nervous, a little awkward. “...‘Ow do?”

Phil smiles, amused, but replies all the same. “I’m well. Very well.” It’s good to validate his pup’s words, even the smallest ones, even ones that might be rhetorical. This is behavior Phil wants to encourage, at least until his shifted communication improves and he can rely a little more on that.

He rounds the kitchen counter and approaches, slowly, easy, telegraphing his movements as clearly as he can. His pup watches each deliberate movement sharply, but he does not flinch or shy away. Good. Very good. Phil crouches in front of him, a few paces away.

“How about you, little one? How are you doing?”

His pup scowls. “Don’t call me that.”

“Of course not,” Phil reassures instantly, and indeed how silly of him. “You must be missing your name very much by now.”

Something crosses the boy’s face, twisted and mournful. Bitter. Phil wants to reach out and cup his chin, to sooth the furrowed wrinkles on his forehead with gentle thumbs, like he has before. But his pup is fangless and clawless, now, and hands are still just as scary as they’ve always been. He refrains.

“It’s Tommy. Call me Tommy.”

“Tommy.” Phil tries out the name, soft with reverence, then nods to himself. Yes, that will do nicely. That will do very nicely indeed. “It’s very nice to hear your voice, Tommy.”

It’s incredibly odd to be human again. Or, as close to human as Tommy can any longer imitate, the beast that he is.

He is clothed in the same tattered t-shirt and shorts as when Dream first picked him up, still blood-stained at the throat, still unraveling at the sleeves.

He’s never felt less at home in his own skin. Or less deserving of it.

He’s not a person anymore. He’s a beast, a thing. Moon-kissed. Moon- bitten. Cursed.

Phil isn’t looking at him like a monster, though. He’s looking at Tommy like he always does. He looks happier, even.

“We’ll need to have a chat, of course,” Phil tells him gently. “But let’s get you a change of clothes first, okay mate? And some breakfast.”

Tommy nods along out of habit, not all that used to being able to talk again. Phil doesn’t seem to mind, only smiling close-lipped but kindly, and rising back to his feet. As he passes the doorway on the way back to the kitchen, he calls down the hall, “Will, grab a sweater and a pair of sweatpants for Tommy, could you?”

There’s a beat of silence as Phil scrapes the chicken and rice into a container (damn), and then Wilbur comes barreling into the room, Techno ambling more slowly at his heels, a change of clothes in neither of their arms.

Phil shakes his head at him, and then he laughs. And Tommy…smiles too.

It feels weird to smile. He’s not used to his face being shaped this way anymore. Wolves don’t smile.

Wilbur catches him flexing all the muscles in his face, regaining a feel for it, and snorts with laughter.

“Oh, hello,” he breathes, coming closer. The laugh had been amused, if shy of mocking, but the words are… reverent. Amazed. Awed. Like Phil.

Tommy squirms under Wilbur’s inspecting gaze. Phil must see, because he steers Wilbur back toward the hallway. “Change of clothes,” he reminds firmly.

Wilbur huffs, a wolfish whine in the back of his throat, but does as he’s told and disappears down the hall. Phil returns to the stove. Techno approaches. Phil must see, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Hello, Theseus,” he says. Tommy scowls.

“Phil said my name,” Tommy snarks back. “You don’t have to keep using that dumb nickname.”

Techno hums thoughtfully, but his expression is amused. How odd, Tommy thinks, to be able to read his face. When he first came here, nothing of Techno made any sense to him, and least of all his face.

Techno comes close, reaching out with hands Tommy can’t help but shy from. But they’re the same careful hands they always are when they cup the nape of his neck. He can feel the cool bands of rings, and the rough calluses, and his jumping heart can slow again.

Tommy wonders if Techno can still scruff him when he’s human. Dream had never tried; he never let Tommy shift at all, in fact.

Techno doesn’t try, either. He exerts no force, just rests his hand there. His thumb comes up though, pressing gently but insistently against the bottom of Tommy’s jaw.

He tips Tommy’s head back and to the side, inspecting his turn bite with a critical eye. Tommy sits stock-still, feeling strangely unthreatened by Techno’s hands so close to his jugular, but uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

He’s not afraid that Techno would bite him. He’s not sure if wolves can turn people in human form, but even if they are, he’s pretty sure Techno wouldn’t (not that it would have much of an effect on Tommy anymore anyway).

He’s not even irrationally afraid of it, really. His turning hadn’t been anything like this. No control. No careful hands. No hands at all.

“Did he bite you like this?” Techno murmurs, maybe misreading Tommy’s stiffness. He doesn’t release Tommy, not yet finished furrowing his brow at the mangled scar tissue, apparently, but his thumb brushes back and forth, back and forth, across the bottom of Tommy’s jaw, stroking like he would along Tommy’s fur.

“Techno,” Phil calls cautiously from the kitchen. “Gently now.”

“I don’t think he did,” Techno grunts quietly. The pinky finger of his free hand runs, ever-so-lightly, along one of the raised ridges of the tooth-marks in Tommy’s throat. Tommy holds his breath, heart leaping into his throat.

“Techno,” Phil calls again.

“I think whoever did this to you wasn’t nearly as careful as I’m bein’,” Techno says, something possessive-angry-mine in the growl beneath the words, something that makes Tommy’s own instincts snap indignantly back.

Tommy swallows nervously. Techno sees the bob of his adam’s apple and finally draws back.

“We have to know what happened to him,” Techno insists, maybe to Phil, maybe to himself. Definitely not to Tommy.

Tommy’s eyes flicker to the door, suddenly rethinking everything. This is… this is really not good.

“We will,” Phil murmurs back, coming to grip Techno’s forearm reassuringly. He’s holding a wooden spoon in his other hand. “Give him some time. Just two weeks, Techno.”

… Really not good. Tommy shifts his weight, eyes on the door,  and the couch creaks traitorously.

“It’s okay,” Phil tells him immediately, releasing Techno to hover over Tommy. He smooths a hand over Tommy’s hair, and Tommy doesn’t think to startle until he’s already drawing back again, so very used to the sight of Phil’s gentle palm above his vision. “It’ll be okay. Have some breakfast, and we’ll talk again.”

Wilbur reappears with a sweater and a too-long pair of jeans. Tommy puts them on. Phil pulls out a chair for him at the table. His food is still in a bowl. The same bowl as yesterday. It’s full of eggs, and a miscellaneous slice of fried meat, probably something that Techno brought home recently.

A fork is sticking straight-up, stabbed already into a clump of scrambled eggs.

Tommy sits. He picks up the fork with clumsy fingers. No one says anything about it.

Instead, Phil sits down across from him. “I want to try our conversation from last night again, Tommy,” he says, “now that you can reply to me.”

“Okay,” Tommy says, eyes glued to his bowl. Suddenly, his hunger feels very far away.

“I would have waited if I’d known, but I didn’t expect to see this face from you until after the full moon.”

Tommy shrugs one shoulder up.

“I stand by everything I said.”

Tommy’s heart drops. “Okay.”

“You need a support system. If you had a pack, we would have received word by now.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” The chair to Tommy’s left scrapes the tile as Wilbur pulls it out, sitting beside his father. “You’re alone, aren’t you?”

Tommy shrugs the other shoulder, scowling into his bowl.

“That’s okay,” Phil says. “It’s okay. Things are going to be better now.”

“You’re not going to let me go home?” Tommy hadn’t been hopeful, but hearing it again is making him vaguely nauseous.

“Where is home, pup?” Techno finally pipes up. He does not sit down, but Tommy can see him in his peripheral. “Where would you go?”

Tommy scrambles for an answer; Phil must notice, because his face falls. “L’Manburg,” Tommy blurts, falling back on his former split-second decision. “Take me to L’Manburg.”

There’s a long pause that he knows probably means Techno is raising an eyebrow. There’s something critical in Phil’s eye, too, and Wilbur’s face is very carefully blank. They must know of it. Maybe it isn’t as far as he thought. “L’Manburg. And who from L’Manburg do you want us to call?”

Irritation flares up, a frustration that feels suspiciously like desperation . “None of your fucking business,” he snaps.

“Uh huh,” Techno says, long and drawn-out and bleeding sarcasm.

“Why did you shift?” Wilbur asks suddenly. “Why now? You seemed so adamantly against it.”

It’s a distraction, but Tommy takes it. He doesn’t really want to talk about this anymore either. He juts a thumb out behind him, in Techno’s vague direction. “Your resident attack dog called me ‘Theseus’ one too many times. It’s Tommy .”

Wilbur laughs a little, but Phil looks skeptical. Tommy isn’t even sure himself if it’s a lie.

“ And you hoped you could talk your way back to L’Manburg,” Techno says bluntly. Tommy doesn’t know, so he doesn’t say anything. “It’s not happening.” There’s a rustle of fabric when Techno crosses his arms.

“I would like to ask you to join my pack,” Phil says abruptly. But Tommy knows better. Tommy was there last night. What Phil had said was not a request. It was not an offer. It was a definitive. It was decided, wholly and unequivocally decided.

Tommy knows the choice has been made. Phil knows he knows; he’s looking at Tommy through those eyes again. Old eyes, intelligent eyes, eyes that know more than a man and a beast combined. This thing before him is not a man. It is not a wolf. And it has already made its decision.

It raises an eyebrow. It challenges him to question what it knows that he has realized.

“Okay,” Tommy says, because he has no choice. “What do I have to do?”

Phil smiles. It’s a real smile, he thinks. “Nothing,” he tells Tommy gently. “Just come spend the night with us. The Moon will work Her magic.”

“It’s illegal to turn a human these days,” Techno tells him one day, on Tommy’s second-to-last afternoon. They’re outside together, Techno with an axe on his hip, stacking the firewood he just chopped under the overhang of the porch. “Even if all parties consent. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“It was painful, wasn’t it?”

Tommy shudders and doesn’t answer. It was, of course. It was the worst pain Tommy has ever felt. Every cell in his body had been lit aflame. He’d writhed on the concrete floor until the sun rose, his sire someplace beyond the bars, he hopes, or otherwise dead. It hadn’t been her fault.

“Most new wolves die from stress or complications, even if they were willing. There’s almost no record of unwilling wolves making it through.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“My assumption is that you were willing,” Techno continues, as though Tommy had never spoken. “Because you’re alive. Do you want to tell me if I’m right?”

“No,” Tommy says.

(“I don’t,” he doesn’t say.)

(“You’re not,” he doesn’t say.)

He doesn’t clarify at all. Techno doesn’t need him to.

They stack the firewood in silence.

Phil has started doing something new.

They all still shift when they go to sleep, drifting off on four paws to their den as the day comes to a close. But lately, it’s Phil who is the last to leave.

He’ll stand on four paws at the edge of the rug, tail wagging lazily behind him, while Techno double-checks the locks on the door and makes sure none of the keys are left lying around. Then Techno will leave, patting the alpha farewell on his furry blond shoulder, raising an affectionate eyebrow at Tommy, and disappearing into his fur to meet Wilbur in the den.

Once gone, Phil will trot up, hook his teeth into Tommy’s blankets, and tug them from the couch.

The first night it happened, Tommy had just let him, completely bewildered at first, and then immediately suspecting whatever preferential treatment they’d afforded him had met its end. That’s it, no more nest for Tommy, sleep on the ground, heathen child.

But Phil had snorted insistingly, tossing his head so the ends of the blanket slapped at Tommy’s hands. Unsure, Tommy had grabbed them and tugged back. Phil wagged his tail so hard his entire backside wriggled with it, snorting again, encouragingly.

…Okay, Tommy had thought. Weird. This behavior he’d come to expect from Wilbur, but Phil?

They’d played tug-of-war with his blankets, Phil’s encouraging yips muffled by the fleece, until finally Tommy, tired and a little fed-up, yanked hard enough to release the fabric from Phil’s teeth. The blond wolf had come bounding up, snorting and sneezing happily, and bonked the flat expanse on his head on Tommy’s knee.

Every night since, the past three nights, Phil has egged him into this new little ritual of theirs.

“What is he doing?” Tommy asks Wilbur finally, on his final morning. “He’s being so weird. And he sucks at tug-of-war even more than you do.”

Wilbur laughs, completely delighted, and passes Tommy another dish to dry (a downside of having hands now, Tommy supposes). “He’s letting you win, Tommy,” he says, like it’s obvious.

And it is, now that Wilbur’s pointed it out. Tommy’s cheeks flush. “Okay, fine, whatever, but why? ”

“It’s good for you,” Wilbur explains. “You’re supposed to let pups win sometimes, and he knows I don’t let you. Builds confidence.”

Tommy blanches. “ Builds confidence? He’s training me like a dog!”

“Not at all,” Wilbur insists, laughing again. “He’s raising you like a pup. You’re dripping water on the floor, by the way.”

Dusk falls too quickly.

The entire pack had seemed torn all day between giving Tommy space, trying to treat the day like it was entirely normal, and trying to smother him in attention and reassurance.

Techno has been gone all day. “Preparing,” is all Phil had said. Preparing, and “nothing to worry about, mate.”

Well, tough shit. Tommy is worried.

This is the first time in many many moons that Tommy has spent out of his fur leading up to the full moon. It never felt good in Dream’s cages, even shifted, but the discomfort of being human is different. His skin prickles into gooseflesh, hair standing on end, longing to grow out into fur. No one else seems nearly as bothered as him, either, which is its own brand of annoying.

“You can shift now, if you want,” Wilbur had said just after noon. “You don’t have to wait until nightfall.” Tommy had just scowled.

Now that the sun is gone someplace behind the trees, bathing the forest in orange light, the buzzing need beneath his skin to shift is completely impossible to ignore. Fur ripples over his back, down his limbs, and it feels as much like dread as it does like home.

“Take it easy,” Phil says, taking a seat on the couch with him and stroking a hand down his back as the fur settles. Tommy shivers, freezing, old memories like frigid water against his skin. “Just relax.” Tommy shoves his muzzle into the outside of Phil’s thigh, breathing in the scent of his cloak, and willing the flashbacks away.

Phil’s fingers massage over his temples as the light grows dimmer and dimmer behind Tommy’s eyelids. He can hear the clicking of Wilbur’s claws on the tile, then the rustle of fur as he sits on the floor before his father.

The light has gone red-violent, barely light at all, by the time Techno’s bark, low and gravely, sounds from someplace outside the door.

“That’s our cue,” Phil says. Tommy’s eyes flick over to him, heart in his throat; he can feel it fluttering, the nervousness so all-encompassing that it muffles even itself, becoming a far-off and fuzzy sensation. His paws feel further still; Phil doesn’t even ask him to walk. He loops his hands beneath Tommy’s forelegs and hefts him into his arms.

Tommy’s head lolls, tipping toward the floor. Wilbur walks, four-legged, in tandem with Phil. Tommy can see his tail thumping his father’s leg as it wags, and he can hear the sound, but the two are desynced from each other.

Wag,

thump.

Wag,

thump.

Or are those Phil’s footsteps?

The door opens, and the January air shocks something in his system back awake. The world refocuses. He can feel his heart racing again.

“It’s alright, mate,” Phil is saying. “Don’t be nervous.”

Gingerly, Tommy is placed onto the snow. There’s a ruffle of fabric, then fur, and then Philza’s teeth are gripping him gently by the scruff.

They hop the fence. Techno is waiting on the other side, hulking and nearly pitch-black in the fading light. He rumbles quietly, hello-pack-hello; Phil and Wilbur rumble back.

Tommy, on the other side of the fence for the first time, wriggles and whines to be set down. Phil huffs at him, taking off at a lope into the trees, and does not comply.

The further into the trees they go, and the darker the night becomes, the less Tommy can think about running. Soon, he’s wriggling for a different reason, tail wagging, whining under his breath. The Moon, he can’t see Her above the trees, not yet, but She’s here! He’s never been so close to Her. He’s never seen Her through lupine eyes, not at her fullest. Not without Dream’s concrete and rebar blocking Her light.

He wants to run! He wants to play! He whines, kicking his legs. Let him down!

Philza rumbles with laughter, soon-patience-calm. To their left, Wilbur yips, panting with breathless happiness, and Techno pauses for a moment ahead of them, blinking fondly over his shoulder.

The three of them are still running, but it isn’t the same. Tommy wants to run too! He whines again, more insistent, more annoying. Run! He cries. Run-help-please!

Good! Phil rumbles back, good-proud, but does not let him down.

The run for what is probably miles, quick as a fish, never breaking pace or slowing down. The forest is dense, but they weave between the trees effortlessly. These must have been their woods for a long time.

There’s a break in the trees; moonlight floods the valley. Tommy only has eyes for the sky.

She’s beautiful.

He’s kicking out again, whining pleadingly. He can feel the rumble of Philza’s laughter; finally, his head bends down to the snow. Tommy is set gently on the ground.

He takes off like a bullet, paws scrambling frantically on the frozen earth, but instead of booking it for the safety of the trees, he can only run laps around the hollow, yapping joyfully at the night. Wilbur takes off after him, barking playfully. He runs counter to Tommy’s clockwise, play-bowing whenever they encounter each other.

He can see Phil settled on the edge of the hollow. His breath billows out before him, muzzle pointed to the sky. Techno pauses at his side; the two rumble at each over. Techno presses his face to his alpha’s shoulder, then absolutely hauls ass after Wilbur.

Before tonight, maybe Tommy would be frightened by Techno’s hulking form bounding in his general direction, massive pawfuls of snow flying out in his wake, but tonight he can only bark joyously. Hello-greetings-hello! Play with me!

Techno does. He scoops up Tommy in his jaws then goes after Wilbur, closing the gap far quicker than the brown wolf can lengthen it.

They romp together in the snow, running in circles after each other, playing keep-away, wrestling on the ice. Tommy’s paws are freezing and he can no longer feel his nose, but he thinks he might be the happiest that he’s ever been.

He has no idea why he was so frightened of this.

The only way it could be better is if Philza would join them. He hasn’t moved, his nose still pointed upward, tracking the movement of the moon as it slowly climbs higher in the sky.

Tommy breaks away from the rest of the pack. Techno whufs after him, a passive warning Tommy doesn’t quite understand the nuances of and doesn’t care to, really. Neither of them follow as Tommy trudges up the hill, returning to wrestling on the snow with a playful snap of Wilbur’s teeth.

Tommy approaches Phil with his head low, licking his lips appeasingly. The blond wolf seems very focused on what he’s doing, which to Tommy looks like nothing, but it must be important if Phil doesn’t want to play.

Tommy wants him to play, though. He whines, play-play-come-follow! Philza snorts out a puff of air, his breath frosty in the moonlight, and lowers his muzzle to look at the pup. Hello-pup-hello, he rumbles. His tail swishes in the snow behind him.

Tommy whines again, nipping at Phil’s forepaws then darting back, jerking his head toward hollow. Instead of following, Phil hooks a paw around his flank and tugs him closer. He settles Tommy between his forelegs, in the warm cavern beneath his body that is blocked from the snow, like a penguin chick perched on its fathers feet. A blond paw comes up, the space between his paw pads pressing to Tommy’s nose.

Philza is feeling for his temperature.

Whatever he finds, Phil leans down and rasps his tongue a few times over Tommy’s forehead. He keeps his muzzle there for a few moments, breathing warm air over Tommy’s own. Then he’s looking up at the moon again.

Tommy looks too, head tilting. He gets it, sort of; She’s beautiful, She really is. She’s so much more than he could see through human eyes. She’s almost directly overhead now, completely unblocked by any trees in the forest.

But he doesn’t want to just watch Her. The entire hollow is bathed in Her moonlight!

He wiggles, tries to pry his way past Phil’s front legs, but the alpha growls warningly at him: calm-stay-be-still, he says. Be-still. Wait.

Soon, he reassures.

Tommy jolts. Soon? Soon for what? What is soon?

He wriggles more, trying to break free, but Phil is bigger and stronger than him by far, especially in his fur. If Phil wants him to stay put, here’s staying put, no matter how much he whines over it.

Phil isn’t even paying attention to him anymore. He has his nose to the sky once again, breathing silver puffs of air to the stars.

Annoyed, Tommy leans into Phil’s leg with a grumble. He has half a mind to gnaw on it, but he still hasn’t forgotten Techno’s warnings about teeth. At least it’s warm. Tommy blinks sleepily, letting more of his weight slump against the blond wolf.

Time blurs. He can hear Wilbur and Techno below in the hollow; the snow crunching under their paws, snorts and sneezes and barking as they wrestle. Every so often, Phil will rumble amusedly; Tommy can feel the vibrations all the way through his foreleg, where he rests his own shoulder. He wants to drift off, grudgingly content in the warmth between Phil’s forepaws, but the Moon still thrums in his veins; the most he can do is doze. 

Teeth hook around his scruff, and he’s being lifted. With a sleepy mrrp? , Tommy blinks back awake, swinging from Philza’s jaws.

Something has changed.

Philza barks, the sound muffled around Tommy’s scruff but deafeningly loud in Tommy’s own ears. He’s heading into the hollow, trotting through the snow, carrying Tommy along with him. Techno and Wilbur have broken apart; they stand, waiting, in the center of the clearing.

The Moon is directly overhead. She’s waiting for them.

Phil sets him down. The three of them surround him. The Moon shines on above him.

Tommy shrinks back, uncertain. All three rumble gently at him. 

Techno looks to Phil. Wilbur looks back and forth between the two of them. Phil only looks at Tommy.

Briefly, Phil works his jaw. Tommy can just see the flash of teeth, backlit from the Moon above them. Not even the moonsong in his veins, not even the moonlight on his face, can stop the jolt of fear.

Scared, Tommy whines. Scared-help-scared! Stop!

Be-still , Techno tells him. He’s backed off a step. So has Wilbur. They circle a half-meter off from Phil’s haunches, as if watching for danger. But their eyes do not watch the trees. Their eyes do not leave Tommy.

Safe, Phil chuffs at him, something amused in the sound. Safe. He blinks kindly at Tommy, and then he turns his muzzle up to the sky one more time.

And he howls.

Oh.

Oh. Duh.

Of course.

Relief floods through Tommy, leaving him feeling faint on his paws. They’re wolves , obviously they’re going to howl.

Wilbur and Techno raise their voices too; the three harmonize, heads thrown back, each breathing silver flame in the January air. Philza pauses his song, leaning down to sniff at Tommy, chuffing in amusement and encouragement. Go, he says. Try.

He fits his muzzle under Tommy’s own, tilting the pup’s head upward toward the sky. Good-pup-try, he encourages again, then raises his own head, voice raising once again with his pack.

They’re not going to bite him. They don’t need to bite him for this. They aren’t going to hurt him. It won’t be like his turning.

Dizzy with relief, Tommy does as he’s told. He howls.

Tommy has howled before. Everyone in Dream’s care did. They grasped at whatever they could to will away their madness, followed every instinct that came on the full moon. But the Moon couldn’t find them there, hidden from the sky. It felt nothing like this.

He can feel them, Philza and Wilbur and Technoblade. He hears them sing, but he feels their joy, their closeness. They’re absolutely delighted, happier than Tommy himself has ever felt, to be here together, with him. They feel love. They feel relief, and protectiveness, and care.

Their feelings aren’t human ones, but Tommy understands them. They aren’t human. Tommy isn’t human either.

Dazed, Tommy lowers his muzzle, stumbling toward Philza in the snow. Safe, Phil rumbles at him. Pack-safe-love .

Yes, his instincts murmur back. Pack. Pack, family, love. Safe.

Safe, Phil says again. Be-still. Techno and Wilbur’s voices still dance around them, but Phil is leaning down. His jaws open again, but Tommy can feel nothing but affection from him. He’s not frightened.

Phil breathes over his face, chuffing affectionately, and noses Tommy to lay in the snow. Phil rasps his wolfish tongue over Tommy’s cheek a few times, rumbling soothingly. Then he slots his teeth over the bite-mark that stretches across Tommy’s throat.

Something shifts in Tommy’s instincts. They wash over him, all-encompassing, drowning him, but this time he can breathe in it. Phil’s teeth are one sharp movement from his jugular, but Tommy goes completely limp beneath them.

Alpha won’t hurt us, his wolf murmurs. Be still. Be calm. Be good. And Tommy is.

Phil doesn’t bite down. There’s no pain, no flash of awful, awful memories. Mine, Phil tells him, growling with his teeth still clamped around the scar tissue. Mine-pup-ours.

Ours, Techno rumbles from somewhere very far away. Ours, Wilbur echos him.

After what feels like a full minute, the blond wolf finally draws back, rumbling approval, having claimed Tommy, all of Tommy, the hideous, horrible, scarred thing that he is, as his own.

Later, Phil will carry Tommy home in his teeth, straight to their den, and this time the wolf-scent will be a comfort.

Later, Techno will wake Tommy in the morning by carrying him to the kitchen. He’ll have seared him a new steak, with Phil this time to oversee. It’ll be smaller, a less fatty cut, but it will be just as delicious as Tommy remembers. He’ll still get to eat the entire thing all himself.

Later still, Tommy will run. He is too much himself, too set in stone, not to try. He will make it to the border of Phil’s territory and he will be unable to cross it, dragged down in his instincts. He will know, instinctually, that this is wrong; he is a pup, he is to be cared for and he must be good in return. He will cry for his pack to save him, and they will come. They will punish him, but for them, punishment means he washes the dishes on a night that isn’t his. Phil will tell him it’s okay. Phil will forgive him. He will run again, and Phil will forgive him again.

Later, Tommy will break down after a nightmare, thrown into memories of Dream. He’ll kick Wilbur in his sleep, and Wilbur will pick him up and take him out to watch the stars. Wilbur will make him a hot chocolate and make him pinky-promise not to tell Phil. He’ll decide, in that moment, not to run again.

Later, Technoblade will finally take him on one of his day trips. Tommy will see the rest of the territory, and he will meet the rest of the pack. Sam will rumble kindly at him; Ranboo and Tubbo will play keep-away. Puffy will offer him part of her meal. Niki will tell him he’s so much like Wilbur, and Tommy will be pleased to hear it. Later still, Phil, Wilbur, and Techno will finally take Tommy back with them permanently to move into the main camp. Tommy will feel a little shy, but not afraid.

Later, Tommy will tell them about Dream. He’ll tell them about the cages, and the feral wolves, and his sire. He’ll tell them about the dogfighting, about the dehumanization and Dream’s hatred. The next morning, Technoblade will leave for longer than a day. Technoblade will leave for several days, a week, two weeks. He will come back stinking of Dream but no wolves; he’ll kneel before Tommy and shake his head. Tommy’s sire, Tommy’s first pack, will be dead. But so will Dream.

Later, all of this will happen. But now, Tommy, seen by the Moon and given Her Blessing, will lift his muzzle to the sky and lend his voice to the song once again.