Chapter Text
The moon, at its fullest, sat high, nestled behind a spotting of clouds for the time being. Once, just once, Kaidan wanted to keep to himself and sleep through the night, but he knew there were people out there dying. Or dead. He quietly cursed his altruistic tendencies as keeping himself shut away sounded more and more selfish. Wind rustled leaves above him in a whisper as he considered his course of action.
He should probably just wander as usual. Fate would lead who he did or didn’t find to their ends or beginnings. With a sigh he heaved his bulk up from the ground and shook out his pelt with a vigour he didn’t think he had previously, and began a steady walk eastward.
Kaidan heard the forest come to life around him, and conversely, settle in for the night. Warm, small mammals shuffled tighter together underfoot, and if he strained particularly hard he could pick up the sound of an owl’s ghostly wingbeats as it sought out prey.
He gave himself a mental shake when he thought about prey.
Long did he wander, zoned out, drinking in the sounds and the smells of the forest around him to determine his path ahead. At one point he smelled people out camping, with the stink of smoke and gunpowder, but also food. He considered giving them a wide berth but instead sat and listened for some time. Only when confident they were deep in sleep did Kaidan approach.
His sense of smell was a blessing in locating the campers’ foodstores. They hadn’t killed anything yet, free of the tang of blood, but he of all people knew the woods were rich with game. They wouldn’t miss a few tins of beans. He made several short trips from the campsite to a tree nearby he was familiar with, carrying tins in maw and hand-paws, and buried them in a hastily dug hole.
When the cans were buried he rubbed his shoulder against the tree’s base thoroughly, and reared up again to gouge his claws into the bark. A scent marker would make it all the more easy to find the food again and if the campers spotted his clawmarks they might make haste in leaving the area, wary of bears. That was an agreeable situation.
And so he found himself wandering again.
Hours passed, and his mind began to wander much as his body was. The solemn connotations of the full moon began to lose its meaning to Kaidan. He didn’t dare hope to stumble across any bodies, but with such a quiet night so far he wanted to revel. And so, to entertain himself, he started to race through the trees.
The forest lost its shapes and colours as he ran. A wolf’s vision was nothing to write home about, but he could still navigate with ease – like he was made for it, and in a way, he was.
But all good things must come to an end, and Kaidan had eventually picked up a hellish smell of blood and rot, and his ears flattened against his skull and he slowed to inspect the damage.
More scents began to swamp him as he crept forward, and he was dismayed to see how close to human settlement this attack had happened. The moon had long left its cover of clouds and if any unfortunate soul happened to peek through their blinds now he’d be seen clear as day. When he found the body, he pulled it unceremoniously back under tree cover. It was easier to assess damage when not fearing for one’s life.
This man had been hit hard, but he was barely alive. Were the moon in any other phase he’d have long since bled out.
Kaidan snarled a curse upon the fool who had been the source of all these attacks, and with great difficulty and little grace, hoisted the man over his shoulders and draped him across his back before assuming a more feral shape, and began the long journey home.
x
He was so tired by the time he’d brought the man back to his home and settled him in that Kaidan felt a familiar pressure begin to hammer at his skull. It was terrible timing, really, not that he ever appreciated it. Normally a nap would stave it off for another day, but he couldn’t now with what may be a newly fledged werewolf occupying his rickety bed. Bleeding out all over it, too. The headache settled in with a vengeance when he thought about how much cleaning had to be done after tending to the last night’s victim.
It had already broke dawn when he set the man down and began to get to work. In man-shape, of course. He had learned the hard way that young werewolves, without explanation, tended to react negatively to a great big hulking wolfbeast, especially if they still had memories from the night prior. That hadn’t been fun, and had left weeks of repairs to his already terrible house to be done.
The man’s wounds had been so severe Kaidan didn’t bother with treating them with herbs kept through the cabin. He simply set to work, pinching lacerations shut from the shallower ends. The man was deep asleep and so the fabled pace of wolf healing set in, and after a few hours, all but the worst of the injuries were beginning to scab or heal even beyond that, and Kaidan’s migraine was bordering on blinding.
Soon, the man was stirring. Of all times. Kaidan was so short on patience he very nearly considered hitting him over the head with one of his salvaged skillets just to knock him out for another few hours, but he was tired, hated to think of the consequences, and couldn’t just do that to a person. They had to earn it.
So he sat back and watched as the man came to consciousness. There was a rapid heartbeat, a flexing of hands, swallowing. The smell of fear, rage. And then his breathing became shallower, before eyelids fluttered open.
The first thing Kaidan noticed, while in a sea of pain battering at his head, were those piercing blue eyes. So piercing indeed that he was taken completely by surprise when he’d found himself pinned against a wall with his shirt balled in the man’s fists. He was strong… too strong. Kaidan’s growl was weak when his head connected with wood.
“Where am I?” The man demanded between surveying the cabin so rapidly Kaidan could only feel mildly impressed. Almost like the man hadn’t been recently turned and had been living his life looking over his shoulder.
Kaidan struggled to formulate a reply. “My head…” was all he could grunt. The audacity of these young wolves was getting tiring fast. Not like he had plucked their near-corpses from the wilds and coaxed them back to life.
But the man was not impressed. He slammed Kaidan back into the wall, painfully oblivious to how strong he was now, and Kaidan bit back what would have been a very petulant snarl. “What do you want from me? Who are you?”
“Please, let me down. I have a migraine.” He licked his lips before continuing. Of course he gets a damn migraine when an aggressive one wakes up! He wondered, not for the first time, why he even bothered. “You were dying. I brought you back. Fixing you.”
Those depth-less blue eyes narrowed, but the man had rightfully recognised how weak Kaidan was currently, and let him slump to the ground with a groan of pain. While Kaidan tucked his head between his knees and tried to breathe deeply, the newcomer began a very in-depth investigation of the cabin.
“You never told me where I am.” It almost felt like the man kept one eye on Kaidan at all times.
He grunted with increasing irritation and tried to gesture to his head. “Migraine! Killer headache. Pleasantries can wait.”
“What’s stopping me from tailing it from here, then?”
“You have no idea how bad a course of action that would be, believe me.” Kaidan’s exhaling had begun to almost whistle through his nose. It was time for the bombshell. “Last night. You were attacked by a werewolf. Not me, I found you and brought you back from death’s doorstep. You have no idea where we are or how to control yourself now.”
The response was a sharp and harsh laugh. So the memories weren’t there, then. “Sure. Whatever. Werewolves… and I know how to control myself, thank you very much.” The man had finished prowling through the one-room building, and laid his eyes back on Kaidan.
“No you don’t. I need to sleep this damn thing off. Look at your injuries, would you? You’re not even in good enough shape to run, let alone fend for yourself in the middle of nowhere.”
Only then, it seemed, the man had looked down at himself. Kaidan’s old clothing was loose-fitting, but the pain he’d registered and put to the back of his mind was now there to explore. “Oh, shit. That’s bad. Those are bad. Why are they so old? It looks like I’ve had them for… days…” He trailed off and stared at Kaidan. “How long was I out? And what did this to me?”
“Only overnight.” Kaidan grunted pointed towards his mattress that had nearly soaked through with blood. “I told you before. Were. Wolf. Read it and weep. Go occupy yourself somehow or rest more, because I really need to sleep this off. You’ll be able to smell where the food is when you focus.”
The other man kept quiet as Kaidan dragged himself onto his bed. Bloodstains be damned, if he didn’t escape from the migraine now he didn’t know what he’d do. As long as that man didn’t tear down the cabin, he couldn’t care less about him, either. Only sleep awaited.
x
Kaidan woke, blissfully pain-free, and quickly deduced it was nearly sundown by the angle of the light filtering through the windows. He had nearly forgot about his latest rescue but thankfully the memories came back before his eyes flitted over the strange man in his home. “You didn’t run off,” he hoarsely commented.
“No. You’re right. I haven’t the foggiest where we are. I also ate… a lot of your food.”
Damn those blue eyes. “You what? How much?” Kaidan asked as he struggled to get to his feet. A werewolf could be up and alert in a heartbeat after waking, but not after a rest spent healing. He was also ravenous, and the thought of his food supply lacking substance was irritating.
“Not much… okay, a lot. Do you have more?”
He’d had time to cool off, at least. Kaidan rubbed his eyes and stretched before deigning to respond. “Yes, but it’s buried elsewhere, and won’t be fresh.”
The man paled when he heard that. “God, you’re kidding right? You really think you’re a werewolf, burying meat and… and-”
Kaidan could only laugh at that. “No, cans of food. Like, beans. Slim pickings when you live out here. I steal them from people who camp.”
“Woah, no shit.” The man had definitely settled down. “Well, let’s go, I need to eat and then you’re taking me back to town.”
“I need to show you something first,” Kaidan said dismissively and headed out the door. The man hovered in the doorway and watched him leave with suspicion. “I can’t wait forever,” he added as he turned to face the cabin. “We need to get this over and done with. And you need to move away from my house when I do it.”
The man was definitely frowning, but complied with a few steps out of his own. When Kaidan began to ease his shirt over his head, he began a chant he’d had much time to memorise. “Don’t worry, don’t freak out, and stay away from the cabin. This is what you are now and it’ll come easier with practice, but watching it happen is the first step.”
The man began to interject but Kaidan hushed him repeatedly. “Please. Just watch.” As he stripped off his pants, the man broke through his dismissals.
“Okay, okay, I get you’re some forest dude who’s really in tune with nature but you’re going to have to wine-and-dine me first, while awake-“
Kaidan had stripped down and chose now to shift to the immense form somewhere between man and beast but still hellishly unnatural. Bones snapped and muscle tore and organs reshaped all within the span of a blink, and the new blood had not been blinking, apparently. It would have been mildly flattering if Kaidan’s mind were not on other things.
The new man shot back with a yelp and an unnecessarily loud “Shit!” but the genetic memory of the forebear that had bitten him kicked in, and the two were both staring at eachother in unnatural, hairy and very dangerous forms in a matter of seconds.
“Breathe,” Kaidan growled to the new wolf. “Stay still and breathe.” It was a guttural language, impossible to decipher for humans, but all wolves were born with the ability to speak among themselves.
New blood’s sides were heaving with stress, ears pinned back and body rigid. Kaidan took the time to familiarise himself with his pelt. One of the darkest he’d seen thus far, black with greys and the odd brown peppering his coat. His underparts were the lightest. Kaidan was amused to see his left foreleg was a strong russet with even lighter greys running down the inside. Not a pelt for hiding in snowy wastes, it seemed.
His eyes were as crystal-blue as ever, and Kaidan’s spirits fell a little when he noticed. No real wolves had blue eyes. If this one went feral he’d better be damn good at keeping away from people.
“Can you hear it all?” Kaidan asked gently, rising onto his hindlegs and gesturing to the woods around them. “Relax, you can move. I told you to stay still so you didn’t trash my doorway. Take a moment to hear and smell everything.”
“Speak?” The other werewolf asked and answered himself in the same breath, but turned around to look himself over. He copied Kaidan, uprighting himself, and seemed particularly absorbed in flexing his front paws over and over. “So, this is real?”
“Yes. Now, follow me,” Kaidan nonchalantly said. It was better to be calm and dismissive and leave them to their thoughts for the first shift.