The creek fell away, deeper into the ravine. She came to the crest in the hill where the thick canopy and thick tree trunks make the underbrush thin out. Decaying leaves and needles littered the ground between bunches of ivy. Avery had a good view all around her in the forest.
This was a good vantage point for the whole forest. She could see down the hill and into the creek bed below. This would be a good place to leave the meat for the wolf. After sliding the backpack off her shoulders, she opened it up and pulled out the plastic bag. Finding a mossy spot, she deposited the meat and stepped away.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of gray fur ducking between the bushes in the underbrush. Her heart jumped and she took a few steps back. As much as she felt a sense of protectiveness towards the wolf, it was still a wild animal. The warnings of the horse rancher and Valerie played over in her mind. She backed away toward the deer trail and quickly turned around and trotted down the hill.
5
When Avery reached the barn, she turned and looked behind her. The underbrush shifted and she met the bright blue eyes of the gray wolf. He stood motionless, his mouth parted slightly, staring at her and tasting the air.
That same strange feeling she’d had before, that she was somehow connected to this wolf, swirled inside her gut. It disturbed her. As much as she wanted to keep the wolf safe, she couldn’t understand exactly why she felt so attached to him. It wasn’t like it was a dog. A pet she’d known for years and loved like family. This was a wild animal who seemed to stalk her whenever she entered the forest.
She broke eye contact and hurried inside. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a shot gun. She didn’t want to hurt the wolf, but now it had been on her land. It could very easily hurt her. She closed the kitchen door and went to look at her little chicks. It seemed like they’d grown in just a couple days. They’d be full grown in a few months and would be ready to lay eggs.
Forgetting about the wolf for now, she spent the rest of the day arranging her belongings in her house so that she felt more at home. Avery put a few paintings on the wall that had been done by a few of her artist friends in college. It really warmed the place up.
She still didn’t have a TV, and the Internet wouldn’t be installed for another week. Without media to entertain her, she sat down in the living room with a cup of tea and a book she’d been reading about inter-planting and intensive gardening. It was a subject she found fascinating. Really a forgotten art. The native Americans used to plant corn, beans, and squash together in one mound. The three sisters. Each plant benefited the other. She wondered how she might further incorporate inter-planting into her own crop rotation.
Spending the day hanging around the house and reading really hit the spot. For dinner, Avery made a beef and vegetable stew. With a full stomach, she put the bowl in the sink and looked out the window at the moon. It was full and casting a bright blue glow over the land. It stirred something inside her. Back in college, and sometimes on the farm, she and some other girls would celebrate the full moon.
The first full moon on her farm, with the magic of spring all around, she wanted to go out into the moonlight and let it bathe her skin. Slipping out of her clothes, she put on a robe and her rubber boots before trotting outside into the cool night air.
Part of her knew it was a little crazy. If someone like the horse rancher or her lawyer brother saw her doing this, they’d think she was a flaky hippy. But it meant a lot to her to connect to life in the way that felt best to her. Avery went down to the creek and dropped out of her robe. The light of the moon in the clear sky illuminated the darkness with its cool glow. The water sparked in the light when it splashed over the exposed rocks in its path.
Avery stepped into the creek, naked as the day she was born. Her small, firm breasts pricked in the cool spring air. She raised her arms skyward then bent to splash the water into the air. Drops slashed on her breasts and trickled down her strong, round tummy. The cool bite of the water made her shiver and laugh.
Offering her blessing to the moon filled her heart with gladness, and she smiled into the heavens. That sharp sense of awe that always followed these rituals overtook her whole body. Unlike the times before, Avery felt herself moved more deeply into the moonlight, more deeply into her sense of awe. The fabric of reality seemed to twist and thin until she could see the other side, into the world of her dreams.
Movement traced in the corner of her eye. Lights and shapes moving in broken fast motion. The wolf was there. She turned to him, knowing she should be scared. The wolf shook and shifted. He grew taller in the blur of darkness and light in front of her. Sleek skin and taut muscles formed, and the face of a man greeted her. Those eyes. Those blue eyes.
The face in her dreams. He offered her his hand from above on the bank of the creek. Avery slipped her fingers into his hand, stepping out of the water. They were both naked. Her skin felt warm even in the cool night air. She looked up into his eyes. They met hers with such intensity, such longing, that Avery was lost in their depths.
“It’s you,” she said. She knew he was both the man from her dreams and the wolf who haunted the hillside.
“It’s you,” he repeated, wrapping his strong arm around her waist.
He pulled her close against his stiffness. Avery gasped. She didn’t know this man. But it didn’t matter. Somehow she did know him. How? She didn’t know. But it all made sense in the blue moonlight. He lifted her off her feet and carried her toward fields where he laid her on a bed of freshly lain straw. It was warm and soft below her. The man lowered himself over her, sniffing the skin of her neck. He grazed her earlobe with his tongue and licked along her jawline.
His hard cock pressed against her clit as his lips met hers. With a hungry breath, his tongue pushed inside her mouth. She met him, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. Her body was alive with desire. The full moon above washed over her naked skin and illuminated her lover.
He looked at her with his glowing eyes and kissed down her neck, smelling her skin all the way. Sucking her nipples into his mouth, one after the other, he pressed himself harder against her clit, teasing a groan from her mouth. She was slick with need and aching. His lips slid over her tummy and sank between her legs.
Avery ran her fingers through his hair, lost in the moment.
Was it a dream?
Was it reality?
She didn’t know and didn’t care. The man licked up her slit, slowly tasting her cream. She shuddered and moaned, wanting more, deeper, harder, more.
He pressed between her folds and caught her clit, teasing it with a maddeningly slow swirl of his hot tongue. His fingers gripped her hips, and he lapped up her pleasure. Twisting and twirling on her swollen bud. He held her tight, taking over her senses before the deep flood of desire came so close to the edge she could taste it.
He licked down her pussy and pressed his tongue into her core, darting in and out in a quick rhythm. Avery gasped and looked down at him. The man raised his aim and sucked her clit into his mouth, making her come with an explosion of fireworks in her core and in her brain.
He rose over her, licking her breasts and neck. His hard cock rubbed over her slick entrance. She caressed his skin, the brightness and shadows cast over his hard muscles making her need for him surge inside. She wanted to feel him deep in her core. She wanted him all over and everywhere. He ran his hand down her side and cupped her breast, kissing her hard.
The head of his cock pressed her soft folds, sliding into her warm embrace. She moaned into his kiss and he lifted her thigh to press deeper. In a thrust of passion, he was inside, deep inside. Throbbing with need, he made her come again. He gave her a quivering kiss and drew back before driving forward again.
“I’ve waited so long for you, mate,” he whispered.
“This is so good,” she groaned between kisses.
“You will save me,” he said, thrusting his thick cock into her again.
“You’re savin
g me,” she said.
“I will breed you tonight on this fertile ground. And all will be well.”
She groaned at his words. It was so pagan. So erotic. She scratched her fingers up his back, and he dove into her again and again. He bit into her neck as he released inside her. Avery’s breath caught as she came with him, throbbing from head to toe.
He pulled away and his seed spread over the ground. They held each other in the moonlight, and it felt so right. There was something so close and so connected between them.
Primal.
Pagan.
Otherworldly.
She knew she’d love him for eternity. She didn’t need to know his name. She knew his soul. He was everything. Everything she wanted. Everything she’d waited for. The other half. The twin flame. The soul mate.
His warm hand slid over her naked skin, cupping her breast and caressing her stomach. He kissed her, and she laid in his arms, feeling so protected. Avery had never felt such a sense of belonging in her life. She’d never felt so loved.
It had to be a dream.
That’s all there was to it. This didn’t happen in reality. Was she asleep, realizing it was a dream?
She didn’t know. She didn’t care. Dream or not, she didn’t want it to end. She wanted to lie here with her mate forever. He was everything to her.
The meaning.
The answer.
The energy.
The power.
With him, life was whole in a completely new way.
Her eyes fluttered closed, shutting out the moonlight on his skin. His warm arms held her close as she drifted into the blackness of sleep. So sweet. So right. She never imagined it could be so good. Images of their life. Their children. Their future flitted through her mind before it went blank.
6
When she opened her eyes, the gray mist of dawn swept over the farm, blanketing the hillside. Gray clouds had moved in above. She sat with a start, finding herself naked on a bed of straw, outside in the field. She climbed to her bare feet. She’d lost the boots somewhere.
She trotted through the cold, moist soil to the back porch. Tiptoeing up the stairs, her mind tried to come up with an explanation. A vague memory of the night before washed through the haze as she opened the back door. She remembered going out to the creek. The moonlight. The sweet feeling in her chest.
Then him.
The man had come to her. But was that real? How could it be? She’d seen him turn from a wolf into a man. That wasn’t possible? Had she been so tired that she’d gone to sleep on the straw? She really was exhausted. Valerie had been right. She needed to take it much easier on herself.
Avery went into the bathroom and turned on the shower in the claw-foot tub. Stepping inside, her body felt alive in a way that it only felt after she’d made love. It had been so long. Maybe she’d just had a really, really good dream. She’d had plenty of them before.
This one had been so intense. So real. What she remembered had to be a dream, though. Those kinds of things just didn’t happen in real life. After her shower, she dressed in a pair of baggy jeans and a warm, fluffy sweater. Today, she’d plant vegetable starts in planting trays.
After a night like last night, she had to take it easier on her body. With most of the heavy work of starting a farm in the first year behind her, she could focus on more relaxed tasks.
Outside, she took out the planting trays she’d bought at the hardware store and set them out on a makeshift planting table she’d made with a piece of plywood and two old saw horses from the dilapidated barn.
She spread out the trays and filled them with potting soil she’d prepared previously. With the trays full and even, she began planting the seeds. Tomatoes, squash, celery, eggplant, pumpkins, peppers. She labeled each tray as she worked then sprayed them with a gentle stream from a watering can.
Over the next two weeks, Avery watched her little sprouts emerge from the dark soil. The little water leaves opened up to the air, catching the morning dew each day. With each new emerging seed, Avery felt a greater sense of awakening possibility. It was more proof that her farm was coming together and would really make it in the end.
The clover had begun to sprout in the fields as well, and the seed she’d sewn directly into the raised rows had also sprouted. She was so excited about the success of her planting that she almost didn’t realize that she was already several days late for her cycle.
When she checked her planning book and noticed that her monthly visitor had not yet arrived, she set her pen down on the flowery page and tapped her fingers to her lip.
Just over two weeks ago had been the full moon. That had been the night of the strange dream of the strange man who had emerged from the body of a wolf. She had rationalized the experience as a dream, a hallucination, a moment of falling into her subconscious. There’s no way that could have been real. But she was never late for her period.
Was there some possibility that she hadn’t dreamed it? Was it possible that part of it was real? Maybe one of those mushrooms she put in her soup hadn’t been what she thought it was.
Had someone come onto her property and made love to her? How could that happen? Everything about that experience felt as if it were the most perfect moment of her life. She felt more connected to the dream man than she ever felt for any boyfriend she’d ever had. She remembered the feelings of connection between them when they were together. That couldn’t possibly happen with a stranger who just wandered onto her land and raped her.
Still, Avery wasn’t the kind of girl who could just let this kind of thing go. Even if she wasn’t ready to define exactly what happened the night of the full moon, she wanted to know the truth. She wrapped a sweater around her shoulders and walked out the front door to her truck.
She drove into town like she did every week for her regular grocery shopping trip. She took her canvas bags into the store and walked up and down the aisles with her cart, placing her weekly supply of groceries in the basket. When she came to the pharmacy aisle, she picked up the box and hid it under a bag of spaghetti noodles.
When she got to the checkout, she hid the box under a box of cereal. When the check out lady picked up the pregnancy test, she gave Avery a strange look and glanced down at Avery’s hand. Avery jerked her hands behind her back. She wasn’t going to let this woman see that she wasn’t wearing a ring. Judgment from some local woman was the last thing Avery needed today.
She paid for her groceries and took them out to the truck, where she put them in the passenger side of the cab. At home, she carried her bags into the house and slowly put everything away. When there was nothing left to unpack, except the pregnancy test, she lifted the box to her face and read the directions. She’d never had to take one of these things before, but she had known some other girls who had. Apparently it was the easiest thing in the world. After reading the instructions, it seemed to be the case, so she took the package into the bathroom and followed the directions.
As she paced around in front of the mirror, she thought to herself how ridiculous this all would seem from the outside. If she told her mom or dad or brother about this, they would think she was a complete flake. She couldn’t tell anybody, that was for sure. The people in this town and the people in her family had already proved themselves to be way too judgmental to trust with a strange situation like hers. Whatever happened, she would have to keep it to herself.
When she looked down at the pregnancy test, she was shocked to see two pink lines. Pregnant. She gasped and put her hand to her mouth as she slid down the wall to the floor. Sitting on the cool linoleum, Avery leaded her head back and groaned. She was pregnant, of all things. The very moment she was able to start her lifelong dream of becoming a farmer, she found herself pregnant by immaculate conception or with a werewolf.
Instead of sitting there and thinking “why me,” she climbed to her feet and threw the pregnancy test in the garbage can. If she was really pregnant with a shapeshifting wolf baby, she certainly want
ed to see it when it was born. She didn’t think for a second about not having it. From that moment on, Avery resolved that she was going to become a mother.
In many ways, the thought of motherhood and pregnancy beginning in the way that it had, with her and the wolf-man lying naked in the fertile spring field, just felt right. She’d love this baby no matter who the father might be. Maybe she was going crazy. Maybe she was totally cracking up. But then again, maybe she wasn’t. Either way, she had to carry on or she would lose it all.
For the next two weeks, Avery continued with her normal chores. Raking, weeding, pruning back the blackberries and brambles that were encroaching onto her farm along the driveway.
One night, Avery made herself some steak and corn on a barbecue pit she’d built in the yard that sprawled around the side of her house. She sat beside the fire, into the night, and watched the full moon come out. Just as the last orange remnants of the sun faded into the purple night, Avery heard a gunshot crack down the road. She shot to her feet, wondering what had happened.
With her heart pounding from the shock, she buried the fire and went inside. As she got ready for bed, she heard a knock from her front door. She almost jumped out of her skin from fright. Who would come to her house this late? She hurried to the front door in her robe, gripping the lapels on her neck. She opened the door a crack and peered outside.
The absolute shock she felt when she looked upon the man who stood on her porch could not be equaled. It was him, his blue eyes glittering in the porch light. She couldn’t speak; she could barely think. For the last two weeks she had been carrying the knowledge of his child growing in her womb, not knowing if he was real or fantasy. But now, here he was, standing on her porch.
Bleeding.
“What happened?” she asked, stepping aside for him to enter her house. He walked past her and went to the kitchen, where he sat down at the table. He didn’t have any rips or tears in his clothes.