The Myth of Acaeton but with werewolf girls
Even in mid September, the evening was chilly enough that Aiden's nose was cherry red and dripping by the time he reached the clearing that he had spent the better part of an hour searching for. He had no idea why the girl's cross country team had decided to have their celebratory bonfire so deep in the woods that bordered their small college, but he found it offensively inconvenient for the task at hand - stealing the lucky plush that was the solemn duty of the very best runner to bring to every team even and returning with it undetected to the dorms. One of his club brothers had caught him staring a bit too long at one of the freshmen runners, Sadie from math class, and had thought this a hilarious form of harassment. Annoyed and cold, he traipsed through the thick underbrush, golden with the season, until he came to the edge of the clearing, keeping low and still as he looked around for the toy. Aiden could see the faces of the girls, pink cheeked from the glow of the lingering sunset, the growing flames, the chill of the air, and many, many vodka seltzers. He recognized a few of the faces from campus, but aside from Sadie and the other freshman she was talking to, only from afar. The team had a reputation for being surprisingly rough and rowdy, cute, but intimidating.
One of the girls in front of him moved to get another drink, revealing the little mascot deer perched on a stump, tucked up against a pile of medals. He watched for a moment, waiting until no one was looking in that direction, and crept closer until he was as close as he could get while still concealed in the vegetation. A few yards of high grass and wildflowers stood between him and the circle and he could feel the cold sweat in the small of his back, inexplicably nervous. One of the girls looked up, sniffing at the air with a look of concentration only to laugh at something her friend said. Aiden knew that if he didn't move soon, he'd either chicken out or be discovered and after one last steadying breath, darted out from his hiding place and dashed for the outer edge of the circle of girls and the plush. Just as his hand brushed the soft, spotted fabric, he felt a presence looming over him and a hand grabbed hard at the nape of his neck. Aiden turned in the grip and saw looking down on him the smirking figure of Coach Di.
"Well, girls, look what I caught," she laughed. Fifteen pairs of predatory eyes were on him at once and Aiden's heart rabbited in his chest. "And just in time for our little fun-run tonight!"
The girls whooped and hollered as Aiden struggled to get away, suddenly certain that his life depended on it. He opened his mouth to protest but no words came out and shook his head and found it heavy and oddly weighted. Antlered. He had no real chance to make sense of the sudden strangeness of his transfigured body before Coach Di let him drop to the ground, landing wobbly and uncertain on four delicately cloven hooves. He scrambled away, instincts screaming to flee as he caught a dangerous scent on the air.
Feminine but animalistic musk filled his wet black nose and he turned his head in time to see the last of the girls change with they , yipping and circling each other final setting of the sun into a pack of enormous wolves. They were sniffing excitedly until the last of them, the team captain, changed shape. Where she had stood a great blonde and cinnamon wolf took her place, her pack rushing to fawn and greet her. She accepted with a silent grace long enough to catch the scent of cervine fear. The moment of peace broke with her resonant howl and Aiden raced headlong into the wild wood, the wolves close behind.
Twice he escaped their snapping jaws, their claws gouging the soft soil as they tried to match his agile bounds up and over the creakbed abd up the clay slope on the other side. He bled from shallow cuts where blackberry brambles raked his flanks but did not dare to stop his flight. Aiden could hear the wolfish laughter of the pack at the one who had tried and failed to follow him up the slick bank and had slid backward before tumbling into the shallow but cold water. The laughter followed after him as he followed a dry gulch along with her snarls of irritation. He was too frightened and too tired to find it very funny.
The full moon was high and bright and the night still young for his weariness. He knew that if he could not lose them through the underbrush choked cliffs, he would be torn apart by their teeth within the hour. The light of the moon caught the bone of his splendid antlers as he turned from his track to try. He plunged though a thicket nearly free, only to stumble into a dip disguised by vegetation. He caught himself again quickly, but twisted a foreleg and made enough racket in the process that the wolves he had nearly outrun and outwitted found him again, coming up a longer but easier slope. They salivated with the thrill of the moon and the thrill of the hunt and he despaired to see them. Blindly, Aiden turned but found himself trapped, faced with a sheer wall of loose dirt and bare roots that he might have managed with time but not quickly and not injured. The great pale wolf emerged, spittle streaked and teeth long and white. He tried to dart out of reach and then to gore her, but too soon her mouth closed around his throat. He fell and waited for the pain, felt the prick of teeth piercing flesh, only to suddenly be knocked in a completely different direction by a blur of gray-brown fur. He landed hard against a rock with a crunch, but the teeth that nearly ended his life snapped around nothing.
The great blonde and cinnamon wolf was bigger than her assailant, stronger too, but the newcomer was far more fierce, fighting with a kind of relentless intensity that the other simply did not possess, even after the iron gray of her pelt with flecked with mud and the mingled blood of bites and scratches. Aiden lay frozen in place, ribs bruised and lame from his earlier fall and panting for every shallow breath. The gray wolf had gotten the worse of the fight, looking fit to drop herself as they parted , but still she stood between him and the pack leader. The blonde stepped back, appraising. The gray tensed, submitted, but did not back away. Aiden watched in confusion as the victor huffed and then padded off, tail high and howling, leaving the two of them behind.
Aiden tried to get his legs under him again, hoping to escape this new threat or, more likely, to die trying, but as soon as he took one limping step, she was upon him again, dragging him down to her feet with force just shy of breaking skin. He did not try again.
A few times, as the night wore on, the gray fended off less motivated packmates, though their exchanges were seemed more like a terrifying kind of teasing harassment than anything like the serious contest before. The adrenaline slowly bled from his body and the buck was a trembling mess of exhaustion and pain as he dozed intermittently on a constellation of emerald moss, the wolf's soft heat pressed against him.
The sky turned royal blue, then pink. A golden beam filtered though the boughs of oaks, falling on a tawny flank and then in the space of a breath, the pale flesh of a young man, bare and cold but still very much alive. Aiden woke not long after, just in time to feel the pelt of the wolf curled around him become the body of his math class crush, Sadie. She nuzzled sleepily into the tangled mess of his dark brown curls. "What a night, huh?" she murmured, before pulling him close against her
On a cold December evening, Aiden stood as close as he could possibly get to the roaring bonfire without burning himself, bundled up in as many layers as he would let his girlfriend put on him before she was off and running through the first flurries of the season and the bare branched trees. His heart pounded as he heard the wolves call out in the darkness, but in the ring of light and that grove, he, prized possession of the pack, could not have been safer.