Dare - Book II

Prologue

The dream woke me, jerking me upright on the old mattress and heavy quilts and blankets which made my bed. I was wide-eyed and aware of an ache in my chest. It took me a moment to realize I was holding my breath and I had to fight to let it out, wheezing as I drew fresh, cool air into my lungs. I coughed and closed my eyes and beside me I could feel one of my brothers stirring sleepily, lifting his great head and sniffing the air.

I felt his tongue on me. Bush. Licking at my hip, telling me to go back to sleep. He could sense my fear, but find no cause for it, and this was not the first time I’d had a bad dream. I sat there, pulling my knees to my breasts and hugging myself in the dark with all of my senses awakened. I could hear the spring night outside our room. The breeze through the barnyard and the trees beyond. The scratching of tiny claws in the rafters above us; a mouse repairing its nest. The sound of my three brothers, Bandy, Barley, and Bush sleeping around me.

I could smell them, rich and musky, and myself as well. The ripe scent of coupling with Bandy just a few hours before filled the room. Just as I was still full of him, although I’d been leaking steadily and my thighs were damp with our combined juices. I could taste him on my lips and tongue; the remains of the dog’s semen in my mouth as I’d cleaned him afterwards while our brothers had watched from their pallet. It was a normal night and I could not say what month or day it was. I had no knowledge of such things. They were useless to me.

The days were growing warmer and longer, but it wasn’t yet summer. I’d been there two years, perhaps, or longer. I couldn’t remember the month when I’d arrived, was it April? Was it another April again so soon? It seemed I’d only just arrived, or that I’d been there forever. I felt both all at once and all the time. I put it out of my mind and moved off our bed slowly, carefully as I wished to go outside and pee. I might have used the small drain in our tiled bath area, but I rarely did that anymore. I was a dog, a bitch, and so I wanted to go outside.

I wanted to see if he was there. Urinating was my excuse and as I crossed the cool gravel towards the horse paddock and the unkempt fields beyond, I gave up all pretenses. My brothers did not follow. I could see well enough in the dark, moving by the light of a half-moon and a million distant stars. I sniffed the air and felt my certain way with bare calloused feet. I’d been a girl once, but no more. I was Onijwa, a person with the spirit of an animal inside her. I was a dog, a wolf, and I’d been mated during my Awakening with another and he was out there now, waiting for me.

He was close. I couldn’t see him or smell him, but I could sense him.

I ran with my thick black hair billowing behind me. My small body, lean and hard, worked perfectly. I was strong and healthy, with soft doe eyes and caramel skin rippling as the muscles worked beneath. My small breasts, pierced through my dark nipples with delicate bone rings, barely moved as I darted quickly and quietly across the open ground. I was naked and most comfortable that way. It had been too long for me to remember since the last time I’d worn clothing of any sort, since I’d been ill with pneumonia and near death. That had been two winters ago and I was long since recovered. I ran swiftly for ten minutes, leaving the farm behind me as I entered the safety of the forest proper.

The wind was in my favor. I’d kept downwind of the hills and now I moved across it, seeking his scent on the air. It was a game we played, a lover’s pleasure as only another wolf would understand it. The hunt was our foreplay and my heart was beating fast. I was breathless, but only with excitement, the physical exertion was nothing for me and I could run for an hour if I had to without tiring. I tilted my head, hearing a faint rustling to my left, downwind, and so I stopped, frozen in place, crouching as a shadow in those black woods. He was there and I caught the golden glint of his narrow eyes regarding me silently.

I hadn’t run far enough or fast enough, and the beast was stalking me. He had the advantage and my body reeked of my earlier sex and the bed where I’d lain. I was easy to find and easy to follow and with that realization I laughed, which was a sound I found annoying for it was uniquely mine, and a reminder that I was still human in some small ways. My brothers enjoyed it, however, and they would tease me with their tongues to hear me giggle. Human laughter is a delight to a dog’s ears; like a baby’s smile or a mother’s touch, laughter has a presence all its own.

So I laughed and I ran, past the place where my mate and I had first fought, where I’d taken him and in my victory given myself to him completely. I leapt across the stream there, fat and quick now with the spring thaw, and cold as I splashed through the opposite bank and up the short ravine. I’d made a den, a place for us beneath the heavy boughs of a large fir tree, and the ground beneath it was soft with moss and thin dry grass. It smelled of pine tar and earth. I’d gathered dried leaves the previous autumn and made a bed for us, lining it with hair, my own and his. It wasn’t a proper den, but it was warm and sheltered and it had served us well through the winter.

He approached cautiously, and his footsteps were slow and light as I lay on my side, stretched out and smiling while he circled the tree. I offered him a sharp bark of happy impatience and my body was tingling for I was in love with him. With a deep throated growl his head appeared finally, pushing through the pine branches and he bared his teeth, staring at me until I lowered my eyes submissively. He took in the scent of my well used sex first, pressing his snout between my legs, forcing my thighs apart to his inspection, and jerked away as he smelled the dog semen inside me like a deep stain.

I reached for him slowly, clutching at his thick fur which was slowly thinning with the spring. He was dark, black and silver, and large. He’d been feeding well again and I was glad. I’d brought him food on occasion, when I was able to catch a wild hare which were plentiful, or the one time I’d come across a goat, lost apparently and wandering alone. I’d killed for him and at other times we’d hunted together, although only briefly.

My Master had named him ‘Chance’ after he’d become aware of the wolf’s occasional presence. It is peculiar to humans that they must name everything. To me he was ‘Mate’ and we had our own sounds for that word; a soft pleasant growl from deep in the belly when we were close, and a long warbling howl when we were apart. The wolf was wary, of course, and careful to avoid my brothers, but he couldn’t resist his instinctive need to be near me. Wolves mate for life and he’d left his pack to remain where I could meet him, sneaking into the night as my own instincts were loosed by his calling.

Above us, in the hills and mountain slopes surrounding the reservation upon which my Master’s home was built, the pack was birthing their offspring now. I could hear their songs echoing at night and it was an emptiness inside me which I knew would never be filled. If it confused my mate, why he’d given me no pups to nurse with swollen milk-filled breasts, he gave me no sign of it. Perhaps there was some understanding within him, I couldn’t know. The language of animals doesn’t extend so far and it was a sadness inside me, but I was comforted by his continued attention and I lavished myself upon him when we were together.

We didn’t mate immediately, but rather the wolf laid beside me, pressing his coarse back against my belly with his handsome head upright, mouth open with his long red tongue lolling between his sharp teeth. I spent some time grooming him with my human hands. At times I imagined them as a handicap, in fact my whole body was ill-suited to what I truly was, but I couldn’t deny my fingers their usefulness. I pulled burrs from his coat and combed my fingers through his fur, feeling for ticks and digging them out of his soft skin. I often did the same for my brothers and it was a slow, pleasurable task and I enjoyed the intimacy of it.

After some time, in the last dark hour of the night, I slipped my hand down his heavy chest and soft belly, to the place where his hair was soft as silk, and I found my mate’s cock, firm and resting within its sheath. I buried my face in his neck, stroking him slowly as I growled my desire. He turned his head, licking at my neck and shoulder, pushing his snout into my hair which was long and loose. His breath was hot in my ear and I felt the odd-shaped tip of his penis slipping out, the tapering head already growing moist with precum, and the smell of my own arousal surrounded us in our refuge. The musky odor of desire radiated from my pores and he didn’t protest as I moved slowly, crawling over him, splitting my legs wide so I could mark his body with the moist scent of my passion, dragging my sex along his fur as I made to exit the den.

There wasn’t enough room within and so I waited for my mate without, on my hands and knees, calling him with a high pitched howl, announcing my readiness to any who could hear and understand. Another wolf, probably young and in his first season as an adult, heard me and answered from some distance away. It was a tease and drew my mate out of our den quickly, as I knew it would.

I was telling him that I would couple with the first male who would claim me and it was a common sound in the early spring, females using it to spur their mates into action. It would occasion a fight if another male heeded her call too eagerly, but only rarely and fight is the wrong word. Contest is better, and the female’s mate was invariably the victor in such events, for her attentions were ever meant for him alone and the newcomer would know that. The female would be punished for her temerity, of course, since she’d challenged her lover to prove himself.

So it was that my mate took me quickly, leaping upon my back with his chest high and head low, and wrapping his powerful forelimbs around my waist so that I was forced to bear his considerable weight. His teeth went to my shoulder as I gasped, nipping my soft flesh sharply and drawing blood, while his prick slipped free of its sheath completely and he stabbed at my sex, searching for the entrance to my womb. I moved myself awkwardly in an effort to help him and then I felt him suddenly, the length of his cock splitting my labia and thrusting fully inside my pussy all at once. I growled with the pain of it, but the pleasure followed immediately as he began to fuck me with urgent strokes.

I turned my head as he held his bony chin against my collar and I licked at the wolf’s jaw, running the tip of my tongue across his sharp teeth. I was submissive to him when he took me, as I’d been since the first time we’d mated at the gathering place called Table Rock. That was where my spirit had been awakened and welcomed by the Native Americans who understood such things. I was a part of the tribe now, although I could only dimly appreciate that.

The wolf scratched my sides painfully as he fought for leverage and I had numerous scars already from tooth and claw, some old and faded white upon my skin, others fresh and pink and barely healed. Now I would have new ones and I wore them proudly, much as I wore the tattoo around my belly button and the piercings in my nipples, and the one lower, the bone ring through my pubis. My Master had arranged for those, and like the scars on my sides and shoulders, they were an indelible part of me now. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t have them, nor would I want to.

I lowered my head finally, both of us panting as we rutted hard beneath the sky as it began to grey in the east. His cock was large and hot, splitting my sex easily now, reaching into the depths of my pussy and I was long used to such things. I stretched around him eagerly and the soft muscles of my cuntal walls clasped to hold the animal tight, quivering with the useless effort as he withdrew time after time, plumbing my sex rapidly until the knot of muscle growing at the base of his cock demanded its proper place within me.

The bulb was large, but not fully ripened, and with a satisfied barking howl the wolf gave a final hard thrust to force the blood engorged knot into the mouth of my cunt. It grew quickly then as my mate began the quick short thrusting which would bring his final release. I was stretched now, and very full as the muscle trapped inside me grew even further. It blocked my sex completely, damming inside our juices, and the knowledge that we were locked tightly together brought me to orgasm as surely as the physical sensations that were quickly overwhelming me.

I clawed at the soft ground beneath me and strained to move myself against him, bearing my lover’s weight breathlessly and desperate to feel his seed jetting into my womb. My heart was a hammer in my chest and my nipples burned ice cold with pleasure. My pussy spasmed as I had one climax after another, milking the wolf’s impossibly hard cock for his living sperm. We were breeding and I should have been in season long before, as winter ended, and I had been, but only in my heart. In my spirit. It was a torturous knowledge and mercifully it was momentarily lost as I felt my mate cumming. His cock seemed to swell larger for a brief second before ejaculating his hot semen against the pillow of my cervix, spraying inside me to penetrate that curious bottleneck and find my womb just beyond.

It brought yet another orgasm of my own, the fourth perhaps, or fifth, and the best of them all as I joined in my mate’s rapturous release. Our juices mingling inside me, seeping into the soft recesses of my body, bathing my lover’s still hard cock as he continued to leak sperm for the many long minutes it would require before the knot would begin to shrink enough to slip from my sex. I always came with him, and with my brothers as well, but most especially with my mate. It was the one time, in those few precious seconds, when I could truly forget I was only a girl.

We were vulnerable then, after our sex when we were locked together with his cock trapped in my pussy. The wolf moved with surprising ease, turning on his hinged penis so that he could face the opposite direction, guarding us while we waited for his sperm to do its work in my womb. He would bring his head down occasionally, to sniff and lap at our union, perhaps pulling at me to test the strength of our physical bond. I would growl at him then, feeling lazy and happy, with my head down on my folded arms, keeping my ass high and watching as the sky grew light around us.

The sun rose late, but always quickly as it came over the mountains to the east. It was a clear sky and an especially bright star caught my eye, or perhaps a planet? Probably a planet, I thought, maybe Venus, although I’d hardly been much of a girl for knowing such things. School had confused me, the way most of my previous life had. I’d never understood people very well, or the civilized world. I’d been easily bewildered and naïve, and most people who’d known me had thought me somewhat simple, to put it nicely. That I’d been found by the one person in the whole world who could care for me and give me what I required was more than just luck. It was proof of something greater than us. Fate or Destiny or God. Whatever it was, it was there and I was grateful.

My Master had taken me in and set me free, although he’d had little idea himself of what he was doing. That was the great irony. How he’d merely sought a girl to entertain him with his dogs, a girl who would pretend to be a dog. I was a dog pretending to be human and I’d resisted at first, but only because I was by nature afraid of change and fearful of risk. That I’d accepted it finally and without coercion had led, perhaps, to the wonderfully clever name my Master had settled upon for me. Before he’d found me it would have seemed a joke, but no longer and I fingered my well worn collar, the supple black leather around my throat, and the three heart shaped tags hanging from it.

One of them, the metal tag nearest the front, read “Dare” in simple letters.

The morning was golden as I crouched by the stream, washing myself thoroughly after my toilet. The wolf had left me after we’d groomed each other briefly and made our goodbyes. He would return to the hills, shadowing his old pack and perhaps joining them for a hunt as they ranged higher to take the wild sheep, and lower to find deer and rabbits. He wasn’t an outcast except by choice, when he left the pack to find me. I gathered some wild radish leaves, putting them in my mouth and chewing them into a soft pulp.

They were bitter, but good for cuts and wounds, and I pinched the pulp between my fingers, squeezing the juice onto my shoulder where my mate had bitten me, and then rubbing the moist leaves against my wound gently. I did the same with the claw marks on my waist, although they weren’t so deep. It stung a little and stopped the bleeding quickly, staining my brown skin with a dull, greenish tint. My Master would frown when he saw me, I knew that, and I’d be meek and yielding to his anger, but it would pass quickly. He didn’t understand completely, but he wanted to.

The Indian medicine man, White Cloud, who was very old and wise, he understood me completely, or as well as a man could. He would visit sometimes and look at me, touch me with his gnarled hands and bony fingers. He’d promised sanctuary for my mate, even though some of the Indians raised lambs and occasionally lost one to the wolf. White Cloud understood that it was in the wolf’s nature to be a predator, just as a lamb must be prey. Losing a few small sheep was akin to a sacrifice to the nature spirits of both animals, or so he’d tried to explain to my Master. White Cloud knew better than to try and explain anything to me and it pleased me greatly when the old man was near.

Another man would come as well, the large Indian named Joe, and he was my Master’s friend. He was fat with a cheerful round face and ready smile to go with his great belly and huge, gentle hands. He would come and sit with my Master, drinking beer and talking in the evenings, and occasionally making use of me for his own pleasure and his friend’s.

My Master enjoyed seeing me suck the Indian’s cock, which was a very large one, and the man would even fuck me once in awhile. My brothers hadn’t liked that at first and they’d guarded my sex jealously for many months, but eventually they’d grown accustomed to the man well enough to let him mate with me. They watched him closely even so and after the Indian pulled out, spending his orgasm on my back usually, one of the dogs would mount me immediately, reclaiming me as their own.

The doctor would come as well, and he was a man I didn’t like. Not for any specific reason, except that he didn’t understand me at all and accepted me only reluctantly. My brothers disliked him as well, especially the antiseptic smell of his skin and clothing which was unnatural and offensive to all of us. I understood the necessity though, or more probably I understood my Master’s caution and desire to keep me safe. The body I’d been born into hadn’t been intended for the life I was living, but it had adapted well enough and even the old doctor had to agree that I was in fine health physically. My mind, in his opinion, was another matter entirely and he would query me closely, asking if I was content and happy.

All I could do was look at him and smile then, but I was fearful that there would come a time when that answer wouldn’t be enough for the doctor.

I heard my three brothers long before I could see them and as the morning breeze shifted momentarily, I caught their scent and it spurred me to run through the forest towards them. They were on their morning patrol, which was a great joy for all of us, especially on a beautiful day such as this. I moved ahead of them, knowing all too well their path, and I crouched at the edge of a field overgrown with wild winter wheat, ripe for harvest and wonderfully tall. It was perfect for hiding in and I panted softly while I waited.

Bush was some distance off and he’d caught my scent so that he was barking happily and bounding about in the tall grasses as if I might be near him. Barley paused to lift his head high, his ears stiff and flicking in the wind as it came from behind him. Bandy, the largest of the three and our leader, was running ahead, charging through the grass and eager to reach the tree line behind me.

I steadied myself, smelling and hearing him, but I could see nothing except the wall of pale grain surrounding me. At the first sign of their parting I gave a sharp bark of my own and sprang forward, pushing with my legs so that I was completely in the air and on him before Bandy could brace himself for my attack. I crashed into his muscular shoulder as he fought his own momentum, and then we were off balance and falling, his head whipping around with those huge jaws open. Bandy was growling and scrambling with his paws for purchase as he fell onto his left side.

I straddled him quickly, feeling one of his rear claws gouging deep into my right calf before I could get my leg between both of Bandy’s, pressing my knee into the soft spot just beneath his rib cage. My other leg was stiff, behind the animal’s back, giving me leverage as I lay half upon him, and I had my left arm under his neck, my hand flat with fingers spread as I pressed it against the side of his face, at his cheek while my right arm covered his throat from above.

Bandy was strong and whipping his head violently back and forth, trying to catch my hand in his mouth while I tried to use my legs to roll the animal over, but he was far too heavy for that and it was a fight I couldn’t win. I wasn’t able to control his head quickly enough and he jerked free of my left hand. Bandy turned his face downward and suddenly took my arm in his mouth, high just below my shoulder, and it was painful, but he wasn’t biting me hard. His teeth hardly broke the skin and Bandy just held me like that, growling softly as I relaxed my body completely. The whole affair had lasted only a few seconds, but time moves differently in a fight, even a friendly one between brother and sister.

He let me go after a moment and I didn’t move right away, but just lay there; avoiding Bandy’s bright amber eyes as he stood above me quickly. Both of us were breathing hard and his cock had grown with our excitement. Sometimes I won, sometimes my brothers won, but it was always fun and we loved it. Barley and Bush had come running and they were barking, dancing through the weeds happily and wanting me to play with them as well. But I ignored them, moving instead to take my place as Bandy’s bitch. He’d won and I submitted myself if he wanted me. If not, one of the other two would take his place, I had little doubt of that.

He pressed his cold damp nose to my sex briefly, perhaps smelling the wolf on me, but I’d washed myself well and in truth they’d grown accustomed to that scent, although they neither understood nor appreciated it. If my brothers found him, they would kill my mate, and that was the driving force behind our caution. It wasn’t men we feared, it was my three brothers, and I couldn’t do anything about it except this. On the mornings after meeting Chance I would make it a point to distract the dogs, playing games such as this and keeping their interest solely on me so that I could ensure my lover’s escape.

Bandy was well distracted now and if his mind wasn’t made up to take me before, after smelling my freshly fucked and washed cunt he was definitely in the mood to claim me. He mounted me easily and unlike the wolf, Bandy was happy to bear much of his own weight, which was considerable, but I could do it when I needed to. I was much stronger than I appeared, and of course it wasn’t an unpleasant burden by any means.

The dogs were all very large, over a hundred and fifty pounds each, bred for size and power from a mastiff father and a mother with St. Bernard and Great Dane bloodlines. They were mongrels to be sure, but beautiful nonetheless, with brindle backs and white bellies; long coats, but hardly shaggy. They had some black around their handsome heads and they shared those gorgeous amber eyes. My brothers were proud and strong, lean with muscle and perhaps suspicious by temperment. I loved them all very much.

As I knelt there, Bandy was able to straddle me easily, his soft stomach sliding over my ass and lower back, his chest pressing up, between my shoulders, and his cock grew quickly to its generous size. It was long and thickest in the middle, big enough that my hand couldn’t encircle the shaft, and I reached behind me to guide the dog inside my sex. He was surprisingly gentle, in fact they all were, and while the dogs acted tough, even aggressive in front of strangers, the fact was that they were all just oversized puppies. At least to my mind. They were not even five years old yet, just young adults, and all they wanted was to shed their abundant joyful energy.

Fucking was a really good way to do that.

“Dare.”

My Master found us soon after Bandy had entered me and it wasn’t often enough that he came out with us on our morning jaunts. Our Master was tall and older, perhaps sixty years of age, although I’m rather bad at determining such things. He was neither handsome nor ugly, but kind and loving and wise. He was a father to us all and we loved him. He was our Master, which is a word of infinite and simple meaning. Much like the word God is for most people.

“Where did you run off to, girl? Huh?” he chided me gently and stroked my face. “See your boyfriend?”

I moaned happily at his touch, while Bandy ignored it. He wouldn’t tolerate one of his brothers coming so close without at least a warning growl, but this was our Master, and so the dog merely continued to fuck me. He arched his back and put more of his weight upon me than he normally might, merely because we were outside and he did want to finish quickly. Bandy’s cock was stabbing me deep and hard, the knot already inside me as I’d been well stretched previously and that made it especially good for me. The bulb slipped in and out a few times, but finally it grew too large for escape and we were locked in our union.

Our Master examined my shoulder; although he couldn’t get a good look at it because of Bandy’s oversized head panting next to mine. He saw enough to know I’d been bitten and he’d assume I had scratches as well, which he would fuss over later. Master said nothing, but merely watched us fuck for a few moments before calling Barley and Bush to his side, leaving Bandy and me to finish our mating alone. We’d catch up sometime later, depending on how long it would take for the knot to go down.

I didn’t orgasm until Bandy did and it was a good one, like they all are. The first few times I’d mated with my brothers they’d torn my sex, as I’d been unused to their size and power. But right now was a very long time after back then, and my pussy could take them easily and as often as we liked, which was to say quite often. Between my brothers and my mate, I was very active sexually, even promiscuous, if a dog could be accused of such a thing. It amused my Master to no end and he was proud of my sexual appetite and stamina, I think. He certainly did nothing to discourage me and sometimes went out of his way to ensure I was mated, whether I desired it or not.

That was the purpose of my pubic piercing, a bone ring which lanced my flesh deeply where my pubic mound was swollen round with fat. He would chain me to an eyebolt in the floor of our room and I was unable to refuse anyone then. The dogs could take me at will and they often did, finding it a wonderful game to have their sister trapped like that. I didn’t understand at first. Even if I wasn’t in the mood for sex, if my Master wished it I wouldn’t have refused him anything. Gradually though I was made to understand that it was more the symbolism he enjoyed, the fact that I was placed in a position where my willingness wasn’t an issue.

Sometimes I believed that my Master desired a dog that was not quite as eager as me. At the same time though, I knew he wouldn’t have traded me for anything in the world. My Master was no fool and I was his treasure, or so he’d told his friend Joe more than once in my presence, and neither the Indian nor I doubted my Master’s opinion. So it was for that reason and countless others that I gave my Master no reason to doubt my own devotion to him.

The last words I’d ever spoken as a human had been to tell him that I loved him.

~~~~

Chapter One

“I love you,” I said softly.

I kissed him and he was cold, his lips like wax beneath mine. In the other part of the house, in our room, my brothers paced the wooden floor. They were afraid and agitated and they fought with each other when one would get too close. They needed me, I knew, as I needed them. I had to say goodbye though and I was crying.

“Dare…” Joe was there with a blanket in his hands, “…you should put this on.”

He was draping it over my shoulders and I didn’t protest. It wasn’t for me in any case, but for the men who had come for my Master. An ambulance and a State Police cruiser with their lights flashing, but no sirens. No need to rush. Death had come to our home and taken our Master away. I couldn’t know the why of it; there was no reason. He was old and it was time. I understood that much of life at least, but I didn’t like it. I’d never known someone who’d died and my Master wasn’t like other people anyway.

He was my Master and so it seemed very wrong.

I’d found him after missing breakfast and then dinner, and finally breakfast again, but in truth we could sense his absence from the first. Not his death, nothing dreadful as you may imagine, but only his absence from our home and lives. It had taken me three tries to open the door and enter the house proper. My courage failed the first time, and the second time my hand was confused by the latch and knob of the handle, which seems silly. I hadn’t opened a door in two years and it seemed a foolish thing to forget, but in my worry I had.

I tried to explain that to my Master when I found him in his bed. I barked softly and licked at his cold fingers. I sat on the floor near him for a long time, until the weary summer sun had faded to a cold glow in the western sky, and I howled then. Not as a dog, but as a wolf, for they have a song for that. For the death of someone you love. Dogs have their sounds, but they’ve too long been tamed, I think, and so when my brothers heard me they joined with the clumsy baying of domesticated hounds.

The men went about their business efficiently. The two who had come in the ambulance were dressed in blue, the trooper in grey. The blue men looked at me curiously, but did not speak. The blanket was over my shoulders and I sat on the floor watching them while the grey man spoke with me. He was young, but his eyes were blue and very old and he was gentle, pulling the blanket closed to hide my breasts and sex, but I paid it little mind. Joe was on the telephone and I didn’t know or care who he was speaking to.

My brothers were in our room. I’d told them to stay there and they had no reason to listen to me, but they did. They were very agitated and barking though, unhappy with so many strangers in our home. They needed to be comforted and fed, although none of us were hungry. There were thoughts, like words on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t find them. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, nor did I care. I hadn’t had to make a decision or accept a responsibility in over two years. I was unprepared for this.

“Miss, I need to know your name.” The grey man had a clipboard with papers on it and he held a pen ready.

I blinked at him and licked my lips, concentrating on his voice for he’d spoken quickly and it was difficult to understand him.

“Your name?” he asked slower. “Can you speak?”

I nodded and cleared my throat softly. “Dare.”

“Uh…” He rubbed his nose. “Dare…Is that short for something?”

I didn’t know what that meant.

“Dare,” I said a little louder and I leaned over, looking at his clipboard as if I expected him to write that down someplace. When he didn’t, I remembered my tag and lifted my chin, feeling the metal under my fingers as I held it out for him to read.

“Dare, right…I got that,” he nodded and finally did write it down. “What, um…are you related to…” he looked at his clipboard, “…Mr. Brocken?”

I didn’t understand and I didn’t know who Mr. Brocken was, so I just sat there, watching the blue men put my Master on a wheeled cart. He was in his pajamas and they covered him with a white sheet before strapping him down. I frowned at that.

“How long have you lived here?” the grey man tried and again I had no answer for him.

The man looked at me for a few minutes and I watched them take my Master out of the room. I rose to my feet and followed them slowly until we were outside and they were lifting the cart to put it in the ambulance. The grey man had followed me and Joe came out as well, having finished his phone call, and the grey man fell on him with his questions while I watched the ambulance leave. I went back to my room then, to be with my brothers.

We were crowded together, the three dogs and I, laying atop one another on our bed, but not sleeping even though it was very late. More people had come and gone, but I’d kept my brothers with me and we ignored the noises from outside. The door opened slowly and Joe looked inside, which brought my brothers quickly to their feet for they’d expected him to be our Master. So had I, even though I knew better, but I’d forgotten at the heavy creaking sound. It was only the Indian though and the dogs regarded him suspiciously, Barley growling with his ears flat, and I grabbed handfuls of his neck and pulled him back down to me.

“Dare, come here,” Joe said and I’d never imagined his big round face could look so sad.

I growled at my brothers to stay where they were and it was difficult, especially for Barley and he was tense. Bush was the most calm and he kept his head down on his paws, only his constantly shifting eyes betrayed his impatience, but like the rest of us he didn’t know what he was waiting for. I left them and walked to the door, the blanket I’d worn long forgotten. Joe looked as if he might say something, but he didn’t. He just stepped aside and led me towards a sitting room, an old parlor near the front of the house. White Cloud was there and I’d sensed his arrival some hours previously, but now that I could see him his presence descended upon me like a great calm and it allowed my body to relax.

Other men were there also, the old tribal leaders who made up the council. I didn’t know them. I’d seen them once, at my Awakening during the ceremony at Table Rock. They looked weary and serious and some of them looked away from my nakedness, but most of them didn’t. The grey man was still there, sitting on one of the chairs and still writing.

“Mrs. Brocken,” he said, looking up and then focusing deliberately on my face. “My condolences on the loss of your husband. I need just two signatures and I, uh…I’ll be done.”

He seemed embarrassed and apologetic and I didn’t understand much of what he was saying.

“Sit down, Dare. Sit here.” Joe was guiding me to an empty chair, but I frowned at him, growling softly before I could stop myself. I wasn’t going to sit on my Master’s furniture. I sat on the floor, on my heels with my legs folded beneath me.

“Are you sure she’s okay?” The grey man looked to the council and they looked to White Cloud. The old medicine man nodded and spoke in the language of his tribe for a moment while the others listened carefully.

“The girl will be fine,” one of the other men finally said, looking at the grey man. “This is her home.”

“Ma’am, Mrs. Brocken, do you have relatives? Parents maybe? A sister or brother you’d like to call?” The grey man was obviously concerned and I had to think of the words I wanted to say, rehearsing them for a moment in my head.

“My brothers,” I nodded and looked back towards our room. “There.”

“Uh…” The grey man smiled weakly and tried to understand.

“She means the dogs,” Joe offered helpfully.

“She is Onijwa,” White Cloud said, sticking out his gaunt chin as if the grey man would dispute it. The other Indians glanced at him, but said nothing.

“Right,” the grey man nodded and coughed lightly. “Okay, uh. It’s up to you anyway. Um, Mrs. Brocken, I need you to sign here and…here, please.”

He approached me slowly, crouching and pointing with his finger as he held the clipboard. The pen was awkward in my hand and I had to remember how to hold one, and I almost smiled as I carefully wrote my name in the places I was supposed to.

“I need your last name signed too,” he told me and I blinked at him with some confusion. “Brocken, right? Like this? That’s your name, right?”

The grey man was pointing towards the top of the papers where he’d filled in my Master’s name, James Brocken, and I nodded, just to be done with this, but I didn’t understand at all. I wrote the name he wanted behind my own in the two places I’d signed, making the letters slowly while he watched.

“Okay, that’s fine.” He took his pen back and stood up. “Again, I’m sorry, Mrs. Brocken. Thank you for your time.”

He left with brief looks and nods at the council and I scratched my head, sitting there and watching him go.

The Indians started talking then, but I paid them little mind. White Cloud was touching my head and said something to Joe and then the old man left, going deeper into the house, towards the kitchen, I thought, but I’d never been there.

“Dare.” Joe sat his bulk in the chair closest to me and on the floor next to it there was a briefcase which he was pulling towards me, opening it between us.

“This might be kinda hard to explain.” He pulled out a paper, actually three papers clipped together. “Jim, uh, your…Owner?” he sighed. “The man who lived here, he was your husband. Did you know that?”

“Master,” I said, smiling then because husband was the wrong word.

“Right. Your Master was your husband, see?” He was holding the papers out. “He married you. Did he ever say anything about that?”

I looked at the papers and they were marriage contracts, signed and notarized by the Tribal Registry. There was his name and mine, my old human name, and our signatures. I had some memory of signing papers like these, the day he’d given me my tags and I was suddenly excited as I noticed the numbers on the pages. It was at the top, the license number, wa06-11031, and I nodded my head eagerly, showing my tags to Joe. One of them had that number on it and the Indian gave me a small smile as he looked at it.

“Right, that’s like your wedding ring, I guess.” He scratched his cheek.

“Married,” I said softly. The way my tongue moved to make the sound tickled.

At the time I hadn’t thought much about it, what I’d signed or what the tag meant. I guess I’d assumed it was a dog license, especially since the tag did say ‘Licensed Canine’ on it. My Master had married me though, two years before and I’d never known. It wouldn’t have changed anything and clearly my Master hadn’t done it for any personal reason. I mean, not like people get married to demonstrate love or something, like it was an obligation. He had more than that without marriage. He’d had everything already, and so why would he do that? Not to impress anyone; he hadn’t even told me. My Master had been protecting me, I realized.

“Let’s see.” There were a lot of papers and Joe was looking through them as if he wanted to show them to me in a specific order.

“This one, okay…Your name is Dare,” Joe was nodding. “It really is. Jim had your name legally changed a few months after you guys were married, see? A judge signed it, so…You’re Dare Brocken, or just Dare, it’s okay.”

I shrugged at that. I knew I was Dare.

“This is Jim’s will. He asked me to be the executor. He wanted me to take care of things when…” Joe frowned, “…If he couldn’t. Okay?”

I didn’t say anything and the other men were quiet now, listening to Joe like I was.

“He was a good lawyer.” Joe tilted his head a little. “A smart man too. So, well, basically he left you everything. The house here, the land of course. There’s some little things about that, because it’s part of the reservation, so…Well, we can talk about that later. It’s yours though, for as long as you want it.”

That seemed sort of obvious to me, since it was my home, and I smiled patiently.

“He also, uh, did he ever mention a trust for you?” Joe asked and then continued on. “Anyway, I’m not too smart about that stuff, but he put a bunch of money in a bank for you and um, it looks like you can get it on your twenty-ninth birthday. That’s, well, it’s a lot. About a hundred and forty thousand dollars when it matures, okay?”

I remembered that conversation fondly, as I’d replayed it in my head countless times. My first meeting with my Master, before he was my Master, and how we’d talked. I recalled how frightened I’d been and nervous and so alone. It had been raining and I hadn’t had anything but the clothes I was wearing and he’d rescued me. I remembered every word we’d said to each other and how Master had told me that he’d put money in the bank for me and after ten years I could get it and it would be a lot. I hadn’t thought about it since then and in truth I didn’t really care. What was I going to do with money anyway?

“He also had a lot of investments, I guess. After he retired, Jim’s income was mostly from dividends on stocks and mutual funds and stuff like that. There’s a lot of money there, a ton of money, and so…”

Joe kept talking and I tried to listen, but very little of it made any sense to me. Apparently my Master had been careful and wise, and all the money he’d made as corporate lawyer for all those years had been put to good use. He’d been living off dividends and now the money would be coming to me once I’d filled out the correct papers. That wouldn’t be difficult at all as my Master had made certain my name was on all of his property and holdings anyway. I was his wife, after all, and so the process was clear and simple and there wouldn’t even be an inheritance tax, whatever that was, since it was already mine.

It seemed very late for me and I was growing tired. My brothers and I usually slept just after sunset and that had seemed a very long time ago. White Cloud reappeared, carrying a cup and it was warm with something like tea perhaps. He told me to drink it and I did. It was sweet, like honey, and it had an immediately calming effect and I was so tired. I’d understood little of what Joe had tried to tell me and I felt burdened by the knowledge that I was somehow to assume my Master’s place.

I needed a new Master, someone to care for my brothers and me, and I tried to find words for that thought, but the drink was making that even more difficult than it already was. I left the men there without a word to them, returning to my brothers and our bed. My thoughts were selfish as I closed my eyes, sad thoughts, and I briefly blamed our Master for leaving us. We didn’t need his money or his things, we needed him. He should have left us a new Master, I thought. We were still very much puppies and he should have known that.

I slept dreamlessly.

Barley was outside, barking when I woke up and he was soon joined by Bandy and Bush while I roused myself slowly.

The two boys were there. Joe’s sons straddling their motorcycles and looking anxiously at the dogs first and then staring at me with something else as I stepped outside naked into the spring morning.

“Hey, can you call off the dogs?” the older one asked me. “My dad sent us over, said maybe we could work for you or something?”

It was hard to hear him because my brothers were unhappy with more strangers at our house. They’d tolerated it the day before, but that was the past and so it meant nothing. This was today and the two boys didn’t belong there. I barked sharply, loud and high pitched, telling them to be quiet and it surprised them, I think. I’d rarely tried to play leader of our small group. That was Bandy’s role as the strongest, but I was asserting myself now and my brothers stared at me. Bandy growled softly and looked for me to lower my head and eyes. When I didn’t he decided to ignore me, which was good enough for the other two, and all three turned their attention back on the two boys.

I wasn’t their Master or their leader, and I couldn’t have changed that if I’d wanted to or even knew how to go about it. I was their sister and I had been for two full years. I shrugged my shoulders and frowned a little.

“Bandy,” I said softly and then took a deep breath, repeating the dog’s name louder, so that he could hear me. “Bandy!”

They stopped then, the dogs looking at me with some confusion. I hadn’t talked to them in my human voice for a very long time.

“Come.” I slapped my bare thigh, trying to be forceful, confident in my gesture the way our Master had always been.

It worked, kind of. The dogs couldn’t ignore my voice or my command so easily as they did their sister’s barks and growls. They’d been taught by our Master, although they hadn’t always obeyed him immediately either, being headstrong boys like they were. But this was different enough, or perhaps interesting enough that they listened to me and I managed to get them quiet and back into our room. I told them to stay, trying to sound like our Master when he said such things and knowing all too well that I didn’t.

I went back outside and the boys were still there. They were older now than when I’d first met them two years before. They were both around eighteen, maybe nineteen and not in school anyway, but I had no idea what day of the week it was either, or even which month we were in. School could already be out for the summer for all I knew, and that was hardly of any concern to me anyway. They were there and little else mattered.

The boys were tall, like their dad, brown skinned with long, fine black hair and dark brown eyes. The one who looked older was the thinner of the two, his brother more thick, a little chubby even and resembled Joe quite a lot, especially in his round face and big smile. They might have been good looking young men, or ugly perhaps, but more likely they were neither and I couldn’t tell. Humans pretty much looked the same to me if I didn’t concentrate on remembering something specific about them.

Their smell was much more distinctive, a mix of oily fumes from their motorcycles, the musky smell of sheep, and the perfume-like odor of soap and shampoo, which I didn’t like at all. Mostly because it reminded me I needed to wash my own hair and my brothers’, which none of us enjoyed. I bathed every day, usually in the stream, and brushed my teeth and hair, the same way I brushed the burrs from my brothers’ fur, but only because it was necessary and I would have much preferred grooming myself as a true dog.

“Thanks,” the older said and both boys were getting off their machines and looking at me openly which I didn’t mind.

“Our dad sent us,” the younger offered, smiling and nodding. “He said you had some work. Like stuff we could do around here?”

I wasn’t sure what they were talking about so I just looked at them.

“You ain’t gotta worry. Dad said you were kinda weird and…” he continued, “…Ow!”

The older boy had elbowed his brother hard in the ribs, but I didn’t know why. I guessed he wanted to talk.

“He means our Pop told us you need help,” the older said. “Like taking care of the animals, you know. Taking care of the chores, that stuff.”

“Your name is Dare, right?” the younger asked. “I’m Mike. Um, you know you’re naked, right?”

“Shut-up, Mikey.” His brother elbowed him again and this time the chubby boy elbowed him back.

“Well maybe she forgot,” he said softly, but I heard it.

“I’m Jay and uh, so is it okay?” The older wanted to know, looking around a little, but mostly looking at me, especially my sex.

“Dad said he’d talk to you about paying us and stuff,” the younger said and he was looking at me too, but trying not to.

I thought maybe my sex interested them because I had no hair down there. My Master had enjoyed grooming me that way himself, shaving my sex and under my arms. I’d enjoyed it as well because it made me special, even though it was a particularly human thing to do, like brushing my teeth. Otherwise my Master had never treated me as anything other than a dog, not since I’d been sick that one time and that had been such a long time ago.

“Food,” I told them, because we hadn’t eaten in two days and my brothers and I were finally hungry again. “Dog food.”

“Uh…Okay,” Jay nodded like he understood me and I started back towards our room, thinking I would wash myself there instead of leaving my brothers alone with these two strangers.

“Hey, um…Hold on,” the other one, Mike, called me. “Where’s the dog food?”

I just shrugged, finding that a pretty useful gesture, and I left them there to figure it out. They knew as much as I did now, just that my brothers and I were hungry. I didn’t know what Joe had told them, but he obviously understood I needed help and they were people anyway. They’d know what to do.

~~~~

Chapter Two

It was morning and I washed myself in the small tiled area that served as the bath for us. It had a deep sink mounted on the floor with a hose running from the faucet. A lip around the tiles kept water from spilling out. An old wooden rack held different things; brushes and soaps for the dogs, strong and made for removing fleas. Some mild ivory soap for me, which was tolerable to our noses at least, and unscented baby shampoo which was hardly unscented at all and a smell I actually enjoyed.

Mostly I washed myself with the smooth, round stones I found in the stream and the sandy mud along its banks. I’d wash myself with mud first and then rinse myself clean using a stone to slough off the dirty skin. I felt good and clean, and afterwards I smelled like the water, which was a pleasing smell and soon gave way to the scent that was just me.

Today I washed inside though. I peed down the drain and washed myself slowly, enjoying the water from the tap which was cold, but nothing like the chill of the spring melt which filled the stream. I liked the way cold water woke me up all over. I had a little hair under my arms, but none on my sex yet, and I’d never had hair on my legs or anything, not so it was noticeable. I was going to miss my Master very much.

I spent some time washing my hair, which was very long and thick and coarse. It reached to the middle of my back now as my Master had never cut it. My brothers watched me. Barley lay on our bed, Bush on the floor chewing a leather toy, and Bandy sitting very near me, occasionally sticking his nose close and taking a lick of my wet skin. I splashed him playfully; flicking water in his face and making him shake his head. I would give them a bath later, I thought, before dinner when the water was warm. The tank was outside and it caught the heat of the sun nicely during the long afternoons.

The door opened slowly, perking our sudden interest, and it was one of the boys, the younger one, Mike. This confused and angered the dogs, of course, since it should have been our Master. He was carrying a large bowl of food, however, and the smell was immediate to our noses. My brothers were barking and so the boy moved slowly, talking to them the way a human will, trying to sound like what he what he was, harmless. The dogs wouldn’t really hurt him anyway. He was no threat to us, it was just that him and the other boy weren’t supposed to be there.

Of course, he was carrying food so that changed my brothers’ opinion of him, but only slightly. He set the bowl down on the floor and went back to the open door he’d come through Apparently he’d left the other bowl on the floor there, probably so he could open the door. He picked that one up as well and brought it into the room and set it down quickly as Bush was right there and ready to eat. Bandy and Barley were already digging into the other one and I didn’t bother turning off the water as I hastened to get my fair share.

There was a lot of friendly growling; some small snapping of teeth, but this was how we ate. I shared with Bush, getting my face next to his and digging into the food eagerly. The boys had made it a little differently than we were used to, adding hot water to make the gravy rather than just cool water the way our Master did, and they’d sort of mixed two or three different kinds of dog food all together, as if they weren’t sure which we were supposed to get. It didn’t matter and it actually tasted very good. We ate like pigs.

Mike had moved back to the doorway, but he hadn’t left us right away. I knew he was there, watching me eat dog food, naked and wet and still soapy in my hair probably. I hadn’t rinsed myself very well at all, but if I’d taken time to do that I would have starved. Dogs are pretty selfish when it comes to food normally, although they can be surprisingly considerate at times as well. We’d been two days without anything though, so this wasn’t one of those times.

“Do you want more?” the boy asked as I sat up on my knees, licking my lips while Bush licked the bowl clean so that it slid across the floor in little jerks.

I nodded eagerly, like what dog wouldn’t? It was just about the silliest question I’d ever heard maybe and I smiled. Our Master had never fed us until we were full, not because he didn’t want to, but just because it wasn’t necessary. Some part of me understood that, but most of me wanted to eat as much as I could get my hands on. At least my brothers’ tolerance for the boy was growing. Bringing us food was a good way to get acceptance and he only received soft growls when Mike reached for the empty bowls, promising me that he’d be right back.

While he was gone, I finished my bath. Getting the soap out of my hair was a hard thing to do as I couldn’t really tell if I’d gotten it all or not. My Master usually watched me and even washed me on many occasions, which was another reason I didn’t shampoo my hair so often. I liked it when he would grab me by the collar and pull me to the sink, telling me it was time for a bath. That was a thousand times better than making my own decision about such things and my Master had enjoyed it quite a lot too.

We ate again, this time with both of the boys watching us. Watching me, I should say. I knew people found me attractive, like my Master and Joe, like these two Indian boys. I’d been a dancer once. I remembered that and even dreamt of it sometimes, and men had always liked me. Females too, some of them, like the woman I’d worked for, but I couldn’t remember her name and only vaguely could I recall her face.

We went out after our dinner, as all of our meals were known regardless of the time of day, and my brothers and I were feeling full and heavy after eating too much. I didn’t know what the boys were doing and I didn’t care. My brothers and I needed to be outside and it was a nice day, a beautiful day, and we ran, barking happily and playing tag through the high grass. I was still deeply saddened by the absence of our Master, we all were, and my heart ached with the knowledge that I’d never see him again. I’d wept for him briefly, for both of us, but this was better. The world was fresh and clean and beautiful, and being with my brothers was a celebration of the life the man had given me. It was the best way to honor him.

We ran through the woods where the brush was thin and emerged into a meadow which led to a gently rounded hill. The land was thick with soft grass, still damp near the cool earth, and it made for us a fine bed. We’d run several miles at least and very quickly. My brothers were faster than I perhaps, but not so much as they’d been in summers past and I was very quick and agile. We could have easily run further, but this was a good place and I lay down, grabbing at Barley and struggling to pull him to me by one of his back legs. He snapped at me in annoyance and I giggled, so he changed direction quickly, turning to press one heavy paw on my belly and pressing his great muzzle to my face, licking at me.

I opened my mouth and sought his long red tongue, playing my own against it and lifting my head to lick at his mouth while I pulled the huge dog closer. It was late spring and I was always eager to mate it seemed. My nipples were hard under the soft breeze that stole through the sunshine like a thin river, its current visible in the rippling grass and swaying trees beyond. It brought us news of the world and all was well.

Bush barked excitedly as he’d flushed a hare and gave it wild chase, Bandy joining him while I held Barley close to me, digging my fingers into his fur and growling my desire into his open mouth. He stood above my prone body and allowed me to pull his attention to my breasts. I became flushed and damp with sweat and he lapped at my flesh slowly, enjoying the flavor of my salty skin. The dog’s rough tongue sent small shivers through me as it dragged across my nipples, urging them to swell even further. My heart fluttered like a wild bird caught in a cage and my tummy tightened as I arched my back, presenting my body eagerly to my brother’s kisses.

Barley caught the smell of my arousal. The depths of my sex became moist then, preparing itself to receive his large cock. I smiled and offered the world a deep-throated growl when the dog found my pussy with his tongue, digging a wet furrow between my plump labia and scraping my clitoris to sudden life. I spread my legs wide for him, lifting my ass off the ground with every lazy lick. He didn’t hurry himself. He was patient and gentle, working his tongue deeper for several minutes before lifting his head to look around and scent the air.

I moved then, getting on my hands and knees, lifting my butt high as I pressed myself back and rubbed myself lewdly against his body. I sought his attention even as I left my smell on his fur, marking Barley so that the others would know I’d chosen him that particular morning. He licked me again, quicker this time, digging at my pussy from behind and then at my ass, making me impatient as my sex felt unbearably empty. I yelped with frustration, wanting his cock inside me now. He was content to tease me though and he stepped back, standing motionless, and his ears twitched as they stood stiff in the wind.

I crawled on my hands and knees, turning and knocking my head into his ribs, barely able to nudge the animal’s great weight, and he merely took a small side step, his tail wagging as he regarded me with calm, amber eyes. I bumped him again and lowered my face between his legs, smelling his musky cock and balls, and I licked at his sheathed penis, feeling it heavy and impossibly firm. I licked at the tip of it, forcing my tongue inside the softly furred opening to taste him there. It was rich and somewhat salty, a distinctive bitter flavor, and I worked my tongue over the hidden head of his penis. The odd shaped tip lay just inside and it wasn’t very difficult to coax it out.

Bush and Bandy were back, having lost the hare finally, and they had scented me easily enough. Bush was ready to mount me and he came close quickly, sniffing at my sex and drawing a rumbling growl from Barley who turned immediately to face him. I dropped my ass to the ground, turning as well. I wanted to mate with Barley, not Bush, and so I was covering myself. When Bush growled at me, I bared my teeth and snapped at his front leg.

He retreated finally, looking over his shoulder at us as I raised myself once more and this time Barley was ready. He pushed himself up, wrapping his front paws around my waist and I grunted under the weight of him, sagging slightly as I’d expected him to be a little more helpful. He wanted to take me though, especially since he had competition now from Bush, and so he was going to hold me tight in case I changed my mind.

Barley stabbed at my sex with his cock, hard and sharp like a bone, and I gave a soft yelp of pain as he was missing the mark and it hurt. He found me though, finally, his cockhead slipping into my slit and then filling my humid hole. He gave a quick thrust and then another as his cock grew even larger for me now that it had someplace hot and wet to fuck.

There was some discomfort at first, like always, but it never lasted very long. I grew incredibly wet with both my own juices and Barley’s precum which was flowing steadily now and perhaps his semen as well. Dogs loose their sperm quickly and continuously during mating. I stretched around him easily, my body long since used to the unusual size and shape of my canine lovers. Where once I’d have been sore for hours or even days after our union, now I could take all three of my brothers in a single afternoon and feel little more than happily worn out by the experience.

I liked being worn out a lot.

I was hot and panting, my arms locked stiff and straight to keep me upright as Barley slammed his cock inside me over and over, working hard to force the swollen knot inside my seemingly too small sex. It would go in eventually, the dog wouldn’t give up; he’d only try harder until it eventually squeezed its way inside. That was both deliciously wonderfully and somewhat painful, but only for a few moments. It was better when they got it inside me quickly, before it was swollen too much and my pussy would be forced to stretch open around it.

Once inside, the thick muscle felt nothing but good for both of us. I’d cum repeatedly as the walls of my sex were pushed and pulled taut around it. It couldn’t go deeper, nor would it come out of me, it was stuck in one place, locking us together. That was when Barley’s balls, which were already leaking some sperm, would finally release their full load. He was right up against my cervix too, the tip of Barley’s cock pressing into the bottom of my cunt like a thick, sharp finger tickling at my most sensitive places. It was a delightful sensation that stole all of my senses, forcing me to lose my strength and drop my face to the earth, gasping and weeping as another orgasm swept through me.

My pussy milked Barley’s cock like a long, soft mouth, sucking at him and drawing out his semen to bathe my womb with pleasure. That was my reward, feeling myself suddenly full of dog cum seeping into every part of me. It had no place else to go, my cunt was so tight around the animal’s knot that nothing could pass it. All of our juices were held inside me and that was the best feeling in the world. I’d never, ever get tired of that and I enjoyed the time it would take Barley’s knot to shrink far enough that he could pull out of me with a heavy wash of juices. That was something I usually resisted and resented, and the emptiness I felt after was always lonely and frustrating.

After perhaps ten or fifteen minutes the knot did pull loose finally, and Barley gave my pussy a quick lick, but he was selfish and walked off to clean himself. That was alright though as Bush had been waiting eagerly, pacing around us and barking impatiently. He took me immediately, his cock finding my well stretched cunt easily and I kept my head down, nodding and gasping for air as he fucked me good. He liked to do it for a little while, perhaps half a minute or so of rapid thrusting, and then he’d get off for a few seconds, sniffing me quickly, looking around maybe, and then mounting me once again.

Bush was a real tease like that and Bandy could be the same way, but usually only when we were outside like we were this day. I didn’t mind. Eventually Bush would lock me up with his knot and he’d have no choice but to finish inside me, adding his own cum to that of his brother’s. I was going to take all three of them, I knew that, and it was what I wanted. We’d gone several days without sex and that was a long time for us.

Barley had left me with scratches, but none so bad as when I mated with the wolf. My brothers’ claws were nothing like my mate’s, but Barley had held me tight and now Bush was making me feel it. He was being greedy too, like Barley had been, and Bush forced me to take his weight as he thrust his cock in and out of me rapidly. The truth was that I liked it though, I really did, and I was growling my own potent desire to be locked up with him. The pain of my scratches, like the discomfort of being stretched to take the animal’s bulb, was just part of being a bitch and I was very used to it.

Bush’s knot forced its way inside me finally and he whined softly as he realized it, and then he was hunched over me hard, pressing his bony chin down on my shoulder, while his rear paws dug into the soft ground. He was pushing as hard as ever, like that ball of muscle might actually go someplace, and that drove me to an intense orgasm finally and then another just a few minutes later when Bush began to loose his sperm freely into my womb. I was fighting for air and closing my eyes tightly against the sun which seemed suddenly a million times brighter than it should have been. Sunlight flooded me, that’s what Bush’s cum felt like, warm sunshine to push aside the shadows of my sadness.

Bandy prowled around us impatiently, waiting for Bush to pull his cock free so he could have his turn. Barley had long since finished cleaning himself and he was gone somewhere, his barking carried upon the wind occasionally. I was just catching my breath, butt to butt with Bush and growling at him as my brother would occasionally tug me off balance, testing the bondage of his knot within my cunt. When it finally did come loose with downpour of our juices, Bandy was right there to put his puppy making sperm where it belonged. It had been a long wait for him, very nearly an hour probably since I’d first started flirting with Barley, and Bandy wasted no time. His cock drove into my sex hard, shoving me forward so that I practically fell on my face and I turned my head to glare at him for a second. He ignored me though, being more concerned with wrapping his powerful front legs around my waist tightly and fucking me hard. I was his bitch now and my brothers could be pretty selfish, like I said.

After Bandy fucked me I spent some time cleaning myself with my fingers and mouth. It was the only way I could really, since my funny girl-shaped body just wasn’t any good for that sort of thing. A lot of times one of my brothers would clean me, but it was too nice a day and we were outside, and the hares and pheasants and ground hogs were out and about and begging to be chased. So they left me to lie there, my pussy feeling tender and stretched and filled to overflowing with our combined juices. I pressed my flat tummy briefly, wishing I could have their puppies, but if that were possible I wouldn’t want my brothers’ pups. I’d want my mate’s offspring, a litter of wolf pups to form our pack. That would have pleased my Master a great deal, I thought, if I could have truly mated with Chance.

I was able to push three fingers into my sex easily and bring them out covered with the thin warm residue of our fucking. I would lick and suck my fingers clean, savoring the flavor and occasionally rubbing the wetness across my neck and breasts, enjoying the heady odor of dog semen and girl cum all mixed up. It was like perfume in a way, but I was just marking myself and I knew it would excite my brothers later. I was tired and a little sore, but still incredibly eager to mate with them all again. In the meantime I had to content myself with licking my pussy clean and waiting for them to come back.

There were perhaps better ways to spend a beautiful day; I just couldn’t remember them. My only wish would have been to share it with my Master.

~~~~

Chapter Three

We had another dinner early that evening, a meal that we didn’t really need, but neither I nor my three brothers complained about it. It wasn’t the sort of food our Master had served us at night. He’d liked to feed us stew usually, made from beef or venison, occasionally chicken with the bones carefully removed, and always with a rich gravy stirred into wild rice usually. Joe’s sons didn’t know about that custom though, so they’d fed us dog food again, but it was still good the way they mixed it all up, even if it did confuse us just a little at first.

Both of the boys brought the bowls in this time and my brothers were too tired to get very excited. They just barked lazily for a minute or two and then concentrated on eating. I was right there with them, of course, getting my fair share even though we’d had a very large breakfast and we didn’t need all that food. Mike and Jay watched us and whispered together. They giggled like children and I thought they were talking about me probably, but I didn’t know what they were saying.

I was never very interested in what people had to say to each other, even my Master when he would speak with Joe, it wasn’t something I paid very much attention to. Not the words at least. I listened more to the tone of his voice and his posture, the look in his eyes. Those were the things that told me all I needed to know, and as I lifted my head from the bowl, licking my lips, I glanced at the two boys and they were easy enough to understand. They were males and I’m a female and there was an eagerness about them, expressed physically in subtle but unmistakable ways.

They desired me.

I didn’t find them attractive at all, not like I did my brothers and most especially my mate, but the boys were interesting to me for other reasons. I missed my Master. I missed his hands more than anything, except perhaps his voice. I longed to be touched by human hands, to have my body stroked and my head scratched. I wanted to be petted and groomed. I missed the attention and those boys would never substitute for my Master, that was impossible, but just to feel their hands would give me some small measure of comfort perhaps. I was very sad inside and looking for ways to be healed.

I moved across the floor slowly, leaving Bush to finish what was left in our bowl. I was crawling like a dog, keeping my eyes down with my hair falling around me. I was showing off for the boys, letting them see me as I moved deliberately and exposing every part of me in one way or another. My muscles flexed beneath my light brown skin when I stretched and I moved my shoulders so that my firm, smallish breasts would sway slightly beneath me. I turned my ass to their gaze, undulating my hips as I crawled less than ten feet in front of them. I dropped my head, growling softly, wordlessly urging them to take me as I displayed my sex in open invitation. I was flagging the two boys and they weren’t making a sound.

My brothers hadn’t noticed my parade yet or they might have been drawn to take me themselves, although they generally preferred to relax for a little while after eating dinner. My sex was growing moist and my heart beating rapidly as I continued my seductive behavior. If the boys had been dogs I would have come closer to them, nipping at them playfully, urging them to give me the attention I was demanding. These were humans though, and so I was wary and coy and waiting for them to understand what it was I wanted.

They continued to talk in hushed tones while they licked their lips and rubbed their faces and shifted their weight from one foot to the other, unable to decide what they should do. We played like that for nearly five minutes I think before the sound of Joe’s truck interrupted us. It was a sound my brothers and I knew well enough and we ignored it, but the effect on the two Indian boys was immediate.

“Oh shit. Dad’s here!” Mike, the smaller, looked towards the door and his brother, Jay, looked frightened.

“Come on! Grab the bowls. Hurry up…” He pushed Mike to get the now empty dishes and they were in a rush to leave the room, but I didn’t know why.

“He’s gonna kill us if he catches us,” Mike was saying and my brothers and I just watched them as the boys left us, disappearing into the house proper.

I didn’t now what to think about that, so I didn’t think about it at all. I joined my brothers on our bedding, curling up against Bandy, hugging his back to my chest and tummy and putting my left leg over his big soft body as he closed his eyes. Bush moved to smell my excited sex and give me a few slow licks across my swollen lips and then my exposed ass. He finally settled with his head resting on my right thigh. Barley left us, going outside to do what he needed to and I just closed my eyes, wondering at how strange people could be sometimes.

I wasn’t sleeping. I was just really comfortable when I heard the boys starting up their motorcycles outside. Barley was barking at them, pleased with himself that he’d driven the strangers away finally, but I didn’t think they were leaving just because of him.

The door opened a minute later and Joe was looking in. I smiled at him from behind Bandy. I was still warm inside from flagging the two boys like I had and so I wasn’t surprised at myself when I slipped off the bed, moving slowly and being careful not to wake Bush or Bandy. I had wondered vaguely if Joe would want to be our new Master. I liked him well enough and I thought he liked me, although I wasn’t too sure how he felt about the other dogs. My brothers tolerated him anyway, so it would be okay if he was, but he didn’t seem to have that same sort of presence that our Master had possessed. Joe was more…I don’t know, neutral, or something. Unassertive maybe, which is a pretty big word for me, but probably the right one. He wasn’t a real Master.

I moved towards him across the hardwood floor, much as I had for his sons just a short while before and I could tell the big Indian was interested. He’d been a frequent visitor and he’d enjoyed my mouth and cunt many times for my Master’s pleasure as well as his own. I approached him closely, so that I could rub my face against the rough denim of his trousers. The man at least understood me well enough to give me the touch I craved. He stroked my head, smoothing my hair from my eyes as I looked up at him, and he was smiling gently.

“Are you okay, Dare?” he asked and I didn’t know what to say.

Instead of trying to reply, I lifted myself to my knees and pressed my head against the man’s crotch, growling softly as I felt his large cock grown semi-hard under his clothing. He was excited and I turned my face so that there could be no mistaking my willingness as I opened my mouth, biting at the heavy fabric and tugging at the man playfully. He smelled funny, but beneath the odors of machines and oil, I could smell his arousal as well.

“Dare, uh…Hold on…” He took my head in his large hands, pushing me back gently and I looked up at him expectantly, thinking he would free his cock and want me to suck it for him.

“I liked Jim, your, uh…Master…I liked him a lot and you being his wife and all…” he cleared his throat, “…I think maybe we shouldn’t, you know?”

I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head, trying to understand what the man was saying. He didn’t want to mate with me anymore because my Master had married me? Or because he was gone? Or both? I didn’t understand any of it. We couldn’t control those things. We couldn’t change them, and they didn’t really change anything at that moment. My Master had enjoyed seeing me give his friend pleasure, so we could honor him this way. We would remember him that way, as my Master and Joe’s friend; we’d share our memories and be comforted in the familiarity of it.

Joe didn’t feel the same way though and I don’t think he meant to hurt me or anything. He wanted me, but there was some custom perhaps, some human thing which stopped him from doing what he knew to be right. It saddened me more than it should, but only because I was selfish in my loneliness.

“Let’s go to the parlor, Dare. We can talk a little, huh?” Joe looked down at me and started to leave the room but I didn’t follow him. I wasn’t supposed to be in the other parts of the house.

The man tried calling me a couple times but finally got the idea as I just sat there looking at him. Joe disappeared for a minute and then returned with a chair, one of the rough wooden ones he always sat in when he’d come around for a visit. I was happy to see it and Joe carried it into the room, putting it in the usual place and sitting down. I crawled over and tried once again to get him to take me, putting my cheek on his thighs and rubbing my breasts against his legs, but Joe merely stroked my hair and started talking.

“I sent my boys around. I guess you know that, eh? I figured you could use the help and they can use a little money for gas. I was thinking like fifty dollars a week, that’s enough for them.”

Joe looked at me like I might say something and when I didn’t he continued.

“Anyway, uh, well I told them to kind of keep their distance. You know, give you some privacy.” He scratched my head lightly and I smiled. “I guess it wouldn’t do much good to try and get you into some clothes.”

It was fun listening to the man talk. My brothers liked it too, when our Master would speak to them. They understood even less than I, but the words were unimportant. It was the sound of the man’s voice, the timbre and pitch and tone that pleased us and made us aware of his mood. If he was pleased or angry or concerned. It was communication on a basic, simple level and it was all we ever needed.

“So, I’ll have to get you to sign a check later. I can pick up some things at the store. Do you need anything in particular?” Joe asked and I shrugged. “You know, you’re going to have to find someone, or something. I’m…I’m married, you know?”

I gave him a quizzical look at that just because I’d never really thought about it before. I wasn’t sure what difference that made.

“My wife finds out about this…” he laughed and shook his head. “Never mind.”

I was pressing my face against his crotch again and Joe was resisting me less now. He wanted me and I was making it plain that I wanted him as well. He was trying very hard to ignore us though.

“The, uh…The funeral is tomorrow. I took care of it and Jim, well, he was pretty specific about what he wanted. I…” he lifted my chin in his hand, “…You’ll need to dress for that, Dare. There will be some people who don’t, uh…They won’t be from the reservation, put it that way. Okay? You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” I said finally, sensing that he needed a real answer, even though I didn’t really understand at all.

I’d already said goodbye to my Master, when I’d sat with him and licked his fingers, even kissed his cold lips. There was nothing more I could do, or needed to do, but it was a human thing and I reminded myself that I was his wife. It was possible my Master would want me there, although I was certain that his spirit was content already.

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” Joe asked me after several minutes of silence.

He made to remove his penis and it was awkward for him because he was so hard already. The Indian’s cock was a large one, the biggest I’d ever seen on a man and perhaps even longer than Barley’s, but not as thick as any of the dogs. I muzzled the heat of Joe’s aroused flesh against my face, making soft moan-like growls from deep in my chest. The man’s cock was uncircumcised and I used my lips to peel the already stretched foreskin back enough so that I could lick the head. I lapped at his penis like the bitch I was, cleaning the man with my tongue and tasting the wonderful flavors of his body after a long hot day. The salty sweat and acrid stain of piss, and the bland precum spilling out of him now.

Joe held his cock for me, since all I had were paws and he understood that. He held my wild hair back and moved his cock around my mouth and face with his huge soft hands. He’d always enjoyed me with my Master’s blessings and I was remembering all those nights when Joe would come to visit and how happy it had made my Master to have a friend he could share me with. I’d never been the sole reason for their friendship either, which was important, I thought. I was just one of the dogs and there were many times when they didn’t play with me at all. Other times my Master would chain me to the floor, locking my pelvis to that eye bolt so I could do nothing but kneel over it, and the two men would talk about whatever it is friends do, while my brothers would fuck me for their amusement.

I remembered all of that and more as I worked my mouth and tongue around Joe’s swollen cock, getting him so excited that he finally pulled my open mouth to the head, pushing his cock inside so that I would suck him in a way no real bitch could. I didn’t mind that so much, but I would have been content to lick the man to orgasm as I’d done several times before. I’d lick him while he stroked his cock, jerking off until he came suddenly, spurting his thick creamy sperm into the air so I could try and catch it with my tongue, smiling and barking happily at that game.

On this night however, Joe wanted me to suck his cock and I did it, enjoying the odd shape of a human penis, so different than a dog’s. It was thick and sturdy, and I enjoyed the smooth head as I took him to the entrance of my throat, for which he seemed much too large. But I was well taught by this time and I opened for him easily, feeling the delicate walls of my throat stretching to accommodate the man. It was only slightly uncomfortable, more because I couldn’t breathe at all while he was inside me, but Joe’s reaction was always my reward. My Master’s as well, when he’d watched me taking all of the Indian’s huge cock, slapping his thigh and chuckling, teasing me and asking where all that cock was going.

While I sucked Joe, Barley returned and by then I was very ready for mating. My vulva was swollen, so much so that I could feel it like a puffy fever between my thighs. Juices ran cool down my legs and I gave a muffled yelp as I felt Barley’s tongue pushing insistently against my sex, working inside my folds to taste my arousal. He licked my pussy wonderfully, making me squirm and suck the man with even greater urgency.

When Barley mounted me I was in heaven and several times I caught myself glancing to my left or right as I’d pull free of Joe’s cock for a breath of cool air, expecting to see my Master in his chair, rocking and smiling at me. How many times had he watched me just like that? Sucking his friend while one of my brothers fucked me. I was saddened that my Master wasn’t there to see it now, but inside I was relieved as well by the happy knowledge that I’d been able to please the man before he’d died.

Barley fucked me long and hard, forcing my cunt to open once more to the familiar size and shape of his penis. It was good for all of us, especially Joe, I thought, who had been a little reluctant, or shy at first when he’d seen me mate with one of my brothers. It had seemed unnatural maybe, until he’d learned the truth at Table Rock during my Welcoming Ceremony. I’d been Awakened then and the whole tribe had seen me mated with a wolf. They knew now that I wasn’t a girl at all, but that I carried the spirit of a dog inside me, the spirit of a great wolven bitch. After that it became much easier for Joe to enjoy seeing me with one of the other dogs.

Barley had just locked up with me finally when Joe groaned with his impending orgasm. He lifted my head forcefully, or as forcefully as the gentle giant could be. I was much used to the demands of my brothers and especially Chance, my mate, and my Master too had never hesitated to handle me roughly when he needed to, but Joe was always so careful. He lifted my head and wanted to see his orgasm shooting into the air, onto my beautiful face, as he called it. He was stroking himself quickly while behind me, Barley was digging his paws into my sides and scratching the hardwood floor as he struggled to find his own orgasm.

Cum shot out of the Indian’s cock in fast, heavy spurts that struck my nose and cheeks and chin as I had my mouth closed. It was what Joe wanted, not to see me catch his seed, but to wear it for him, and so I did that and after a few shots of semen against my flushed skin he pulled me close so he could rub his cockhead over my face while it spewed hotly for half a minute more. He was painting me, washing my face with cum until it seemed to cover every part of me and then he lifted my head so that he could see me, glistening and wet and panting now as Barley rocked my whole body violently. His knot was stuck fast inside me and he was cumming now, the rigid length of the dog’s cock buried in my cunt and his climax filling me while my brother whined with pleasure.

I licked my lips and then set about cleaning the Indian, washing his cock clean and working to get the pools of semen that had spilled onto his pants and shirt. My body was hot and trembling, inside and out, and Barley had gotten off me finally, waiting patiently now for his knot to shrink once more. I hadn’t cum this time, but it was still enjoyable for me. This was what I’d wanted and needed and I felt no betrayal for my Master in doing it. This was another way to remember him and I think Joe realized that, if not for himself, then he understood my feelings at least and that was enough.

~~~~

The funeral was in Seattle, which seemed a long ways away; farther than I remembered it being. I rode with Joe and his family, sitting between the big Indian and his wife, a woman about my height, which is to say short, but very plump. She was nice to me and she remembered me from the ceremony at Table Rock, although I had no memory of her. She’d brought a dress for me and it was very uncomfortable, but not for any real reason. It was a nice enough dress, but I hadn’t worn clothes in two years and the cotton felt itchy and a little claustrophobic to me. It was black and covered most of my body. The shoes hurt my feet too and I found it difficult to walk. When she’d tried to remove my collar I’d shaken my head and backed away. It wasn’t hers to remove, and only mine to wear.

I enjoyed the ride though, my first since my Master had brought me home, and I wished I was sitting in the back of the truck with Joe’s two sons, or at least next to the window. I could smell so many things, different scents from the world passing by, and it was all I could do to keep from leaning across the woman and sticking my head out the window. I’d never experienced anything like it, as if it were a carnival for my senses. My skin prickled and my tummy knotted and my ears twitched at the sound of rushing air. I wanted to touch myself because it was very much like an orgasm at times, but I just swallowed hard and closed my eyes, trying to remain still.

The funeral itself meant very little to me. There was a lot of sitting, some standing, and a lot of talking. There were many people there, a great many people whom I didn’t know, and it surprised me as my Master had lived a quiet life so far as I knew. His only regular visitor had been Joe. Now I was finding that my owner and husband had known a lot of people and they’d all come to say goodbye to him. It made me feel very good, much better than I would have expected, and I was happy and smiling because of it. That wasn’t what those people expected from me and I could sense their puzzlement, but if this ceremony wasn’t intended to make us feel good, then what was the point? I was very proud of my Master.

Most of the people spoke to me, telling me they were sorry or asking me if I was okay, and most often telling me they hadn’t known that Jim was married. I had nothing to say to any of those things, but I nodded a lot and said thank you and tried very hard to remember how I’d been a person for my first nineteen years. It shouldn’t have been difficult to pretend I was a girl for just a short afternoon, but it was. Thankfully Joe and his wife and even his sons remained close to me and so I felt somewhat safe, but it was very confusing to me as well. I hadn’t expected a reception after.

There was food in a silver buffet and I was hungry, but it didn’t smell very good and so I had a glass of water.

“Hello, Mrs. Brocken. I’m Cal Goldman,” a man said quietly, sitting down near me. “I’m your husband’s accountant, or yours now, I should say. I’m really very sorry for your loss. Jim was a good man.”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Jim made certain arrangements. He didn’t expect that you’d have much interest in finances, so…” He talked for awhile and all I really understood was that bills went to this man and he paid them.

Joe talked to the man more than I did and I was sure that if I needed to know anything the Indian would tell me. I was getting rather weary of money and how much I had or didn’t have, and how it was being saved or spent. I’d never had a credit card or even a checking account. I’d had a piggy bank as a girl and a savings account someplace, but I couldn’t remember what bank it was in and I’d never used it anyway. To listen to these people it seemed as if there was nothing else in the world so important as money and I was saddened by it.

“You seem to be taking it well,” a man was saying to me and he had my Master’s eyes and I looked into them carefully.

I shrugged, not knowing what he meant by that, but I didn’t like his voice. It made the hair on my neck stiffen and I suppressed the growl that rose unbidden from my throat. He had a smell, cloying and bitter-sweet like blackberries grown overly ripe and bursting on the bush.

“Taking all of it too, eh?” He smiled thinly and a woman was with him, and they were both in their thirties, or early forties perhaps, but no older than that.

“Leave her alone, John,” the woman said, sounding bored.

“He was my dad and I didn’t even know he was married.” The man looked me up and down. “I guess I can see why he liked you though. Do you speak English?”

I just looked at him. Many people were looking at him.

“I bet you speak fucky-sucky just fine, huh?” He was trying to embarrass me, I realized, and I felt sorry for him. Except for his hazel eyes, he was very much not like his father.

“Dare, come on…” Joe was taking my hand. He’d been eating when this man had come over to speak with me.

“He’s buried next to his wife,” the man said loudly. “The one who loved him. How does that feel?”

“Dare, he’s just angry. Come on…” Joe tugged my arm but I ignored him.

“He loved her,” I said softly, the words coming slowly. “His spirit needs her now.”

“Right,” the man sneered. “His spirit.”

“Yes,” I agreed, speaking slowly and picking my words carefully. “He was forgiven a long time ago.”

“Not by me,” the man shook his head.

“Forgiven for what?” the woman asked me and she was the wife of my Master’s son.

I shrugged because it was clear to me they didn’t know my Master. Not the woman nor her husband and I wondered how he could be the son of the man I’d loved. There had been a lot of pain in their lives, I thought, much more than my Master had ever expressed to me. I hadn’t known he’d had a son, just as John hadn’t known of me. I was forty years younger than his father, beautiful and foreign in my appearance, and I must have seemed out of place in the world John had imagined his father lived in. He didn’t know his father at all and again I was struck by how the only misery I found came from the living.

Joe led me away and I met other people as well and learned that the man, John, was from a very short first marriage. My Master had supported the boy and his mother for many years, but they’d never been close. John had come to the funeral just to see the man that he’d never known. Now my Master was going to be buried next to his second wife, the one that had died, and it made people wonder about me. They didn’t understand why I wasn’t crying. Why I was so young. Why I was wearing a dog collar. They wondered why I wasn’t like them and I asked Joe to take me home.

~~~~

Chapter Four

“Hey, why do you have that thing there?” Mike asked me.

He and Jay were sitting on the front porch drinking Cokes while I was lying on the wooden flooring, enjoying the summer afternoon in the shade because it was very hot. My brothers were there too, and by now they were much more accustomed and happy with the two boys. I’d found out that Jay’s name was really Joe Junior, but it had been shortened to J.J. when he was a child and now he liked to be called Jay because he was full grown, mostly.

I was naked, as always, and the boys had never followed their father’s advice to give me privacy, mostly because I’d never cared if I had any or not. As soon as the boys had figured out that I wasn’t even a little shy about my body, they’d gotten used to it pretty quickly and I think they were almost to the point where they barely noticed, except they always had erections when I was around. Joe did too, and even my Master had been aroused usually, although he’d been very good at both ignoring it and hiding it from me for some reason.

“The ring in your, stomach or whatever,” Jay added, making it a little clearer for me and I smiled as I looked down at it.

I spoke to them sometimes, but only when I had to ask for something, or explain something important. Mostly though I was able to say whatever I had to with just a look, a nod or shrug sometimes, maybe even a bark or growl. The boys learned quickly enough anyway and they’d been coming by everyday for more than a month according to the moon.

“White Cloud did it. I know that…But why?” Mike scratched his head a little. “Does it hurt?”

I shook my head and got up slowly, deciding it would be nice to have some fun, even if it was pretty warm. I’d been waiting for Mike and Jay to play with me, the way their father did some nights, a couple times a week when he’d stop by after dinner just to check on me. Joe always ended up playing with me, letting me lick his cock until he came in my mouth, or sometimes he’d fuck me, always careful to pull out before he came. His sons hadn’t tried anything yet though and I wondered if I frightened them. I didn’t sense any fear, but I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t accept my offer on those occasions when I was willing to mate with one or both of them.

The boys followed me, naturally. I’d come to understand that much about them. Once their chores were done, Mike and Jay would stay close to me as much as they could and sometimes it was fun to run off with my brothers, racing across the farm and fields and into the woods as the two boys tried hopelessly to keep up with us. It was tempting to stalk them sometimes, and we did, but we didn’t attack the boys in the playful way my brothers and I did with each other so often. I wasn’t sure the boys would have understood that sort of game.

I knew where the chain was, along with the two small padlocks my Master had used to secure me to the eyebolt in the floor of our room. It was on the wooden rack near the water faucet and sink, where our Master had kept all of the toys and utensils and whatnot my brothers and I required. I retrieved the chain myself for the first time in my life. I’d never handled it before, at least not directly. It had always been my Master who’d decided when it would be used, but he wasn’t there and I did miss it. There was a need inside me to be submissive in a demonstrative and not entirely consensual way, although I’d never refused or resisted anything my Master had done to me.

The two boys weren’t quite sure what I was doing, but it soon became clear enough as I locked the chain to the eyebolt, on my hands and knees over it, and then attached the chain to the bone ring which pierced my pubis. It was long enough, barely, that I could kneel upright, but it would be impossible to stand or move much farther than a foot or two from the eyebolt in any direction. I clicked the small padlocks in place with a sound that I’d long missed and tossed the two keys across the floor so that they slid near Jay’s feet.

I was on the floor then, on my hands and knees as a bitch should be, and helpless to free myself. My ass was toward the boys and I smiled over my shoulder at them, barking sharply and wagging my hips as if I had a real tail. There could be little doubt in their minds now as to why I was pierced and after a month of watching and wanting me, Mike and Jay would have to take me now, I thought. I was excited by it and everytime I moved I could feel that bone buried deep in my flesh, tugging at me as the chain was pulled taut. It wasn’t painful, not at all, since I’d long since healed completely. It was a part of me, like the rings in my nipples and the tattoo around my belly button. Feeling that ring being pulled was much like having a finger or toe tugged on, a gentle pressure that merely desired attention.

“Uhhh…” Mike laughed nervously and glanced at his taller brother.

“You think she’d tell dad?” Jay asked softly.

“What? You mean if we, um, did it?” Mike was staring at my cunt now, they both were.

“Yeah.” Jay was reaching down for the keys and I reached between my labia, finding myself damp inside and I fingered myself for a moment and then brought my fingers to my mouth.

“Shit,” Mike breathed. “I don’t care, man.”

“You ever done it?” Jay looked at his little brother and Mike shook his head slowly.

“No. You?” Mike asked.

“No.” Jay looked around but we were alone, my brothers had remained outside to rest in the shade and that was good, they might have gotten a little jealous.

“Are we gonna do it with her?” Mike was rubbing his crotch and his erection was obvious while I continued to finger myself, as that was the only way I could clean my own sex.

“Maybe she doesn’t, um…want to,” Jay said, but he clearly didn’t believe that and I seriously began to wonder what was wrong with those two young males.

“Yeah, right!” Mike laughed again and finally he was taking off his clothes. He’d had enough of my teasing finally.

“This is so crazy!” Jay laughed too and then he was taking off his clothes as well.

Their cocks went well with their respective bodies and for being humans I suppose the two Indian boys weren’t that unattractive to me. Mike, who was somewhat shorter and a bit more pudgy than his older brother, had a dark thick penis, not so long as his father’s, which was very large, but it was nice and the boy stroked it slowly. He was uncircumcised as well, and I sucked the sweet tang of my juices from my fingers as I watched the skin being pulled back from the swollen glans to reveal the pinkish head of his cock.

Jay’s penis was thinner, but longer, and it had a little curve to it, so that it stood straight out from his tall, athletic body and pointed upward slightly. The boys seemed somewhat shy about being naked together for some reason, but they were brothers anyway so I didn’t know why that should be so. Jay stroked his cock slowly, pulling his own foreskin back as his low hanging balls swung slightly back and forth. I barked softly, smiling and once again wagging my butt to show my eagerness for them.

“Uh, you wanna go first?” Mike asked and Jay grinned, probably a little relieved or something that I hadn’t started yelling when they’d taken off their clothes.

“Maybe she sucks,” he shrugged.

“God! That would be cool,” Mike laughed and his chubby belly jiggled a little.

“No doubt,” Jay nodded. “I bet she does. I mean, she’s licking her fingers, dude.”

“Try it,” Mike urged his brother.

I guess they were nervous because it was their first time probably. Whatever the reason, I was getting really turned on by their teasing and I spread my now swollen labia with my fingers, showing them the hot pink interior of my willing sex. I was bound to the floor, on my hands and knees; doing everything I could think of, short of speaking, to get the two boys to fuck me. It was a lot of fun and I imagined my Master watching us, knowing he would have enjoyed this very much.

Jay walked over slowly, like maybe I was going to bite him or something, looking down at me with wide brown eyes and rubbing his cock. Precum was dripping from the tip, clear drops of it falling to the floor as he moved, and I growled playfully as he stepped close enough that I could turn my head and lick at his cock with my tongue.

“Oh, man!” Jay was all smiles then. “She’s doing it!”

“Jesus! Okay, um…I’m going to try it,” Mike was saying from behind me and I didn’t bother to look at him. I was lapping happily at Jay’s cock while he stood there looking down at me.

I moved my mouth down to Jay’s balls, dragging my tongue across them slowly and then up the underside of his cock. He seemed to like that quite a bit and I was enjoying the taste and smell of the boy when I felt Mike getting close behind me. He touched my hips tentatively, stroking my warm body and bringing soft happy noises from my throat. I tried to keep my attention on Jay, but it was hard as I was tingling all over with excitement. I was licking around the smooth swollen head of Jay’s penis, gathering his precum on my tongue and swallowing it, when I felt Mike rubbing his stiff cock over my sex.

“I’m gonna shoot already, God!” Mike groaned and he started to push inside me just as I’d decided to push myself back.

His cock suddenly found itself buried completely inside my pussy, parting the walls of my steaming sex easily around his thickness. I arched my back and yelped with pleasure, forcing myself against the boy as much as the chain would allow and I could feel the ring pulling at my body almost painfully. I paid it little mind though, that cock inside me felt too good to ignore and I’d been working myself up for sometime already, now I was cumming and just that quick. My cunt spasmed around the boy, squeezing him like a buttery fist to coax his cum-filled balls to give me their load.

Mike moaned loudly, holding me tight with his hands around my waist, not moving at all as he found his first orgasm inside a female’s sex. It had taken just one thrust and the sensations of my own climax pulling at him to bring the boy off. His sperm was hot inside me, scalding it seemed, and I could feel it distinctly. He was shooting harder than any male I’d ever felt, even my mate, and in the urgent fog of my own orgasm I wondered if the boy had ever cum before in his life. It didn’t seem like it, as much semen as he was pumping into my cunt, and all I could do was enjoy it, rolling my hips and grinding my ass against him.

Jay hadn’t paused to admire his brother’s pleasure. He was holding my head now, pushing his cock into my mouth as his confidence and desire grew. His little brother had cum inside me already and Jay wanted the same thing, and my mouth was warm and wet and soft for him. I was able to take the boy’s penis into my throat easily enough. He wasn’t very thick at all and the first time Jay felt the velvet muscles of my throat fluttering around his cockhead he groaned, gripping my head tighter and pushing as if he might get even more of himself inside me. I was already pressed against his body though, my nose and lips and chin tickled by Jay’s soft pubic hair.

It took only a minute, or maybe two at the most before Jay was cumming. I’d taken him perhaps half a dozen times into my throat and that was enough. He announced his orgasm with a soft cry of pleasure and then he was shooting hard into my mouth and then down my throat as he jammed his cock inside me quickly. The boy held me to him as some sperm leaked from the corners of my mouth, but most of his creamy load was shooting straight into my tummy. Jay had a lot of it too and my lungs were hot and heaving when the boy finally relaxed and let me loose so I could breathe cool air once again.

Mike was still inside me, his cock still hard even after the huge orgasm he’d had, and now he was fucking me slowly, pushing me forward slightly and that eased the tension on the chain and my ring. I was cleaning Jay’s cock, swallowing the remains of his sweet and salty climax and enjoying the way Mike’s thick cock was working in and out of my overfilled cunt. I was soaked inside with semen and my own sex juices, and it was a wonderful sensation the way Mike’s cock was stirring it all up inside me, forcing it to squish out of my sex and run thickly down my thighs and the length of his cock.

I kept sucking Jay until he told his brother that he wanted to fuck me too. I’d kept him hard with my mouth, savoring the flavor of the boy’s semen which was good, but a little bland compared to my brothers’ seed, a little less bitter perhaps.

“Wait, I wanna cum inside her again,” Mike said with a ragged, breathless voice and the boy was really fucking my pussy hard now that he knew I liked it.

“Cum in her mouth, dude. She swallows it and everything,” Jay suggested, probably because he was growing a little impatient.

“You wouldn’t believe how awesome this feels, man!” Mike laughed happily, sounding even younger than he was.

“I know! Come on, Mikey! I want to do it too!” Jay was stroking my head while I took his balls in my mouth one at a time, sucking them gently.

“Ah, yeah…Okay…Man…” Mike made noises like he was unhappy, but not totally. “…Here. Fine.”

I growled at the sudden emptiness and then barked as Jay moved away from me, but I was just playing. I had the advantage of understanding what they were doing, but I’d been feeling real good with Mike’s cock inside me and when he pulled out, my pussy felt lonely. I suppose a real girl might have been a little unhappy with the way the boys were talking. Speaking as if I wasn’t there, or at least like I didn’t matter, but for me it was perfect. I was a dog, not a girl, the boys were fucking me the way people had been fucking animals since the Stone Age probably.

That’s what I wanted from those two boys, the same way I wanted it from their father. There wasn’t any love on their part or devotion on mine, they weren’t my Master, but they were people and I was a dog, and they were treating me like one. The month they’d spent watching me hadn’t been wasted and the boys knew I was Onijwa, although I’m not sure they’d really accepted that at first. Joe and his family were Baptists and didn’t completely believe in their ancestral traditions the way some of the other Native Americans did, but it was hard to ignore what had happened at the Welcoming Ceremony and my own behavior since I’d been Awakened. I knew Joe had often talked with my Master about it, trying to reconcile his modern religion with the ancient beliefs of men like White Cloud. I’d never paid much mind to it since I knew what I was and God, whoever He was, had probably made the world big enough for all different kinds of beliefs.

Now the boys knew about me as well. They were using me like the animal I was and I was grateful for it. Mike brought his cock, greasy and dripping with the fuck juices from my sex, to my hungry mouth and I went to work cleaning him with my tongue. Jay took his brother’s place, getting on his knees behind me and pushing his long hard cock inside my stretched pussy quickly, going a little deeper than Mike had reached and that was a pleasure all its own. I fucked myself back the same way I had the other boy, moving my ass around in a tight circle so that I could feel his shaft rubbing me sweetly inside.

The boys talked to each other now, giggling like children at a carnival as they worked their cocks in and out of my body, working me from both ends. Jay would push so that I was forced to take all of Mike’s thick penis into my mouth and throat. When he pulled back I’d follow, lifting my mouth to take a breath and voice my satisfaction with a soft whine or high pitched bark. They enjoyed that, I think, the way I moved and sounded and fucked like a bitch in heat. Jay pulled my hair so that it covered my shoulders and back like a thick black coat of fur and he stroked it beneath his hands. I enoyed that human touch intensely and it might have been enough to bring me to another orgasm all by itself.

I was cumming quite a bit anyway, enjoying one climax after another, and it was making me crazy with lust. My body was burning up and sweat was literally dripping from my puffy dark nipples. Wetness spilled down my thighs and I was being jerked against the chain and the ring holding me in place. I could feel it in my tight belly, the curious tugging sensation as the fat and muscle just above my swollen vulva was pulled uncomfortably, but even that small bit of pain was driving me to cum again. This was the rapture, an almost religious experience as my soul, my animal spirit, was being loosed from the awkward bonds of my flesh.

It was raw sex, primal and instinctive and in my feverish mind I realized that this time I really could be mated. My womb would be fertile perhaps and Mike had cum inside me once already. Jay was going to cum any moment. I could feel him tensing, his thrusts getting harder and more rapid. He pulled my hair as if the Indian boy were riding a horse, guiding me with soft tugs to fuck him back and urging me to meet his cock with my cunt, to impale myself as deeply as I could. He was going to add his semen to his brother’s and bathe my womb in his potent sperm. I didn’t fight it, or pause in my efforts to bring both of the boys off. I sucked Mike’s cock almost violently, dragging my teeth along the shaft at times because I was both careless and wild. I growled with pleasure and he would gasp and moan and wince with pain, but that was all. He was close and I wasn’t really hurting him. I was gentle near the head and I washed it with my tongue in between his thrusts into my open throat.

“Ohhh fuck!” Jay swore loudly and he almost fell on me as he began to ejaculate deep inside my pussy.

“Oh yeeeeah…” Mike joined him as the two brothers came together inside their bitch, flooding me with semen at both ends.

They held me tight between them so I couldn’t have refused their spurting gifts even if I’d been of a mind to. I swallowed Mike’s thick cum eagerly as it filled my mouth and then my throat. It was hot and salty and once again less bitter than a dog’s semen would be, so that it seemed almost sweet by comparison. I was shivering with the joy of eating his seed, and the sensation of Jay’s sperm spraying against the bottom of my sex, seeping inside my cervix and further, into my waiting uterus, was bringing me one last push over the edge of ecstasy. I came hard, my quivering sex collapsing around the boy’s penis, the contractions milking his cock for every drop of semen he could give me.

It was really good sex.

~~~~

Chapter Five

Barley was fucking me and I was feeling sore. My brothers had shown up soon after Mike and Jay’s second orgasms and they’d found the two boys sitting on the floor, drinking sodas and grinning at each other as I cleaned my pussy with my fingers, licking the seamy mixture from my hand while they watched. I had no idea if I might get pregnant or not. For a short while after first arriving, I’d tracked my cycle with the moon, but that had become boring and pointless after a few months, and like most of my other human habits I’d given it up.

The days merely came and went and now I tried to remember how long it had been since my last period, but I couldn’t remember if it had been just before or after the funeral. The memories all ran together really and when I thought about them it was like catching random glimpses of my life. Near as I could figure I should have been having my period any time, so I was a little disappointed because I didn’t think I was probably fertile. I was just a dog though, so I contented myself with the thought that I could have been wrong too.

Bandy had come first, sniffing the air and barking to call the others. He could smell the sex plainly and he regarded the boys a little coolly, but he was used to them now and I was chained down. He understood that it meant I was fair game for anyone who wanted me. That didn’t stop him from asserting his proper place as the leader of our little pack though. Bandy mounted me quickly, slamming his cock inside my cunt so hard that I yelped with pain and turned my head, trying to bite him. I’d have refused him probably, if I could have, just because he was being mean. He gripped me tightly with his front paws and punished me with his cock, there’s no other word for it. Dogs get jealous like anyone else and they do have tempers. Bandy was blaming me because he hadn’t had me first. He could be such a puppy sometimes.

It took me a few minutes to get used to him and Bandy was going full speed anyway, ramming the length of his huge dog cock in and out of me like a hot piston, squirting fuck juices out the sides of my cunt with loud sounds that made his brothers bark impatiently. Bush and Barley were both sporting long red erections as they paced around us and Bandy would warn them away if one got too close. He was working to get the knot inside me and that wasn’t difficult at all since I was already seriously soaked and stretched and ready for it. Bandy locked me up quickly and short stroked me for another minute at the most before he was cumming.

As soon as he was able to get free of me a dozen minutes later, Bush took Bandy’s place. He gave me a curious lick which made me shiver and then he was inside me, digging his claws against the floor as he tried to find traction, and his cock began rushing in and out of my sex wildly. He’d been waiting too long to be gentle, Bush just wanted to get his sperm inside me as fast as he could so that my puppies would be his. I dropped my head to the floor, panting for air as I was rocked violently beneath the animal.

My pussy was sore already and I still had Barley to look forward to. Sometimes it was like this, I knew that, and my brothers would get in a mood and fuck my pussy until I was raw and tender from the abuse. I’d make them pay later though, first by giving me a bath with their tongues, which was always special, and then I’d make them wait a few days before I’d let them mate with me again. Not only because I’d need the rest, but it was good to frustrate them once in awhile. I spoiled my brothers terribly with sex, mostly because I enjoyed it so much myself. If I got my menstruation that would make it even better, or worse if you like, because they loved it when I was on my period. My brothers thought that was when I was really in season and they’d get very competitive with each other to fuck me.

Barley finally got his turn and he wasn’t being gentle either, but there was little I could do about it. I had deep scratches in my sides now and I could feel myself wet with blood and the wounds burned as my salty sweat would get in them. My pussy ached and it felt as if there were a fire burning inside me. I had some cramps and my knees were stiff, my thighs and shoulders aching from being in that position and having to support the weight of my oversized brothers during our sex. I’d suffered through this before, many times for my Master’s pleasure, but it had been a long time and I’d almost forgotten what it could be like after an hour of hard fucking while I was chained down.

The two Indian boys just sat there, both of them hard again and stroking their cocks slowly while they watched us. They probably planned on fucking me again themselves, but I wasn’t sure how my brothers were going to take that. I wouldn’t resist them if Mike and Jay wanted to fuck, but I really hoped Bandy wouldn’t get upset and decide he needed to fuck me again just to show the Indians who the dominant male was. I’d be seriously worn out if that happened and all I really wanted was to be let loose after Barley was finished so I could stretch and lie down for awhile. I was pretty tired.

I didn’t get exactly what I wanted, but it wasn’t so bad either. Bandy didn’t protest when Jay got up so he could fuck me after Barley finally pulled his cock loose from my pussy. We’d been locked up for only a short time, maybe five minutes, or a little longer, but not much. I was very stretched by the time he was done and when the knot came free, a great flood of our juices spilled out to join the large puddle that already stained the floor beneath me. I was drenched from my ass down to my knees with the remains of all that sex and the room was ripe with the odor of our mating.

Jay didn’t mind however, he knelt behind me and entered me so quickly and easily that I barely felt him at all. The dogs were much thicker than Jay’s human penis was, longer too, and my pussy had been wrapped around my brothers’ knots, so I wasn’t sure what it was like for Jay. I guessed it was okay for him. The boy didn’t complain anyway, he just fucked me wordlessly, thrusting his cock into the soggy sperm filled mess of my cunt for perhaps five minutes before he told us he was cumming. I barely felt anything at all, but there was pleasure in the knowing.

Mike took his turn then and even though the boy was a bit thicker than his brother, it was just a pleasant squishing sensation for me. It was like being massaged from the inside out more than being truly fucked, and it actually felt pretty good. I just kept my cheek on the floor, sighing softly and keeping my eyes closed as Mike fucked his human penis in and out of me at a leisurely pace.

“Oh shit!” Jay suddenly said and we could all hear the truck pulling up to the house.

“Oh man!” Mike started fucking me faster, as if he was going to cum before his dad caught us.

“What are you doing?” Jay was scrambling to get dressed. “Get dressed, Mike!”

“I’m gonna cum…ah…Dammit!” Mike pulled out of me as the truck stopped and the engine shut-off with a dying growl a second later.

Both boys were trying to get dressed as quickly as they could and my brothers and I just watched them with curious amusement. It was only their father and he’d fucked me plenty of times, so why would he be mad if his sons did it? Humans had never made much sense to me, even when I’d been one, so I just lay there, getting on my side with my tummy close to the eyebolt. I could at least stretch myself out that way and that felt pretty good.

“Where’s the keys?” Jay was asking.

“What?” Mike had his t-shirt covering his face and his head popped onto his shoulders with wide brown eyes. “You got them!”

“I don’t…Oh, yeah…” Jay almost laughed as he pulled the two keys for my padlocks out of his jeans pocket.

“What’s this?” Joe’s voice suddenly froze the two boys, Mike half dressed, Jay still barefoot and holding the keys in his hand like he was offering them to his brother.

“Uh, hey dad,” Mike said.

“You chained her down?” Joe blinked at me.

“No dad, uh…She did it…” Jay tried to explain.

“She did it, huh?” Joe looked a little angry and I’d never seen him like that before and so I sort of curled up, trying to be small in case he got mad at me for starting it.

“She did it to herself,” Mike nodded and he was buttoning his pants. “I asked her what the ring was for and she just…Showed us, kinda.”

“What did I tell you about staying away from her?” Joe shook his head and looked at me. “You look like you’ve been put through a wringer.”

“The, uh…the dogs sorta did it too,” Jay cleared his throat.

“They probably do it everyday,” Joe sighed and his anger was going away quickly.

He wasn’t the sort of man who could stay mad at anything for very long, especially not his sons. Of course he’d fucked me plenty of times himself so being mad at Jay and Mike was a little like the pot calling the kettle black, as my Master might have said. Joe had probably planned on getting a little bit of me for himself, since we’d been doing it several times a week ever since the funeral. He was good man, but not a Master, unfortunately. He’d never have the heart to discipline me when I needed it, which I often did if the truth be told. My brothers and I had all become very spoiled very quickly.

“Well, I guess I can’t blame you guys too much. She is, uh…She’s awfully pretty,” Joe coughed lightly.

It was just common sense finally asserting itself. Joe couldn’t seriously have expected his two sons, who were just eighteen and nineteen years old and flush with youthful vigor, to spend every day around a naked young woman who was offering herself to them sexually. He probably expected to catch them fucking me even sooner than it had finally happened. I don’t know anything about fathers and sons or any of that stuff, but he had to know we were going to do it. Joe also knew I’d never tell anyone, at least not in the literal sense.

“She’s really a dog, ain’t she dad?” Mike asked. “I mean, like White Cloud says.”

“Yeah, I guess. Listen, you don’t tell anybody about this, you understand me? If your mom finds out there’s going to be hell to pay, believe me.” Joe stared at his sons.

“Yeah, no. We won’t,” Jay promised and his brother was agreeing as well.

“I mean it. Not your friends, not anybody.” Joe was being very serious. “We’re looking after her, that’s all. If she wants to let you guys, uh, do it with her that’s…I don’t know what that is…The important thing is she doesn’t belong to you or me or anybody, got that?”

“Yeah, dad,” the boys answered together, both of them looking a little shocked at the idea that I might be owned.

Joe knew better though, he’d seen me owned and knew it was what I wanted more than anything, to have an owner and Master again. Joe also knew it wasn’t going to be him or his sons though, and he was pretty smart that way, I thought.

“Did you guys use condoms at least?” Joe asked and then frowned at the guilty silence that answered him.

“We didn’t really think about it,” Jay finally said.

“She didn’t say anything,” Mike offered.

“She never says anything, stupid.” Jay elbowed his brother.

“Sometimes she does.” Mike elbowed him back.

“She hasn’t said anything since she told us about the vitamins,” Jay shook his head. “That was like a month ago.”

“So? She still talked, didn’t she?” Mike replied.

“Quiet, both of you,” Joe said and then looked at me. “When’s your, uh…When do you get your period, Dare?”

I just shrugged because I’d been wondering the same thing, sort of.

“Shoot.” Joe wasn’t really happy that I wasn’t going to tell him anything, but he must have had some idea that I was due anyway, since I hadn’t had one in almost a month.

“You think we got her pregnant, dad?” Mike asked.

“You best hope you didn’t,” Joe shook his head. “Give me those keys. Go fix some dinner for the dogs and then get home. The both of you.”

“Yes sir,” Jay said, walking over to his dad to give him the keys. Joe hadn’t moved from the doorway at all.

“Yes sir,” Mike echoed, grabbing his socks and boots and deciding he’d finish getting dressed someplace else. Jay followed his brother a few moments later, grabbing his own footwear with a quick glance over his shoulder at me.

“They didn’t hurt you or anything, did they?” Joe asked as he knelt to unlock me from the chain and I shook my head. “Good. I wondered how long that was gonna take.”

As soon as I was free, I stood up just so I could stretch properly and I thought about washing myself at the sink, but I just wanted to crawl between my brothers and rest. I was pretty sore down between my legs and my waist was gouged and throbbing on both sides from the dogs’ claws. It reminded me that they owed me a good tongue bath and after I slept for awhile I’d make sure I collected on that.

Joe had seen the scratches though and he was going to take care of them, much as my Master had done. I’d have ignored them, but my Master had always been attentive and he’d chided me constantly for not taking better care of myself, or at least for not bringing my wounds to his attention right away. An infection would be a bad thing and so I had to wait until the man had found a washcloth and the anti-bacterial cream on the rack. I didn’t mind so much, except it kind of stung just a little, but Joe was gentle and it felt good after he was done.

“I’ll have to pick up some more of this stuff,” Joe smiled at me with his big round face. “You should lie down.”

I was already halfway there and I smiled at the Indian as I pushed my body between Barley and Bandy, wedging myself between the two dogs until I was comfortable. They had their eyes closed, but they weren’t sleeping, just resting before dinner. We really were very spoiled now, all of us, and getting fat too. Joe’s sons fed us too much and we didn’t exercise properly since we had no Master to take us outside and give us a reason to caper about and show-off. We just did what we felt like doing and that was always bad for lazy spoiled dogs like us.

~~~~

I wasn’t pregnant, much more to Joe’s relief than mine, but that was simply because I had no idea how to plan ahead. I’d never been much for that anyway, even as a girl, and now that I was a dog I just lived in the moment. I understood that I needed to do something though, if my brothers and I were going to be happy and have a Master once again. I needed to find one, since by the middle of summer it had become obvious that a new Master wasn’t going to come looking for us.

The boys were used to fucking me now, and they were careful as their father had instructed, using condoms during our sex. I didn’t mind it so much, the feeling was much the same for me, but I did miss the feel of their semen inside my womb when they’d finished. They weren’t Masters, however, just boys who took care of the farm and kept my brothers and me well fed and groomed. It made all of us dogs restless, having no strong hand or dominant human personality to guide us, and so I reluctantly decided I’d have to ask for help.

I hadn’t spoken since the funeral however, and I didn’t want to. I can’t explain that reluctance, but it was always there and so I tried to put it off as long as I could. So it was that I found myself sneaking into the silent house one night after Joe had stopped by to check on us and left again. I was frightened and more than a little nervous. Dogs weren’t allowed in the house and I knew it. I was breaking a rule that my Master had set and if he found out he’d be angry and punish me. Of course I knew he wouldn’t be coming back, but it was hard to remember that, especially when I was being bad.

What I’d decided to do was look for the newspaper, the one my Master had used to find me by placing an advertisement for a dog girl. That had been a long time ago, but he must have had one once and so perhaps it was still in the house someplace. All I needed was a phone number and I could place my own advertisement maybe, if I could figure it out somehow. I’ll admit it wasn’t the best plan perhaps, but I didn’t have any other and it had taken me from one full moon to the next to think of it. Part of me actually felt a little proud that I’d come up with an idea like that all by myself.

I walked through the house slowly, since I’d never been in most of it before. I’d been in our Master’s bedroom and even slept in his bed when I’d been sick, and I’d used the bathroom during that time of course. I’d been in the front parlor as well, after the man had died, but that was all. There were a lot of rooms and even more upstairs, but I was too frightened to go up there. I didn’t turn on any lights; the night was clear and the windows large. My eyes were accustomed to the dark anyway. Like my other senses, my vision seemed remarkably improved over what I could dimly recall from my previous life.

I didn’t know where to look and I started in the kitchen, of all places, but only because I liked the smell. I found a large bag of food, the crunchy sort that tasted pretty good with warm water to make gravy. I had to open it with my teeth and spill it onto the floor, but it was still good and I ate more than I should have probably. It made me very thirsty. I didn’t find the newspaper there.

It wasn’t in the bathroom either, although I could at least get something to drink in there and that made me feel better.

My Master’s study seemed very imposing and I hesitated at the door, peering into the room nervously. It smelled strongly of him and I thought he must have spent a lot of time in that room. It was quiet, so still that I could hear the leaves rustling in the night air outside. I could hear my heart beating and I knew no dog had ever been allowed in this room. I’d been walking upright through much of the house, but now I dropped to the floor, lowering my head and entering only slowly. It was his lingering presence that confused me, as if our Master might appear at any moment and I trembled at the thought of being caught. A soft whine issued from my lungs before I could catch myself and I looked around nervously.

The bookcases were large and full, but there were no newspapers that I could see. There was a closet, a small one, which contained white cardboard boxes and little else. I opened the one on top and there were files inside, but no newspapers. I didn’t look through any of the other cartons. My Master’s desk was before the windows and near it, on a smaller table sat a computer monitor. It was dark and silent and covered with plastic. I ignored that and swallowed hard as I opened one of the desk drawers. Papers and pens and a stapler and paper clips, that was all I found. An address book, an electronic organizer and a cellular phone. Other things, some of them I recognized, some of them I didn’t, but none of them were newspapers.

I thought I would have to look in the bedroom next, which I’d been putting off for last as that was the place which was most special to me. My Master had nursed me to health in that room, in that bed where we’d made love and spoken, if only briefly as man and wife. Of course I hadn’t known we were married at the time, but I remembered his voice and the words had many meanings, some of them different depending on who I’d been. He’d fed me and read to me and touched me in his bedroom. I’d found him in that room after he’d died. Going back into the bedroom was very frightening for me as I didn’t want to intrude on those memories. I couldn’t see that room without him in it.

It had seemed to me once that there must be a fate, or a destiny which had some measure of control in my life. I’d believed that after the strange and seemingly random string of coincidences that had led me to find my Master, and then to discover my own true self. It had seemed very bad at the time, a very dark time as I’d sat in the rain without anything but the clothes on my back and not even twenty dollars in my pocket. I’d found my Master though, and so it was understandable maybe that I was feeling rather confused and sad that I’d been alone now for a long time, almost two months or possibly longer, and fate hadn’t stepped in to save me.

I sat on the floor near the desk and after a few minutes I was laying there, curled up and not wanting to cry, but inside I was very lonely. I loved my Master and I wasn’t eager to replace him. He’d understand, I thought. My Master knew that my brothers and I weren’t meant to be alone. Other people wouldn’t understand that, because I was his wife and so I should be waiting and mourning and doing whatever it is a woman does when her husband is gone. But I was neither a woman nor his wife, despite what those papers said. I was a dog and he was my Master, which are both very different things, and I needed a new one.

My Master wasn’t helping me though.

~~~~

Chapter Six

The world was in twilight, the grey moment between day and night, and I was moving amongst the people. I’d left the house, sneaking away because I didn’t need or want my brothers to follow me. I thought perhaps that I was looking too far when there were a lot of people living on the reservation.

The Native Americans knew me already; most of them had seen me at least once, during the Awakening, but little beyond that. I was more like a rumor, I suppose, a ghost maybe, and some of them understood and accepted me, but many didn’t. I had little knowledge of that, however, just as I knew next to nothing about any of my neighbors. Except for Joe and his family, White Cloud and a few of the tribal elders, I hadn’t spoken with anyone. My new Master could be among them, I thought, and I was trusting my spirit to guide me. It seemed as if I should recognize my new Master instinctively, if I could only find him.

The first stars appeared as I moved through the reservation cautiously and for the most part it wasn’t concentrated as a real town might be, but sprawled across the valley. There were large trailers and small houses here and there, with fields and small tracts of land, much of it wild and overgrown, to separate the families. I couldn’t say how many people were there, but it seemed like a lot and I became hopeful as I ran and crept and even crawled through the reservation.

I watched the people moving about, many of them outside to enjoy the warm summer evening after their dinners, or visible through their windows as they sat inside, watching television or reading or whatever it is people do. I could smell the place and the humans, strong and strange smells, different from the home in which I lived, but familiar all the same. Too strong though, those scents and the sounds as well, too loud were all these people and I felt overcome at times by my senses. I was nervous and my heart would leap at every alien noise.

I was determined though, and so I was moving as a wolf might, from shadow to shadow, staying low and wary. I approached from downwind so much as possible, though even when I was caught by the shifting breeze the people didn’t seem to notice me at all on the air. I didn’t completely trust these humans, not for any real reason except that I was not one of them. It was very much like trailing the pack in the hills, on those occasions when I would venture high and look for Chance, my mate. I would be wary of the other wolves and watch them from a distance. This was the same for me and if I was always struck by the differences between my human self and my animal nature, now I was also reminded of the similarities.

“Who’s that? What are you doing there?” A woman had spied me and it was late already, the sun having long set, but she’d caught me moving as I crossed her yard, wanting to look through the windows into her trailer.

She wasn’t so old and pregnant maybe, sitting in a chair and smoking. I could smell the acrid smoke and it made my nose itch. She had a dog with her and children inside. I could hear them arguing and a man’s voice yelling something, probably telling them to be quiet, or go to sleep. The dog was what caught my attention though, even more than the woman who was staring at me. It was a male and large, like a German shepherd, and he was up and barking at me.

I gave him soft barks of my own and stepped back, into the shadows as the dog came close, jumping from the porch with shoulders high and his head low. He was curious and protesting my late visit, but that was all. The woman said nothing more, or if she did I didn’t hear her. Perhaps she thought her dog would run me off, but I was waiting for him, getting down to meet him and he sniffed me for a moment and then stood there as I pressed my nose close to his belly to scent his sheathed prick and the musk there.

Being a female, I was no threat to him and dogs had always liked me anyway. He nosed my cunt and satisfied himself, deciding I wasn’t in heat, and so the animal went back to the woman. He paused long enough to mark the nearby leg of a rusty swingset before laying down close to her feet with his head and ears up, staying alert but relaxed.

“Get out of here. Go on. I don’t know what you’re doing, but do it someplace else…” the woman was telling me and her words meant very little except that there was no Master for me there.

~~~~

Sometime later, maybe a week or more after my futile and incomplete search of the house for a newspaper, the paper which advertised for things like dog girls and presumably Masters, I brought up the subject with Joe during one of his evening visits.

I was signing a check, slowly and deliberately writing my name on the bottom so that Joe could buy more food and vitamins and soap, and all the things that we needed and which I’d always taken for granted. I was also paying the two boys, Jay and Mike, for the work they did everyday, although Joe told me they should be paying me, since they were having sex with me as often as they could. He promised me he’d talk to them about that, but I hadn’t complained or anything and I didn’t mind it very much anyway.

“Joe?” I asked and my voice cracked even on that one simple word. I hadn’t spoken in a long time. Not since the funeral.

“Huh? Yeah, Dare. What is it?” He looked at me with some surprise and I think he was used to my silence.

“I…We…” I looked at my three brothers who were sitting on the floor because it was cooler than our bed, “…need a Master.”

“Ahhhh…” The big Indian licked his lips and blinked at me and I wondered if I’d chosen the right words or not.

“A new Master,” I tried, keeping my eyes on his. “For us.”

“Right. Yeah, well…” he cleared his throat, “…I’m not exactly sure how to go about finding you one of those.” He chuckled softly and I tilted my head.

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t even know how Jim found you,” he scratched his head. “I mean, there’s probably a lot of guys who’d love to meet you, but you have to be careful.”

“Careful.” I nodded because that sounded important.

“Yeah, like…Well, you have a lot of money for one thing, Dare,” he said and I just shrugged, which made him laugh. “Right. I know you don’t care, but you need to think about it. Um, you have to find a man who understands about your uh, situation. Right?”

“Yes,” I nodded seriously.

“I just…” he held up his hands, “…I don’t know, Dare.”

I finished signing the check, which I’d been doing on the hardwood floor, and I sat up slowly, leaving the funny paper and pen on the floor for Joe to pick up. My impression wasn’t only that he couldn’t help me find a new Master, but that he really didn’t want to. Not because he didn’t want to help me, I’m sure Joe did, but only because he had no idea about that sort of life. More to the point, Joe didn’t want to know about it beyond what he shared with me.

“Is that why you’ve been going around at night?” he asked, watching my face to see if I was surprised that he knew about that. “Some people have been talking. They don’t understand what you’re doing.”

I just shrugged, having no real answer beyond the one Joe already knew.

“You might want to just stay around here, okay?” The Indian cleared his throat and he wasn’t comfortable saying this to me. “I mean, some of the folks around here, you know, they just don’t…They don’t know what to think, see?”

He was telling me that I wasn’t welcome around the reservation and he plainly wished that were different, but I was going around after sunset, naked and prowling the shadows. What would people be expected to think of that? There wasn’t any good reason for it. None that a normal person would understand, and while I’d been safely kept by my Master, nobody had cared or even noticed. Now I was loose. The crazy girl who thought she was a dog, and that would frighten people, the way all of us are afraid of what we don’t understand.

It disappointed me, perhaps even saddened me, but I couldn’t blame the man for telling me. He was my only real friend and I depended on him, much more than I knew, probably. I was mostly just frustrated because there was nobody else I might ask to help me. I left Joe to sit there and went outside, wanting to run suddenly. I needed to exercise and lose some energy. I felt tight all over, coiled up and knotted. I was happy with my brothers, there was little for me to complain about, except for that longing I felt to be with someone who understood me. A Master who could own me.

The sun didn’t set until late now and most often I was already asleep by the time it did, but not this evening. The pack was high in the hills now, ranging at the edge of the timberline where the mountains started, and I’d heard them many nights in a row. My mate was there. Chance was with them again and I needed him. I ran across fields and into the forest, following trails made by animals and not men. It felt good to run and my spirits were lifted in the cool shadows. I was scratched occasionally by rough brush as I passed, but I hardly noticed such things. My feet were calloused after more than two years without shoes and even the sharpest rock was a mild discomfort at worst.

I howled as I ran and entered the high meadow, startling a deer and her fawn so that they bounded quickly away. I laughed at them and kept going, working my way higher until the grass thinned and the ground became hard with loose shale and grey sand. There were trees here, spread wide apart and they were ancient. Hardy pines growing from the side of the mountain, their tops reaching a hundred feet or more into the air. I was breathing hard by then and behind me I could see the valley and the reservation spread out some five miles away or more. I howled again, calling my mate and he answered and his voice was joined by others. They were close, but still higher than I was, in the place where they’d made their summer dens.

I caught a brief scent of them as the wind shifted and then lost it as the wind changed again. They were over a dozen adults now, this small pack, their numbers swollen with the litters birthed some three or four months earlier. I was moving slowly, cautiously and announcing my presence with low barks until I could hear the pups fighting over their mother’s teats, or just playing roughly with each other. Their small growls and yelps made me smile and they were there, just beyond a short ridge in a shallow bowl of dirt and rocky outcroppings.

The leader was mature, but hardly old, and thick with muscle. He challenged me before I’d come within even twenty yards of the place, dropping his shoulders and baring his fangs. He growled with real menace and his hackles bristled at the back of his powerful neck. I dropped quickly, lowering my eyes and stretching my arms in front of me. I kept my knees close to my hips and tummy and made my own soft growls in reply.

Others watched and the younger wolves barked excitedly, prancing around impatient for a fight. They knew me, most of them, but not well. I’d never tried to join them before, not this way, but merely trailed them on those occasions when they would hunt in the forest. I would find Chance then and we would occupy ourselves without concern for the pack, but this was different. I was an outsider, an intruder, and the animal’s instincts told him I was a wolf, but his senses told him I was a human. It was confusing to him and he was nervous and frightened because of it.

I stayed very still, with my chin on the ground, my eyes focused on his neck, avoiding the wolf’s eyes and giving him dominion over me. Chance was close, watching and making his own noises, pleading my case if you’d like to think of it that way, but this was nothing so complicated as that. It was a life and death decision; if he would welcome me to stay, or drive me off and most likely try and injure me in the process. If I’d had the body of a wolf to go with my spirit, this would have been easy and being female I’d have been welcome and allowed to stay.

He came closer, sniffing and growling and he didn’t like my smell. I stank of my brothers and the bed on which we slept. I smelled like soap and dog food and Joe’s hands upon my skin. I pushed myself back slowly, understanding the rejection and hating it. The wolf didn’t attack me, but snarled and snapped his teeth with sharp barks that told me to leave. I crawled back the way I came, without taking my eyes from his body, ready to fight if it came to that, and several minutes later I was able to stand again.

It was an ache inside me, to be unwelcome as I was. I should have known better than to expect otherwise. I settled some distance away and Chance joined me finally, as the sun was setting and the night grew chill. The ground was soft and loose with dirt and sand and I pushed it this way and that, making a place for us to lie down. He bathed me slowly while I stretched beneath the rising moon, Chance’s long red tongue scraping across my body like wet sandpaper, as if we had all night for only that. He still loved me, he was still my mate, and while the other wolves would sleep and groom each other and some would sing to the moon, we would do the same.

I buried myself against the wolf’s soft belly, curling up and hugging him close. When sleep came for me, it was restless and filled with dreams. A man was in them, speaking in a voice that wasn’t human and I tried to understand him, but I couldn’t. He spoke as a crow and when he flew away blood fell from his wings. I woke up in the darkness and Chance was asleep beside me. The only sound was the wind as it came over the mountains above us and there was no blood, no man there.

The dream was familiar to me, but I didn’t know why. I couldn’t recall having one like it before, but I felt very sure that I had. The dream was fading though, receding faster the harder I tried to remember it, slipping from my mind until it was gone and all I had left was only that thin sliver and nothing more. I stroked Chance, feeling his hot breath on my skin, and I reached between us to feel his cock, firm but well sheathed and I didn’t want to wake him.

Near dawn I left him there, walking down the hillside slowly. I couldn’t stay there, the other wolves weren’t ready to accept me and Chance would follow me in a few days. We’d meet in the forest and spend our time there, alone and secluded, just a day or two every few weeks. He was drawn to me, just as I was to him, but we couldn’t exist in each other’s world. He had to be a wolf and I…Whatever I was, I required a house and a Master, and my bed and soaps and brushes to care for my imperfect form.

I was very unhappy then.

By the time I reached the meadow, the sun was up, but not yet over the mountains to the east. The grass was wet with dew and I bathed in it, rolling my body in the cold damp. I washed myself with just my hands and then some bark I’d stripped from a young oak on the edge of the clearing. The outside was rough, but inside it was soft and curved and I smiled at the sensation of sloughing dirt and old skin from my body. It was nice and when father sun finally did show himself, my spirits were much improved by the warmth of his gaze.

“Don’t stop,” the man said and so I did stop, staring at him as he sat beneath a brightly hued pine tree, green and young and rich with moisture.

I was sitting in the grass and I stood up slowly, smelling the air, but the wind was from my back and I couldn’t find him there. He was an Indian, like Joe, and perhaps a few years younger, or maybe older, but thin and less friendly seeming. Not dangerous, but of a serious nature and I felt my muscles tense, my calves and thighs, as if I might spring away from some approaching threat that I couldn’t see yet.

“Do you know this tree?” he asked me and he was reaching for the lowest branch, pulling at the fruit, red berries, lush and fat.

I didn’t say anything, of course, but merely watched as he gathered some of the berries into the palm of his left hand. For a moment I was afraid he was going to put them in his mouth and I started forward, shaking my head. The tree was poisonous and animals didn’t eat from it. I wasn’t sure if it would kill a human, but I had no wish to see this man hurt.

“It’s a yew,” the man smiled. “It’s poison, but you know that, don’t you? It’s medicine too, like everything else. It’s good and bad, see?”

He was putting the berries into a small leather pouch. The man wasn’t dressed any differently from most of the Indians I’d seen. Boots, worn jeans and a flannel shirt, but it was his hat that caught my attention suddenly. Or not the hat itself, which was an old felt cowboy hat, a Stetson I think they’re called, but the feathers in it. They were black with red edges at the tips, three of them, cocked at odd angles as if they’d grown out of the wide leather band into which they were fixed.

“Everything is good and bad,” he sighed, “to something else. So long as it’s true to itself though…” He shrugged and closed his pouch. “The yew doesn’t know if it’s poison or medicine. It doesn’t care. It is what it is; we’re the ones who decide. See? And sometimes we’re wrong.”

“Crow,” I said softly, pointing at his hat. His words made no sense and it was my dream. He was talking but I didn’t understand and he was going to fly in a moment.

“Red Crow,” he nodded and narrowed his dark eyes. “Do you remember me?”

I nodded slowly, thinking he meant my dream, but then I realized he was talking about something else and so I shook my head, which made the man chuckle.

“Maybe, huh?” Red Crow smiled. “I understand.”

He was standing up, dusting off his pants and lifting his hat briefly, smoothing his long black hair back from his broad forehead. His eyes were black, like the feathers in his hat, and I looked away when he turned them on me. I didn’t want him to fly, but I wasn’t sure how to stop him, or even why he should be important to me.

Red Crow didn’t fly away; he merely turned into the forest and disappeared, fading into the brush and shadows until he was lost to me. I stayed in the meadow for a long while, until Chance found me sleeping in the grass and woke me with his tongue across my face and then my breasts. His mouth moved down to my stomach and I laughed, grabbing his fur and pulling him down. I’d hoped he’d find me as the pack moved lower to hunt rabbits or possibly that fawn I’d seen previously, if it strayed too far from its mother.

My sleep had been dreamless and I was tired after the night before, but now I was awake and energetic and I played roughly with my mate. We wrestled and growled and chased each other through the clearing. Chance barking with a sound unlike any dog. I knew his speech and I returned it, my throat growing dry and sore from the effort, but I barely noticed and I lapped at the ground, where the grass was still wet with dew to slake my thirst. We didn’t share thoughts or ideas, only emotions and base desires and pleasures. The language of wolves is far better suited to expressions of love than any human tongue. People think too hard and wish to say too much, when all they have to do is feel.

When Chance had me down, breathless and warm beneath his teeth, I growled my desire and it said everything and all at once. His jaws were around my throat, his sharp teeth working at the leather of my collar which he liked to chew sometimes, and I closed my eyes, feeling beneath him for his long fat cock as it had grown during our excited play. The flanged tip was dripping and I caressed it, stroking my mate to his full length and when he released me finally, I rolled over, presenting my sex to him. Chance licked my cunt for a minute and then mounted me, stabbing at my sex, and not finding it immediately, he got off me. It is the way of sex with wolves, and dogs as well, and often it will take three or four or even half-a-dozen mountings before they will be satisfied.

We made love finally, rutting in the clean grass, under the endless blue sky above us. My mate’s cock filled me, his knot swelling inside my sex so that he could deliver his orgasm to mix with mine. It was beautiful and washed away my fears. I might have spent my entire life in that moment and been happy for it. The only thing lacking was a human to share it with, to share my life as I did with Chance. Both were necessary to me, I realized, my mate and my Master, two aspects of one ideal which could never be joined, because I could never be one or the other, human or canine. I was both and I was neither.

That was my revelation, which was a very large thought for someone as simple as I am. It was an understanding, I should say, and necessary to my heart. I’d been unhappy with my rejection by the pack, far more than I’d allowed myself to admit, just as I’d been rejected by the Indians on the reservation. The human’s would accept me, but only on their terms. It was what Red Crow had been trying to explain to me perhaps; that what I am is neither good nor bad except as others perceive me. It hadn’t been a question for me as I think I knew that instinctively. Now I had the expression of it and that was an odd comfort, a confirmation of my place in nature, but it changed nothing.

We slept for a little while after our mating, until it was time for me to return to the house and my brothers. Joe would be worried, his sons as well, and the other dogs would be agitated by my absence. Chance needed to hunt and eat and I would see him again soon enough. I made my way home deciding I’d return to the meadow the following day and begin a den for us there, digging into the rich earth and making us a place where I could stay for several days at a time. Like the den I’d made the previous winter, I’d make a place for my mate to rest with me. It was a nice thought and I was greatly cheered to have some small purpose at last. I’d been far too lazy for far too long, I thought.

~~~~

White Cloud visited me often during the late summer and he was aware of my unhappiness and understood the cause of it, I think. The old Indian didn’t speak with me, but he would look in on me and occasionally prepare something for me to eat or drink and his medicines calmed me somewhat. My brothers largely ignored him, as the man seemed more a part of nature than a real human. I wondered sometimes at his purpose and I had thoughts of trying to speak with him, but I was afraid he would think that foolish and unnecessary and I had no words for my thoughts in any case.

I’d made a den in the meadow and I’d spent much time there with Chance, but it was getting into autumn and the rains had come, falling cold from the northwest and the world was grey. We’d retreated into the forest as the pack came out of the mountains and into the hills, and I’d put myself to repairing our winter den and that was really the balm which I found most soothing, devoting myself to my mate and trying to forget that I was incomplete without a Master. I had a hole inside me.

And I dreamt often, finding myself awake in the small hours of the night, breathless and shaking. Chance would be with me, sleeping or perhaps awakened by my movements. He’d lift his head, checking the night air and nuzzle me gently, perhaps using his long tongue to comfort me back to sleep. It was always the same, those dreams, or near enough that the differences were blurred and meaningless. Always a crow, dripping blood and speaking words I couldn’t understand. He’d fly and I’d chase, scenting the trail left by his scarlet tipped wings and I would lose him, the bird disappearing through the trees and I was desperate to follow. I had to keep up, to run faster, but I couldn’t and the blood would dry to dust and blow away. Or sometimes in my dreams it would rain and the trail would be lost beneath my nose and searching eyes.

Joe was worried, his two sons as well, and I found myself avoiding them and becoming suspicious that my friend’s intent was to keep me for himself somehow. The man wouldn’t help me find a Master and I was unreasonable in my doubts, forgetting all he’d done for me and there was just a small part of my mind that realized what was happening. I was becoming wild, the way a pet will if she’s left on her own in the wilderness. I needed to survive and the house no longer afforded me comfort, nor did my brothers it seemed, and I’d deny them my attentions for long periods, growling and snapping at one of them if he tried to arouse or even play with me.

Only Chance could comfort me then, him and the Indian medicine man, but White Cloud was no Master either and his magic only pushed the inevitable a few more days or weeks into the future. It was becoming harder to return to my home and finally a morning would come when I wouldn’t leave the forest at all and I knew I couldn’t survive the winter. My form was too frail for that, too weak and ill-suited and I wouldn’t care by then. I’d sleep finally and no longer dream.

~~~~

Chapter Seven

I’d slept poorly again and awoken late to find Chance gone. Our den was beneath a broad pine whose heavy branches swept low over the ground. It was soft in there and warm, and well protected from the chill of a winter not yet arrived, but soon. It was coming and I knew the rain would give way to snow one of these nights. I could feel the cold coming inside me.

This morning was clear, however, like the one before it, and the day would be warm enough. I was hungry, but only my body, and my mind was but dimly aware of the need for food. It had been three days since I’d last been home and slept with my brothers. They’d tried to follow me when I’d left, Bandy leading them in their chase as I ran off. I’d led them away from the den, of course, and the dogs rarely ventured so far into the forest anyway, but I was always cautious and protective of my mate.

I’d lost them finally, smiling at the sounds of their frustrated barks and unhappy baying. I’d crossed the stream twice and even ran along it for a good distance before climbing a steep ravine and into the hills to circle around, through the meadow where the pack had moved in late summer, they hadn’t made permanent dens such as mine, but used it temporarily as they followed the game lower, and a month or two later they’d moved on once more. The other wolves were gone now, not too far, but enough so that I felt the loneliness. I’d never been a part of them, but just the closeness of their kindred hearts had been a comfort. It had kept Chance near me as well, but now I understood he was restless to join them. They would hunt together and grow fat before the lean months of winter which lay ahead.

Slipping from the comfort of our den, I was able to stretch and stand upright, reaching up with my arms and enjoying the sensation. I’d go to the stream and bathe, collect the over-ripened gooseberries that grew along the banks and breakfast on their tart flavor. The bushes were thin by now, however, and I wondered if I couldn’t catch a rabbit perhaps, although I had little taste for raw meat really, and my stomach was too gentle for such fare normally. I was annoyed with my hunger and inclined to dismiss it as I didn’t want to go home yet.

I made my toilet and washed myself in the cold water as it rushed around my legs to the knees. I used smooth stones and sandy mud on my body, and tree bark on my hair. It was thick and dirty by then and I pulled a tick off my thigh, frowning at it and knowing there would be others. I’d need a real bath when I returned home, the two Indian boys would see to it anyway. They’d grown used to grooming me, even shaving my sex with shy smiles and blushing cheeks, and it was one of the few pleasures I still enjoyed there. Mostly I only felt the frustration of having no Master to care for me properly and I’d very little hope left of finding one.

Fate, which had once been so generous with me, was now pressing upon my heart with bitter claws and I fought it, but only weakly as I grew smaller inside with every day that passed. It was unnatural state for me, to be melancholy, and I ran to escape it. The adrenaline would help as I pushed myself to exercise and leave the stream behind, letting the air dry me as I moved quickly through the forest. This too was a pleasure and I’d found that if I pushed myself hard enough and long enough there would come a warmth to swallow my grey mood. It didn’t last long enough, but it would make me smile and I was searching for Chance in any event, wanting to find him and spend our time together before he left me to rejoin his brothers.

I hadn’t gone far at all when I heard a sharp crack, like thunder, but short and muffled somewhat. It was a curious sound and I’d heard it before, but this seemed different, closer perhaps, and it filled me with an uneasy fear. It was an unnatural noise, different than the sound of snow breaking in the mountains in late winter, but similar. That was what it reminded me of, but even that offered me little comfort and I leapt from the trail I’d been following into the brush, crouching there and sniffing the air.

After a few moments, when there was nothing else to alarm me, I moved slowly, keeping to the shadows and I couldn’t give a specific reason for my anxiety. Perhaps it was my mood, or more likely the lack of proper rest and the weak memories of my dreams which had always seemed a foreshadowing of something else, something to come. I had lost much of my hope, but not all of it, and that was the real reason possibly. I’d come to expect something, but I didn’t know what, only…Something, to take me by the hand and guide me. This strange thunder out of a clear autumn morning could be it, as much as it could be anything else, and my spirits were desperate to rally to that cause. I was afraid though, for precisely those reasons, and I had no desire to suffer another frustrating disappointment.

So I held my heart in check and forced myself to move slowly, keeping my feet soft and staying to the moss and grass where it grew in the forest’s weak light. I checked the wind and held myself low and I found myself enjoying that game, stalking a sound which was long gone seconds after I’d heard it. I moved quicker, picking up my pace finally, and my mood was improved, so that I was running again and getting very near the meadow. I could see the trees and brush thinning ahead, giving way to the blue sky and the tall green grass. It excited me, for no other reason than I’d always liked that place and perhaps Chance would be there, for the scent of wolves was in the air.

The wind shifted and I caught another smell suddenly, faint but distinctive and I came to a sudden stop, my heels digging into the dirt as I dropped to my hands and crouched there. It was blood, fresh and near, and I crept to the edge of the meadow and found it on the grass. The long, broad leaves were stained near a trampled path freshly made and I could smell the musk of the animal that had passed recently, only minutes before. A deer, injured and bleeding, but not so badly. It had been running and leaving a trail of crimson on the leaves and stalks, not upon the earth itself, but only where the grass was high.

It had been running for the safety of the forest, crossing the meadow, but turned suddenly away and I knew why. There was a howl, faint but carrying on the crisp morning air. The pack was giving chase. One of them was making the sound, it wasn’t a chorus, just a lone wolf and he was herding the deer towards the others who would be silent and stalking, laying in wait for their prey to find them. One or two would be chasing, making noise and snapping at the animal’s hooves to tire the beast and drive it on. The wolves had come out of the forest and turned the deer away and now I followed their trail easily, seeing the events as if they were happening right in front of me.

I ran then, as fast as I could, wasting no breath on the joy I felt in the depths of my belly. My heart was rushing and there was a hunt on and I wanted to see it, to be a part of it, if only from a distance. The pack wouldn’t let me join and they’d guard their kill jealously. I’d have to be wary when I found them, vigilant in my approach, but what a great game this was! It called to my spirit irresistibly and I couldn’t have let the moment go even if I’d wanted to. Chance would be there, I knew, and he’d have his share of the kill and bring some of the meat for me. Some scraps of muscle and fat, not much and I didn’t require it, but he was my mate and we’d have that small victory together at least.

The trail led across the meadow and into the hills and I was gaining on them, the deer turning this way and that in its fright and confusion, only to be goaded once more upon the path chosen by the wolves. The pack would not be far off now and I hastened to find them, climbing through loose gravel and the short, tough shrubs and grasses which grew there. We were close to the place where the pack had made their summer dens, the odd bowl shaped hollow in the hill. I scented them now as they were upwind and I could hear the two chasers plainly.

They were down slope and still some distance from me, and the deer was caught finally. It was a large buck with sharp antlers and thick muscles, winded and weakened, but still dangerous. He was turning and kicking up dirt as he snorted and clung to his defiant life. His mouth was foaming and he lowered his great head, swiping at the two wolves who’d chased him so long, young males barely old enough for their first real hunt. They danced and barked and one circled too closely so that the deer caught the wolf suddenly with a powerful kick, his back leg snapping into the wolf’s shoulder and sending the animal limping off quickly with a sharp yelp of pain. The other leapt in at the distraction, not to attack, but to antagonize and wear the buck down. The pack was close and I could see them as shadows among the rocks and bushes, moving closer, and they would take him down soon.

The buck was bleeding as I already knew, wounded high on his left shoulder and his brown hide was stained dark with blood. The injury was too high to have been caused by the wolves and in the wrong place entirely. The muscle was thick there and strong, and though it was hard to tell, it didn’t appear as if the shoulder itself had been hurt, but only some of the fat around it maybe. I didn’t understand that, but it hardly mattered. The animal was wounded and now trapped and I moved slowly along the hill, creeping closer and though I was perhaps still a hundred yards off, which seems like a long ways, the wolves would note my presence soon enough and when they did, wherever I was, I’d have to stop and remain there.

“Somebitch…” I heard a voice, a human voice to my right, higher up and downwind. I hadn’t seen or smelled him at all, but I heard him now.

There were noises, the sound of metal and machinery maybe, the clacking and rattling unique to people and their things. I blinked and lifted myself, as I’d been moving close to the ground just then, and I saw him. A man dressed like a bush, or something. He was green and brown and wearing soft thin pants and boots and a jacket. He had a gun, I recognized that well enough, a big one. A long one, made of wood and steel and the word rifle came into my head and hunter, and not so much words maybe as ideas and memories. I knew what he was doing and why he was there. I knew why the deer was bleeding now and how only a human would have tried to kill a powerful buck by wounding it in the wrong place. Wolves waited until they could be sure of a kill, but this man, all he’d done was hurt the animal, not killed it and now he was angry, watching as the pack prepared to claim his unearned prize.

BLAM!!

The sound of his rifle hurt my ears, that short thunder echoing off the mountains and rolling down the hills. I’d leapt at the sound, my heart stammering and I screamed perhaps, not as a girl or a wolf, but as a spirit offended by the violence of that awful noise. He’d fired into the air and now the man was shouting, even as he worked his gun, jerking the metal to reload.

“Get out of here! Get away!” He hadn’t noticed me, or heard me apparently, and he was aiming now at the wolves that had given the noise and the stranger on the hill only some of their attention.

The buck was still there, still dangerous and now fighting for his life as the wolves surrounded him. They had no time for thunder or men dressed as bushes, not so long as the man was all the way up here. They were the pack and they were many and the smell of blood was in the air, the taste of it on their tongues. Winter was coming and they had adolescents to feed, and they’d been hunting these mountains since last glacier had melted away, long before there were men and rifles.

The man cared for none of that. He couldn’t appreciate the wolves or understand that they were unable to leave the deer. He was hot and tired and angry now, and I watched as he pointed his rifle at them, at Chance it seemed to me, for he was down there among them. I couldn’t know which of the wolves this human intended to kill, but the possibility that it would be my mate forced me to move. I wasn’t able to reason or decide, I only moved, scrambling up the loose hillside, howling with the sounds of warning and fear, and I’d attack the man if I couldn’t stop him. I’d kill him if I had to. It was in me now, that one purpose to protect my mate, to protect my family, and whatever I was then, I wasn’t a girl.

My instincts were sharp and my spirit awakened completely. This was my dream and I’d followed the blood and this was the part of my dream when I should have woken up, but not this time. I was more alive than I’d ever been in my life and all my rough play with my brothers, all of the battles with Chance and the dogs for our amusement had been nothing but practice for this. I was going to kill him. I felt it. I was making my plans without thought or desire, but with the ruthless chill of a real predator. I’d take him at the neck, where he was exposed and weak. I’d leap upon his chest, burying my teeth into his flesh and clawing at his soft belly and groin. It would be quick, I thought, and all I had to do was get my jaws around him and hold tight against his strength.

The man heard me of course, and then he saw me, lifting his wide eyes from the sights of his rifle and staring at me as I rushed towards him. A naked girl, dirty and wild, pierced and tattooed, with feral eyes and sharp teeth. I pushed myself up, digging my toes into the earth and springing with my strong legs. He couldn’t avoid me, it was too late for that and his gun roared again, the air ripped around me by the noise and I was deafened for a moment by it. He hadn’t been aiming though, my mind registered that in the split second I had before meeting him. He’d been looking at me and his finger had jerked with surprise. Chance would be safe now and I felt my heart lurch with eagerness, that sliver of time seeming to last an eternity as I was in the air, flying at him.

The man caught me however, his surprise overcome by his own survival instincts so that he brought his weapon around, just turning his shoulders more or less, twisting on his hips, and that heavy steel suddenly found the side of my head just as my claw-like fingers found his jacket. I felt it like a hammer to my temple and everything went black for a second, there was a sickening wave of pain and I was clawing at him even as my body crashed into his.

I couldn’t hold him though. I was stunned and confused, falling off the man as he continued turning and he was large, very large. I hadn’t thought about his size when I’d seen him, but he was strong enough to keep his balance and his attention now focused on me. My body landed heavily on the ground while he stumbled back, working his rifle to get another bullet into the breach.

I snarled at him, baring my teeth as my eyes cleared and I realized they were wet, and so was my temple and ear. I could smell my own blood and he’d cut me with that gun, but I barely felt it. I felt almost nothing except anger and frustration. I scrambled to my feet and he was close, just eight or ten feet away maybe, backing up and working the bolt. I was going to leap at him again, telling myself to be smarter this time, to watch out for that gun and duck beneath and go for his testicles and soft belly. My fingernails were thick and sharp, enough so I could tear through those clothes and into him. I was making a plan as best I could and spending none of my time waiting for it. Wherever I found the man with my claws and teeth, I’d hurt him.

He was bringing that gun around though, pointing it at me and his finger was on the trigger now. He held it low at his hip and he had no need of aiming. I was nearly impaled upon it as I prepared to rush at him once more. Somewhere in my mind I knew he was going to pull the trigger and shoot me. I was going to fail and he’d kill me and then my mate, shooting Chance for no other reason than my lover was a wolf. It angered me further and for just a second while my muscles tightened and I took the last breath I’d ever need, I wondered if the blood I’d followed in my dreams hadn’t been my own.

BLAM!!

~~~~

Chapter Eight

“Freeze! Federal officer! Put your weapon down now!” The shot had come from behind me and to my right and now there was a voice as well.

I didn’t understand the words exactly and I was prepared to leap anyway, but the man seemed to stagger suddenly and for just a second or two I wondered if he’d been shot. It was merely surprise though, shock perhaps and he was still holding his rifle, still pointing it at me, but looking confused and plainly unwilling to leave himself defenseless in front of some naked and obviously crazed girl.

“Put the rifle down or I will shoot you!” the voice said and I looked to see another man, dressed in brown with a shiny jacket and a smaller gun, a pistol in both of his hands. He was pointing it at the hunter in front of me, crouched slightly and staring intently down the short barrel.

“She’s gonna kill me! Shoot her!” the hunter said and he was looking at me mostly, but his eyes were darting to the other man constantly as well.

“This is your last warning!” The man in the jacket either didn’t believe the hunter, or didn’t care what I was going to do. He just wanted that man’s gun on the ground.

“Okay okay…Fuck!” the hunter yelled, putting his gun down slowly and that’s when I finally relaxed.

He couldn’t hurt Chance now, not with his rifle on the dirt. My mate was safe and I didn’t have to attack the man. I felt my whole body seem to collapse then, as if that realization drained every ounce of strength I had and I just fell to the ground. I was crying, I realized, but it hurt to keep my eyes open. I was tired and my head was pounding and there was a ringing in my ears from the gun shots. I just wanted to sleep. I was so tired and cold, and I curled up.

“…up now. Hey, wake up.” The man was touching me, washing my face with some water from a plastic bottle and wiping at me with some cloth.

I blinked at him and I had a headache. I couldn’t have been asleep very long, I didn’t think. I reached for my temple and there was a large cut on the side of my head, just under my hair where it started growing. The wound was still open and wet and I looked at my fingers, seeing them red and sticky with blood. Some fifteen or twenty feet away, the hunter was sitting on the ground facing me. He had his hands behind his back and I guessed he’d been handcuffed, because he didn’t look very comfortable to me.

“Let me clean that up,” the man was saying and I realized I was covered now with his jacket. It was shiny and green with patches sewn on it and inside it was soft and warm with a flannel lining.

“You took a pretty good lump,” he frowned and I caught his eyes for a second and they were green, darker than his jacket, and warm with a little gold. He wasn’t so old, but strong and confident and his hands were gentle.

“She’s crazy! She tried to kill me!” the hunter was saying. “Look at her, she’s nuts! You oughta handcuff her, not me!”

“Quiet,” the man said over his shoulder then he looked at me. “What’s your name?” he asked and when I didn’t say anything, he spoke again. “I’m Frank, okay? I’m with the Fish and Wildlife Service. I’m a police officer, nobody’s going to hurt you.”

“Police,” I said weakly and nodded and I was remembering the grey man who had come to the house when my Master had died.

“What’s your name? Can you tell me?” he asked me gently and he was pressing his neckerchief against my head.

“Dare,” I said, licking my lips and looking into his face. “My name is…Dare.”

“Dare. Okay,” he nodded. “That’s a nice name. How did you get up here and…” he couldn’t help but smile, “…why are you naked, Dare?”

I just shrugged, giving him a small smile of my own, even though it hurt some to do it. He tried asking me other questions too, where I lived and if I had relatives nearby, but mostly he was asking the same questions in different ways and I really had no answers.

“Okay. I got the bleeding stopped, I think…But, here, keep some pressure on it. Can you walk?” he asked me finally. “Can you stand up? My truck’s back that way…”

“Yes,” I said slowly.

I did standup, slowly with my head still pounding as I pressed the damp cloth to the cut, but it wasn’t terrible. I’d survive it. I let the man’s jacket fall from my shoulders and I started walking away, down the hill the way I’d come following the deer. I looked over my shoulder, down the other way and the deer was dead already, the wolves working to divide the animal’s carcass between them

“Hey…Hey, hold on! I need you stay with me, okay?” The man seemed surprised that I was leaving and I looked over my shoulder at him, but I wasn’t going to stay there.

“Shit, she’s crazy!” the hunter laughed. “You better get her!”

“Miss…Uh, Dare! Hold on…” The man wasn’t chasing me at least, nor drawing his gun to shoot me and I wanted to go home.

I’d let Joe look at my head and maybe try to tell him what had happened, but mostly I wanted to see White Cloud and especially Red Crow, if I could. This had to be my dream. I’d followed the blood, but I didn’t know what it meant or what I was supposed to do now. It had to be the dream though, that was my only real thought, and I wanted to ask someone about it, someone who would know.

~~~~

“Oh man! What happened?” Mike was there when I got home and he was yelling for his brother, Jay, and they worried over me together.

“Go call dad,” Jay said a little impatiently and he was just helping me to my bed mostly.

I was very tired and hungry and I must have looked terrible after three days sleeping outside and then getting in a fight and knocked on the head. My brothers were there, barking excitedly at first, pressing their large bodies against mine and sniffing at me. I wasn’t in much of a condition to do anything but sleep though and so that’s what I did, getting on our bed and quickly joined by Bush on one side and Bandy on the other. The two dogs pressed their bodies close and licked at me while Barley paced the hardwood floor and he was a little agitated it seemed, probably at the smell of my blood and the two strangers I’d been so close to that day.

The antiseptic smell of the doctor woke me up, as well as the unhappy barking of my brothers who weren’t letting him get close to me. Joe was there now and despite his best efforts to get the dogs away from me and the bed, they weren’t willing to leave and didn’t want that doctor in their room at all. It took me a minute or two before I realized all that as I felt very foggy and finally I let Joe call me to come with him. Reluctantly leaving my brothers, I went into my Master’s house, into the front parlor so that the doctor could look at my head in peace.

“This girl doesn’t belong by herself,” the doctor was saying, wiping at my head with something stinging. “How long has it been since you ate anything?”

I just shrugged and looked at Joe and his two sons who were standing there looking uncomfortable, as if they might be in trouble now because of me.

“You’ve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you,” the doctor told me. “This cut isn’t so bad, but you’re lucky you don’t need stitches. Hit your head on a rock or something?”

I wasn’t talking and the man knew me well enough by then anyway not to expect any answers. He spent his time chiding me about eating and taking my vitamins, about checking myself for ticks because they could make me very sick if I wasn’t careful. He was speaking to me, but most of his words were meant for Joe and the big Indian was nodding and agreeing, and the doctor wasn’t terribly happy about any of it.

“You should think about getting the girl some real help,” the doctor said finally. “She can’t take care of herself and whatever you people might think, she isn’t an animal. I’m going to check on her in a few days and see how she’s doing. If the girl’s like this…” he shrugged, “…I’ve got a responsibility to report it. You understand?”

Joe nodded and he didn’t look too happy either and whatever it was the doctor meant by that, I suspected it wasn’t anything too good for me. I’d never liked him anyway though and I just stared back at the man as he looked at me for a long moment and when he left finally, I felt much better.

“You need to stay around here for awhile, okay?” Joe was bathing me in my Master’s bathtub and I’d protested at first, but the Indian hadn’t let me refuse. “You have to eat more. That doctor was right. You’re too skinny now and you’re a mess.”

I just shrugged, resting my chin on my knees as I hugged them to my breasts. I was sitting in the warm water while Joe just gave me some time to soak in it before he washed me properly. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had a hot bath in a real bathtub. I had some memories of it maybe, but they seemed to belong to someone else. I tried not to enjoy it, or to give Joe any direct answers, pretending like I didn’t care or understand what he was saying.

“This isn’t what your Master would want, Dare,” Joe told me softly and that cut through me like a knife, the truth of it, and I wept quietly while the man bathed me.

By the end of my bath I was clean for the first time in a long time. Joe had washed me several times in fact, letting the dirty water out and refilling the tub three times. His hands touched me everywhere, his big fingers were surprisingly gentle and there was nothing sexual about it, even as he washed my sex and anus, soaped my breasts and everywhere else. I felt very much as if he were a father to me just then and I felt ashamed of my behavior. My Master would not have wanted me running off the way I had, neglecting my brothers, and even a dog has responsibilities, I realized. I had to take care of myself better and keep my spirits up somehow, but it was hard and my resolution was fleeting as the last of my bath water swirled down the drain.

Joe dried me thoroughly and I felt better and I must have looked much better as well. He’d washed my hair as well and forced me to sit on the closed toilet while he brushed it. I still had a few burrs and hopeless tangles that he struggled with and I growled softly as my scalp burned under the ceaseless tugging, despite his caution with my wound. His sons were preparing dinner for us and I was hungry suddenly, impatient as the Indian dragged the brush through my long black hair. He wondered aloud if he shouldn’t cut some of it, just to even it up some and I narrowed my eyes slightly, not sure if I wanted my hair cut or not. It was awfully long by then and the ends were split and frayed, but I did love the way it covered my body when I slept. I liked to imagine I had real fur and it would help keep me warm during the winter.

“Maybe just this much, what do you think?” Joe was pinching just an inch or so of hair between his first two fingers, holding it up for me to see and then we heard my brother’s barking, warning us that a stranger was coming.

“Who’s that now?” Joe asked himself mostly and he glanced towards the open bathroom door.

The dogs didn’t like strangers and they never had. Our Master hadn’t raised them to be overly friendly with people they didn’t know and so when strangers would come to the house they were always there, outside to challenge whoever it might be and tell the stranger that he wasn’t welcome. That’s what they were doing now and we could hear their frantic barks, loud and sharp and not dangerous, not yet, but if the stranger wasn’t careful the tone would change as the dogs became nervous and angry.

Their voices did change as I followed Joe towards the front door and the porch beyond, but my brothers were calming and that seemed unusual. There were very few people who could settle my three brothers down that way, Joe being one of them and his sons of course, White Cloud was another, but if it were the Indian medicine man the dogs wouldn’t have challenged him at all. Each truck and car and machine made by men has its own sound and we knew all of them well. This wasn’t White Cloud, or anyone else we knew, and we stepped into the dying light as evening settled on the reservation to find a big green truck parked behind Joe’s.

“Yeah, yeah…Sit…Go on, sit down,” a man was saying and my brothers were still barking, but they weren’t angry. They were cheerful, I realized. “You’re a big boy, huh…What’s your name? Come here…You like that?”

“Bandy,” I said and I was walking towards the man, down the short steps while Joe remained behind me.

“What’s that?” He smiled at me and even though I was naked and still damp from my bath, most of his attention was on my three brothers as they capered for the beef jerky he was feeding them out of his pocket.

“His name…” I pointed at the dog, “…Bandy.”

“Bandy, huh?” He chuckled. “Okay.”

“Bush…and…Barley,” I nodded, pointing at the others and Barley ran over to me at the sound of his name, his head against my belly briefly and taking a sniff of me.

“And you’re Dare,” he nodded as well. “Sorry, boys. That’s all I got.” He was patting Bush on the side, slapping his hand against the dog’s ribs with a heavy, pleasant thudding sound. “Sorry about that.”

“Hey there,” Joe made his presence known and the man looked at the Indian.

“Evening,” he said. “Uh, I was talking with a fella outside the store there, um…Red Crow? He gave me directions.”

“Red Crow sent you here?” Joe asked.

“I’m Frank Sawyer,” the man nodded. “I wanted to find out…Stop it…” he pushed Bandy away as the dog tried to shove his nose into the man’s jacket pocket, looking for more jerky, “…I wanted to find Dare and make sure she was okay.”

He was looking at me now, giving me all of his attention and I swallowed hard because this man wasn’t like the others. My brothers could sense it and he had no fear of them at all. He’d met all three of the dogs and turned their suspicion aside easily. Now they were merely anxious for his attention, showing off the way boys will, the way they hadn’t done for anyone since our Master had died so long before. I felt my heart getting thick and my blood seemed thin, close to my skin and making me warm despite the cool night which was growing quickly around us.

“You’re a park ranger or something?” Joe wondered.

He was looking at the truck and its decorations on the door, a symbol of some kind like a shield, the same as the patch on the man’s jacket. Joe was also seeing the gun on the man’s hip maybe and wondering probably why this man would come here looking for me. He might have wanted to arrest me or something, but I knew he wasn’t here for that. The man had nothing but good intentions. They were radiating out of him and I blinked hard at that. I was afraid to think what I was thinking just then because unlike my brothers I did have a sense of time, of before and after, and today and tomorrow. Not a good one, not like a real person did, but enough to be afraid of what the future could bring if I wanted something too much and didn’t get it.

“Fish and Wildlife,” Frank said, playing with the dogs and looking at me, curious why I was naked but for a collar around my neck, wondering who Joe was and why I was there at all. Maybe why he was there too.

“I found Dare this morning. She was, uh…” he smiled at me, “…She was fighting with a hunter. About to get herself killed, I think.”

“How’s that?” Joe asked and the man’s tone had made it sound like he was joking maybe, but we both knew he wasn’t.

“A fella I’d come across, he was just off the reservation hunting,” Frank explained. “It was all legal until the buck ran onto the reservation and he followed it.”

“Chance.” I glanced at Joe and he’d heard the name before. The Indian had some idea I was mated as he’d been at my Awakening ceremony, as well as spoken with my Master about it often enough.

“Chance…The wolf, you mean?” Joe looked at me and I nodded happily, even though he couldn’t know why I’d mention him.

“What’s that?” Frank looked between us. “Wolves? Yeah, there’s a pack up in the hills there. I think the guy was ready to start shooting a few of ’em.” He shrugged. “They’re protected, but they were taking down the buck when I got there. He wasn’t too happy about that.”

“Who are you?” Mike asked suddenly as he and Jay came around the side of the house, probably wondering where the dogs were and why they had gotten so quiet.

“You boys get that dinner ready?” their father asked.

“He’s a ranger, dummy,” Jay nudged his brother in the ribs. “Yeah, Pop.” He whistled for the dogs, patting his thigh and trying to call them. Mike was trying too, but my brothers were more interested in Frank and they didn’t know dinner was waiting.

“I’m Joe, anyway. Those are my boys. We watch the place,” Joe said and he was coming closer, probably to shake hands with the man or something.

I felt light inside and I liked the way the man was looking at me, the way he wasn’t shy of my nakedness for one thing. How he didn’t look away, or stare really, but just looked at me the way my Master used to. With something like amusement perhaps, and some pleasure, like maybe he was looking at something he knew nobody else could see. We were sharing a secret it seemed to me and I barked sharply, laughing despite my desire not to as I told my brothers that there was food waiting. I ran off playfully, racing around the house and they were right behind me then, barking and happy with my sudden mood.

I was flirting, I knew, and it made me feel good as I took one quick glance over my shoulder and it was an invitation for the man to follow. I wasn’t sure if he understood that, or even if I did really, but it was there all the same and I was almost too excited to eat. I was very hungry though and pulled my damp hair out of my face and held it twisted in my right fist as I pushed my nose into the big bowl I shared with Bush. We ate hungrily, especially me, and my appetite filled me as I tasted real food for the first time in three days, or perhaps it was my improved spirits. I was being greedy, growling and using my shoulders to shove Bush aside, snapping at him as the big dog growled back at me and it was fun.

I’d expected to find the man there when I lifted my head, licking my lips and feeling warm and full inside, but he wasn’t. We were alone, my brothers and I, and so I washed my face and even brushed my teeth, as I hadn’t done that in awhile and I suddenly wanted to groom myself. I did it quickly, happily nervous at the thought of being caught by the man as I performed that distinctly human ritual. I didn’t want to let him see me that way as it was embarrassing for some reason that I can’t properly explain. So I was quick and grinning, barking softly as I scrambled onto the bed and my brothers joined me. It was always our custom to lie down after eating and they’d missed me.

Barley licked my thighs while I pulled myself against Bandy, hugging his softly furred neck to my breasts and reaching down his soft belly to feel his sheathed penis. It was thick and bone-like even while he was relaxed and I played my hand along it while I spread my legs for Barley’s tongue to go higher. He was sniffing my sex, licking at me slowly and tasting nothing but my recent bath, which was not very interesting to him. I kept my eyes on the door, wondering and hoping the man would come in to find me. I was waiting for him and pretending that I wasn’t, telling myself not to want anything, but inside I was helpless. I’d felt his presence and he was the one I’d been waiting for, all of us, and my brothers had already accepted him.

Fate had led me to him, my dreams coming true, and Red Crow had shown me the way as he’d promised. I’d followed the blood, that trail in the high grass and I’d met my challenge and been saved by that man. He’d come back, looking for me and finding me, and all he had to do was come the last few steps. I watched the door anxiously, barely breathing as I clung to my brothers, kissing Bandy’s neck and squeezing his cock gently, feeling my wetness growing beneath Barley’s tongue as he tasted me finally. I was eager and excited and my heart threatened to burst and all the man had to do was come through the door.

I’d crawl to him with my eyes down, scenting him and licking at his fingers. I wanted to feel his touch and hear his voice and I promised myself I’d answer his many questions, for a day or a week, however long it took to satisfy him and then I’d speak no more in that strange tongue. He had to understand me. I’d seen it in his eyes. He was the one and I was delivered to him, waiting and wanting and staring at that door, willing it to open. He’d be our Master, I was sure of it and the world would be right again. Joe would tell him about me. White Cloud would explain everything. It was all clear to me how the future should unfold.

The door did open and I lifted my head at the sound, but it was only Joe and I heard the man’s truck leaving. I blinked at that and frowned. His sons followed the big Indian, Mike and Jay, and they picked up the empty bowls, taking them away while Joe looked at me.

“He was asking about you,” Joe said and perhaps he sensed my curiosity and disappointment. “Wanted to know who you are, what you’re doing.”

I nodded slightly at that, but I was afraid more than anything else. Perhaps the man didn’t understand, or didn’t like me for some reason. What did that mean? He’d asked questions and then left. I dropped my head trying to tell myself it was alright, that it would take some time perhaps while the man considered me. I wasn’t thinking as a person might, thinking like a girl. People required time and thought, and unfamiliar things were unwelcome to the human mind. I’d offered myself and my brothers had accepted him and I’d thought as a dog, expecting the man to take us, to take me. We had no Master, not anymore, and he must have known that by now. Joe would have explained, I was sure. So why had he left? It confused me.

“Seems like a nice enough man anyway,” Joe spoke slowly, cautiously, and I closed my eyes.

~~~~

“Dare.” The man came back the following day, not long after I returned from my bath at the stream.

I looked at him with surprise and it was a cold morning, the sun still hidden behind the eastern mountains, while the whole world waited, cold and grey and damp. Joe’s sons hadn’t yet arrived and my brothers were outside, with him and content as he’d been feeding them once more with treats from his marvelous pockets. He approached me as I felt rooted to the earth and unable to move, my toes sinking into the soft ground. I lowered my eyes and I had it mind to crouch low and press my head against him, but he was reaching for me and I was filled with an exhilaration at his touch.

“I need to speak with you.” He was touching my face, lifting my chin gently so I would meet his gaze. “I need you to be a woman for me, can you do that?”

“Yes,” I closed my eyes as I said it and this was very much as I’d imagined.

“Can we go inside?” he asked and I nodded, leading him to the side of the house and the room I shared with my brothers.

“This is my…place,” I said slowly and I looked around the room, inviting the man to do the same.

“Joe told me about you. Your friend, the Indian?” he offered and I was moving to the sink and using the hose to wash my muddy feet, although I normally wouldn’t.

“Yes.”

“He said that you’re, um, Onijwa? Is that right?” He was smiling uncertainly at me. “A spirit, or a girl with an animal spirit?”

I shrugged and the water was cold as I washed the mud away quickly. My brothers had followed us and they were sitting on the floor, Bush laying down on the bed, watching us.

“I don’t really know about that stuff,” he shrugged as if apologizing for his ignorance. “I want to know about you.”

“I’m Dare,” I told him, turning off the water and then I did get on my knees, sitting naked and looking up at him.

“Right, no…” he smiled, “…I mean, uh…Shoot. What do I mean?” He seemed confused and uncomfortable and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he stood there.

“They like you,” I said, looking at my brothers and then pointedly back at him.

“The dogs?” He nodded, looking at them. “Yeah, I guess I always had a way with dogs. Most animals really.”

“People?”

“What? Do I get along with other people?” He chuckled at that. “I get along, but…Well, I like being by myself too. I…I don’t know.”

“I don’t,” I said and then I had a thought. “I’m not…crazy.”

“I know, yeah.” He looked at me. “I don’t think you are, Dare. I just never…You’re different. This is different.”

“Different,” I smiled. “Yes. I am.”

“You’re beautiful,” he said and then closed his eyes for a second. “Sorry. I mean, you’re…Look, uh, I’m pretty nervous here.”

I nodded and I was nervous as well.

“Did you look for me?” I asked him.

“Look for you?” A small smile pulled at his mouth. “Yeah, yesterday. I asked around and…”

“No,” I shook my head, frowning. “Not yesterday. Did you look for me?”

“Dare,” he licked his lips. “I think I was looking for you all my life.”

I smiled at that and nodded.

“It’s crazy. I don’t…I don’t understand it, or this, or…You. Not yet.” He seemed to be talking to himself as much as he was to me.

“Yes.”

“But I want to,” he told me and then took a breath. “I think…I’ve dreamt of you, maybe.”

“Master.” I looked at him and the word was barely spoken, but we both heard it and he held out his hand.

I crawled over as a dog, shedding the woman he’d wanted me to be for that brief time. I could smell him and then taste him as I licked his fingers slowly, until he put his hand to my cheek and then into my hair, stroking me gently while my brothers watched. I growled softly, allowing the sound of my pleasure to rise from my breast, and I turned my head against his touch and smiled up at him, into his eyes and welcomed him home.

~~~~

Epilogue

“Dare?” His voice was distant, like a dream, but coming closer and I smiled. “Dare!”

He whistled with a long warbling that made me giggle sleepily and Chance lifted his chin from my breast, his ears twitching at the sound. It was dark there, in our den beneath the pine boughs, and warm and dry despite the cool spring rains outside. I’d found my mate shortly after my morning bath and we’d played together before retiring for our afternoon nap.

I stretched as much as I was able and sighed before pressing my face against the wolf’s neck, extending my tongue and licking at his coarse fur. I bit him gently, causing the wolf to jerk his head with annoyance and I pushed at him then. I needed to get up, it was getting on towards evening and I needed to bathe and eat. My Master was calling.

Chance resisted, finding no good reason to move, and I growled softly and then barked, pushing him again and he finally relented, crawling out of our nest on his belly so that I could follow him. I groaned slightly, pushing at the heavy branches and getting a small shower as the rain that had collected there fell onto my bare skin. I shivered and frowned, looking up as if I might blame the tree. Chance regarded me with his warm, golden eyes and if a wolf could be ever be said to smile, my mate was smiling at me. He was patient with my clumsiness however, and gentle, and as I emerged he stayed close, watching over me. My protector, my mate.

I stood up slowly, stretching once again and feeling my back slightly sore. I touched myself, my swollen belly as I felt the pup inside me restless now with all that motion. I was some seven months pregnant, maybe a little more or less, and grown large now. Chance imagined it was his offspring inside me and I wouldn’t have told him otherwise even if I could. It wouldn’t matter in any event, I was his mate and ripe with pregnancy and he understood that much at least. I hadn’t been sure if he would at first and I was pleased to notice the small changes in his demeanor.

Chance had become much more attentive over the winter, staying close to the house. Too close, I thought, and I’d watched my brothers carefully to keep Chance safe from them. He brought me food, rabbits mostly and I’d eat only as much as I needed in order to satisfy him, then I’d let him have most of it. The winter had been very long and cold and my mate needed that food more than I did. We spent much time together, but only during the short days. I wasn’t allowed to stay outside overnight anymore; my Master was equally protective of me.

“Dare? Where you at, girl?” I heard him, my Master’s strong voice calling me.

He’d returned home from his work, patrolling the forests and mountains around and including the reservation. It was how he’d found me and saved me. My Master had an affinity for the land and that had made him welcome with the Native Americans, especially those who adhered most closely with tradition. Men like White Cloud and Red Crow, who was White Cloud’s son and my Master’s friend. It gave the man a great understanding of who I was and what I needed. When I recalled my despair of the previous summer and autumn especially, I felt ashamed and it seemed to me sometimes that Fate had been far more generous than my weak faith deserved.

I crouched to give Chance a soft murmur, a deep throated sigh of reluctance as I embraced him and said goodbye. He licked my face and pressed his nose between my breasts which were just beginning to grow firm with milk, a quick sniff and brush of his tongue and my lover was off, padding away slowly. There was a bounce to his step and he was beautiful like that, enough so I forgot what I was doing and just watched him disappear like a ghost into the shadows.

“Hey!” My Master’s smiling voice found me a minute later and he was following a path most humans wouldn’t have been able to see. But he wasn’t like other people. My Master was very comfortable outside and I stood up slowly, smiling and looking down the gentle slope at his approach.

“It’s chilly. Are you cold?” he asked a moment later and Master was touching my face, the way he liked to, and I turned my head to lick at his fingers.

I shook my head and glanced up at his green eyes, flecked with gold. His baby was kicking in my belly and I took my Master’s hand in mine and put it there, lifting my eyebrows to ask if he could feel it and the man laughed and smiled. He was like Chance, the both of them so similar that I had a hard time telling them apart. That should seem impossible, I know, but it’s true nonetheless, they were of a kindred spirit my Master and my mate and I was equally happy with both of them.

“He’s pretty busy, huh?” The man stroked my stomach and looked around. “Where’s Chance?”

I shrugged, looking over my shoulder in the direction the wolf had gone.

“Okay. Let’s go home,” Master nodded. “No running, Dare. Stay with me for a change. You have to start slowing down.”

I barked sharply and laughed at that. I was slowed down and I felt like I was terribly fat, swollen all over with my pregnancy, and I still had a couple more months to go. It had been nice for a while, but now I was anxious to have my baby and be done with it. To see the child I’d been carrying inside me for so long. I was still in good shape though, strong and physically fit and not as large as a lot of human women would be at seven months, I was sure. The doctor told me I looked more like five months. He couldn’t complain though, my baby and I were perfectly healthy and I hadn’t even had any morning sickness, except for my cravings for wild turnips. I’d eaten too many of those once and had myself a good tummy-ache for two days afterward.

“Put this on. It’s getting cold,” Master said and he was draping his jacket over my shoulders, the shiny green one with the soft flannel lining.

I didn’t need it. My body was much more tolerant to heat and cold than most people are. I couldn’t say why, perhaps it was just that I was used to being outside and naked, or maybe I really was changed. Like my senses, how I could smell things that most humans wouldn’t notice, or see and hear much better than I remembered as a girl. My new Master was aware of it, but it didn’t change his mind about things like keeping me warm and dry in the rain. I had a baby now too, so I didn’t argue and shrug his jacket off like I might have done otherwise. I wanted to walk with him and he held my hand, which was a very human thing and I liked it.

I paused at the edge of the wheat field close to our home and it was overgrown now with weeds. I needed to pee and the man waited patiently for me. He was wet now, we both were, but especially my Master as I was wearing his jacket and so I decided to run the last little bit, knowing he’d follow quickly and get inside that much sooner. I smiled at him over my shoulder in the twilight and barked loudly, telling my brothers I was coming and I could hear my Master shouting behind me, but I was going to be a bad dog and I giggled, holding my belly as I moved easily over the soft earth, following a trail three years old to my eyes.

I ran into the house, wild eyed and happy, hardly breathless but for my excitement as I dropped the jacket onto the hardwood floor, and very nearly leaped onto the bedding I shared with the other dogs. I was playing and very much like a child, smiling and pushing at Bandy as I forced myself between him and Barley, pressing my hands between his legs and he was so warm. They growled playfully, sniffing and licking at me and Bush was there as well, rising from his place on the floor and the rawhide toy he’d been chewing. He scented my legs and then upward to my sex, finding Chance there of course, and he shoved his large snout between my thighs with a deep throated growl.

“I’m going to start using a leash on you soon, girl.” Our Master entered a few minutes later, wet and muddy and shaking himself off.

“Mmmm…” I gave him a soft whine from my throat and giggled as my brothers scrambled to greet him.

“Outrun by a pregnant woman…” he was trying to kick off his boots and fend off the dogs as they vied for his attention, “…Anybody finds out about that and…Hey…Come on, guys! Down…Down!”

I watched as my brothers wrestled with our Master, lifting their bodies so he could grab them by the throat, pushing and pulling at them and they loved that game. They were so large, all of the dogs, and strong, but so was the man, and it was great fun to watch them roughhouse. They’d nip at him and try to grab his hand, not biting hard at all of course, but just playing and trying to knock him down. Our Master laughed and he was breathing hard, teasing the dogs and grabbing at their flanks, or the loose fur above their tails, pulling at them so the dogs would turn their heads one way and then the other. But he was outnumbered and my brothers always took advantage of that, eventually wearing our Master down until he was forced to sit and wrestle and shove them away.

I might have tried to help him, but it was nice laying on those thick warm blankets, on my side and turned slightly so my chin rested on crossed arms, and my legs were askew, my sex exposed. I was biting my bottom lip and giving our Master ‘The Look’ as he called it, the one which told him I wanted him inside me. I’d had Chance all day, letting my mate have me twice, and now I wanted my Master the same way.

“Ahhhh…shoot…” He was laughing as he sat down beside me, the dogs calming somewhat and content to sit around us.

I reached for him, pawing at his wet shirt and urging our Master to turn and come closer. We’d done this before and it was nice. I undressed him slowly, hardly moving my body at all as our Master sat close. He was cold, even after playing with his dogs, but so strong, so full of life that he didn’t show it. He was a proud man that way and handsome, even a dog like me knew that. He had a strong face and a square jaw and his eyes were dark and pretty and green. He was a man of nature, of the sort who belonged outside and understood the world we live in, not just the things we put upon it.

I tossed his wet clothes aside and when he was naked I brought him to me and I was his woman then. I’d come to understand that I couldn’t always be a dog, not for him. He was my Master now, but different than my old one. He had his own ideas and his own needs and he’d explained them to me carefully, looking for my agreement but not forcing me into anything. It was my choice and at times like this I was content to be his wife as well as his pet.

“You’re cold,” I whispered, pulling him to my swollen body and embracing him. “Let me warm you.”

“Hmmm…Dare…” He slipped his leg between mine, splitting my thighs so I’d put my foot behind him.

My round belly was against his stomach and he stroked my damp hair with one hand while his other found my left breast, petting my skin and playing his thumb over my pierced nipple, toying with the bone ring that lanced my turgid flesh. We just looked at each other, my hand moving across his broad shoulders and down his back, rubbing him briskly to bring his warm blood to the surface. I knew his cock would be hardening for me and I made a little face as I shifted slightly closer, feeling my own sex grown excited already.

“You should take me soon,” I told him in a gentle, teasing voice, “before one of the others catches my scent.”

“You’d make me wait?” he smiled and I nodded. “Bad girl.”

I giggled and he moved then, pressing the tip of his tongue between his lips the way he did when concentrating on something. I could feel him rubbing the head of his penis against my pussy, sliding the smooth tip between my moist labia and looking for the entrance. I pushed with my hips, trying to help him and it was awkward, but then he found me and I gasped with the pleasure of his entry, my Master’s cock sliding several inches into my eager body all at once.

“I love you, Dare,” he whispered, kissing my lips softly and there was no doubt in his eyes, nothing but the truth of it.

“I love you, Master,” I told him, because unlike Chance, he needed to hear such things and I did like to say them now.

“God. You’re so beautiful,” he sighed and he was making love to me as we lay side by side, slowly and gently the way only a man can.

Master touched my swollen belly where his child slept, caressing me there, and I put my hand over his. I touched his face with the other, using my fingertips to trace his cheeks and lips and chin. After a few minutes he moved to straddle me, while I remained on my side, he knelt above me and he was able to drive his cock fully inside me then with long slow strokes while I looked up at him. My Master lowered his mouth to kiss me and that was good for us as well. He was grunting softly and my pussy was hot and wet for him now, clasping at his prick and struggling to keep him inside me where he belonged.

Barley had noticed our lovemaking, of course, all of my brothers had, but he was the first to grow impatient as they all intended to take me once our Master was finished. Barley walked around us, pausing to lick at my skin or occasionally sniffing at our union, making me laugh and our Master groan, shooing the dog away as he’d lap at our Master’s balls, but Barley paid that instruction little heed. My brother’s cock was unsheathed, just the bright red tip, veined in blue and dripping precum as the aroma of our fucking grew stronger.

I reached for him, tugging at the dog and growling softly so that he would stand near my head. He was so large and strong, but I was insistent and pulling at his fur and coaxing him down. Our Master, my husband, watched as I finally had Barley on our pallet, his soft belly exposed and his cock had slipped back into his furry sheath. I worked him with my hand and then my tongue, stretching for the animal’s penis and drawing it out as he felt the familiar sensation of my odd shaped mouth around him. I’d sucked him a hundred times before, more than that, and now I was content to do it again while our owner fucked me. That was a pleasure all its own and I found my mouth filling with hot dog cock as I tongued the sharp tip of Barley’s penis.

Precum and weak semen flooded my mouth and I swallowed happily, losing some to spill down my flushed cheeks, but paying it no mind. I held the base of that large canine cock, feeling the beginnings of his knot beneath my fist and I slid my tightly stretched lips up and down the length of him, so much as I was able. Barley’s penis was very large, long and even thicker than Joe’s, but I was well practiced and I took half of him easily enough. I was more limited by our position than anything else. If I’d been on my hands and knees, with Barley standing upright, I could have taken the dog into my throat, which was something our new Master enjoyed watching every bit as much as our old Master had.

“There you go, girl…Suck his cock nice…You’re so sexy like that…” Master spoke to me gently between ragged breaths of cool air.

He was warmed all over now, flushed with his arousal and working his cock in and out of me quickly. Master would cum soon, I knew him well enough by that time and I could sense his onrushing orgasm. His hands held me tightly, giving me little tugs as he pulled himself deep into my pussy. Some part of Chance was still in there, I knew. I hadn’t washed myself at all after mating with the wolf. I’d merely cleaned myself with my fingers, licking our juices from my hand while I waited for sleep to take me in our den. Now my husband was fucking me and he’d add his own sperm to that of my mate and that idea alone was enough to bring me to the edge of anxious orgasm. Feeling my Master cumming inside me finally pushed me over the edge.

“Ummmphhh…Jesus…” he groaned, giving me several hard thrusts in time with his potent climax, shooting his semen into the depths of my cunt while I spasmed around him.

I held Barley in my mouth, making muffled sounds of pleasure as my body shuddered and I came hard upon that cock buried inside me. The dog turned his head, perhaps curious why I’d stopped moving and gave my flushed face a lick while I held his cock by the root. His swollen knot had grown large by then and slippery beneath my fingers with spit and Barley’s juices. I shivered and my eyelids fluttered perhaps and I began moving my mouth once more, determined to bring the animal off in my mouth so I could feast on his rich semen.

Our Master kissed my shoulder and stroked my hair while his orgasm weakened and finally ended. He pulled out of my pussy slowly, leaving me to sit close by and watch as Bush took his place, my brother sniffing and then licking at my sex for a moment and then barking as he wanted me to lift myself for a proper mounting, but I ignored him. They knew how to take me when I was laying low like that and in his excitement Bush wasn’t going to insist that I move for him. He stood over me, stabbing with his cock and making a mess of finding my sperm filled sex until I finally reached back to guide his penis inside me.

Barley was getting closer to finishing as I kept my mouth tight around him, holding his knot fast with my hand as if he were locked inside a cunt and I gave him as much of that sensation as I could. He was moving, wanting to push with his hips and fuck my face, but I kept him down, squeezing his cock with one hand and pressing down on his neck and shoulders with the other. I was growing tired and my neck was stiff, my back sore again as I was twisted somewhat uncomfortably, but I wanted him so badly.

Bush fucked me hard and fast, which helped take my mind off everything else. He was eager as always and working hard to get his knot lodged in the mouth of my sex. It was slipping in and out, but growing larger with every thrust until finally that muscular bulb was held fast, trapping his large cock deep inside my pussy. I moaned at that sweet sensation, and one that I never tired of. I could feel another orgasm rising in the depths of my belly as his knot grew even larger, expanding against the walls of my sex in every direction, and the dog was whining, pushing against me hard as if he might somehow get even deeper.

I came about the same time as Barley did, his cock ejaculating not so much like a man’s, with hard jerks, but something both subtle and vigorous. My brother’s cock just seemed to swell and contract in my mouth, the whole thing pulsing with a life of it’s own as his semen poured out the tip in what seemed a long continuous stream. It wasn’t so thick, but rich and slightly bitter and I swallowed hungrily, taking as much into my stomach as I could. I was feeding on him, drinking his seed and spilling quite a lot of it as dogs always seem to have so much when they loose their orgasm.

Bush was cumming then also, growling and dropping his head and his whole body was stiff with the instinctive pleasure of filling his bitch with puppy making sperm. He was shooting a lot as well and I could feel it distinctly as his cockhead was right up against the bottom of my cunt, close to my cervix. I felt it as a warm pressure at first, easing slowly as the juices were spread through me, bathing my womb and my brother’s cock as he would be locked inside me for a dozen minutes or more by his swollen knot.

I sighed breathlessly as I let Barley’s cock go and the dog turned to lick my face and I opened my spermy mouth so he could kiss me there. The animal’s long pink tongue dipped into my mouth and I teased it with my own. I always enjoyed kissing my brothers and I played with him, sucking at his long red tongue and pinching it with my lips. He’d pull it back in annoyance and then come back for more. They liked kissing me, despite my games, and our Master would chuckle and shake his head, and I guess he hadn’t seen too many other girls kissing dogs in quite that way. Barley cleaned my nicely, gathering his orgasm from my skin and the bedding around me and I was wet and flushed and giggling happily, still locked up with Bush, and watching Master watch me.

This was all I’d ever wanted, all of it, the whole day. Mornings with my mate, evenings with my Master, being shared with my brothers and loved and now pregnant. I had a husband who understood and accepted me, a man who’d saved my life once, and then again when he’d returned to find me. I had a Master again and I lay there on that rough warm bed, feeling his hand on my tummy, and I closed my eyes and listened to the rain as it fell. I pressed my hand to his, sharing our baby for a moment and then went lower, feeling the ring in my taut flesh and the wetness running from my sex. I was content, remembering another rainy night and another girl, and I smiled at the lifetime between us.

The End

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