Feral Blood

Assimilation

"On what terms are you with your wolf?"

I turned to Fenrir, my surprise evident with my expression.

"My wolf?" I asked, perplexed.

He nodded, "Your wolf, how do you communicate?"

I furrowed my brows and stuck out my lip, not understanding what he was saying.

He seemed to read my expression and added, "Perhaps it is different with you, since you are Feral Born."

I looked up with a pout, my nostrils flaring. "Just because I have been sired by a wild, does not mean I am incapable being as one of you."

"That's not what I meant: some wolves, they communicate with their other half, with their instincts. They share common thoughts, but are ultimately two distinct entities. Others... they are one in the same, they are their wolf. Their wolf is them. Like a wild; yet, unable to change into a man or woman."

I thought of the strange feelings, the strange instincts, and... my nature. Is that what he meant?

"My nature? That strange thing that makes me think or do things I would not think to feel?" I asked, looking into the forest surrounding us.

I dug my toes into the snow, climatising them to the new weather.

"Yes, perhaps that is how you sense your wolf—how she appears to you." he hummed, looking into the woods with me.

I began to wonder about how different my nature—my wolf— has acted since he instilled his mark upon my neck. If he knew so much about what my wolf was, perhaps he had the answers to her strange behaviour.

I turned to Fenrir, "Why did you mark me?"

He glanced at my face out of the corner of his eye but otherwise kept his head forward.

"Because my wolf— the equivalent of what your nature is— was intrigued by you. Never before has a female begot such interest from him." He stated, his tone musing.

"Begot?" I asked, confused at the unfamiliar term.

He looked at me, the corners of his lips upturned fleetingly before defending into that straight grimace he usually wore.

"Ever the curious female. It means to bring about; or to kindle or provoke." He explained.

I nodded, understanding what he meant.

"Your nature forced you to take a claim on me? Did you have no choice of your own?" I asked dolefully, turning back to the view of the woods.

"We all have a choice— some minute part of me  allowed my wolf to come forward and sink my teeth into you. Perhaps it was because he did not want any other males to lay claim to it before him." He turned his head to the sky and shook out his hair, as one would do as a wolf.

"What does this mean for us then?" I expressed, urgency and panic lacing my tone.

I watched his face close off, shutting me out. I had asked the wrong question.

"It means, for now, you are mine. My claim. If you mark me, than we will be each other's... but for now you are mine." He turned, avoiding my gaze, and stormed off back to the den.

I sighed, a pit of sorrow growing in my gut.

It was strange; I had never felt these strange feelings before, lest as often as I was feeling them now. Perhaps it was because Mother Wolf and Sable Wolf had indulged in letting me remain as a wolf for the majority of the time. It had been easier to shut out the emotions that a wolf did not feel when I was not man.