That Saturday afternoon Sofia had arranged to meet Dave to do their usual exercise routines. They had been running in silence for some time, accompanied only by their rhythmic huffs, and every now and then she stole him furtive glances. The boy, dressed in his tracksuit, was looking straight ahead with an expression of absolute concentration on his face. As expected, he wasn't sweating, but he was very careful not to pant in front of her. He was no fool, he knew there were things about him that were not normal. What Sofia wasn't so sure about was to what extent he was aware of how special he was.

Ever since Sofia discovered the truth about his nature, she had been thinking about how to approach the subject. It wasn't easy, because not only did she have to tell him about the supernatural world, she also had to explain that his true appearance was that of a dog, that he would spend the rest of his life transforming into one during the full moon, and that she knew all this because her mother hunted those who were like him and her father was a wolf.

‘If I tell him that and he doesn't know anything about the supernatural world, he'll think I'm crazy. If, on the other hand, he does know what he is, he'll hate me for being a hunter’. Neither option was something she felt like facing, so she decided to wait until she figured things out. It was cowardice, she knew, but that boy had become her best friend and she didn't want to lose him.

So absorbed was she by her thoughts that when Dave turned to her, he caught her staring at him like a fool. A choked gasp escaped her lips and she turned her gaze away a bit too fast. 'Shit', Sofia gritted her teeth and swallowed the groan she felt in her throat. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment, and no wonder considering the absurd way she had just reacted. The worst thing was that it hadn't been the first time. ‘He's going to end up thinking I like him’ she told herself, and that thought made her belly tingle with anxiety. The last thing she needed was for them to become awkward over some stupid misunderstanding.

Careful so he wouldn't notice, Sofia sneaked glances at him again. She just wanted to see if there was any expression on his face that gave away what he could be thinking about. ‘Surely that I'm an idiot for looking at him when I didn't think he'd notice’. However, she found nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite. Dave was looking straight ahead again but on his lips now was a small, warm smile that matched the blush that had appeared on his cheeks. A pleasant warmth began to flow across the girl's belly and she also smiled.

“I was thinking, would you like to take a walk with me?” Dave asked when they stopped to rest and stretch their muscles.

“Now?” Sofia asked while arching her back to ease the tension. “I don't know... I didn't want to get home too late today.”

“If you don't want to, it's okay. I wanted to show you something, but I can do it some other day,” he said with a shy smile.

“If it won't take too long... but before nine I want to be back home.”

“Oh, that wouldn't be a problem. Is there any particular reason why you want to go back so soon? We've been out until later than this before,” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I'd like to take Kas for a nice walk and study a bit before…” She shut her mouth and looked away.

“You're going to look for the dog.”

It wasn’t a question. Sofía bit her lip and nodded.

“I just want to make sure he's okay and... maybe gain his trust somehow. Those three assholes keep planning to do misdeeds and I don't want him to get hurt.”

Dave let out a quiet sigh and looked up toward the trees.

“Deep down this forest would be better off if he wasn't here,” he said, his voice quiet.

“No!” Sofia exclaimed, her eyes locking on his confused gaze. “He's not the one who has to leave! He's not the one who has filled the forest with traps and shells! He probably just wants to be left alone, and those three villain apprentices keep going after him.”

A warm smile and a matching blush appeared on his face.

“He's lucky there's at least one person trying to help him.” Then he took her hand and pulled her toward the forest. “Come, I'll show you a secret that we're also trying to protect.”

“Protect, who?” Sofia asked.

“Biologists.” He opened his lips in a smile so wide that his four canine fangs came into view.

The two teenagers left the wide dirt road and entered the depths of that incredible place. Under the cold darkness of the night it had an atmosphere that was somewhere between ghostly and magical, as if only then could the most incredible miracles and the most terrifying apparitions occur. However, bathed in radiant sunlight it seemed like another world altogether. The golden rays that sneaked through the tree’s branches created a dance of light and shadow that brought out the color from the lichens that covered the rough trunks, the holly tree’s red berries and the moss that carpeted the ground.

Sofia took a deep breath to inhale all those smells that mingled in her nose. Damp earth, vegetation and also some soft musk that belonged to the animals that inhabited the forest. Among them there was one that caught her attention, a masculine scent that she was already familiar with and which seemed to blend in with all the others. He always wore the aroma of pines on his skin, something that did not surprise her since they ran under those trees almost every day. He probably thought the same about her.

“You like to walk around here,” Dave observed.

“Very much. It's one of the few places where I feel calm, happy, where I feel alive again.” Sofia opened her arms to bathe in the evening light. “Sometimes I think I'd like to stay here to live, to just get lost and get away from all the shit from my past life. It's just silly, of course.”

“It is, and it's not. I can understand that longing because I have it sometimes as well. Where I used to live there was a forest too. I used to walk there a lot. When you're in a peaceful place like that, surrounded by trees and nature, it's hard not to come to believe that things would be so much simpler just letting yourself go.”

“What were you going to live on? You reject hunting.”

“I never said I rejected hunting. Hunting for food is something I respect and support. What I don't support is hunting for a trophy or to get rid of an animal just because it bothers you. I find that despicable.” Dave tightened his lips and turned his head away to avoid her gaze. A restrained growl rumbled in his throat.

Sofia bit her lip and hugged herself as if she were cold, which was not so far from the truth considering the shiver that shook her from within. A whimper rose in to her throat but she held it back. If she needed any more evidence that he would never accept her past as a huntress, he had just proven it. ‘Angel looked at me like I was a monster because I'm not human, and Dave would look at me the same way if he knew what I did’.

Worst of all, he wouldn't be wrong. It didn't matter that she had never liked it, and that she had never shot one, the truth was that many cinanthropes had died thanks to her because she had helped her mother find them using her keen senses. Yes, Helena forced her, and she had no choice but to pretend so the guild wouldn't suspect she wasn't human, but that didn't change anything. To save her own life, she had condemned dozens of innocents.

“Hey, are you all right?”

Sofia felt a gentle caress on her hand and looked up. Dave was looking at her with his head tilted slightly to one side and with a worried expression that made her realize that she hadn't been as successful in suppressing the whimper as she thought she had been. ‘Shit, how do I explain this?’, Sofia bit her lip and looked away.

“It's nothing, don't worry. It's just that I don't like trophy hunting either, and because of my mother I've had to see it up close.” Sofia tried to reassure him with a small smile that even she noticed how forced it was.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“You don't get along with her,” Dave guessed, very serious.

“No, we don't get along. I live with her because I have no choice, but that's why I'm studying for the Civil Guard exams. I don't have any special vocation for being a police officer, but it's a stable job and it will allow me to get out of my house soon. If I were to study for a career, I would have to stay another five years and I don't want to do that,” she explained.

Another shudder shook her body as she thought about the main reason she had to leave. She didn't feel like she was going to change any time soon, but something inside her told her that the moment when her true form would emerge wasn't so far away either. ‘I hope it will at least give me time to finish the academy’.

“What would you have liked to study?” Dave asked.

“I like numbers, logic games, puzzles and riddles, and I also like getting lost in places like this. I don't know what I would have studied, but maybe something that would have allowed me to do outdoor field research, find clues and solve mysteries. Something like archaeology or something like that, although I think I have a very idealized image of it thanks to Indiana Jones,” Sofia replied with a small chuckle, and she was grateful to be able to change the subject.

“A little. Archaeologists spend more time reading and researching than doing fieldwork, but I think you might like police work,” Dave commented.

“Yes, maybe you’re right” said Sofia with a more relaxed smile. “What about you? What would you have liked to study if you'd wanted to do a degree? Wait, don't tell me. Something to do with biology.”

“You're starting to know me well!” Dave scratched his head and laughed such a crystalline laugh that Sofia felt the chill that had settled over her being replaced by a pleasant warmth.

As they went further and further into the deepest part of the forest, a place that not even Sofia knew, they chatted and shared snippets of their lives that were more or less accurate to reality. Of course, Sofia wasn't going to tell him that her mother hunted supernatural beings, and that her father was a lycanthrope, but being able to say some things, like the fact that he abandoned them when she wasn't even born, felt like taking a weight off her shoulders.

“I will never understand what kind of man abandons his own children. I may sound a little... conservative perhaps, but a man has to be there for his partner at all times, to care for her and support her, and it is his duty to protect and raise his children,” Dave said, frowning.

“Oh, I'm all for women's independence and feminism and all that, but after seeing what my mother became and what they turned my life into between the two of them, I wish the bastard had thought more like you.”

Dave let out a quiet sigh.

“I hear you,” he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “So... here we are.”

Sofia looked around. They were in a patch of forest that looked exactly like the whole stretch they had crossed to get there. There were some large rocks covered with moss and lichen, sheltering under the shade of the towering Valsaín pines. The ground was covered with a blanket of leaves, with grass patches, ferns and other shrubs growing on it. Moss carpeted the rocks and woody roots that had been exposed to the elements. It was beautiful but there was nothing remarkable about the place.

“I don't want to seem ungrateful, but...”

“Shhh.” Dave put a finger to her lips. “Wait.”

The boy took a few steps away from her and looked into the depths of the forest. To Sofia's surprise, he took a deep breath, raised his head and, with his hands forming a megaphone around his lips, let out a long, melodious howl. It was such a beautiful song that it took her breath away, and she had to fight with all her might to suppress the urge to join him. It wasn’t easy because she recognized, in a language so ancient that it was imprinted in her genes, that it was a friendly greeting. The howl fell silent. Its echo got lost in the forest while Sofia, dumbfounded, was unable to take her eyes off her friend.

“Dave... what...?”

“Shhh, listen,” he said in a quiet whisper.

Then she heard it. Far, far away, but still clear and distinct; the answer. Not one but a chorus of six howls that made Sofia shudder all the more, that made her blood wake up with a shout of joy as she recognized her people in those voices. It was a friendly response and also a warning that indicated the size and strength of the pack. It was a cordial greeting to a neighbor with whom they would get along if he did not cross the invisible boundary between the two territories.

“Wolves...” gasped Sofia, barely able to suppress the urge to howl back. “Wolves in Madrid. It's not possible. They were exterminated decades ago.”

“I thought you might like it.”

“It's incredible... How did you know?”

“Biology runs in my family,” Dave said, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. “My grandmother has taught me a few things and she's also told me a lot. There's a group of scientists who know about that pack, but they won't say anything to protect them. You've seen what happens.”

“Yes, I understand. Thank you for showing this to me,” she said, unable to stop smiling.

There was no doubt that her four fangs, as sharp as the boy's, were showing under her wide smile, but she didn't care. All her life she had lived in a world of suspicion, of secrets and fear. That Dave had decided to trust her with such a secret... there were no words to describe how it made her feel.

“Come, do you want to say hello?” Dave asked, taking her hand to encourage her.

“Me? No, I don't know, I'm a little embarrassed and I don't think they'll listen to me.” She bit her lip.

“Don't worry about it, I'll help you if they don’t respond,” he gave her hand a gentle squeeze and twisted his lips into a reassuring smile.

“This is crazy!” Blushing and still smiling, she shook her head.

With their hands intertwined, they both looked out toward the forest depths, where the echo of the wolves' response had long since fallen silent. In its place was only the chirping of birds and the rustling of the wind through the branches. With knot of anxiety in her chest, Sofia took a deep breath, raised her head and howled.

As her voice flowed towards the sky, anxiety gave way to a sense of freedom she had never felt before. All her life she had lived hiding her nature not only to avoid hunters, also because she knew people would reject her. However, since she had met this pup, he displayed his own behavior in such a casual away that he was encouraging her to let herself go. ‘Shit, Dave, you're going to make all my self-control fall apart’. The thing was that she was enjoying it. She was enjoying being table to communicate with someone who could understand her.

The echo of her song got lost among the trees, and the wolves responded again. Her people, Sofia shuddered and her smile widened. It was her people.

“They answered me...” Sofia gasped.

“I knew they would. It's an amazing experience, isn't it?” he replied, his cheeks a little flushed.

Then their eyes met in a warm gaze that made Sofia shiver, and her smile softened. She was suddenly aware of the hand that was still entwined with hers, of the touch of his skin, of the warmth of his body so close to hers, and of the scent that emanated from him. Her heart skipped a beat at the sight of that smile. It was no longer restrained, it was wide, spontaneous, sincere, and it exposed the four small fangs. Sofia blushed as she stared at those lips, thinking it was the most beautiful smile she had ever seen.

“Howl with me,” he whispered.

“With you?” Sofia giggled.

“With me...” he whispered again.

Sofia’s smiled grew to match his and a blush crept up her cheeks. Dave was so close to her that his scent flooded her nose to the point she couldn’t smell anything else. ‘This is madness!’ she screamed in her head. Weredogs didn’t just howl with anyone. They howled with someone very special because the bond this created was not just one of friendship, it meant becoming a pack. The two of them were not even mates and yet there was no one else in the world with whom she’d want to share this with.

At the same time, with their hands joined and the warmth of their bodies blending because of their closeness, they took a deep breath and raised their heads towards the sunset sky. Their voices merged into a new howl, one that was not a greeting but a promise. One that belonged only to them.