Sofia was sitting in front of her desk with her physics notebook in front of her, but she hadn't paid any attention to it for a while. That afternoon, in fact, she hadn't been able to study much. She hadn't stopped thinking about what was happening to her friend. Biting her lip, she turned her gaze towards the window to gaze at the starry night sky. Soon the moon would rise, a moon that had one day left to be full, at which time its influence would force every cinanthrope that had ever changed to remain in their real form until it set.

“He's a cinanthrope, of that I have no doubt, but I'm not so sure anymore that he's a pup. There are too many details. His behavior, the way he talks about himself, how stealthy he is when he walks and the forest scent he always used to carry on his skin...”

Sofia bit her lip and picked up her cell phone. She opened the message she sent him the last time she saw the white cinanthrope. It took him an hour to respond and he told her he was sleeping. When he learned that she was still in the woods, he asked her to go home and promised that they would look for the dog the next day. His godfather was a light sleeper and would get angry if he was awakened. The same godfather who didn't care if his godson stayed out all night. Sofia felt a little dumb for not seeing it sooner, but the message had thrown her off. She didn't count on the fact that, although they looked like dogs and moved on all fours most of the time, their hands were human and could handle tools.

“You were wounded, you went home, probably to get help. You used this opportunity to send me the message so that I wouldn't be able to link him to you, because you were afraid that I would reject you. That was the last time I saw him and you started to get worse right after. Later, during Christmas, you told me you were trying to keep it under control but I thought you were talking about you behavior.” It was so obvious that a guttural growl rumbled in her throat. “Shit, Dave, you're holding back the change. You can't do that. You can't!”

She rose from her chair so abruptly that it fell with a bang. Kas, who had been sleeping on the bed, woke up with a start. She was sure he was going out that night. He was very unwell and she didn't think he would be able to suppress his nature any longer, especially with the full moon so close. Last time it was the same but this time Rodrigo already knew that the dog was around, and the worst thing was that he was beginning to suspect that he was a werewolf. He would surely go to the forest because he needed to prove to his friend that he wasn't crazy. Sofia had to do something to get him away from there, but she didn’t know what.

“The first thing I have to do is find him. If Rodrigo shows up, I'll think of a way to chase him out of the forest.”

From her wardrobe she pulled out a pair of white trousers, a T-shirt and a beige jumper with some dark stripes on the sleeves. Dave would have no trouble seeing her, even if she tried to camouflage herself with the snow around her, but she hoped to go unnoticed by human eyes. As she got dressed, she glanced at one of the drawers and her stomach tightened. Her huntress uniform was still in there, including the silver dagger, a secret that made her guts churn.

“Shit. I know what I have to do. I can't keep pretending I don't know what happens to him when the moon rises but…” She bit her lip and hugged herself.

That damned secret had been the only reason she hadn't dared tell him anything, because she was terrified of what would happen if he found out. Sofia let out a deep growl and slammed the drawer shut. Her past continued to haunt her, it kept conditioning her life. She could have been with him all that time, she could have helped him, she could have been by his side so he wouldn't have to be alone, and she hadn't because she was terrified he would discover the truth and walk away from her.

She could no longer run away. Her best friend needed help and she wasn't going to let that bastard hurt him. With a knot of anxiety in her stomach, Sofia left the room and went to the kitchen to get a good drink of water before she went out. When she entered the living room she saw that her mother was there, cleaning her work tools. At the sight of the crossbow, dagger and bolts strewn across the table, Sofia twisted her lips into a grimace of disgust, but Helena didn't even look up as she walked past her. Their relationship had never been very good, but now it was just nonexistent.

“Tell me something,” Sofia said from the kitchen, after taking a big gulp from the bottle of water in the fridge. “Is the change painful?”

That question was enough for Helena to look up and lock those glacial gray eyes on Sofia. The girl immediately noticed that her mother was studying her, looking for some trait in her that would indicate whether she had already changed or not. Uncomfortable, Sofia looked away and licked her lips.

“How would I know that?” The woman replied. “What's the matter? Are you worried about what will happen tomorrow? The only thing I've come to learn about those disgusting creatures is that, when the change is close, they feel it, but I don't know any more details.”

Sofia curled her lip and let out a dry growl that didn't sound at all like something a human would do. As always, her mother was completely unfazed when her pup openly displayed her more aggressive behavior. Not only had she never changed and therefore could not do so at will, but even if she could, she would not be able to defeat her mother. She wasn't one of the most feared and lethal huntresses for nothing.

“We are not disgusting creatures, we are people!” Sofia exclaimed.

“No, you are not people. You are beasts in human disguise, but you are still beasts. You are prisoners of your own instincts, of your bestial, primitive and savage behavior. Do you know how many times I had to correct you for walking on all fours? Do you know how many times I had to scold you for panting, for sniffing, for growling? And look at you, you still do it and have continued doing it behind my back. You can't escape what you are because you're a beast,” said Helena, still looking her daughter in the eyes with that icy calm that Sofia found so unsettling.

“I pant because I don't sweat! It's the only way I can cool down! What do you want me to do, die of heat stroke?” Sofia cried out. The energy in her chest stirred uneasily. “And what's wrong with my behavior? Just because we don't behave like humans is no excuse for hunting us. You're lying when you say we're dangerous. We haven't hurt anyone!”

The energy in her chest fed on all that accumulated rage and violently threw itself against the barrier that contained it, but it did not succeed in knocking it down. That internal struggle provoked an intense pang of pain that was like a cramp that spread throughout her body. Sofia yelped and staggered as she felt her strength abandon her. It was only for an instant, but it was the first time something like that happened to her. For a few seconds she remained hunched over, panting more out of fear than pain. Her hands were shaking.

“There's your answer,” said Helena as she returned to her task. “If you want some advice, Sofia, force the change and go through it already. Sooner or later it's going to happen, even if you want to convince yourself that you'll manage to live as a human without ever changing. The sooner you go through it, the sooner you'll learn to control the changes, and only that will give you a chance against hunters.”

Sofia took several deep breaths to try to mitigate the trembling of her hands, which was caused more by fear than by whatever had happened to her. She was confused, this was the first time this was the first time her energy rebelled so violently and she didn't understand why. Her mother knew what a cinanthrope was, but she couldn't help her understand herself because the only thing she knew about them was how to kill them. Her father would have come in handy now, if the bastard hadn't abandoned them.

“Another thing, the son of Diaz the hunter is beginning to suspect that this creature is not a common dog. He will soon come to the right conclusion, and when that happens I will recruit him. You’d better hurry if you don't want your cinanthrope friend to find himself a few months from now at the mercy of a real hunter.”

“Why are you doing this? Why do you care if the cinanthrope lives or dies?”

“I don't care about him. I could have hunted him down myself by now had I wanted, but I'm not the monster you think I am.”

Sofia disagreed. She had seen her chase dozens of frightened pups, and there were enough pelts in the cellar beneath her feet to give her nightmares for several lifetimes. After giving her a last look of disgust, which she emphasized with a low growl, Sofia stormed out of the house and headed for the woods.

As she walked through the village streets wrapped in a winter chill that made her snuggle up in her sweater, she thought about how to approach the subject. It wasn't going to be easy to get close to him, his senses were more developed than hers and he would be able to see her from a great distance, but she had to try.

She wasn't really sure what she was going to do when his secret was out, either. She already knew that the lamb had been an accident, and he had not attacked cattle again. In fact, he actively avoided being around people and had spent two months in hiding, getting to the point where he was suffering from not being able to let his nature out. However, the damn hunters kept intruding on his territory, no matter how deep he went into the forest.

“It's not him who has to leave the forest, he hasn't done anything. It's that bastard Rodrigo Diaz who has no business there. I have to find a way to drive him out. The last thing we need in El Cerro is for a madman like that to be initiated by my mother.”

With that idea in mind she reached the pine grove. Thanks to her improved vision, Sofia had no trouble finding her way in the dark, but the snow crunched with every step she took. Trying to be quiet was not going to be at all easy for her. She walked for quite a while, going deeper and deeper into the forest, and found multiple tracks of footprints among which there were several of deer, foxes and other animals. There were also boot marks, but they were considerably rarer and could very well belong to the hunters. What she didn’t find were footprints that belonged to the cinanthrope. Not a single one.

“Fuck, Dave, how long has it been since the last time you changed? Since the last time you went out into the woods?” She bit her lip.

A cold wind that carried an amalgam of intense smells that she was unable to ignore hit her. Deer, roe deer or mouflon, she wasn’t sure, but they were prey and her instincts knew it. Sofia hugged herself, partly from the cold and partly to calm the energy that stirred within her chest. A growl of frustration escaped her lips, a reflection of the effort she was making not to let herself drop on all fours. The sudden desire to change hit her so abruptly that it left her breathless. There was no point in all these urges if her body still looked human. She needed her fangs, and her claws, and her fur.

“Fuck...”

Sofia shook and began to pant. She didn't always feel her instincts this strong but when she hadn't exercised or eaten meat in a while, the presence of prey could trigger her predatory urges. She bit her lip as she remembered the first time she saw Dave have one of those attacks. It was after catching the scent of a deer. Back then she thought it wasn’t going to be long before he went through his first change. Now she knew what was wrong with him, he had gone so long without hunting and without changing that he was on the verge of losing control. The exhaustion was a consequence of the effort he had made to restrain himself. A cinanthrope could not go indefinitely without changing, they just could not.

Her thoughts were interrupted by an echo that resonated in the silence of the snowy forest. It was a sort of choked moan of pain, a hoarse, guttural sound that resembled something halfway between human and dog, and it chilled her blood. With the hair on the back of her neck bristling and his name hovering on her lips, Sofia started to run towards him. She hoped Rodrigo hadn't found him before she did. He was still in human form, it was obvious from the sound of his voice. She didn't think that madman was going to hurt him as long as he looked like a person, but she couldn't be entirely sure either. Something was wrong with him, that much was obvious.

“Hold on!” she whimpered.

She ran for a while without bothering to remain silent, and she kept her ears open for the moans and grunts she was hearing. When she reached an area with dense, snow-covered vegetation and large boulders, she came face to face with a trail. They were boot prints, but not only that. At some point he had fallen to his knees and had left his hands imprinted there too. Sofia bent down and dug her finger into the snow without any difficulty. It wasn't frozen so the trail was fresh.

Then she closed her eyes and sniffed the air. The snow dulled the forest aromas but she was still able to recognize the scent of pine, earth and vegetation. Among them, more intense, more recent, was one that made her shudder. She had expected it but she still felt a brief pang of anxiety that made her gasp. ‘Fuck, this is getting too real, and I still have no idea how to broach this subject with him’.

First things first, she had to make sure he was okay. With some caution in case she had to use the element of surprise, she walked in a crouch for a few meters while following the trail. She saw that he had fallen a couple more times from which he had staggered back to his feet. His choked moans still echoed through the trees, a strange contrast to the cottony silence of the snow and the soft crunch of her footsteps. When she reached a handful of bushes that looked like mounds, as they were covered by a thick, white blanket, she crawled towards the nearest tree and cautiously peeked out.

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A few meters away from her she saw him. He was completely naked, kneeling on the ground and curled in on himself. His body was trembling as if he was suffering from severe spasms and his breathing was very rapid and erratic. Sofia bit her lip and felt sorry for him, and also a little afraid for her future. She had no idea if he was trying to suppress the change or if he was pushing it, but that looked like it was being very painful.

Then it happened, and it was much faster than she thought it would be. Thick white fur covered his bare skin and a long tail grew from the base of his back and curled over it. The ears migrated high on the head and his face became a dog's muzzle. The leg bones shortened a bit to allow for quadrupedal movement and the feet became canid paws, with pads and claws and all. What really gave them away were the arms, as they maintained a human-like shape, with prehensile-fingered hands, albeit thicker and clumsier. The whole process, which Sofia watched in fascination, happened simultaneously and in just a handful of seconds.

When the change was over, Dave plopped down on the snow. He was panting as if he had run a marathon and looked exhausted, but also relieved. For several minutes he simply lay there, his eyes half-closed and his breathing increasingly slow and relaxed. After he seemed to have rested enough, he rolled around on the ground just as a dog would, his muzzle open and his tongue hanging out between his jaws. Sofia couldn't help but smile and a pleasant warmth spread through her belly. Dave seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

“That's why you always smelled of forest...” Sofia whispered, feeling the warmth spread over her body to embrace her.

Her mother's words calling them beasts for their behavior echoed in her mind. Yes, cinanthropes had to fight against their own instincts all the time only to pass as humans, and it wasn't always easy to mask their doglike behavior. However, if that display of absolute freedom and relaxation was beastly behavior, then Sofia would rather be a beast than a human limited by a stupid society.

When he seemed to have finished rolling around, Dave stood up on all fours and shook, ridding his fur of the snow that had stuck to it. He then began to retrace his own footprints to hide them in order to prevent his human feet to be linked to the ones he now had. So concentrated was he on his methodical task that Sofia saw him getting closer and closer unaware of her presence.

He was a very beautiful weredog, with fur so white that it was easy for him to blend in with the forest’s winter blanket. His body was slender but firmly muscled, and he moved with grace and elasticity, as if he had been doing this for years. Biting her lip she realized that she also found him attractive. Maybe it was because it was him, and she knew it, or maybe it was because she was a cinanthrope too, so it was natural for her to like someone of her own kind. However, she had been raised as a human, and the realization that she was attracted to her friend even in his real appearance was causing her a little internal conflict.

So engrossed was she that she didn't realize how close she was to him until he stopped and looked up. The canid's sky blue eyes met her gray ones, and Sofia froze, not knowing what to say. Dave’s tail dropped to tuck itself between his legs and surprise flashed in his pupils. He quickly looked back to the place where he had shed his human disguise to show his true identity, and again searched for her eyes. His ears flattened against his skull and he began to whimper. On his face was a question, one whose answer he thought he knew, and fear, lots and lots of fear. So much so that it broke Sofia's heart.

Before the girl could react, Dave turned tail and ran. His body moved gracefully through the snow, as if he had little trouble wading through it, and in a few seconds he had disappeared among the tree trunks.

“Wait!” Sofia shouted, reaching out for him.

The crunching of his footsteps started to fade into the night, moving further and further away from her in a desperate flight. A metallic sound like that of a spring activating broke into the forest silence. The next thing she heard was a sharp yelp of pain that made every hair on her body bristle.

“No...”

Sofia broke into a run after her friend and it wasn't long before she found him. A foothold trap had caught one of his hind legs. It wasn't a razor trap but the blunt impact had broken the bone. That wasn't a problem as it would heal as soon as he got free. The issue was that he wasn't getting free. He fumbled with his hands, as if trying to figure out how to open the mechanism, and when he found himself unable to do so, he began to bite it in desperation. Throughout the whole process he kept crying and whimpering due to the pain.

The girl ran towards him. When he saw her approaching, the cinanthrope began to tug desperately at the trap, as if to free himself. With each tug his body trembled with pain, and high-pitched moans escaped his thin dark lips. Sofia dropped to the ground beside him, grabbed his leg and pulled him back as she let out a deep warning growl.

“Stop being a jackass already!”

With the dexterity gained from years of handling such objects, Sofia managed to open the trap, and Dave fell face first into the snow. He quickly turned to face her and looked at her with a mixture of fear, surprise, and Sofia thought she saw something else, a hope that made his sky-colored eyes shine. His tail wagged a bit, almost uncertainly, as if he wasn't quite sure if the blush on her cheeks and the look of annoyance mixed with affection was real.

“Fuck! Knowing that cretin's still around, how could you even think of...?”

Dave perked his ears and turned his gaze towards the depths of the forest. His expression of confusion changed to one of fear, and this time it was a different kind of fear. He looked at the girl and whimpered softly, and Sofia became infected with his emotions through the pack relationship they shared and tensed her body. She heard it too. Footsteps, approaching footsteps, and by the nonchalant way he moved through the snow, it was surely Rodrigo.

A deep growl rumbled in her throat and she felt the sudden urge to rush out to meet him. It was almost a good thing she couldn't change because she wasn't sure she'd been able to contain the urge to give this monster a taste of her fangs.

“Can you walk?” she asked her friend.

Dave nodded.

“Run ahead. I will follow you and hide your tracks. Move through areas where there are trees, low branches covered with snow. Got it?” she whispered.

Again he nodded. Then jumped to his feet and ran deeper into the forest. Sofia followed suit. It was harder for her to keep up with him, but she had no trouble following the trail he was leaving on the white blanket. As she walked under the branches, she shook them and let the snow fall to the ground to conceal the footprints. It wasn't a perfect system but Sofia hoped it would be enough to throw off an apprentice hunter whose eyes were human.

As they ran, she kept an ear out for the sounds of the forest. She heard a curse echoing in the silence, so she guessed that Rodrigo had seen the empty trap and the tracks they had both left there, as they lacked the time to erase them. For a while she heard his footsteps as he followed them as fast as the snow would allow him, but he kept falling behind and eventually she stopped hearing him. He had probably lost the trail but even so she did not get overconfident and kept running while hiding their tracks as best she could.

After a while, when her lungs were so thick it was hard to pant, they came to a slightly steeper area where the trees grew twisted and crooked next to great stone walls. Dave led her through some dense bushes into a small crevice. It wasn't much of a cavern, just a small shelter, but there was a bed of dry, flattened ferns that indicated the boy had often used it for sleeping.

For the next few minutes the only sound was that of their accelerated panting and the occasional crunch of snow falling from the top of a branch. When Sofia managed to catch her breath, she turned to the cinanthrope. Before he knew what was happening, she lunged at him and pushed him so hard that he ended up lying on the ground with her on top of him. Her lip curled up to show her pathetic little fangs of a pup that had never changed, but the deep growl that rumbled in her throat sounded very adult and angry. Dave looked at her, surprised, and couldn't even bring himself to lick his muzzle. He seemed unable to take his eyes off her.

“Don't ever do anything like that again. Don't ever play the hero again and don't ever run off like that when you know there are hunters around,” she cried, her voice deep and mixed with that growl that was more one of fear than anger.

Dave blinked and looked away. A quiet whimper echoed in his throat. As if to try to emphasize what he was feeling, he held up a hand and showed it to her. It was humanoid and had five fingers, but black pads took the place of the palm and fingertips. Instead of fingernails it had claws sharp enough to break the skin of the prey on which he fed.

“I know!” she whined, her eyes locked on his. “I know it's not something easy to tell but you don't need to run away as if I was a ghost when I've already seen you change. We've howled together, we've run through the forest, we've played like dogs. What made you think this was a problem for me?”

Tears of rage and frustration began to stream down her cheeks without her being able to do anything about it. Annoyed, she growled and abruptly stepped away from the boy to turn her back on him. Behind her she heard Dave shake to release the tension. From his lips escaped a sigh that became a moan, but she didn't want to turn around. In fact, she turned her head sharply when she sensed him close. Only when she felt human hands wiping her cheeks did she raise her gaze, and she met eyes the color of the sky that looked at her with such affection that she shuddered. Having his scent so close didn't help either.

She couldn't help but let her gaze wander down his body, and though she tried to be as discreet as she could, he noticed and covered himself with his hands while also licking his lips. He was naked because clothes didn't magically transform with them when they changed. That allowed Sofia to appreciate the firm musculature the boy had beneath a thick clump of whitish hair. She wasn't going to deny that she liked what she saw, though what really caught her eye was the furry tail that curled over his back.

“Sorry, I didn't know that happened...” she muttered and looked away.

“It's okay, I understand. It... it doesn't happen all the time, only when the moon is fuller or when I feel very intense emotions,” he said, wagging his tail a little. “I'm sorry for how I reacted. I got scared. I've been trying for so long to keep this from you because I'm terrified of you rejecting me that, when I realized you'd seen me change, I didn't know what to do.”

“You're my best friend, Dave. Trust me a little. You're not as alone as you think you are.”

Sofia showed him her wrist. At the sight of the white scar the silver had imprinted on it, the boy opened his mouth in a mute gasp of surprise and stroked her skin in a shy brush of trembling fingers. So soft was that touch that Sofia shivered, and their eyes searched each other in the darkness.

“You're a cinanthrope... a real cinanthrope,” he gasped.

“Almost. I'm a half-breed, my father is a werewolf though from him I've inherited only the wolf wariness and my love for this forest. To all intents and purposes I am like a cinanthrope,” she said with a shy smile.

Dave pounced on her and hugged her so tightly that Sofia gasped. For a long moment he held her close to his body and buried his nose in her neck to breathe in her scent. Sofia, having overcome her initial surprise, wrapped her arms around him and burst out laughing. His tail, which was wagging happily, tickled her hands as she caressed his skin covered in abundant body hair. It didn’t feel like the bristly fur that covered human skin, it was softer and it reminded her of the coat of a full-grown dog.

“All your behavior is like mine, you’ve got excellent hearing and you can see in the dark but I didn’t know if you had noticed, if you knew what you were... God, my best friend, are you aware of how much this means to me?” Dave said as he turned away from her so he could look into her eyes. His lips had parted in a smile so wide that Sofia was able to see all four of his fangs, and she loved it.

“I can imagine!” Sofia replied, smiling just as wide.

As they smiled and exchanged glances, aware that neither of them was alone, the moon rose. There, in that sheltered cave under the pine branches, its light was negligible, but Sofia felt its caress brush against her chest to awaken the energy slumbering in it. For her it was just that, a gentle kiss that made her take a deep breath. For Dave it was something more intense since he pulled away from her abruptly and, moaning, brought a trembling hand to his bare chest. His breath came in long, deep puffs as he tried to control the urge to change.

“I'm... I'm sorry, I haven't changed for a long time and...”

“You need to let go.”

The boy nodded. Then he looked towards the cavern’s entrance, through which he could see the clarity of the snow covering everything, and a sigh that matched his sunken shoulders escaped from his lips. His tail left its curled position on his back and fell languidly to the ground.

“I need a place where I can give vent to my nature, where I can hunt and behave like a dog. I can't stay locked up any longer, I'll go mad, but it's too dangerous to change here. God, why won't they just leave me alone?” Dave buried his hands in his hair and huffed.

“Hey, I'm going to help you, okay? We'll find a way to get him away from here so you can get your territory back,” Sofia grabbed his hand and locked her eyes with his in a look of fierce determination.

“You don't know how much I appreciate it,” he whispered with a warm smile, and gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

In that gaze he exchanged with her, in those eyes the color of the sky, Sofia saw an affection so deep that it made her shudder. She remembered that full moon in mid-October when she saw him sitting by the little stream that ran near the path. His gaze had been that of a creature who felt terribly lonely. He no longer had that loneliness in his face, on the contrary, he showed a glimmer of hope that was infectious.

However, Sofia knew very well that as long as that obsessed psychopath was around, Dave would not be safe.