The woman stands at the crest of the hill. A chill, restless breeze throws her scent, rich and savory with a faint sweetness at the edges, against the hunter's nose, bringing an involuntary smile to his black lips. She would be statuesque in her beauty, save for the motion of her long hair, silvered by moonlight, as it dances with the wind. She watches the half moon rise, back turned to the primeval blackness of the forest. Her attention is fully fixed upon the lighthouse moon as it surmounts the horizon.
 
The lurking hunter's smile stretches into a toothy grin, hunger like saliva dripping from each clean white fang.
 
Muscles tensed, he crouches in shadow, waiting.
 
The wind continues to blow his way. The woman does not move.
 
As a cloud rolls across the moon, he springs.
 
The wolf's form blurs outward as it leaps, stretching into a larger body with obvious human influence but overall bestial character. Landing lightly on its hind legs just behind the sky-gazer, the werewolf towers over her; the top of her head barely brushes its chin.
 
Growling as if savagely hungry, the big brindled werewolf folds his arms around the woman, pulling her back tight against his powerful, thickly-furred chest.
 
Smiling, the woman relaxes into his grip. His hands grasp at her chest even as her form shifts to match his, one with no discernible breasts to grope. Elegant tail wagging, the golden-coated bitch-wolf turns in her mate's arms, nipping playfully at his muzzle. He whuffs in return, nuzzling her throat.
 
Releasing her, he steps back, and both return to their human guises, grinning like small children playing hide-and-seek.
 
"You and your games," Lucretia Night-Watcher teases, one fine finger resting on his aristocratic nose. When he takes her finger in hand and nips it playfully, she giggles.
 
"Happy anniversary, my mate," Autumn Rain murmurs, almost shy. He feels giddy, a little off-balance, still awed by his great fortune. That his own alpha female would take such interest in him, and take him as her preferred mate, was dizzying luck for a beta male. That she should consistently choose him for five seasons running seems impossible, yet here they are.
 
His grin flickers like a poorly screwed-in light bulb, but settles into a more secure expression as she falls into his arms again, linking her own around his back, her head against his chest trustingly.
 
"I have a present for you," she whispers into his chest. Even in human form, his ears are sharp enough to hear her clearly, though none but another werebeast could match the feat.
 
"Oh do you now?" His hands roam below her waistline, and she chuckles low in her throat.
 
"That too, but something... else." Her reticence pricks his ears, drawing a double-bass thump from his percussionist heart. As if she controls his very instincts, mating suddenly seems much less important than whatever else she has in mind.
 
But, of course, she does have that control. She is his Alpha. Mating with her doesn't change their relative ranks.
 
He would have served her ecstatically even without the overwhelming social, genetic, and spiritual reinforcement to do so, and not just out of love.
 
They two stand apart even from other werewolves in some ways, they know well -- yet not from each other.
 
Grinning toothily, Lucretia steps away from her mate, beckoning him with upraised eyebrow before dropping onto all fours, hands becoming paws before they hit the earth. Her glittering eyes, silvered by the moon, entice him.
 
Autumn Rain returns to the shape of his birth, and follows Night-Watcher's lead, tail held low in deference. Two pairs of lupine eyes shine bright with excitement, gamboling as if yearling cubs through the dense coastal forestland that makes up their territory.
 
There is no rush.
 
---
 
Patrick grunted in annoyance, re-loading his rifle. He stood slowly, moving with exaggerated caution toward the fallen doe. Despite his efforts at moving silently, he crunched and crackled his way to the dying animal's side. He cursed the dulled equilibrium which caused him to almost fall as he knelt by the gut-shot doe. Oblivious to the reek of scotch on his own person, Patrick fumbled at his waist, his big sausage fingers wrapping about the hilt of a long skinning blade.
 
Wish it hadn't taken so much Red Label to quiet my nerves, Patrick thought with annoyance. It wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last. He had long since adjusted to operating while drunk, but his current level of intoxication was disarming even by his prodigious standards.
 
Still, a man had to eat, and the larder was almost empty. The fancy-pants politicians and environmentalists who made the laws didn't understand things like that. So he simply waited until nightfall, then took his rifle and his best hound deep into the untouched coastal wilderness, where he knew for a fact that even the Park Rangers didn't go often. It had taken Patrick a good long time to save up for the night-vision goggles, but it had been well worth the expense and the wait. With them, he had no need for a light source other than the half moon which loomed overhead like a judging eye.
 
Patrick frowned for a moment. That thought, that association, didn't feel like his own, somehow. Then he dismissed the feeling, putting the unusually graphic image down to the booze and the setting. He didn't like this kind of place, with no humans for miles around. Unfettered and free. Too free, to his mind. God made humans to steward the Earth, and places like this seemed in dire need of new management.
 
Gripping the skinning knife firmly, Patrick slit the doe's throat to ensure she was dead. He nearly decapitated the animal when he lost balance again and lurched to the side, dragging the knife and the doe with him.
 
Patrick lost his balance because his hunting dog, an overweight hound mix he called 'Boomer', had leaned his full 80-pound bulk against his owner, whining fearfully.
 
"Goddamn mutt, git off!" Shoving ineffectually at Boomer, who only redoubled his efforts to burrow into his owner's protective embrace, Patrick was forced to drop the knife, falling onto his back with the terrified dog on his chest.
 
"What in Sam hell is wrong with you, you stupid cur? Git off me!" Finally, with much effort, the drunken poacher managed to shove his all but panicking dog off himself and sit up.
 
Raising his gaze, Patrick saw eyes.
 
Feeling as if someone had just stabbed him from balls to throat with a ghost icicle, Patrick fumbled desperately for the night-vision goggles with one hand and the rifle with the other, all the while bellowing incoherent attack commands at his cowering dog.
 
He managed to slip the goggles over his eyes just in time to get a glimpse of his attacker's face before going down.
 
Somewhere, he heard a dog barking in terror. The sound receded, as if its source were moving away from him at a rapid rate. The Doppler effect percolated strangely into his ears. Dizzily, he grasped at dry leaves, knowing something very important was nearby and if he could only grasp it...
 
He grasped only dead leaves and duff.
 
It was getting very hard to breathe. Patrick couldn't feel any specific injuries, oddly, but he felt as if something heavy were sitting on his chest and stomach. Vaguely he wondered if he were having a heart attack, if the eyes, the wolf, had been delirious illusions.
 
Paws. Striding into view.
 
Big paws.
 
"Boomer?" Patrick called, querulous.
 
It wasn't the dog.
 
---
 
Autumn Rain stands on the violator's torso in his natural shape while Night Watcher becomes the woman Lucretia again, in order to bind their captive. The tall woman works with experienced efficiency, but also a certain reverence for the rope itself.
 
Using secret words, she thanks the spider-spirit within the rope for lending them its power.
 
Autumn Rain pays close attention, knowing he must do these same things one day. He is also fascinated by the ritual for its own sake. He had watched his mate create the rope -- growing the necessary hemp; harvesting it; collecting spiderwebs at dawn and dusk until nine times nine had been assembled; weaving the rope from hemp and spider-silk; calling the tiny spider-spirit to temporarily inhabit the rope.
 
It was the spirit which truly made the rope an instrument of justice. And vengeance.
 
Lucretia binds Patrick's wrists behind his back, then loops the sacred rope around his neck like a hangman's noose. When the man moans, tossing his head from side to side, the bitch-wolf cautions him with a hungry smirk.
 
"Ah-ah-ah," she scolds with a mock-indulging smile. "Wouldn't want to pull too hard on your leash, boy. You're on a choke collar."
 
Autumn Rain struggles to conceal his excitement. The beta werewolf basks in the glow of being found worthy to help his alpha-mate with her righteous task. He hopes this doesn't take too long, though -- he is curious what present Night-Watcher has in mind. But duty comes before personal business, always.
 
When she finishes, Autumn Rain steps off the poacher without having to be asked. At Lucretia's nod, he joins her in the hairless ape shape. Helpfully, Autumn takes their captive's "leash," shivering happily at the gossamer caress of the spirit-being living within it.
 
"This way," Lucretia leads. Autumn follows, trailing Patrick behind them.
 
---
 
Patrick found himself paralyzed, unable to struggle against his bonds even if he wanted to. Somehow, he also found himself able to walk in a straight line, though that had been a challenging task not so long ago. It was as if the rope itself were straightening him, guiding his feet.
 
In front of them, he picked out the subtle crash and rumble of the ocean. They were going to the beach. Hope dawned within the captive -- they would be exposed there, and maybe someone would see them. Surely his kidnappers could not explain having a man "leashed" by a noose. Dimly, he realized that surely these people (or whatever, whispered a part of his psyche that was both paranoid and sober) were not stupid enough to needlessly risk exposure. Nevertheless, he clung to hope with the desperate need of a drowning man thrown against a chunk of floating wood by the very sea that threatens to overwhelm him.
 
Patrick found soon enough that he wasn't too drunk to recognize a blind cove. They walked along the beach for only a few steps before disappearing into a shallow cave that penetrated a sandstone cliffside for perhaps ten yards before curving sharply to the left. This hollow was about twenty by thirty feet and nine feet high. It curved around almost 180 degrees, concealing the back chamber efficiently from outside view. Very primeval, and very private.
 
While the man held Patrick's leash, the woman (whose shapely nude form Patrick couldn't stop himself from admiring) began to pile driftwood at the very back of the cave within a hollow in the sandy floor. It seemed to have been dug out for that very purpose, and used more than once -- ashes and black char lay beneath the newer logs and kindling.
 
Patrick was having trouble associating one moment with the next thanks to his blood ethanol level. Somehow, though, he knew that even the firelight would be invisible to anyone in a boat. It might even be invisible to someone on the beach unless they stood right outside the cave.
 
The man dropped the rope to help the woman build and start the fire. Patrick couldn't quite make out what the nefarious pair did with the rocks they scooped off the sandy ground, but they managed to ignite the pile of driftwood with swift, practiced ease.
 
Patrick, surprised by this carelessness and his own luck, mustered his will and tried to make a break for it.
 
In doing so, he discovered why his kidnappers didn't bother to hold the rope once here. There was no need. The rope held him immobile all by itself.
 
A moment later, Patrick learned that the rope did not prevent him from weeping. So he did.
 
---
 
Once the fire catches, dancing with glorious anticipation, Autumn turns to Lucretia, curious. Speaking as the wolves do, he asks her what she is up to. ~Will the pack not join us to return this criminal to the Earth?~
 
Lucretia smiles, enigmatic and predatory simultaneously. ~It is time for the Rite of Renewal. I have chosen you. This is how we shall celebrate our anniversary.~ Her grin is hungry on many levels, tantalizing him.
 
Autumn shakes himself, a bit overwhelmed. A warm blast of affection and gratitude kindles deep inside, but still, he protests aloud. ~I am the purest, the most devout? What about Fire-Splits-the-Sky?~
 
Lucretia takes her lover's arm, nipping at his jawline seductively. ~He is too proud. You approach the spirits with humility and open ears. You are my mate, anyhow, not Fire-Splits-the-Sky.~
 
Autumn resists the urge to swagger; instead he allows his mate to guide him slowly back to their captive. Together, they complete his bindings, securing the man's limbs to rocky outthrusts on the walls. Autumn remembers coming here before, and being told to carve those pillars into the sandstone -- now he knows why. The werewolf's pulse quickens as he helps prepare the criminal for execution.
 
When the two have finished, they step back as one to coolly regard the poacher.
 
"Criminal," Lucretia intones, "you have broken the Laws. You must make recompense for what you have ruined."
 
As she speaks, Autumn slips out of the cave. After a few moments, he returns with two handfuls of freshly-picked plants, aromatic herbs growing nearby. These are thrown on the fire, smoking and sputtering as the sweet pungent scent fills the sandstone cavern.
 
Ghost whispers echo in the enclosed space. A doe's scream echoes, just outside mortal hearing, amplified so that all three present can hear it. Other voices, plant and animal, form a wraithly refrain, a ululation of woe calling for justice.
 
A river of tears cascades to the sand from Patrick's face. Terror casts his mind in lead, dark and immobile.
 
The werewolves abandon their human disguise, stretching into their furred hybrid shapes. As one, they move to either side of their helpless captive, staring down at him with blazing golden eyes. Impossibly, the half moon's silver glare reflects in their gazes.
 
It takes some effort to form the human words with their wolf faces, but they manage it:
 
"It is time for justice."
 
---
 
Patrick wished they would just hurry up and kill him.
 
He was sure their torture had driven him insane. He saw werewolves now, hideous beasts impossibly blended of wolf and human features. They seemed able to conjure anything they wanted from nowhere and put it back just as easily, as if he were in a dream and dream-logic applied. Strangely, it felt just as natural as if that were true.
 
If this were a dream, it was a painful one. And he wasn't waking up no matter what they did to him.
 
They had carved sigils into his flesh with their claws, endless obscure diagrams and symbols, spiraling and spiking up and down his legs, all over his torso. They had dripped hot wax from burning candles over their bleeding rune-carvings, in intricate loops and spirals. While one used the candle, the other drew a burning brand of incense plant against his skin, as if reinforcing their mad flesh drawings.
 
And all the while, that ghost chorus crowded around, watching, gnawing at the edges of him, pulling, as if a jury exulting in the cruel result of their verdict.
 
Now the male was digging his claws deeper into his belly, and Patrick desperately hoped that was a sign the end would be soon. A row of distinct sharpnesses pricked his throat, ever-so-lightly, and he knew he was right.
 
Except that when the bitch-werewolf tore out Patrick's throat with her teeth, and when her monstrous mate opened Patrick's belly with his talons, Patrick found himself unable to sink out of his body, as he knew-felt he should be doing.
 
Time got- - gets strange suddenly... / --~
~-- / ... as the soul which still knows itself as Patrick struggles with increasing fervor to escape its dying flesh. Despite being immaterial, he remains bound -- the rope's force is *fully* unescapeable.
 
The werewolves -- for he can see and understand, whether he wants to or not, their true nature now -- grow dimmer and fuzzier, their outlines blurring.
 
At the same time, the other presences, the howling ghostly beast- and plant-thins, which had crowded so close before, now grow sharper and brighter, clearer. More tangible.
 
Hungrier.
 
Only when the apparitions' death-cold claws first touch him does the spirit of Patrick Kellerman begin to scream.
 
---
 
The werewolves, exulting in their kill, rip backwards, shredding the corpse of Patrick Kellerman in two different directions with fang and talon. Then both open jaws and fists, spitting the poacher's remains out in distaste. Panting a bit, the two wolf-beasts stare at each other. Blazing eyes seek their counterparts, piercing and penetrating and holding. Loving each other with their eyes, they step closer, melting into human form in order to fold claylike into each others' embrace.
 
Lucretia sets her teeth against Autumn's throat, pressing with just enough force to express dominance; he tilts his head back, gratefully accepting and acknowledging her. At the same time, both werewolves run warrior's hands possessively over the other's back and sides, smearing crimson evidence of their prowess against smooth skin interrupted only by the occasional scar. At first this touch is chaste, but with each circuit the route wanders lower and grows ever more detailed. A crease of skin is smoothed out here, a nail drags across scar tissue there.
 
Autumn's dusky complexion in human form seems even darker by firelight. Patrick's blood, smeared across his powerful chest, dripping down his well-defined abdomen, glints with ruby highlights from the flames. Releasing her lover's throat, Lucretia raises her head, staring deeply into Autumn's eyes. Then she presses her nude body to his, sliding her arms around him to dig her fingernails into his shoulder blades.
 
This contact is gentle at first, but she digs harder as he nibbles at her jawline, leaning his powerful frame against hers. Both feel the manifestation of his need pressing hotly between them, fueling their interest. She eagerly returns this attention, arching her hips against his while licking blood from her mate's chest. Meanwhile, Autumn's nibbling, interspersed with kisses, moves across her forehead, lavishing adoration on each part of her face in turn.
 
Soon enough, thoroughly enwrapped in each other, they drop to their knees, then into the shredded mortal remains of their kill, still warm and steaming from their recent destruction. Lucretia pushes Autumn onto his back, demanding his in-depth attention to her every detail. He closes his eyes, focusing only on her increasingly intense guidance. Finally, she slides down his body, straddling him.
 
They make love first like humans, luxuriating in each other amongst the carnage on the sandy floor as if enjoying a romantic honeymoon getaway.
 
As their ardor rises, they roll over, dripping with gore, grasping at each other with low commanding growls of need and encouragement. Autumn directs his whole being to her, and she responds in kind until finally she trembles atop him within a cascade of orgasmic release. Thus ends this part of their dance.
 
Here they pause for a moment, Lucretia lying atop Autumn, curled trustingly in his strong arms. After a minute of rest, without disengaging, they adjust their position to their shapeshifting and begin to move again. Low moans become throaty, half-voiced barks and howls.
 
Now two wolves mate with fervor in the abattoir, their fur soaked in crimson wetness, claws digging into the gory sand.
 
Autumn Rain shudders and nearly fails in his duty when Night-Watcher howls from her soul a second time. But he holds his own climax back with an effort of will. Then he lifts himself from her so she can turn to face him again, both changing in perfect synchronicity with each other to the third form, that which is both wolf and human, and yet neither at the same time.
 
Sometimes, now, they roll together as men and women do. Other times loving and lustful murmurings give way to bestial growls and ululations. Always their claws roam over each other, leaving long shallow love-marks at every passionate upwelling. Thus they claim each other, and thus they restored the Cycle of Life, creating in the face of destruction.
 
This time, when Lucretia Night-Watcher reaches her personal crescendo, climaxing a third and final time, Autumn Rain comes with her. For a single eternal instant, they become one heart, one soul, one being making love to itself.
 
Autumn Rain draws on the last of his energy to carry his mate, their bodies still joined by his tie, to the fireside. There, the two collapse.
 
The ritual is complete.
 
They lie together, spent and happy, eyes closed. A deep satisfaction falls, cloaking them in companionable silence. This is broken only long enough for this exchange:
 
~Next year,~ Night Watcher whispers to her mate, ~you will be alpha for this rite alone. This is the tradition and the Way. I suggest Fire-Splits-the-Sky for your partner.~
 
~Yes, dear,~ Autumn replies, drowsily.
 
Sleep carries them both away soon after.