The Red Wolf

He ran.
Not because he wanted to feel the air run like fingers through his fur or because running in his animal form offered a freedom one simply cannot experience as human, hell, not even for a little exercise. He was running for his life. Life sure as shit hadn’t turned out like anything he ever dreamed of when he was a young man. In a time when the kilt he favored was what men wore on the regular and women wore dresses that were a deep breath away from a wardrobe malfunction.
He was almost a hundred and ten years old, had fought in countless battles with men trained to kill him and a human woman with a pitchfork was how it was going down.

Freya was beautiful. It was not the boast of a merely pretty girl. She made every star or athlete on the cover of any magazine declaring them most beautiful look plain.. She’d been down-playing that beauty since she had to stab a foster father with a pair of scissors when she was ten. By the time she had aged out of the system she’d had to fight off three foster dads and five brothers. On the streets she’d had to fight off too many to count. Even with that s****y start in life, she didn’t let it get her down. She’d found jobs and taken care of herself. Managed not to get raped or killed.
She stood over the transforming animal, bug-eyed, opened-mouth, until before her was a man. Then she passed the out.