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When the missive came from the forest, bearing the seal of the Pack, everyone knew what it meant.
What it meant for Steve.
There was only ever one thing the Pack wanted to say: a call for human sacrifice. ‘The best your village has to offer’, the letter would demand, as all the other messages had. And though what was meant by best could be debated, and had been in the past, there was only one answer this time.
The first time a human sacrifice was demanded, it was assumed that ‘best’ would refer to the purity of a virgin. A fourteen year old girl, just past her first bleed, was tied to the offering stake wearing only a white shift as a symbol of her pure status. There was an old oil painting of her hung in the Hall of Tributes, body torn to pieces by the monsters from the woods.
There was a distinct sense that the village’s best had failed to reach the Pack’s standards that year, and every sacrifice year after.
They had offered boys and girls, men and women. Farmers, leaders, philosophers, and soldiers. Each had a memorial hung in the Hall. Walking through the paintings of the dead, one could see great thinkers with their throats torn open, lord swordsmen missing limbs, and beautiful women with guts spilling out.
Steve had walked the Hall before, of course. Everyone would try to sneak in before they came of age, stealing glances at the nudity and brutality depicted across every wall. It was a right of passage for boys and girls of the village.
He could still remember his first expedition to the mass memorial, with Thomas Hagan on one side and Carol Perkins on the other. Tommy had halted in front of one of the most recent paintings, though it was still before any of their births. The trend of some of the latest memorial pieces was to depict the sacrifices before their death, and many of them showed the subject being raped or eaten alive by the monstrous members of the Pack.
Tommy had laughed and stayed a long time, gazing at the undressed form of the lady sacrifice and the violent sexual acts being committed upon her. “Think we could try that one day?” Tommy had asked Steve, and he knew even then that his friend had been referring to the positions, one demon creature taking the girl from behind and another claiming her mouth. Despite knowing this, knowing Tommy didn’t mean the act of rape, Steve had felt sick.
Carol had turned a cold eye on the memorial, and found it lacking. “No wonder they didn’t accept a sacrifice that looked like that. See her pores?” And then she’d scoffed at Tommy’s clear infatuation, and departed in a huff. Tommy had followed shortly after, a muttered “Girls,” his justification, and Steve had been left alone.
He had stared at that painting for a long time, unable to muster the same disdain and vapid intrigue his fellows had. Steve felt pity looking on the brutal end that girl, and so many others, had come to. And, he found, a vague disappointment.
None of the memorials depicted a sacrifice fighting back. They were all offerings to demons and creatures of evil, and supposedly accepted their fates with submission and bravery. But to face death without raising arms in your own defense? Steve couldn’t understand such a thing.
Years after that first clandestine visit, he stood in front of the same painting and still couldn’t grasp it. It was the first year in his lifetime that the Pack called for a sacrifice, and Steve knew in his heart as well as anyone else that it would be him. Steve was the most proficient swordsman in the village, descended from a prosperous and noble family, and the handsomest bachelor on the market at a virile nineteen years of age.
The best Hawkins had to offer was Steve Harrington. By nightfall, he would be clothed in the customary white shift, bound to the offering stake, and given to certain death at the hands of creatures infinitely stronger and more cruel than himself. But he was determined to put up a fight, as best he was able. Steve had faced everything in his life with bitter obstinance, from the athleticism afforded him by hard work and dogged performance to the academics he had always underperformed with but never given up on.
He may serve as food and entertainment for monsters in the night, but he would damn well make them work for it.
The guards that escorted Steve to the clearing with the offering stake did so with an apologetic air. No one expected him to live through the night, and it would be a somber death for the whole village because Steve was held in high esteem. The Harringtons were a house of respect in Hawkins, with opportunities for employment under their estate and distant relatives reaching the royal court. Steve was the only heir his parents had, and had been primed to inherit their wealth and power.
He’d been trained his whole life for leadership, referred to as ‘his lordship’ from a young age by even his peers. Steve’s life was meant to go great places, and Steve himself was meant to be someone great. To be denied the opportunity to do so would be a greater blow to the community than to Steve, who would be too dead to really feel the scope of his own loss.
Steve had less than twelve hours to come to terms with his demise, after all. Everyone who had known him would have years after this to mourn the life he could have led.
Maybe, though, his parents would have another heir and that child would grow into a great leader and do great things. Maybe Steve would fade quickly, become just another dead face in a hall of dead faces. Maybe one day soon children would look at his memorial and dream about sex, or criticize his looks.
Maybe Steve was the kind of ‘best’ that wasn’t actually very special at all, easily replaced when he was inevitably lost.
But for the moment, Steve was a treasure among his people and they afforded him the respect of appearing sad to lose him. He wasn’t sure what the proper way to guide a sacrifice to the stake was, but he thought maybe his guards had refrained from whatever it may be in the interest of compassion instead. The guards walked a respectful distance behind him instead of crowding close, and they didn’t rush him in his walk through the trees.
Steve picked his way carefully over the uneven terrain, avoiding sharp rocks and exposed roots to spare his bare feet. When they came to the clearing with the offering stake, he stepped up to the simple wood pole and clasped his hands behind him, stretching his arms around the stake. The guard that tied him used a supple rope, and Steve felt a finger dip between the bindings and his wrist to test for tightness before he was left alone.
The rope wasn’t meant to hold him, after all. It was symbolic and traditional more than anything else. Steve’s own bravery and sense of duty to his people was meant to hold him to the stake until his killers came for him, and then he wasn’t meant to be held at all. Then he was meant to be consumed.
It might be the mark of Steve’s own failing that his bravery and duty would not end up securing him fast to the stake. Instead, Steve waited for the sun to begin to sink below the horizon before he began struggling against the weak knots. It was too late for anyone watching to dare come down to stop him, for fear that they would get caught in the Pack’s path.
Steve twisted his fingers and dug his nails into the rope until his fingertips hurt, and then yanked the knots apart until they came unraveled in his hands. He stepped away from the stake, and he was free. He could run, and likely bring death to his whole village. It would be an outrage for no sacrifice at all to be presented. Monsters could be lenient in the face of submission, but they would always be monsters.
Steve didn’t intend to run, though.
He scanned the edges of the clearing, looking up at the lowest branches. Darkness grew as he considered his options, and finally he made a decision. One of the trees framing the open space had a heavy looking branch, low enough that Steve could reach it and small enough he might be able to break it off.
He leaped up to grab it, and let his hanging weight pull it down. There was a loud cracking as the branch began to break, but it did not fall. Cursing, and aware of his time running out fast, Steve hurried to climb the tree. He came to a stop just above his chosen branch and braced himself against the trunk. He lifted both legs, and with all his strength kicked down.
There was more loud cracking, and he watched the branch splinter across the base where it was connected to the tree. Aiming for the visible weak spot, he kicked again. The branch cracked more, and hung half off the tree. Steve dug his fingers into the break, feeling splinters cut into his nail beds, and peeled the branch further off.
It fell to the ground below, and Steve dropped down after it. He tested the weight of his weapon in his hand, giving a few experimental swings. It was not unlike the club he had been taught to wield during weapons training, though it was lighter and unbalanced. The wood was solid, though, and could seriously injure another man if wielded properly.
Of course, Steve wasn’t going to be facing another man. His opponents would be unnatural creatures of magic. There was no knowing what sort of damage he could do to them, if any. In the end, the goal wasn’t really to hurt the Pack. It was to fight for his life, because his life was a thing worth fighting for. Even if only to himself.
Steve would die in the end, but he would die fighting. There would be an honor in that, at least. Even if his corpse was defiled soon after.
Steve returned to the stake in the center of the clearing. He had no indication which direction the Pack would come from, so staying center would give him the most time to adjust his position. The sun had fallen past the horizon, and the moon took the sky.
A howl went up some distance into the woods. It was answered by many more.
Steve planted his feet and waited.
And waited.
Minutes creeped by. Steve's breathing slowed as no immediate threat made itself known, and his arms began to ache from the strain of holding up the makeshift club. Certainly, Steve thought, it wasn’t supposed to take this long. It was always meant to be at dusk.
Finally, something shifted into the clearing on his left. Steve tensed and spun, heart already beating quicker. Before his eyes could focus on the monster in front of him, another movement caught his eye from the side and he turned again.
One by one, the monsters stepped into the clearing from all sides. Steve turned in a full circle, taking them in. There were eight of them by the time it was done, though Steve kept spinning in search of more past the treeline. Eight unholy creatures of evil, come to eat a sacrifice.
They were unnaturally large and hulking, with hunched shoulders and arms that stretched too far. Steve couldn’t see well across the distance and through the shadow, but he caught the glint of impossibly sharp teeth. The creatures kept moving closer, growling like animals. Moving like animals, like predators locked onto prey.
He could see black claws tipping their fingers now, larger than any claw he’d seen before. And hair, but it was more like fur across their cheekbones and chests, down their long arms and legs. These things were naked, and Steve could tell at a glance which were male and female.
No artist had ever committed to painting the Pack, instead commonly preferring to shroud them in shadows. Steve understood now, faced with this horrific amalgamation of man and animal before him. The heads were so very human, with hair just like any other person he’d seen, but the faces were elongated into faux-snouts that would look at home on a dog.
Several were baring their teeth at him as they drew nearer, growls pitched low. They came ever closer, but so slowly and never making a move to attack. Steve felt himself growing tenser, until something in him had to give way.
Had to snap.
He turned on the nearest one, watched its eyes widen, and then its lips drew back over large teeth. Steve tightened his grip on his weapon, leaned forward, and bared his own teeth in an animal warning. It wasn’t something he had ever done before, but it felt instinctively right in the moment.
The monster in front of him ducked back, also on instinct, and it was as if everyone had only been waiting for a sign. All at once, it began.
The creatures, all except the single largest one, launched at him from every side. Steve ducked under one wild swing of a clawed hand, and brought his branch around into the thing’s ribs. It roared and fell back. The next one came at Steve’s collarbone, and he jumped away fast enough that the claws only just scraped through his skin. Even so, pain instantly bloomed as blood began to well up.
Steve swung his club again, in a wide arc that forced the monsters away from him only for them to immediately surge back. One came at him from the right at the same time another sprinted at him on the other side. Steve jammed the end of his club into the first monster’s gut, hearing the whoosh of breath leaving its body, and brought the other end of the branch around into the next monster’s face. There was a loud crack of bone, and red blood spilled from the thing’s nostrils.
Steve was surprised to see them bleed the same color he did. He had expected black blood, from evil things like these.
The next attack dragged across his hip, claws cutting into flesh and dragging away the shift. Steve hardly noticed the loss of covering, so meager it had been. He instinctively brought his leg up to crash his knee into the monster’s chin, and immediately regretted it when the monster proved to be as solid as a stone slab.
One of the other monsters latched onto his club from behind, pulling it from his hand and cracking the heavy wood as if it were fragile spun glass, letting the remnants clatter to the ground. He spun to face the threat, and watched it snarl like a beast. Steve bared his teeth again and snarled back, scaring the monster into backing off. He couldn’t imagine what picture he made in that moment, bloodied and sweaty and making animal threats of intimidation, that would be enough to scare a monster.
A large mass barreled into him from the side, taking him to the ground and pinning him beneath its weight. Steve struggled against the unyielding form above him, clawing at its skin with his blunt nails and kicking at its legs. The thing kept up an unbroken growl emanating from its chest, and rested sharp teeth against his cheek in threat.
So Steve turned his head, sunk his teeth into the thing’s furry shoulder, and held on.
Immediately, the growls turned to roars of anger and then yelps of pain. Eventually, the monster was whimpering like any wounded animal Steve had seen on hunting trips. Instead of pressing him into the ground, the thing was trying to pull away, fingers prying Steve’s face off of its shoulder.
When Steve finally fell back, it was with blood and meat clenched between his teeth. Arms shaking from the strain, he shoved himself up and spit his mouthful at the monster before him. It was still whimpering, jerking away from him as if Steve might come back for seconds.
Steve found the idea didn’t repulse him. He should be the one getting eaten right now, and the feeling of sinking his teeth into a thing meant to consume him was a heady sort of power he had never felt before.
A deafening roar filled the clearing, and all at once the monsters dropped back to leave a clear circle around Steve. And the biggest of them stepped forward from the sidelines, into that circle. This one had fallen back before, always at the edge of Steve’s awareness with a watchfulness that prickled across his neck. He had focused on the immediate threats while the larger monster watched, but now it was reversed.
Every other growling creature was standing back, making no move towards Steve. And the biggest in their midst was approaching him with the casual grace and intense focus of a predator on the kill. Steve lowered himself, eyes never leaving the threat, and scooped up a solid rock from the ground.
When the monster feinted towards his left before striking to his right, Steve followed the feint and swung the rock at its face. It staggered back, spitting blood, and then moved supernaturally fast to smack Steve across the face with the back of its hand and bat the rock out of his grip with the other hand. The monster pulled back, tilting its head in consideration as Steve brought his arms in front to defend himself.
Steve shifted his stance, bared his bloody teeth a third time, and waited for the attack. When it came, it wasn’t at all what he had expected. The monster swung claws by Steve’s face, and when he dodged away it let him. And there was the undeniable sense that it had let him. Steve knew with an innate judgment that this thing could have moved faster, pressed harder, and simply had chosen not to.
It continued, making slow swings that forced Steve to dodge in a circle, but never came close to hurting him. When Steve moved too close to the barrier created by the rest of the Pack, they would swipe at his heels and force him closer to his opponent. His opponent who, it would seem, was toying with him rather than fighting him.
Steve was being tired out, exhausted to an inevitable end. His legs began to shake from the effort of holding up his weight, and on the next dodge he stumbled to his knees. Growling at the physical limitations, at the looming end to his resistance, he shoved himself up for the next swing. It didn’t come.
Instead, the monster dropped low and kicked Steve’s feet from under him. He fell too fast to catch himself and smacked into the ground with enough force to send his ears ringing. He groaned at the disorientation and made to push himself back up, wholly unsure if he was even capable of it, when a weight settled against his back.
He thrashed against the creature above him until its teeth cut into the back of his neck. It pressed him firmly against the ground and growled, only pulling back when he stilled. And then it pulled back just far enough to lick the blood from the nape of his neck. And Steve…
He collapsed his weight to the dirt beneath him. His breath was heaving after the battle and the drawn out feinting and dodging afterwards, his legs and arms heavy with exhaustion. He had told himself he would go down fighting, and he had. He had fought until he exhausted himself.
He had also told himself he would make these monsters earn their meal, and he had. And they had. Steve twisted his face to the side, pressing his cheek to the ground, and stretched out his neck. It wouldn’t be such a disappointment, he thought, to have his throat torn out by something so much stronger than himself. Even in defeat, there could be solace in facing the inevitable without cowardice.
The monster nosed around his neck into the hollow of his throat and breathed deeply, licking there as well. Steve breathed, and waited for the final kiss of teeth. Instead, the monster pulled back completely and moved down his body, licking down his spine. Steve shifted when it reached his ass, remembering all at once the rapes depicted in the Hall. Dread rose in his throat, choking the breath from him.
And then the monster licked into him. Steve gasped at the feeling, pushing back into it. He had never heard of the Pack doing this before. They had used sacrifices for their own pleasure without thought to the body providing it, leaving some so torn up as to be unrecognizable when the remains were collected in the morning. This creature should be tearing Steve open, ripping him apart until he was spread across the clearing in pieces.
Instead, it forced an arm under him to prop up his hips and licked deeper into him. Its tongue was long, longer than Steve thought should make sense, and the saliva it spread between his cheeks and into his hole was viscous like slobber. Without thinking, he moaned and rocked his hips. He was caught between the sensation of rutting into the warm arm beneath him and pressing back into the wet tongue behind.
The creature rumbled behind him, a sound that Steve could tell was different from the growls before. This struck him as a pleased noise, an approval that shot straight through Steve to his hardening cock. He moaned again, and kept rocking between the arm and tongue as pleasure built.
Steve had never felt this before. He had been the one licking into his partners, eating out the girls he brought to his bed and bringing them to climax with his tongue and fingers and cock. Now, Steve was sure he had offered a pitiful performance in comparison to the skill bringing him undone.
The creature’s tongue moved like another limb, prodding deeper and curling around to make delicious pressure. The rough edge of the muscle rubbed against his inner walls with a delicate friction that he thought should hurt, and maybe it did. But any pain was cut through with a pleasure stronger than he could understand. And the saliva kept coming as the creature drooled over him, like Steve’s ass was the finest meal it had ever tasted.
When the creature pulled back and wrapped its hands around Steve’s waist to yank his hips into the air, he sobbed at the loss. He still twitched in its hold, desperate for the pressure back against his cock or coiling inside his hole. It jostled him slightly, claws biting into his skin as it held him still, and even that sent sparks of heat shooting up his spine.
Before Steve could get too desperate, something new pressed against his hole. The creature, the supernatural man that had taken Steve down and then taken him apart with pleasure instead of violence, pushed his dick into Steve in one slow, continuous thrust. The sound Steve made, halfway between a moan and a scream, was purely involuntary.
The stretch of his body around the thick cock was divine. He thought probably this was meant to hurt, but perhaps he had lost track of time while the man was licking him open because his body gave way as only one well prepared and lubricated could. The feeling of it was almost overwhelming, the slow push into his deepest places. He could practically gag on it, by the time furred hips met his ass.
(This, too, was a new sensation to him. He was used to the smooth, supple skin of the ladies he would court. He wasn’t even familiar with the feel of another man’s stubble, and this animal-like fur was wholly unknown to him. It did not, however, dampen his passion.)
The man, the man Steve didn’t even know how to address, was still rumbling his approval as he rocked gently back and forth. Letting Steve get used to the feeling, the girth and the length within him. It could only be a kindness, an act born from the desire to not hurt him. A desire to make Steve feel good too.
Moaning again, crying out his pleasure for his partner to hear, Steve presented his throat again with no thought beyond getting more of this man on him. His lips, his teeth, his entire body pressed against Steve’s in any way that he could have it. If Steve was going to die tonight, he would at least take what pleasure he could on his way out.
The man didn’t disappoint. He dropped down to press along Steve’s back, licking across Steve’s shoulders and throat. Feeling that tongue against his pulse point, knowing where it had been, flooded Steve’s veins with heat. He needed more.
Steve rocked back onto the man’s cock, and it was all the invitation needed for him to begin thrusting in earnest. His strength was unbelievable, forcing Steve across the ground with only the power of his pistoning cock. It forced Steve’s breath out in weak “uh uh uh”s that seemed loud in the quiet clearing. The only sounds were Steve’s breathless gasps of pleasure, and the man’s purring rumble.
Steve felt something swelling at the base of the man’s cock and clenched down, immediately crying out at the tighter feeling. It made his cock feel even bigger dragging against Steve’s walls. The man wasn’t unaffected either-his rumbling stuttered and his thrusts grew more frantic. His hands scrabbled at Steve’s sides, cutting into him again as the man forced his hips higher.
With the new angle, the next thrust landed right on Steve’s prostate. Steve jerked, scratching into the dirt for more leverage to shove himself back into that feeling. His cries got louder and words began to come through, a babbling string of yes god please more more more that he couldn’t have controlled for anything.
The man, or maybe a benevolent god based on how the night had turned, met Steve’s enthusiasm by reaching one hand from Steve’s waist to his cock and roughly jerking it in time with the punishing thrusts. The roughness, pain and pleasure mixing into some beast of sensation that plowed through Steve, sent him hurtling into orgasm.
As Steve was sent rocketing, screaming, into release, he felt the man’s fangs return to the juncture between neck and shoulder and latch on. The sharp pain of the bite and the intense orgasm still rolling through him left Steve senseless. When he came back to awareness, it was with a slow floating sensation as if riding a cloud.
First, he felt the full weight of the man collapsed on top of him. There was a swollen protrusion at the base of the man’s cock that felt too large to fit inside Steve, but somehow it had. Steve clenched again, felt the man shake against him, and came to the conclusion that however it had got inside, it wasn’t coming out any time soon.
Next, Steve felt the vibrations from the man’s chest shaking into his back. He could hear howls going up all around them, the Pack he had forgotten in his passion. And under that, he could hear the man growling again. Missing the pleased purring from before, Steve tried humming softly to soothe the man. With his throat raw from screaming, it came out as a broken and poor imitation of the earlier purring.
It seemed to hit the mark though. As soon as Steve began his pathetic hum, the man’s growls turned back to purring and he set his mouth to the aching bite mark in Steve’s neck. He offered soft kitten licks to the broken skin, a comfort and apology in one that pushed Steve towards unconsciousness.
His body was warm and delightfully sore, still stuffed full in the most perfect way. The weight of the man on top of him was like a weighted blanket drawing him towards sleep, and the constant purring wrapped around him soothingly. When the howls died down, there was nothing to stop him from drifting.
He came awake gently when the man finally pulled out of him, the swelling having gone down sometime while he dozed, and he whined at the loss before even processing it. There was an answering chuff and a clawed hand stroking carefully down his side, avoiding cutting him open more. He was rolled onto his back and when he forced his eyes open, the man’s face was right before his own.
It was still oddly stretched and part-human, part-canine. The pronounced bones pushed oddly against the skin at his browline and jaw, as if they didn’t fully fit within his body. Most striking were the warm, dark brown eyes that reflected intelligence. This was not an animal, or a dumb creature. This was a man capable of complex thought, and all his focus was directed to Steve.
For a moment Steve thought the man was going to kiss him, but instead he licked a line across Steve’s mouth. Steve wondered if the man even knew how to kiss, but if he didn’t Steve certainly wouldn’t complain about the licking. Steve tipped his head back and closed his eyes, humming his contentment when that perfect tongue returned to his throat.
The next thing he was aware of was being suspended in the air, held up by an arm under his knees and back. His eyes opened to slits, and he could make out a pale sunlight through the swaying branches of trees above him. He was being carried away from the clearing, and if he were more awake he might have the presence of mind to realize how strange that was. Every other sacrifice had been murdered in that clearing.
The familiar purring started up again and Steve didn’t need to look to know who was carrying him. He buried his face in the man’s warm chest and let himself drift away again, feeling inexplicably safe and cared for.