Preview - Willow Creek Werewolves universe, 3rd person, Deaf werewolf dirtbiker x f. character (Patreon)

So, instead of working on the blind naga that will be coming out for the very end of the month, this 10k word monstrosity took over my brain in a single night, and I wanted to share a preview with you. It's set in the Willow Creek Werewolves universe, but it's not set in Willow Creek itself, and this pack/wolves aren't the same as Ben and Tanner's ones.

If you're Deaf and would like to do a sensitivity read of the whole thing before I post it, I'd be really grateful, so do get in touch either here or on Discord. While the plot isn't centred around the MMC being Deaf, it's obviously a huge part of his story/life/interactions, so I'd like to be as respectful and accurate as possible, not being Deaf or part of Deaf culture myself.

Content of the story: after breaking up with her werewolf fiancé a month and a half earlier, Lori booked a one night stay in a remote, former logging town, and goes hiking to clear her head. While on a trail, she slips and grazes her arm, and while she's picking herself up afterwards, a dirt biker comes almost out of nowhere and narrowly avoids slamming into her. The two connect, she realises he's Deaf, and since she knows Sign, she's able to chat with him a bit. Only trouble is, she's pretty much done with werewolves, and it turns out that, against all odds, he's one too. So the two part ways after some careful flirting, and she returns to her B&B. Fate has other plans though, as he and his two friends are in the bar right next to her B&B that night... She thinks 'what's the harm - it's only a one night stand' and lets him join her at her table for dinner...

Content/warnings: minor injury/blood/shallow graze, mention of breakup, non-specific Sign Language (I try to keep locations nice and vague for my story settings, so that goes for language too on the whole. Willow Creek universe is kind of USA coded, but never actually mentioned).

Working wordcount: 10,444 words. Preview wordcount: 2406

(Please keep in mind this is a WIP, so you're more than welcome to point out any spelling/grammar goofs!! Lemme know if you're excited for the rest, or if you're not bothered too, I guess!)

_

When Lori took a tumble on a hiking trail in the middle of absolutely bumfuck nowhere, with nothing but the silver detritus of old pine trees and prickly, summer-dry scrub for company, and a whole lot of red-ochre sand, she thought she could probably be forgiven for simply bursting into tears. 

Big, ugly sobs wracked her entire body as she sat with her legs sprawled apart on the trail and blood running down her arm from a massive graze on the outside of her forearm. Pain radiated out from it in rapid fire pulses that mirrored her heartbeat, and through the blur of her tears she looked down at it and cursed. She’d downed the last of her water half an hour ago, and now the wound was full of grit and sand, and she had no way of washing it out. 

“Fuck,” she spat through clenched teeth and then, just for good measure, she yelled it into the mountains all around her. “Fuck!”

The adrenaline from the fall began to fade and dissolve into her bloodstream a few seconds later, and left her hurting all over, with a bruised hip too and a sore backside to add insult to injury. 

A buzzing in the distance gave her pause, and she frowned and listened, hoping it wasn’t some kind of particularly aggressive wasp closing in on her. It drew closer and closer, until she realised it was the whining purr of a lone dirt bike engine. 

“Maybe they’ll have some water?” she whispered, gathering herself to stand up while the bike got closer and closer. 

Actually, they were closing in at an alarming rate, and as she looked over her shoulder from where she was still sat on the trail, she saw an orange bike skimming over the roots and rocks on the trail and leaving a cloud of pale dust behind them that drifted out through the old, former pine plantation. 

It had all been left to go to ruin, with lots of dead wood fallen across the trails and leaning up against the remaining trees, looking ready to tumble at the first breath of wind. Wild blueberry plants had grown up around the ragged stumps, inviting other plants to move in around them until the pale grasses were choked with flora and wildflowers while the remnants of the logging industry rotted around them like broken teeth. 

As the biker ripped up the track she’d just scrambled up behind her, she realised she was going to get run over if she didn't move, so she scrabbled to her feet just the rider flew up over the ridge. The bike leapt into the air, carried by the momentum of the climb and the sudden summit of the trail, and she screamed and dived out of the way just in time. The biker landed and came to a bad stop, flipping over the bars as the front wheel kicked to one side and ejected them out into the nearest pile of brush. 

“Holy shit,” she yelped. “Oh my god, are you ok?” 

The rider didn’t respond as he staggered to his feet and shook himself out before turning the key in his already-stalled bike so it didn't drain the battery while it lay on its right side in the dusty grit of the trail. He was wearing dirt bike gear that consisted of some pretty serious looking black boots, and pink and purple matching pants and top that accentuated his lean, wiry figure. She wasn’t even sure he had any protective armour on underneath, but at least he had a helmet and goggles. As he pulled the goggles off, the iridescent blue and pink lenses caught the sun and she blinked, trying not to stare at his incredible, hazel green eyes as he approached her. Fuck, she hoped he wasn’t angry with her for causing him to crash. The last thing she needed was some random man getting violent with her while she was alone in the middle of absolutely bumfuck nowhere, after all. 

“Are you ok?” she asked. “I’m sorry, there wasn’t much I could do to get out of your way before —” 

The man made a sharp gesture with his right hand that brought her up short. He signed ‘Deaf’, bringing his index finger from the corner of his mouth, or where it would have been underneath his full face helmet, and then brought it to his ear. 

He did it with an air of frustration about him, the gesture sharp and impatient, and she wondered if he was in pain after the fall as well. A moment later though, his frown pulled into an even angrier scowl, and he tugged his dusty, moth-eaten gloves off, let them drop to the dirt, and began to fiddle with the chinstrap of his helmet. 

He pulled it off over his head, revealing a shaggy, slightly sweaty, dark blond mullet haircut that was entirely in keeping with his persona as a dirt biker, and he put his helmet down on top of his gloves. As he straightened, she saw that he was at least a head taller than her, at somewhere around six foot, and that he had double sets of tiny hoop earrings in each lobe that looked like stainless steel. They caught the light as he moved and she saw a matching stainless steel necklace peeking out from beneath the round neck of his motocross top. 

He was still scowling at her, but holy hell, he was handsome in a slightly feral kind of way, with an obvious two-day stubble around his jaw and mouth, and the sharpest bone structure she’d ever seen in her entire life. 

He brought his right arm up and tapped his forearm in the same place where she realised her own dramatic-looking graze was, and she looked down at it to find that it was still dripping blood onto the trail at her feet. Her hiking shorts were scuffed and covered in blood too, and she realised she must look a fright. 

She cupped her left hand around her right elbow, examining the shallow, bloody graze again and wincing as the little bits of grit and dirt pulled on the ruined skin. When she looked up he was sloughing out of a tiny rucksack on his back and opening it up to reveal a bladder full of water. 

“Oh my God, thank you,” she said, and he tossed her a shy little smirk that made her completely forget that she was actually quite sore. 

She ducked her head as she held out her wounded arm and he began to pour water over it, trying to catch his eye. They were the most incredible colour: somewhere between green and gold, with flecks of copper that sparked inwards from the edges of his irises. He flicked his gaze up to meet hers and she took the opportunity to sign, “You’re Deaf?” at him.

This close up, she could see he wasn’t wearing hearing aids, but she didn’t imagine they’d be particularly comfortable — or necessary — with his helmet on. 

He blinked in surprise then nodded, and, still pouring water over her with one hand, asked, “You?”

She shook her head. “I know some Sign though,” she said, speaking the words aloud as she signed them clumsily. It wasn’t easy to do while he was sloshing water over the patch of raw skin on her arm after all. “You’re riding the trails alone?” she asked as he lifted the bladder away and inspected her arm. 

He nodded, then put the lid on the bladder and put it back in his rucksack. Without looking at her, he went back to his bike, knelt down and picked it up, and she thought that was it, that he was just leaving, but instead, he let it fall over onto its other side, apparently not worried about damaging it at all, and reached for a tiny little bag that was lashed to the bodywork on that side. It had a cross on it, and she recognised it as a first aid kit. 

Damn, if he wasn’t her knight in extremely dusty bike gear. 

As he returned to her, she signed a shy, “Thank you,” and he offered her another one of those little lopsided smiles that showed a flash of his canine. It was thick and sharp in a way that made her think suddenly of her ex, and she wondered briefly about this man. But what are the chances of her coming across two Deaf werewolves in her lifetime?

Besides, if he was a werewolf, he probably wouldn’t need a first aid kit. They healed from almost any injury, excepting anything involving either silver weapons or wolfsbane poisoning. A tumble on the trails, even a broken leg, would be good as new within an hour at most for a werewolf. 

No, he was probably just some hopelessly reckless boy. 

Boy. The man was easily in his late twenties, with crinkled tan lines around his eyes that showed he laughed more than he scowled, and the weathered skin of someone who lived for being out of doors. 

He drew a packet from the first aid kit and unwrapped a wound dressing pad carefully without touching his dirty hands to it, setting the shiny side down on her wet skin. “Hold that there,” he signed. It didn’t quite cover the long, shallow graze, so he got another one out, then proceeded to wrap it with a stretchy bandage, tying it off. “Not too tight?”

She shook her head. “Thank you,” she said again. 

He stepped back and frowned again. “You’re hiking alone?” 

Lori nodded, then realised it was probably pretty dumb to admit to something like that, even if he had just helped her out. 

“You got far to go? Where are you headed?”

“There’s a car park about six miles from here,” she said, drawing out her phone from her pocket. As she unlocked it, the phone flashed up a low-battery warning and she cursed aloud. “I’ve got a paper map too,” she said, jabbing a thumb behind her at her rucksack to show him she wasn’t completely useless. 

He just nodded as if it had never occurred to him that she’d be so unprepared as not to have a backup with her. 

She zoomed in on the car park, then out until the blue dot showed their location. 

“You want a ride?” he asked, pointing at his bike. 

“No,” she said immediately and then laughed. “Thanks, but… without any gear, it seems kind of reckless. Plus, you just crashed.”

He grinned, flashing those big canines again and her heart skipped sideways. The only people she’d ever seen with teeth like that, subtle as the differences were, were indeed werewolves. “I only crashed because of you,” he said without sting in the way he signed it. 

“Touché.” 

Again, his whole face lit up, taking him from a sullen teenager to a handsome man her own age. 

“Are you ok?” she asked and he nodded. 

“Fine. I was more worried I’d done that to you,” he said, pointing at the dressed wound on her arm. “You hurt yourself anywhere else?”

She shook her head. “Took my eye off the trail. Thought I saw something down there in the trees and skidded out on some grit.”

He turned to follow where she’d pointed, narrowing his eyes, and as he did, the sunlight caught his irises and turned them gold for a moment. 

Her heart dropped. 

It wasn’t the sun. 

He was a werewolf. 

As he was focusing on the distance, trying to see with his advanced eyesight what she’d only seen as a blur (and whatever it had been would be long gone by now with all the noise from the dirt bike anyway), she took a deep breath and tried not to let her scent show her rising anxiety. 

Unfortunately, she’d always telegraphed everything she was feeling through her scent, apparently, and he turned sharply back to look at her, eyes narrowing. They were back to their astonishing green-amber hue now, but she knew exactly what she’d seen. 

“You ok?” he asked, and she watched his nostrils flare slightly as he caught the shift in her emotions. He could literally smell her discomfort now. 

She nodded. “Look, I’d better get going. I don’t want to be out here when the sun’s going down, and I’m probably gonna take it slow for a bit. Thank you so much for your help. I really appreciate it.”

He inclined his head, but looked… disappointed? Uncertain? “Yeah, cool,” he signed, the movement sloppy and distracted. “Alright. You take care, ok?”

“You too.”

He turned away from her and stooped to pick up his helmet and gloves, and she tried really hard not to stare at his ass in his gear, but it looked really good. He was rangy and lean, all sharp angles and narrow waist, and when he walked, his hips had a natural sway to them that just… did things to her. His footsteps faltered slightly as he reached his bike, helmet now back over that shaggy, blond mullet. A breeze had blown her scent down to him and he froze for a heartbeat before securing the second cuff of his gloves, settling his goggles over his eyes, and heaving the 2-stroke upright again. 

With one long leg braced on the ground, he carefully set up the kick start, then fired up the bike with one easy, downward kick, and it belched out a load of blueish smoke that luckily drifted away from her, down over the open, log-strewn clearing below the trail. 

He glanced back at her before he put his goggles back in place over his eyes and she mustered a smile that she knew was sad all the way around the edges, and signed, “Ride safe,” to him. 

He paused, then bowed his head, turned his gaze back down the trail ahead of him, and revved the shit out of the little 2-stroke. He thoughtfully didn’t spin the wheels, but he still left in a choking cloud of dust, and by the time the breeze had cleared it, he was leaping the bike over a log jump at the bottom of the incline. Once he’d sailed over it, the track opened up into a wide, flat path, and he yanked the bike up into a long wheelie that had her gasping and clapping her hand over her mouth. 

To her surprise, he set the wheel down and then came to a skidding halt at the end of the short stretch of flat track that spun the bike in a gentle arc that allowed him to look back up at her. 

Knowing he was a werewolf, and that he would probably be able to see the sweat that was starting to stipple her skin at her temples in the summer heat, even from that distance, she signed in a hugely exaggerated way, effectively shouting at him across the distance. “You were supposed to be riding safely!” 

As he tipped his head back, she could see him shaking with laughter, even with her inferior human vision. With the bike still upright, he balanced on both pegs and shook his head. Then, instead of signing something back at her, he just waved and did a smooth turn in the dirt and rode off into the denser pine trail at the bottom of the hill. 

Something twisted in her core that felt dangerously like attraction.

With a sigh, Lori listened to the retreating, mosquito purr of his bike and then began her own, careful descent after him.

_

Lemme know what you think!

(Her fiance was Deaf and a werewolf too, in case that's not clear from this preview. Backstory literally right after the cut off point though...!)