WIP: My Knotty Slut Phase Ch. 7 (Patreon)

Chapter 7: Betrayal

I woke up with a crick in my neck and a raging boner.

“…Ow.”

At some point during the night I’d abandoned any pretence of going to bed. One towel had become a pillow. The other was still wrapped loosely around my waist, having somehow survived eight hours of tossing, turning, and existential crisis.

The television had timed out to a black screen. My mug of tea sat cold on the coffee table. Again. I was beginning to suspect I wasn’t very good at finishing beverages. For one blissful, groggy second, I couldn’t remember why I’d slept on the sofa. Then it all came back.

WolfInTheWoods.

Shane.

UrinalPup.

Gods.

I groaned into the towel. “Morning, sunshine,” I muttered. “Ready for another emotionally stable day?”

A muffled laugh drifted down the hallway.

Not Harry. Higher. Lighter. Followed by Harry’s unmistakable baritone saying something too quiet to make out. I closed my eyes.

“…Of course.”

The flat wasn’t empty after all.

A heartbeat later another sound floated through the morning stillness. The rhythmic creak of his bed frame. A steady, insistent beat. Soft, breathy gasps. Harry’s low, encouraging grunts.

“That’s it, bunny,” I heard him growl, voice thick. “Ride that cock.”

I lay there staring at the ceiling.

It was oddly… comforting.

Not the activity itself. Gods knew I’d had enough of other people’s sex lives lately. And my own. No. It was the routine of it. Harry bringing someone home. Someone leaving the next morning looking rumpled and thoroughly shagged. The kettle going on. The shower running. Life continuing, whether I had a personality left or not. There was something reassuringly predictable about it all.

The creaking picked up. Faster. More frantic. The bunny’s cries grew sharper.

“Harder,” he whimpered, thin and reedy. “Please, Harry, harder.”

“Anything for you,” Harry grunted, and the slap of his hips against arse echoed down the hallway like a metronome I’d heard too many times to count.

I untangled myself from the towels with considerably less dignity than I’d have liked, scrubbed both paws over my face, and stood.

Today’s plan was simple. Attend lectures. Pretend I wasn’t thinking about a coyote who had vanished off the face of the earth. Definitely not search the quad every time I saw brown fur.

Simple.

Absolutely foolproof.

Then I went fully vertical, and a dull pressure in my lower abdomen made itself known. My bladder, full and insistent, demanded immediate attention. I groaned and shuffled towards the loo. The sounds from Harry’s room grew louder as I approached. Creaking. Breathless moans. Those low, guttural grunts that lived in my skull now whether I wanted them or not. I was almost at the bathroom door when I passed his room.

The door wasn’t just ajar. It was wide fucking open. And there they were.

Harry on his knees behind a white-furred bunny, who was on all fours with his face buried in a pillow. Harry’s broad back was to me at first, muscle rolling with every thrust. That thick red wolf cock — the one I’d already seen enough times to stop pretending I hadn’t — glistened with lube and precum as it pistoned into a stretched pink hole. The bunny’s fluffy tail was lifted high, giving me a perfect, unobstructed view I had not asked for and did not walk away from.

The room smelled of sweat, sex, and that sharp metallic tang of arousal that clung to Harry like a second cologne.

“Fuck, you’re tight, bunny,” Harry growled. “Gripping me like a fist. Taking it so good.”

“Gods, yes,” the bunny whimpered, voice cracking. “So big. Splitting me open—”

Harry chuckled, dark and pleased, and sped up. He reached around — not for the bunny’s cock. His paw splayed across a trembling stomach.

“No touching yourself, slut. You’re gonna come from my dick alone. You’re gonna come from being bred.”

The bunny sobbed into the pillow. “I can’t—it’s too much—Harry, please—”

I should have walked.

My bladder was screaming. My own forgotten arousal was a thick, heavy weight against the towel. My eyes were glued to it anyway. It was almost theatrical, the bunny’s performance. The raw animal need in Harry’s hips was not. That part was real. That part always was.

Harry shifted his angle.

The bunny shrieked, back arching. “There—oh fuck, right there—don’t stop—please don’t ever stop—” He was rambling now, filth and praise spilling out of him. “Best dick I’ve ever had—no one’s ever fucked me like this—oh gods, I’m gonna—”

That was when Harry glanced backwards, his gaze catching mine.

Eyes dark. Intense. Over his shoulder.

Straight into mine.

He didn’t stop.

He didn’t miss a beat.

A slow, predatory grin spread across his face.

He saw me.

He saw me watching.

And he put on a show.

“Gonna pump you so full of my pups,” Harry snarled, loud enough that it was for me, not the bunny. “Gonna breed this tight little hole until you’re dripping. Belly swollen with it. You want that? You want my fucking cum?”

The bunny could only sob and nod. His untouched cock began to spurt, thin streams painting the sheets as a hands-free orgasm tore through him. He shook, cried out something incoherent about being wrecked, and went limp. A boneless, panting mess.

The sight of it sent Harry over.

One last brutal thrust. Buried to the hilt. Head thrown back. A guttural sound ripped out of him as he emptied himself, thighs straining, balls drawing up, pumping a load so heavy I swore I saw the bunny’s stomach hitch with it.

I tore myself away.

Stumbled into the bathroom. Closed the door. Leaned against it with my legs shaking. Harry’s deep, satisfied chuckle followed me. So did the bunny’s weak little whimpers.

I looked down.

The towel was tented obscenely. A dark spot of precum already soaking through.

“Fuck,” I told my reflection. “Just… fuck.”

I pissed like a man who’d narrowly survived a war. Then I wrapped a paw around myself and wanked with all the ceremony of taking out the bins. Fast. Ugly. Forehead against the tiles. I came with a bitten-off sound and immediately wanted to apologise to the bathroom.

I cleaned up, dressed like a person with a future, and decided I was going to behave like a good uni boy today.

Not a depraved, broken-hearted slut with a front-row seat to his roommate’s breeding programme.

That lasted as long as it took to open the door.

The kitchen smelled of coffee and butter. Harry stood at the hob in a faded university gym shirt and charcoal joggers, humming, flipping something in a pan. His fur had settled from a shower. One stubborn tuft on top of his head refused to cooperate.

The bunny, whatever his name was, was gone.

Walk of shame accomplished in the time it had taken me to disgrace myself in the loo and dress in my room. Efficient.

Harry glanced over his shoulder, this time without the heat and intensity of being buried balls deep in his latest conquest. 

“Oh. You’re alive.”

“Barely.”

“You snore.”

“I absolutely do not.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I have recordings.”

“You are a liar and a scoundrel.”

“I’ll send them to you.”

“You’ll be hearing from my solicitor.”

He laughed — that deep, easy laugh that always sounded like it started somewhere in his chest.

“Coffee?”

“Please.”

He reached for a cupboard, grabbed a mug without asking, and poured.

Coffee.

Not Earl Grey.

Coffee.

The way I used to drink it.

Two sugars.

A splash of oat milk.

He slid it across the island.

“There you go.”

I picked it up. Took a cautious sip.

And blinked.

It was exactly right.

I looked up.

“You remembered.”

Harry frowned.

“Remembered what?”

“How I take my coffee.”

He shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You drank it like that for weeks when you first moved in.”

“That was… months ago.”

“So?”

“So I switched to tea.”

“You switched to Earl Grey,” he corrected. “Because you said coffee was making you jittery before lectures.”

I stared at him.

“I… did say that.”

“You’ve barely touched the stuff since.”

A beat.

“You remember all that?”

Harry gave me an odd look. “Course I do.”

I wasn’t sure why that hit me.

Maybe because I couldn’t have told you how he took his.

Harry caught whatever expression had crossed my face and smirked, “Wes, you alphabetise the spice rack. It’s easy to remember how you do things, because it’s always the same.”

“That is called organisation.”

“You apologise to the microwave when you stop it early.”

“It works hard.”

“You thank the bus driver.”

“They’re providing a service.”

“You folded one of my jumpers because it was looking a bit lonely on the drying rack.”

“…it was.”

He barked out a laugh, shaking his head, “You’re such a weird little fox.”

I smiled into the mug before I could stop myself, “So I’ve been told.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward.

It never seemed to be.

Harry fussed over breakfast. I sat at the island scrolling absent-mindedly through emails from lecturers I absolutely should’ve read yesterday. Something about assignment deadlines. Something about a guest speaker. Something about the importance of attendance.

Oops.

Outside, students drifted past our building in little clusters, backpacks slung over one shoulder, coffees clutched like life support. Someone cycled through the drizzle wearing a bright yellow poncho that billowed behind them like a superhero’s cape.

Campus was waking up.

“You’ve got that morning lecture first, right?” Harry asked.

“Mm.”

“And then literature.”

I looked up. “How do you know my timetable?”

He shrugged without turning around. “You left it on the fridge.”

“For a week.”

“You colour-coded it.”

“I did colour-code it.”

“It was difficult to miss.”

Fair.

He plated up two absurdly perfect omelettes and slid one in front of me.

“Eat.”

“Bossy.”

“You’ll complain about feeling faint by eleven otherwise.”

“I would never.”

“Wes.”

“…probably.”

I picked up my fork.

The first bite was annoyingly good.

I narrowed my eyes.

“You put herbs in this.”

“Basil.”

“Fresh?”

“Our window box.”

I blinked.

“You stole my basil.”

“I harvested your basil.”

“Harvested.”

“Mhm.”

“You harvested my basil without filling out the appropriate paperwork.”

“It signed the consent form.”

“Oh, did it?”

“Very enthusiastic signature.”

I laughed.

Properly laughed.

For the first time since waking up, the knot between my shoulders loosened. Maybe only a little. But enough.

Harry looked strangely pleased with himself.

The smug bastard.

I was licking basil off my fork when my phone buzzed against the island. I glanced at it. Howlr.

I almost didn’t open it. Then I did, because I am an idiot, and last night’s message was still sitting there like a stain I hadn’t quite scrubbed off.

Harry noticed. Of course he did.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I locked the screen. “App nonsense.”

He waited. The bastard was good at waiting.

I sighed, “Some piss freak keeps making new accounts,” I said, as lightly as I could, which was not very. “Blocked him. Reported him. He made another one. Used my name this time, which is… new. And disgusting. Anyway. Gone again.”

Harry’s spatula stopped halfway to the sink. “He used your name?”

“Wesley, even. Full humiliation.” I took a sip of coffee like that was a punchline. “It’s fine. Campus perverts are part of the tuition.”

“That’s not fine.”

“It’s an app, Harry. The whole point is strangers being unwell at you.”

He set the spatula down too carefully, “Can I see it?”

“Absolutely not. I have just eaten. I intend to keep it that way.”

“Wes.”

“I blocked him,” I said. “I’m not going to start forwarding my hate-mail to my roommate because some bloke wants to baptise me in golden showers. I’m embarrassing enough as it is.”

Harry’s ears had gone tight. “If he does it again, you show me.”

“Yes, Dad.”

He didn’t smile. “I’m serious.”

Something in his face made my joke feel cheap. I looked at the coffee instead. Two sugars. Oat milk. The version of me he’d filed away months ago.

“It’s daylight,” I said. “I’m going to lectures. I’m not going to get murdered between biomechanics and the quad.”

“Location’s still on?”

I rolled my eyes, but I checked anyway. The little share sat there, smug and glowing.

“Yes. You can continue your career as my parole officer.”

“That’s not—” He stopped. Rubbed the back of his neck. “Just… be careful.”

“I am the picture of caution,” I said, and stole the last bit of omelette off his plate so we could pretend this had stayed normal.

It didn’t.

By the time we’d finished breakfast, the rain had eased into a fine mist that hung over campus like gauze. Students poured along the footpaths in every direction, umbrellas bobbing through the grey morning.

I slung my backpack over one shoulder and reached for the door.

“You heading to the gym?” I asked, changing the subject. 

Harry nodded. “After class.”

“See you tonight?”

“Hopefully.”

I opened the door. Cold air drifted inside. For the briefest moment, I caught Harry watching me, that look was still on him.

Concern.

“Have a good day, roomie,” he said.

“You too, daddy.”

The door clicked shut behind me.

I headed across campus with coffee in one paw, a backpack on my shoulder, and absolutely no intention whatsoever of looking for one particular coyote.

I lasted almost three minutes.

Cyclists threaded between pedestrians with all the confidence of people who had clearly forgotten brakes existed. A group of engineering students stood outside the student union arguing about drones. Someone had chalked GOOD LUCK FINALS SURVIVORS across the main walkway despite exams being months away.

University students weren’t known for their relationship with calendars. I fell into the familiar current of bodies flowing towards the academic buildings. Backpack. Coffee. Earbuds. Thousands of furs all pretending they knew exactly where they were going.

It should have felt ordinary. Instead, I caught myself scanning the crowd. Not consciously. Just… Looking.

Brown fur.

No.

Another coyote.

Too tall.

One crossing the quad.

Wrong jacket.

“Gods’ sake,” I muttered.

I wasn’t looking for him.

You’re just being observant.

There was a difference.

Probably.

A squirrel nearly walked straight into me because I was too busy craning my neck towards the athletics fields.

“Sorry!”

“My fault,” I replied automatically.

It wasn’t.

I was distracted.

Annoyingly distracted.

I tried to focus on anything else. The enormous oak in the centre of the quad. The bronze university mascot someone had dressed in a fluorescent pink scarf. The coffee cart with the queue stretching halfway across the plaza.

Anything.

My eyes drifted back to the track. Empty. I laughed quietly to myself.

“You’re unbelievable.”

One nice evening. One walk home. One cuddle. And apparently I’d decided to become the patron saint of pining. I was better than this. Surely.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

For one ridiculous heartbeat, I thought—

Shane.

It wasn’t.

Just an announcement that my morning lecture had moved rooms.

“Right,” I sighed. “Back to reality.”

I turned towards the building. As I climbed the broad stone steps, I glanced back over my shoulder one last time. The athletics field was still empty. I told myself I was relieved. I wasn’t entirely convinced.

My phone buzzed again. I almost ignored it. Almost. But the app that flashed across the screen made my stomach do something stupidly hopeful.

Howlr.

I stopped walking. Unlocked it too fast, already half-smiling like an idiot, already stupidly ready for ShaneTrack97 after so long an absence.

The smile died immediately.

Hey Wesley,

Have a good wank this morning? Bet you did. Saw you watching your wolf roommate wreck that bunny. You looked like a fucking dog in heat, all desperate and pathetic. Did you touch your useless little fox dick while you watched a real cock do the work? Don’t answer. I know you did.

You won’t need to wank when I’m done hosing you down in my golden brew. I’m going to fill you up from both ends, my little piss pet. I’ll fuck your throat until you’re gagging on my cock, then I’ll wash it all down with a bladderful of hot, steaming piss straight into your stomach. You’ll be so full of me you’ll taste it for a week.

And that tight little arse of yours? Oh, I’m going to fucking ruin it. I’ll breed you until your belly is swollen with my cum, then I’ll plug you up tight. Just when you think you can’t take anymore, I’ll flip you over and baptize your pretty white fur in a shower of my filth. I want to see you covered in it, head to toe, marinating in my piss and spunk like the dirty little urinal you are.

You think you’re broken now? I’ll shatter what’s left of you. You’ll be nothing but a whimpering, desperate mess, begging for my cock, my piss, my filth. Your only purpose will be to be my personal toilet, my cumdump, my piss pet.

I’m saving up a special batch for you, Wesley. Nice and strong, first thing in the morning. Just for you. I can’t wait to see your pristine white fur stained yellow with my waste. To see you choking on it, drowning in it.

Keep wanking to your roommate, Wesley. Enjoy your last moments of freedom. Because soon, the only thing you’ll be wanking to is the thought of me using you like the filthy, disgusting toilet you are.

I’ll be watching. Always.

I stared at it.

My expression went flat.

“…what.  the. fuck.”

I blinked once.

Twice.

Nope.

Still there.

My ears went hot.

“Absolutely not,” I muttered, already swiping like I could physically erase it from existence.

I was still standing there, half on the steps, when I realised something.

The username.

Wrong.

Not ShaneTrack97.

My stomach dropped.

I reopened it slowly.

urinalpup102

“…oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. A hundred and two.”

I exhaled hard through my nose, equal parts relief and disgust, and deleted the notification like it had personally offended me.

My phone buzzed again.

Another message.

This time I didn’t even look.

I shoved it back into my pocket and started walking.

“Not today,” I told myself firmly. “Not doing this today.”

I made it three steps before my brain betrayed me anyway.

Because somewhere in the back of my mind, I was still waiting for Shane.

Lecture was a smear.

I sat. I opened a notebook. I wrote the date like a functional adult and then spent forty minutes drawing a knot with a tiny cape, because some habits survive heartbreak and higher education.

The lecturer said words. I nodded at appropriate intervals. Someone in the row ahead fell asleep so aggressively I was a little jealous.

When it ended, I spilled out into the corridor with everyone else and told myself I would go to the library like a person with a degree to finish.

I went to the quad.

Just to walk.

Walking was allowed.

Brown fur near the coffee cart. Too short.

A coyote in a track jacket by the union. Wrong shoulders.

One laughing with his whole chest, and for a second my own chest did something stupid — then he turned, and it wasn’t him, and I wanted to kick the oak tree for being tall and unhelpful.

“Get a grip,” I muttered.

One night.

No dating.

No expectations.

That had been the deal.

So why did it feel like I’d been stood up for something that had never even been arranged?

I bought a sandwich I didn’t want. Ate three bites. Threw the rest away. Sat on a damp bench under the pink-scarfed mascot and opened Howlr before I could stop myself.

ShaneTrack97.

Nothing.

Still nothing.

I typed coyote again, like the app might have been confused the first six times.

It was not.

I locked the phone. Unlocked it. Read WolfInTheWoods’s last messages instead, which was a different flavour of pathetic.

Being wanted is easy. Someone sees your body.

Being known is terrifying. Someone sees you anyway.

I stared until the screen dimmed.

Then I went to literature, because I was still, technically, enrolled.

The seminar was on whether suffering improved art.

I did not raise my hand.

I had notes.

I had opinions.

I had a coyote-shaped bruise under my ribs and a piss-stalker who apparently had a window into our flat, and I was not about to workshop that in front of eighteen other literature students and one old vixen who used the word liminal too confidently.

When it let out, the mist had turned to proper rain.

I put my hood up, slung my bag higher, and started home.

No more looking.

I meant it this time.

I was halfway across the far side of campus, cutting past the athletics centre because it was the fastest way back to our building, when I saw him.

Brown fur.

Leather jacket.

That easy, wiry height.

Amber eyes I would have known in the dark.

Shane!

He was standing under the overhang with a kit bag at his feet, scrolling his phone, rain beading on his ears. Alive. Real. Not unmatched. Not imagined. Not a fever I’d invented because I was lonely.

My whole body went stupid with relief. I actually smiled. I took one step toward him. Then someone jogged past, a stocky hare in university track kit, and shouted without slowing down:

“Eugene! You coming to film night or are you flaking again?”

Shane — 

the coyote —

looked up, grinned that same easy grin, and called back,

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there, you menace.”

Eugene.

The name landed in my ears like a wrong note. I stopped walking. The hare was already gone. The coyote under the overhang was still there, still smiling at nothing, and then he turned his head and saw me.

The smile died so fast it was almost funny.

Almost.

“Wes,” he said.

Not surprised like a coincidence.

Caught.

I heard my own voice come out strangely calm.

“Shane.”

He flinched.

Good.

I walked the rest of the way under the overhang because I was not going to have this conversation with rain in my ears. Up close he smelled the same. Sandalwood. Clean sweat. The night that had ruined me for every anonymous cock on Howlr.

He looked sick.

“I can explain,” he said.

People who can explain never start with that.

“You’re Eugene,” I said.

He swallowed. His ears folded back.

“Yeah.”

“Not Shane.”

“Shane’s… a username.”

“A username you deleted.”

His gaze flicked away, toward the track, toward anywhere that wasn’t my face.

“Wes—”

“Did I imagine you walking me home?” I asked. “The bakery stairs. The plants. The record player. You calling me pretty.” My throat had gone tight. I hated that. “You held me after. You don’t get to look at the floor and make that less real.”

“It was real,” he said, too fast. “That’s the problem. It wasn’t supposed to—”

He stopped. 

There it was.

Wasn’t supposed to.

The rain ticked on the overhang.

I heard myself laugh. One short, ugly sound.

“What wasn’t it supposed to do, Eugene?”

He dragged a paw down his muzzle.

“Harry asked me,” he said.

The athletic complex went very quiet, even with the rain, even with students splashing past us ten metres away.

“Harry?,” I repeated.

Eugene nodded, miserable. Not smirking. Not cruel. Just a decent-looking coyote who had been kind to me on purpose, which was somehow worse than if he’d been a bastard.

“He said you were having a rough time,” Eugene said. “Said the app stuff was… hollowing you out. He didn’t want me to date you. He didn’t want a trick. He asked me to give you one night that felt like it meant something. Just—be decent. Take you for a drink. Treat you like a person.” His voice dropped. “I wasn’t supposed to let you fall for it. I wasn’t supposed to fall into it either. He told me to make it one night and disappear after, so you wouldn’t get attached.”

I stood there and felt the evening rearrange itself.

The bar.

The gin he ordered without asking.

The books on the shelf.

You’re pretty.

You deserve to be treated right.

The fluffed pillow.

The forehead kiss under the tree.

Harry told him to disappear.

That was why the profile was gone.

Not because he’d met someone.

Not because I’d imagined it.

Because my roommate had written me a scene, cast a coyote, and then had him ghost me for my own good.

“He paid you,” I said, because I needed it to be uglier, simpler.

Eugene shook his head at once.

“No. Gods, no. He’s—he’s a mate. From around the department. He asked a favour. I said yes because he looked properly worried about you.” He finally met my eyes. “I am sorry. I should’ve said no. Or I should’ve told you. I didn’t think you’d…” 

He didn’t finish.

Didn’t think I’d what?

Want to stay? Ask why he was single? Stand in the rain weeks later like an arctic fox who’d lost his mind?

I nodded once, as if we were agreeing about the weather.

“Right.”

“Wes—”

“Don’t,” I said, still calm, which was how I knew I was not calm. “If you say I had a great time, I will do something undignified.”

He closed his mouth.

I looked at him — at Shane, at Eugene, at the animal who had knotted me slow and then told me he burned bright and never stayed — and the worst part was I still wanted him to be real.

He wasn’t. 

He was Harry’s idea of what I needed.

I turned and walked. He didn’t follow.

Good.

He was better at disappearing than I’d given him credit for.

The walk home was twenty minutes.

It felt like a year.

Rain soaked through my hood. My coffee from the morning was a cold ghost on my tongue. Every kind thing from that night replayed with a little director’s credit stamped across it.

Harry.

Harry asking him.

Harry telling him to vanish.

Harry, in our kitchen, pouring the coffee I used to drink.

Harry, sniffing my neck that night, rumbling coyote, fancy one, classy cologne.

Harry, saying sluts don’t cuddle.

He had known. Of course he had known. He’d sent him. 

I wasn’t angry yet.

That was the disgusting part.

I was just… hollow. Like someone had reached into the one evening that had felt like mine and written Harry’s handwriting all over it.

By the time I got to our building my paws were shaking. I took the stairs. I didn’t trust the lift not to give me a motivational poster.

I opened the door.

Harry was on the sofa in those charcoal joggers, gym bag dumped by the wall, scrolling his phone. He looked up, already half-smiling, that easy roommate face, and then he saw mine.

The smile went.

“Wes?”

I shut the door with more care than it deserved.

Set my keys down.

Stood there dripping on the mat.

“Eugene,” I said.

Harry went still.

Not confused-still.

Caught-still.

That was twice in one afternoon I’d watched a face do that.

“Wes,” he said, and his voice had already gone careful. “Let me—”

“You asked him to fuck me.”

“That is not—”

“You asked him to take me for a drink,” I said. “To be decent. To give me one night that meant something, because you decided the way I was getting laid was incorrect. Then you told him to disappear so I wouldn’t get attached.” Rain dripped off my whiskers. “Did I miss a beat, or is that the shape of it?”

Harry stood up.

Too tall. Always too tall. His ears were back. He looked like someone had reached into his chest and squeezed.

“I was trying to help.”

There it was.

I laughed. It came out wet.

“Help?”

“You were coming home empty,” he said, stepping closer, then stopping himself, paws out like I was an animak he didn’t want to startle. “Every night, Wes. Different blokes. Same look on your face. I could see it. I thought if you had one night that was actually—kind. If someone treated you like you mattered—”

“Then what?” I asked. “I’d stop being sad? I’d stop sucking dick in club toilets? I’d what, Harry? Become well-adjusted because you outsourced a cuddle?”

His jaw flexed.

“He wasn’t supposed to make you fall for him.”

“Oh, good,” I said. “So the problem is the quality of the performance. Next time hire someone worse.”

“It wasn’t a performance.”

“You wrote it!”

My voice cracked on that, which I hated, which he heard, which made his whole face do something pained and stupid.

“I didn’t write what he said to you,” Harry said. “I didn’t tell him to—” He dragged a paw over his head, wrecking that stubborn tuft. “I asked a mate to be decent to you for one night. That’s all. You looked so fucking empty, Wes. I couldn’t— I didn’t know how to—”

“How to what?” I said. “How to do it yourself?”

Silence.

There it was.

The real thing, sitting in the room with us, dripping on the floor.

Harry’s mouth opened.

Closed.

I stepped closer, because if I was going to ruin this I was going to ruin it properly.

“You could have been him,” I said, quiet now. “You were already here. You already knew how I take my coffee. You already knew my timetable. You already waited up past two and stole my location and sniffed another male on my neck. You already looked at me like that in my bedroom with your spit on my hole.” My eyes were burning. I did not give them permission. “And instead of holding me, you sent a coyote to do it, told him to vanish, and then you stood in this kitchen the next morning and said sluts don’t cuddle.”

Harry looked like I’d hit him.

Good.

“I thought—” he started.

“You thought knowing what I needed meant you had the right to arrange it,” I said. “You decided. You engineered it. You didn’t ask.” I swallowed. The Damien of it all rose up my throat like bile. “I’ve had this before, Harry. Someone who knew better than me. Someone who smiled while they did it. Control wrapped in care is still control.”

His ears went flat.

“Don’t,” he said, and his voice was rough. “Don’t compare me to him.”

“Then don’t act like him.”

That one landed.

I saw it land.

Harry’s throat worked.

“Wes. Please. It wasn’t— I’m not him. I was scared you were going to keep handing yourself to anyone with a knot until there was nothing left. I didn’t know how to say I wanted—” He stopped. Too late. He’d already said the edge of it. He looked away, jaw tight. “I fucked up.”

“Yes,” I said. “You did.”

I pulled my phone out because my paws needed something to do that wasn’t shaking.

Howlr opened like it had been waiting.

Seventy-something unread. A buffet of strangers. Perfect.

I scrolled with vicious focus. No faces I wanted. No names. Hosting. Close. Now.

A profile with no muzzle, a dim torso, and a message that just said:

free now. you host or i do. no chatty shit.

I sent my location-adjacent neighbourhood like a dart.

He replied in seconds.

come through. i’ll send pin.

A map dropped.

Not far.

Far enough.

“What are you doing,” Harry said.

I didn’t look up.

“Getting my arse thoroughly fucked by someone you didn’t cast.”

“Wes.”

“Some stranger is going to fuck me tonight,” I said, and I made myself look at him when I said it, because I knew where it would land. “That’s the plan. That’s my plan. Not yours.”

Harry’s face did something I had only seen once before — that tight, pained flicker when he’d smelled husky on me and said good job, roomie.

Only worse.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please don’t go.”

“You don’t get to please don’t me.”

“It’s not about that.” He took a step. Stopped again. His voice dropped. “That piss bloke. The messages. You showed me enough, Wes. He’s not some joke anymore. He’s escalating. You go out angry and turn your location off and meet a stranger from an app, and I can’t—” He exhaled hard. “I can’t do nothing. Please. Stay. Shout at me. Throw a mug. Just don’t walk out there tonight.”

It sounded like care.

It was care.

That was the problem.

I opened the location sharing he’d put on my phone that night after Shane.

Eugene.

Whatever.

The little permission sat there like a leash I’d agreed to because I’d been wrung out and he’d been shirtless and worried.

I revoked it.

Watched the status change.

Held the screen up so he could see.

“There,” I said. “You don’t get to know. That’s the point.”

Harry stared at the phone like I’d kicked him in the chest.

“Wes.”

“Have a good night, roomie.”

I grabbed my jacket.

He moved to the door.

Not blocking it, quite. Just there. Big. Helpless. A wolf who could pin a bunny to a mattress and couldn’t figure out how to stop a fox from leaving.

“At least tell me where,” he said.

“No.”

“Text me when you’re—”

“No.”

“Wes, I’m sorry.”

I opened the door.

Rain and cold and the hallway smelling of other people’s dinners.

I didn’t turn around.

If I turned around I would see the coffee mug. The basil. The stupid tuft on his head. I would see the wolf who remembered months of me and still thought the kindest thing he could do was lie.

“I know you are,” I said.

Then I left.

The pin looked fine in the app.

That was the first lie of the evening, and I told it to myself.

Ten minutes across campus. A residential street. Hosting. Easy.

Then the pin updated.

Sorry mate, come round the back. other side of the block.

I almost turned around.

I didn’t.

Turning around meant walking back into that kitchen and letting Harry be right.

The rain had properly set in. My trainers were soaked. The neighbourhood got less residential with every street. Student houses gave way to a row of shuttered takeaways, then a stretch of service road behind the sports halls, then a low brick block with a flickering security light and a sign that had once said something about facilities.

My phone buzzed.

you close?

yeah, I typed.

Pride is a stupid, stupid animal.

I stood under the light and looked at the pin. It wasn’t a flat. It was the edge of campus nobody put on the prospectus. An undercroft. A row of old toilets they hadn’t demolished yet. The kind of place you went if you wanted to get your hole wrecked without anyone’s flatmate hearing.

I could go home.

I could go to the library.

I could go stand in the rain outside our building and refuse to knock, which would at least have been dignified.

I could text Harry.

I could text WolfInTheWoods, which was a thought so pathetic I nearly laughed.

I did none of those things.

Because if I left now, the coyote under the overhang won.

Harry won.

Everyone who had ever decided what I was for would get to be correct.

My hole was dry. My head was loud. My anger had cooled into something that felt a lot like fear with better posture.

This was a fucking terrible idea.

I knew that.

I stayed anyway.

Another buzz.

come in. last door.

I walked.

The smell hit first. Damp concrete. Old piss. Bleach that had given up. My white fur felt like a joke in here.

I pulled out my phone, because some pathetic leftover instinct still wanted a record, a check-in, a breadcrumb, something.

I’m here.

Send.

A phone buzzed.

Not mine.

Nearby.

Close enough that the sound bounced off the tiles.

I froze.

My own screen still glowed in my paw.

I’m here.

Delivered.

From the dark beyond the last stall, someone laughed. Low. Pleased. Like he’d been waiting long enough to enjoy it.

Then a voice I’d only ever read, wet with delight.

“Evening, piss pet.”