You stare at him. Is he serious? "Dude, I proposed the buck thing because getting kicked or antlered won't kill us. I'm not gonna prank a guy to death. Are you really --? Look, have you ever killed anybody? Sentient, I mean, a person. It fucks you up. And I am never doing that again if I can fucking help it, understand?"
You're not sure if you feel indignant or embarrassed. You're not a monster, you don't kill just for fun. Except you were sort of proposing to, weren't you. Except he's not exactly some poor innocent, is he, he's an arrogant, obnoxious reject who should be taken out of the gene pool sooner rather than later. Except, that's not really your call to make. You sigh and curl your tail in. "Alright, do as you think best," you agree. "If he's really such a bad egg someone else'll be along to take him out. Won't be our fault."
"Yeah." You whuff a sigh and prop your chin on the back of his neck in a sort-of-hug. "Sorry I got strident there. We don't have to take him on as a project; if he stays failwolf, we can bundle him back to his vehicle and kick him out of the park. Maybe he'll learn, maybe he won't. Anyway!" You shake off the seriousness. "We're here to have fun, right? Let's go get some birds. Lord Fedorabutt can eat whatever instant crap he packed along, if he finds his way back to camp at all."
"Well, he won't be eating jerky, this is much too good to share." You grab the rest of the bag and trot off with it, swishing your head about to keep it away from Bel. "No! Even you! You're not worthy!"
"I don't have to be worthy," you laugh, "I just have to be faster than you!" You're not, though, or at least you're not more nimble no matter how fast you can run, and he manages to keep the jerky bag away from you successfully for quite a long time until it rips from all the swinging around-in-teeth and spills its delicious cargo among the pine needles. You snatch up a stick of it and dance back to chew it, satisfied to let him have the rest now that you've gotten a taste. It's too salty, frankly.
You hastily snap up the rest of the sticks, then stand there awkwardly gnawing and drooling with your hackles up as you attempt to defensively eat six at once. "Bleh, salty," you say, finally finishing up and licking your chops. "Alright, let's go ruin some ducks' day." You get halfway to the lake before you skid to a stop. "The backpacks!" you remember.
"What about them? We can pick them up when we finally lead the idiot back to his campsite like it was his idea all along. Unless you plan to leave him out all night? I'm not really sure what your comedy agenda is here."
"Oh! I thought we were just going to leave him lost out there and go set up camp somewhere nicer. Maybe find him in the morning. You know, if you set your tent items up by his he might poach them. Then again I'm still licking nicked jerky off my whiskers so I probably can't judge. Duck!" You make the final dash to the lakeside and pounce, but too late. The waterfowl you smelled on the wind has heard you coming and sailed, scoldingly, off and away. "Aw, boo, they're keeping a lookout for us today. Feel like employing advanced stealth skills, Sir Knife Wolf?"
"Always, Mister Jingle Toes, or whatever you're calling yourself this minute. You're terrible at making up names, it's adorable." You creep toward a stand of cattails, peering through. "There's some over there, but we'll make a hell of a racket if we push through. Circle around?"
"I'm fantastic at making up names, Baron Sassypaws. What I'm bad at is remembering them. Here, you go one way and I'll go the other. When we see each other again we charge and just bite anything that moves."
"Even if it's each other," you agree just to make him scowl at you, and sneak off. Stealth is much easier in this form; lower center of gravity, softer smaller feet, closer view of the ground with its potential noisemakers. Also helpful is that this part of the forest is all pine, so there's soft needles underfoot and soft ferns to hide you. No wonder the taiga has a reputation as a wolf paradise. The ducks don't suspect a thing. As planned, you and Erskin attack in concert, and the ducks get confused about which way to flee and don't quite manage it. You make a magnificent leap and get a half-flying bird by the neck, shake it and hit another with the dying one's flailing wings, which stuns it long enough for you to finish breaking the first one's neck and grab the second. "Got an extra," you show Erskin when you've laid your dinner out on the grassy shore and the rest have flown. "Just opportunism, I don't need it, but I guess we could feed whatsisface if you're not extra hungry." You throw him a wicked smile as a thought comes to you. "Remember how I balked at squirrel? I bet Fucko would freak ten times as hard at raw duck. We can present it as a fealty gift and act offended if he won't eat it."
You grin at him, finished with your first duck and leisurely tearing apart your own second. "Yeah, he seems the sort to have been living on kibbles 'n bits, so far. Do you want to—" you hold yourself stiff and regal, "—give it as tribute on your own, mighty hunter, or should I play up—" you cringe in on yourself, "poor little bitty coyote me, bribing his way in with the big dogs?" You pull the head off your second duck, toss it in the air, and snap your jaws closed on it as it falls. "I'm helpless, you know."
"Yes, an 'omega', I heard," you growl. "I really don't like the way he talked to you." You huff and let it go. Nose your spare duck toward Erskin. "Do the bribe thing, I'm being hard to please. I wonder what spell he thought he did, he didn't have any magic-looking stuff in his baggage that I saw."
"Mmm. I think he's in the 'halfassed dabbler' stage of thaumaturgy, you know. Read a spell off your computer and splash some lavender water on a kitchen knife and all your dreams come true, what?" You lick feathers off your nose, then go over to lick feathers off Bel's nose.
"So there's no chance he actually made shit happen, right?" It's hard to be anxious about the unknown when your best snugglebro is washing your face. "Because if he tries to mind control me for reals I will scar him, I swear."
You laugh. "Well, some say there are no coincidences, but I say if our Lord's not only a werewolf but also a wizard we're going to have to put him down. He's already an obnoxious disgrace at one thing most people don't get a shot at. Can you imagine it? He'd summon infinite silly hats, or substandard tents. Or soda pops. You noticed like half his equipment weight was cans, didn't you? It's going to be so much fun watching him try to open those with paws."
"On the other hand, being an idiot, he's malleable. If he's a wizard for real it might be worth putting him through Basic, so to speak. Give him a chance to unfuck himself. He acts like his parents never told him no."
You give an expressive shudder. "Well, alright, if you think he's worth the time," you say doubtfully. "Are you sure we shouldn't just feed him to a bear?"
"Not remotely," you admit, and shrug. "I suppose we'll just play it by ear. All I'm sure of is we need to be nowhere near him or anyone else when we can both stay human for several hours at a stretch again. Because I want to have a lot of sex at that point in time." You nose the spare duck toward him now that you're both feather-free. "Your cringe-offering to the cookie dough wizard, monsieur?"
"Good heavens, I'd rather bite my cock clean off than invite him to play with it," you say, shuddering from nose to tailtip. "Can you imagine! I bet he wants honorifics in bed, too." You scoop up the duck. "Alright, lead on. Chapter two: the Forbidden Fuckwit."
