The Wolf

Chapter 1
The Wolf

Chapter Description: This is a short story about a promiscuous gay man who considered himself quite the alpha male on his favourite hook up circuit in London. The problem with being a big bad hunter is that there may always be a bigger badder hunter out there ready to put you in your place. The story has some sexual themes and male age regression to infancy.

The wolf

Jack was soaked through, a final insult that drove home just how much of a failure his night had been. He had only intended to pop out for a pack of cigarettes, at least that’s what he told himself, but that had been nearly five hours and an unmeasured amount of alcohol ago. Now he was trudging back to his apartment in the relentless rain that, to him anyway, seemed to fall heavier the longer he reflected on his miserable situation.

It always went this way when the urge took him. In fact, the whole routine was starting to become a little performance he did with greater frequency now that he was getting older. On those nights between projects, between distractions, a deep hunger would stir within him. It was not the type of hunger that could be satisfied with sufficient food or ample drink. No, this hunger was more profound, it stretched beyond his stomach, it existed in his marrow. Over the years, Jack had grown used to this recurring necessity and knew exactly what he had to do to sate it, as he had done so on many occasions before tonight. What he needed, what he salivated for, what he desired more than anything else, was flesh. Not the flesh of deceased things, but living, breathing, and fucking flesh that he could hunt, catch and consume through the dark of the night. And he was an expert at this game too. For years, he had dedicated himself to crafting his body into the most alluring and tantalising physical specimen he could in order to draw out his quarry, to bring them to him so he could feed. He was tall, his arms were thick, and he had a strange power in his charm that had only grown more pronounced as he passed through his thirties.

Laying on his bed, Jack stared at the ceiling while he let the thoughts of the night to come dance through his head. With a thumb, he gently traced tiny circles across the tip of his increasingly hard cock as it pressed against his jeans, eagerly anticipating its freedom. His mouth watered when he thought about sinking his teeth into a strong neck, his heart leapt when he considered running his tongue across a set of hard muscles, and his cock, his faithful weapon, pulsed when he imagined finally stabbing his prey and pinning it to the bed.

It had been sometime since his last conquest, and yet Jack could still taste the scent of his victim on his lips. “What was his name again?”, he puzzled for a moment. “Was it Ian…or Joe…or was it a Michael?” Either way, it didn’t matter now. Whoever he was, he had been delicious at the time, and Jack had managed to feed off the memory for so long. But now the hunger was back. Now he heard the howl echo in his heart again, and he knew he had to answer its call.

“Evening Jack, honey”, the barman absentmindedly said as he entered through the door to one of his preferred out-of-the-way bars.

Jack raised his head and grumbled a greeting in reply, one that barely hid his contempt for being named upon his arrival. He was well known on the scene by now, but he preferred to think of himself as an anonymous shadow, a mysterious and enigmatic character who would descend on a night out and swoop away with whoever he set his eyes on, never to be seen again. And yet the opposite was true. He had hung around enough of these bars to become identifiable as a regular, a title he abhorred, not just because it suggested predictability and dull consistency, but because it was accurate. He didn’t even need to specify a drink now, a tall gin-and-tonic appeared on the coper-plated bar in front of him before he could even sit down.

As he took his card out to pay, he cast a look around the room and started the process of selecting potential targets. “It’s a bit quiet tonight, Jackie”, the barman commented as he followed the eyes of the hunter. “I did see a party of students head upstairs though; they were your type, if you know what I mean.”

“My type?”, Jack responded with a slight growl.

“Yeah, you know, young, innocent, a bit twinky. One of ‘em has an ass on ‘im you could balance your glass on. I mean it caused me quite a flutter when I saw it wobble into the room”, he replied as he pretended to fan his face. “If I were twen’y years younger I would ‘appily have a go at that, but I think I’d pop me old ‘eart if I tried it now. Those boys would be the end of me.”

Jack didn’t say anything. He cast the barman a sideways look and smiled a devil’s smile that revealed the white of his teeth. He then gathered his drink and started up the stairs where he could almost smell the musk of young men ahead of him. To him, this was not a party or a group of friends out enjoying themselves, it was a herd gathered together for safety and he was the predator stalking from afar. The game was on and he was prepared to make the most of every moment of it. And yet for all his supposed prowess, he barely noticed the shape coming towards him in the opposite direction as he turned the corner of the stairway. The young man practically bounced off Jack’s larger frame, but the impact was enough to send his drink tumbling out of his hand and down his front. In an instant, his tight shirt and jeans were darkened as their fabric greedily absorbed the spilt liquid.

“Fuck sake, why don’t you look where you’re going?”, Jack snarled at the younger man who had already started to move away from him as if nothing had happened.

“Ah, sorry mate, I didn’t see you there. I owe you a drink though. Don’t worry!”, he called back nonchalantly as he disappeared into the bar.

Jack was furious. The smell of gin was already mixing badly with the aftershave he had liberally applied before he left. As he made his way into the new room, he found himself feeling almost bashful as he passed by the other patrons scattered around the room. Their gaze was upon him and he knew they were stripping down and judging every inch of his being. Some of them he recognised from previous nights, some of them had even been former victims of his hunts. Time had long since erased their names from his memory, along with any sentiments that may have been attached to such encounters. They were familiar strangers now. No, they were worse than that, they were competitors and he had to remind them who this territory belonged to. However, that would have been significantly easier had he not appeared here now with an empty glass and a sodden crotch. Moreover, his usual spot had been taken by a couple who were practically curled up in one another’s arms as they made out in the corner. Jack liked this spot as it gave him a view of the whole room while providing him with sufficient cover when needed. He would now have to sit in the open where he would not only lose his advantage, he would also be on display to others.

Once he finally found himself an adequate table to occupy, he slumped into a seat and casually covered his lap with his coat. He finished the puddle of liquid that had remained in his glass and wondered how long it would be before he could get up to replace it without drawing attention to himself. This was not part of the plan. He would need to adopt different tactics.

The herd had settled themselves on two sofas that faced one another by the widows opposite to where Jack was now positioned. There were about six of them noisily chatting to one another over remastered version of Fleetwood Mac that blared out from the speakers. This was one of the appeals of this place. The music, mixed with the low lighting and the aged décor, created an inviting retro atmosphere that stank of nostalgic if one forgave its slightly shabby appearance. Over the years, Jack had learnt that this kind of bar, just off the main thoroughfares in London’s busiest gay centre, drew a regular supply of new faces for him to appreciate. It was neither too busy nor too quiet. It provided the perfect balance between a place where groups of men could gather and mingle more intimately while affording lone hunters like him with a sense of anonymity to melt away into when they needed to.

As he surveyed the landscape before him, the music’s volume grew louder. The pretty young things across the way were certainly getting into the spirit of things. Jack could see one or two of them mouthing away to the lyrics while they drifted in and out of the conversation taking place around them. The barman had been wrong. These were not students; they were clearly older than that. If he had to guess, he would have put them in their mid-to-late twenties. Some of them were kitted out in fine looking suits, which made him think they were probably in town on business and having some sort of reunion. This hypothesis became stronger when he saw the two empty bottles of champagne resting on the table between them. This wasn’t a casual event, this had been planned in advance which could work in his favour, after all, what happens in London stays in London.

Jack smiled to himself as he tried to catch the eye of any lad who just happened to look his way, but they were all preoccupied with one another. He was about to get up to refresh his drink however, when a figure appeared next to him. It was the young man from the staircase.

“Hey, sorry about the whole drink thing, mate”, he said, as he held out a new glass of gin and pointed it at Jack. “I told you I would get you a new one though, didn’t I, and I’m a man of my word.”

The hunter accepted the offering, a placating act of respect that calmed his desire for vengeance. The man then pulled himself up at Jack’s table and raised his own glass in response. Jack hadn’t really had time to examine the younger man when they collided on the staircase, but now he could see that he really was quite something. This confident figure could boast a strong jawline and fine, almost refined features that gave his face a kind of elegance that blended nicely with his short, neat beard. He was dressed in dark clothes with a leather jacket which, from what Jack could tell, covered a well sculpted body that could rival his own. In fact, he wondered for a moment whether this young man could in fact be the one the barman had mentioned, the one with an ass so firm you could bounce a penny off it. But the thing that really captured Jack’s attention was the man’s eyes. They were so prominent, so forceful. Set deeply into his skull, they looked almost black, but when the light caught them, they shone an almost brilliant blue. It was disarming and, when the man asked for Jack’s name, he was so taken aback that he practically stammered his reply. A new tone of red suddenly flushed across Jack’s face as he scrambled to recover his composure, as he tried to regain the initiative.

“So, you errrr…you’re visiting town?”, he spluttered with instant regret.

The younger man took a leisurely sip of his drink and, while still maintaining eye contact, nodded. He then calmy placed his glass on the table, as if lazily talking to an old friend, and proceeded to recline into his chair. “Yeah, passing through the old town. It’s been some time since I last visited London. A very long time actually, but I felt a desire to see these streets again. I always find my way back when the urge takes me, you know what I mean?”

He then continued that devastating stare that seemed to bore directly into Jack’s soul. The presence of this young man was starting to unsettle him, though he couldn’t quite figure out why. Perhaps it was his overly casual, almost familiar manor, or maybe something about his baring, but whatever it was, it made him want to squirm in his seat. And yet, on a deeper level, Jack was painfully aware of what was going on. This stranger was upsetting the whole nature of his game, of his glorious hunt. The guy had already ruined his shirt when he spilt his drink and here he was again interfering with Jack’s flow, with his mojo. No matter how hard he tried to reach his strut again, this man seemed to reduce it to something comical compared to his own.

Jack fidgeted again under the intensity of the moment. Unconsciously, he adjusted the coat that lay folded on his lap while he thought back to the incident on the staircase and how it had resulted in the embarrassing stain on his jeans. As if the stranger had somehow received Jack’s secret thoughts, he lowered his eyes and regarded the area now hidden under the fabric. He bit his lip for a moment and then looked back up at Jack’s face. “Sorry about that, Jackie”, he said with an almost condescending tone to his voice, “did someone have an accident?” He then started to laugh to himself and waved a hand as if to dismiss the whole thing as a joke.

Another burst of blood surged across Jack’s face as his patience finally gave out. He was keen to recover control now, to reclaim his dominance and to take this little shit down a peg or two. Instinctively, he puffed up his chest in order to exaggerate his size, he was broader and taller than this blue-eyed otter after all, and he wasn’t prepared to be emasculated by him any longer. “So how about you and I get out of here, eh? Fancy a real London daddy showing you the sights?”

The stranger sipped his drink again and seemed to stifle a smirk. “A real London daddy you say?” He then cast his gaze up and down Jack’s body with that same strange intensity, as if he wasn’t just undressing him with is eyes like the others were, but almost sizing him up too. “Is that what you are, Jack? Are you my daddy?”

The smirk returned to the corner of his mouth as he swirled the last dregs in his glass. He picked it up, knocked them back and then stood without saying another word. As he did so, Jack noticed that the other boys by the window were also preparing to leave. His heart dropped when he realised what was happening, it was like someone had pricked him with a pin and all the bluster and egoism leaked out of his muscles like so much hot air. The boys by the table neither looked at him nor even seemed to register his existence. The enigmatic man then turned his eyes back to Jack’s and with what felt like an air of sincerity, he said “I’m sorry Jackie, I prefer my men to be younger. But I am sure I’ll see you around sometime.”

The hunter was outraged, his mouth practically fell open as the herd gathered their coats and left without paying him the slightest heed. A new fury boiled within his veins. He had never been so insulted or patronised in his life, and he wasn’t about to have his territory sullied by a new pretender in town. He stood suddenly as if to confront the younger man, to show him what a real alpha could do but, as he did, the coat fell to the floor and broadcast the ridiculous stain to everyone else in the bar. Jack practically shrank when he saw all their attention suddenly drawn to him and his dark patch. The other patrons, the usual faces, grimaced and leered in his direction just as the boys from the table turned to see what was going on. Their faces lit up when they saw this peculiar man with the large water patch on his crotch. A few whispered to one another while the others just laughed, point across the room, compounding Jack’s increasing sense of humiliation.

Everything turned dim to him after that. It was like all the colour and definition had been pulled from the world. The music and the chatter of the other men in the room fused together into an incoherent mass of sound while his vision retracted to things that immediately rested before his eyes. No matter what happened next, he couldn’t stay here. He had to leave and yet he could just go home empty handed. He had to regain his title and this dive clearly wasn’t doing it for him. No, he would have better luck elsewhere away from these onlookers. The problem was he had been stained with more than just spilt gin. The night’s defeat had tainted him with the scent of failure and worse, desperation. No matter where he went, no matter how much charm he tried to peddle, no one bought what he was selling. He moved from bar-to-bar, cruising, flirting and sometimes outrightly demanding, but the men he approached equivocated, disregarded or completely spurned his advances. All the while he sank more drinks and his desperation become more obvious, like a noisy aura that screamed in the faces of anyone who might get too near. In the end, the bars began to close, and the hunter’s realm diminished until he was left standing alone on the streets. It was at this point, when he felt at his most wretched, that the rain started.

Jack had been utterly unprepared for this turn of events; he had never had such a resounding disappointment. Sure, some nights were slower than others and sometimes he had to settle for men he hadn’t really had interest in, but in the end he usually got what he wanted from them. That’s all that mattered after all. The hunter seeks conquest only, the thrill of the hunt, the joy of dominance. Nothing beyond that is of interest, whatever happens ‘tomorrow’ is immaterial before the fact. But on this night, he hadn’t just failed to pick up a guy, he had been made to feel incapable and insignificant by a man a decade younger than him. “Who the fuck did he think he was with that condescension and those eyes?”, Jack snarled to himself. No matter what he did though, he couldn’t get the man’s face out of his mind. He was sure he had never met him before, but there was something strangely about him that conjured confused feelings deep within Jack’s being.

The more he thought about it, the more he hated the man that had outmatched him. And yet his memory was already blurring reality with imagination. When he tried to recall his features now, the avatar his mind projected was increasingly taller and more physically substantial than Jack was. When they had met, Jack was clearly the larger of the two, but now his mind had betrayed him. It had already swapped their places and crowned the younger man the victor, casting Jack, the true alpha, in a lower position in the new pecking order. The whole thing infuriated him, but he couldn’t help but feel a growing sense of fascination for this usurper.

As memories of the night’s events continued to torment Jack’s mind, his groin began to ache. It felt like his penis was protesting at his inability to secure it sustenance. His balls felt swollen and heavy too, to the point where he thought their entire content might flood his pants if he merely bent over to tie his shoelaces. He was so wrapped up in these thoughts that he barely even noticed the shadow looming in the ally way as he passed. When his eye finally detected something in the corner of his vision, he looked up and saw nothing but rain and darkness. For a moment though, he was certain he had seen a large shape down there, some unseen eyes watching him as he mopingly made his way home. A chill crept down his back. For the rest of the journey, he felt mildly on edge, like something was haunting his tracks, and yet every time he looked around he would find he was quite alone.

Once he finally reached his flat, Jack slammed the door and pissidly staggered directly into his bedroom. He then stripped himself down to his briefs and collapsed onto the bed without even bothering to pull up the sheets. The world was still spinning from the copious amounts of alcohol now coursing through his veins. “What a shitty shitty night”, he grumbled to himself and closed his eyes, begging for sleep to pull him into a drunken oblivion. Within seconds, he was gone, but his mind would not free him from his torments so easily. His dreams replayed the evening for him with chemically enriched vivacity. In these reruns, it wasn’t the younger man who had ran into him on the stairway, it was the other way around. And instead of knocking his drink into the stranger, which would have completed the reversal, the latter had simply grabbed Jack by the arms and pulled him into a tight hold. Jack looked up into the face of this far taller version of his competitor and was filled with a terrible feeling of inferiority and almost awe for this man’s sheer presence. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t look him in the eyes, those eviscerating blue eyes, that seemed to make him feel less and less worthy. Jack’s dignity broke entirely as the man lowered his mouth to his ear and whispered, “so whose daddy you now, Jack?”

Jack woke suddenly in his bed. He was completely alone. He looked at his phone and realised he had probably only been asleep for half an hour or so at most. Despite being intoxicated, he just couldn’t settle himself again. The dream had left him with a ceaseless pulsing feeling in his groin. If he had any hope of sleeping, he was going to have to take care of himself. As he repositioned himself on the soft bed sheets, he took his throbbing erection in hand and started to masturbate slowly. He had barely even stroked himself a few times before the first full beads of pre-cum issued from its tip. “Fuck, I’m so horny. I can’t even remember the last time I was this turned on”, Jack slurred to himself as a warmth seeped into his body. The juice was practical leaking from his head, but his state of arousal only seemed to grow more severe. A light groan of pleasure passed unconsciously from his mouth as he gently rubbed the fluid into his tip. He then delicately stroked his entire shaft again before increasing the rhythm. It was sublime, a powerful deepening desire coursed through him as he reflected on the dream and the images of the larger young man flashed in his mind. He imagined his breath against his neck as the stranger moved closer to his ear. Then his mocking words echoed through Jack’s head again, but they had been translated into intensely erotic tones as Jack beat down harder on his shaft - “so whose daddy now, Jack”, “whose daddy now, Jack”, “whose daddy now”. Jack let out a loud moan of ecstasy just as he was reaching climax.

That’s when he heard a floorboard creak further down the corridor. Tearing his attention away from his primed cock, Jack turned his head in its direction to see what was happening. And there, at the end of the hallway by the door, stood an enormous wolf with wicked looking teeth.

Sobriety hit him with sickening clarity. The wolf charged down the corridor towards him as he leapt off the bed and slammed the door shut. He stood against it, holding it in place with one hand and hoisting his underwear back into place with the other while his mind caught up with what had just happened. “How did a wolf get into the flat?”, he thought to himself as his heart started to beat wildly in his chest. This could not be happening, not in London. No, it had to be a large dog that had followed him home, that’s all. But then again, even if it was, how did it get in? He had gone through two self-closing security doors upon entering his building and he was certain he had closed his own when he staggered in not so long ago. And it was a wolf, there was no mistaking it. It was a fucking wolf, and it was in his flat. But then again, perhaps he had merely imagined it all. Perhaps this was just another manifestation of his drunken mind playing about with the shadows. After all, his imagination had been running roughshod over him since he left the bars.

At that moment, as if reading his thoughts, a loud snuffling noise came from the other side of the door. Whatever was there, hound, wolf or the devil himself, it was sniffing him out and, as its claws clipped and clacked against the floorboards, he could tell it was pacing in expectation of gaining entry to his room. Jack felt helpless, he had no idea where to go or how to fight off such a vicious animal. For a moment he thought about spending the rest of the night pressed up against the door. Maybe the thing would get bored and leave or someone would come to look for him in the morning, once the sun was up again. This was a pointless thought and Jack knew it. He lived alone and worked from home. Moreover, he was between projects so there weren’t even any clients who might miss him for some time, and who knows how long that would be. It was just him and the predator at the door, and as the image of it giant mouth reappeared in his mind, he felt that terrible ache in his groin again.

For reasons unknown, even though his body was now flooded with adrenaline and a growing sense of desperation, his cock had not settled down. If anything, it felt more solid, more eager than ever. He tried to put it out of his mind, but the urge was hounding him. Why the fuck was he so turned on still, at a time like this? He slowly, almost ashamedly put his hand into his briefs and pulled the rigid meat free from its fabric confines. More pre-cum had found its way to his head and it was starting to dribble down its length. He then took it in hand again began to slowly, cautiously pumped it, up and down. The moment he started, the wolf on the other side of the door growled louder, but rather than completely intimidating him, it felt like he was being encouraged onwards. Any hesitation he had quickly evaporated as he took up his effort again and his body rewarded him with the same overwhelming pleasure he had experienced in bed only minutes before. He stroked and pumped with different rhythms, teasing himself one minute and then punishing himself the next. It was the most passionate experience he had ever had, and the sensation seemed to be growing with every passing second.

It was at this point that his briefs fell to the floor and situated themselves around his ankles. A new feeling of vertigo washed over him as the room spun a little. Jack couldn’t be sure of what was going on, but the world around him seemed to be changing somehow. A new quality had crept into the walls and furnishings surrounding him while his attention had been fixed on those damned urges. The feeling was reminiscent of the dream, the part where he encountered the now taller version of the blue-eyed man. It was like he was smaller. The ridiculous idea passed through his mind for a fleeting second as Jack cast his eyes around the room, but then it hit home with greater intensity when he examined himself more closely. Whatever was going on, whatever was happening to him, it was changing him. The more he felt the desire to masturbate, the smaller he felt and now he was seeing physical signs of this transformation. His once proud chest no longer had its inflated definition, the muscles that had been engorged and almost round now seemed far slimmer, far leaner. It was as if someone had pulled the valve on a blow-up doll. Moreover, the thick body of hair that had covered his skins was becoming visibly spars. In fact, he watched in a confused state of amazement and horror as individual hairs retracted into his pours and then vanished altogether. All the while, and despite his abject fear, Jack couldn’t take his hand off his penis which ached with increased excitement the more his physique seemed to dwindle.

He staggered back from the door and practically fell over as his body continued to shrink and shift. Jack ran to the corner of the room where his standing mirror was stationed. For years, this immaculate glass had shown him his body as he morphed and chiselled it into the shape he wanted. He had measured his biceps and triceps in it, he had watched his reflection count his abs as they appeared on his core with perfect clarity, like eight solid rocks protruding above a river of skin. Now he watched, horror struck, as all this progress melted away before his eyes. His beard, a thick almost solid thing, was now non-existent and had been replaced with the smooth, immature features of a boy in his late teens. Jack had not seen this face in years, and as his reflection continued to rejuvenate, he continued to pump is erect penis with fury and hideous delight. All the while, the wolf at the door growled and snarled as it too began to change. The terrible beast was louder and larger now, and as Jack’s frenzy overflowed into a full-blown orgasm, the door opened to reveal the predator in all its enormity.

Jets of thick, steaming cum issued from Jack’s cock and shot across the floorboards in front of him. The power of this eruption even sent some of the loose fluid as far as the doorway itself, splattering to the floor only inches from the wolf’s paws as it skulked into the room. The animal kept its head low as it sniffed the scent of Jack’s essence that still lingered in his discarded briefs. In all this time, it never once took its dark, shadow shrouded eyes off Jack, its prey, as he huddled his shrinking body against the opposite wall. Closer and closer it stepped and, as it did, it got larger and more ferocious looking while Jack’s body tumbled back through puberty with greater speed.

Jack was so ashamed of himself and so incredibly frightened of the big bad wolf as it approached him. “What do you want from me?”, he shouted at his pursuer, but the voice he heard had no power to it whatsoever. It was no longer the commanding boom of a thirty-eight-year-old’s man but rather the shrill pitch of a boy tipping back into childhood. He was so scared now, so humbled before this gruesome example of muscle, teeth and strength. The thing was nearly upon him, and as it moved out from the shadows Jack was finally able to see its eyes as they were illuminated by what little light entered through the windows. What brilliantly blue they were, a cold piercing blue, that shone with intelligence and intension. Jack’s little face started to crumple into tears as he recognised the man from the bar within them, the man who had defeated him, the one who had reduced him to such a sorry state. The little boy’s physical maturity ebbed away so smoothly that it was like his years were a receding pool of water at the bottom of a bath. Soon he wouldn’t even be above five years old, and these waters were getting shallower.

Little Jack looked up into the eyes of the frightening wolf as it eventually reached him. Such a big thing for such a small toddler to deal with. “Pweease” he pleaded with infantile pronunciation, “stowp dis. Me big, me no wanna be widdle!”  

The wolf’s eyes flared with delighted vigour as it heard this pathetic appeal. The tot couldn’t take it anymore, he had to escape that look that penetrated his very being. He pulled himself onto his feet with excruciating effort and, as he grizzled and sniffled, he attempted to flee the wolf’s knowing gaze. One unsteady foot replaced the other as he wobbled and tottered further along the side of the bed before his strength gave out and balance abandoned him altogether. With a little plop, baby Jack’s soft bottom met the floorboards. He now peered up at the wolf as it took to its hind legs and the man from the bar stepped towards the tiny baby sat on the floor. Jack was now less than a year old and he felt so incredibly impotent and naked in front of the handsome man with the pretty eyes. He looked so strong and so gigantic, his fibrous muscles contrasting perfectly with his own soft belly and chubby features. The stranger’s teeth glinted in the light as he smiled down at the shrunken child he had hunted across the city. Those teeth looked flawless and sharp, while Jack’s had receded into his gums and were no more.

Jack tried one last time to plead for this all to end, for him to be returned to his adult form and for his age to be restored, but the gibberish that fell from his lips proved to him that this was a one-way journey. The man with the blue-eyes was not going to return what he had taken. And why should he? After all, Jack had never once thought to return anything he took from the men he conquered. All those hearts he had broken over the years, all that innocent hope he had defiled and all of those names he had forgotten without care. This was, in the end, what he deserved, and he knew it. This feeling of overwhelming insignificance and littleness was the exact unsettling sensation the man stirred in him when they first sat across from one another in the bar. He recognised it now. The true hunter had looked deep within him and seen what Jack really was inside and, with greater skill and ability, he had tracked him across London and returned him to his true nature. Jack wasn’t a hunter anymore; in fact, he wasn’t even sure he would be able to say another man’s name for some time, let alone flirt and seduce one. And as a puddle of warm liquid spread across the floorboard under his backside, he realised that he wouldn’t be able to control anything else either. A future of nappies and dependency flashed across his mind, but he didn’t expect to live long enough to experience them. In the end, what does a wolf do when it finally catches a smaller animal?

The towering figure finally bent down to his level and looked deep into the eyes of the baby who had unconsciously voided his little bladder. But rather than meeting Jack with that cold incisive stare, there was a look of warmth on his face. With hands that were now equal to the infant’s entire torso, the wolf delicately plucked him from the floor and brought Jack up to his chest where he held him securely. Jack could feel the warmth of his body against his delicate skin, and as he revelled in an unexpected sense of security and comfort that came with being held by such a giant figure, the wolf cradled and cooed him. “It’s okay, Jackie”, he said, “daddy’s got you now”. The words flowed through Jack’s mind and he gave himself over to the hunter who carried him out of the bedroom.