Taming the Beast

“Stop this.”

Andreas heard those words and understood them, but what he couldn’t understand was what he was supposed to stop doing.

What had he been doing?

“Andreas…” came that faraway voice again. That familiar, feminine voice he would have recognized from across a crowd, and from across a field or through woods.

That was his name—Andreas.

He’d been moving, violently bucking and writhing, but he stopped then and craned his neck around to confirm who spoke to him in such an insistent way.

Oh. Yes.

His goddess.

He opened his mouth to tell her all was well and that she needn’t have worried, but his mouth didn’t work the way it should have. He couldn’t shape his lips around the words or mold his tongue the way he needed to. And his tongue was long and flapping, not thick and firm.

The beast…

How do I…

“Tell me what’s happening,” came a faraway voice, but not in the room. Distant and distorted with static, for some reason.

“He’s stopped moving as much,” his lady said. “He’s just looking. Moving his head as if he’s tracking voices.”

“That’s good,” came the faraway voice. “Keep trying to call him back.”

“Um. Okay.”

She was atop him. Her knees dug against his sides. She pressed her forearms against the hard floor, and placed her face near his head.

Vanilla and banana…

“Andreas,” she whispered. “If you can hear me, know that everything is okay. I won’t hurt you. You just scared me a little. That’s all.”

I frightened her? No. No, never that.

He bucked again, needing to roll over—needing to convince her that he hadn’t meant to frighten her. He couldn’t remember what he’d done, if anything.

Did I physically harm her?

“Be still,” she said, but he’d already rolled over, dislodging her and snapping his jaw, trying to shape the words, but none came out.

“I can’t hold him like this,” she said to the phantom voice.

Where is that sound coming from?

“He needs an alpha, Mary. If he’s stuck like that, one of the boys might be able to force him back, but I don’t know how far they are from you. I hope you can get him to come out sooner than they arrive, or he might get needlessly aggressive.”

Come out?

Andreas pointed his muzzle toward the voice and shouted, but the sound that came out of his throat was a woof, not a human voice saying “Help.”

“What’s he doing, Mary?”

“He’s barking at the phone.”

“No, I don’t think that’s a bark. I think he’s trying to say something and can’t. There’s a little bit of him in there. When he can get back on two legs, he might even remember a little bit of what happened.”