It was difficult to determine what was more soothing, the gentle, absent-minded hum or the fingers that gently stroked the top of my head. With my eyes shut and my chin against the reassuring warmth of her knee I could almost forget where I was and what had happened to me. The beast was content, and so was I. Touch was important, Six had told me. Touch kept packs together, kept them grounded. In the absence of my own pack, she had said, contact with others would suffice. It would never be the same, but it would help.

She was not wrong. Once I had gotten over the idea of it, had hidden the flaming of my cheeks at the memory of the electric zing that had passed through me last time I had touched her within the fur of my beast, it had felt good to curl by her side. Six’s fingers traced the delicate line of one of my ears, even as she read, feet tucked beneath herself. I had been terribly conscious of all the places where her warmth met mine, the long line of her leg pressed against my chest as the beast huffed in contentedness at the innocent contact. My wolf was happy. We were happy. It felt good to be in wolf form, and feel in control. The idea of changing had terrified me, left me shaking at the memory of what I had done to the man who made me what I was. Terrified that the thing inside me would snap, and the tiny, fragile life of this woman who had welcomed me into her home would be snuffed out in an instant of snapping teeth.

Six did not share my terror. She had been nothing but steady, and assured, in the days since I had come to be here. Dell seemed less sure, and tended to hover with an over-protectiveness that I could understand very well indeed. I’d felt it, the first time she pushed, testing the tenuous hold I had over the monster within me. Dell had been wound so tight I felt like I could have snapped him in half with a touch. But not her. Even with her own blood dripping from her fingers, watching the visible battle I waged with myself as the wolf thought of nothing but hot, wet, bloody things, she had stood firm and calm. We had come a long way in the few short days since that time.

Today was a test. I had changed, twice, fully since I came to stay here. The first time had been with just Dell, and my beast had raged. It was fortunate he was so big, so formidable. The wolf inside me wanted, wanted so badly. What it wanted was hard to put a finger on. I was not used to the way it thought, the primal, feeling-driven way it acted. To begin with, it did not feel like part of me, but rather like an insidious parasite lodged within me. All I knew was that the beast was not pleased that when I finally let it out, it was without Six there and it was prepared to fight the demon in the room to reach her.

It was lucky, or perhaps exactly what the two had planned, that something about Dell seemed to quash the wolf’s fervour. It was pissed, ready to rip his hand right off his arm until one of those big hands had shot out, viper quick, to snag the wolf’s - my - snout. He’d held on too, tight lipped, as I tried to throw him off. He was a big bastard, and struggling did nothing. I was lucky, I suppose, that the wolf had gone fine, and settled abruptly. It didn’t exactly like Dell, but it was prepared to do what it was told.

It was fucking weird.

The second time, Six had stayed. The wolf seemed happier. When it came, it didn’t slam into me the way it had done previously, did not try to rip its way out through my skin. It was like it padded towards me, towards the surface of me, rather than bolted. I changed, and the beast had regarded, not the woman, but Dell. Within it’s strange, beastial brain, it made a decision that was not wholly mine. With a sigh, it had plopped down at the feet of the imposing demon.

This was the third, and the first time Six had touched me. It was also the first time that we were alone. Dell had looked unhappy when he left, but he had to go. His prince needed him, there was only so much time the pair could spend away from their young charge. I had not met the boy, was not allowed to until I was in control of the wolf. But I knew something of what was going on, from the conversations that Six and Dell had over steaming cups most mornings. I knew that things were getting testy, that many of the hobnobs at the top of Ziran society were not as charmed by their guests as they had been when the foreigners first landed. Dell was organising their departure, a ship that the Hishin-bred prince, Roa, had promised them to take them back across the seas.

Dell had stayed, to watch my change. There was a tenseness to his face that I understood all too well. It was not hard to see how much he cared for the little woman. I suspected a side to their relationship that wasn’t strictly platonic, but they were too strange a pair to know for sure. I hadn’t been exposed to many Others prior to becoming one myself. There was something inscrutable about both Dell and Six, that made them bloody hard to read at times. More than once, I had caught Dell in a queer sort of stillness, a complete lack of movement that went beyond just “staying still”. He tended to do it when he thought no one was around, as he snapped out pretty quickly when he realised I was there. It also showed when he wasn’t completely happy, like he had been this morning. There had been a measure of stillness to him then, a rigidity in his features that seemed to draw the opposite from his companion. Six had teased him, gently, something I had rarely seen her do. She’d almost pushed the big lump right out the door.

She had padded around the kitchen, fixing herself a hot drink. We retired to the small sitting room, and it was there she told me of the power of touch.

The feeling of her fingers sinking into the ruff of fur at the base of my neck drew me out of my drowsy thoughts with a shiver. It was difficult to not be distracted by her closeness. She was so casual, so unafraid. I took up much of the couch, even half curled around her. My wolf form was big, much bigger than any normal wolf with every feature super-sized. But her hand never stopped, never hesitated as she rubbed the top of my head or as her fingers ghosted across the lips of massive jaws filled with teeth made for ripping and rending. I knew she was relaxed in a way that I couldn’t quite understand, that went beyond just looking at her. Somehow, instinctually I just understood that she was not faking it for my benefit.

This closeness would have been unbearable, if I was in my human form. But somehow, it seemed far more natural to lie next to her in such an intimate way with the power of the beast between us. He knew this was good, was right, and he was still very much able to sway my thinking in this form. This was today’s lesson - a test. They wanted me to be comfortable with both sides of myself, to be able to coexist without struggling to fight against the beast. Today, my task was just to “be”, to fill the paws of my wolf. Leaving me here with just Six was a show of trust. It made me nervous, frightened of what might happen should I fail.

There was a power in Six’s blood that I was already keenly aware of but did not quite understand. Tasting it had both drawn and soothed the wolf. I suspected that if push came to shove, she could use that power - another weapon in her arsenal - to control the beast to an extent. It wanted to please her, to stay close to that power. By extension, I wanted. The taste of that blood had changed the small, fragile woman from “meat” into something else. The wolf did not want to eat her, which was a small comfort. There were other...urges, however, that had replaced the desire to tear and devour. Those worried me. I wasn’t quite sure what I would do if I lost control. So I was wound a little tight, even before the knock on the door.

Six looked up from her book, and her hand stilled on my neck. Her head tilted to one side for a moment, as if listening, and then she ruffled her fingers through my thick fur.