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Bad knows his time is running out.
He hasn’t been fed in days. This, he thinks, isn’t even an intentional cruelty on the town’s part—just a convenient one. They don’t know how to feed a wolf in a cage when their main means of control is by the muzzle of barbed twine wrapped tight around his snout. And if it leaves him weaker by the day and less likely to bite back, well, all the better for them.
All the worse for Bad.
He’s worried. There’s something different about today, about all these recent days. Between the freshly-turned wolf who came snuffling up to him with the naivete of a pup and the faint scent of familiar wolves permeating the town stink, he can tell that others are moving around through the world around him.
The cage around him shudders, suddenly. Bad jolts to his feet, ears perked to attention, but all he can tell through the thick curtains is that he’s being moved. The unsteady rocking movement and the tangled chains around him soon send him back to his knees again, but he keeps his head high and eyes open, trying to figure out what’s going on.
He can hear people. Lots of people. They’re getting louder by the second, raucous and unrelenting, indistinct voices shouting over each other with the slam of feet on stone and hands on wood, loud, loud, loud.
Bad presses himself against a back corner of the cage, wincing from the sound. There’s something else, too—a promising shift in the air, something cooler and fresher managing to work its way into the cage.
Fresh air. He must be outside. If he strains, he can even make out the glow of the sun on the horizon through a crack in the curtain.
Assuming that’s not a torch, that is. Something is burning. Many things are burning, sending ashy smoke into the air, and Bad can’t smell anything past it and what must be the whole town’s worth of people sweating and angry in the street.
The cage rattles to a stop. Bad immediately starts pawing at his restraints again, trying to hook his claws into iron and wire in the vain hope that this time will be different from his thousands of other attempts. Freedom is right there. It’s just outside these bars. If he could just…
A familiar voice speaks up over the crowd, alarmingly close to the cage. Bad stills. It’s the town leader, with the lying smile and lying eyes, and if he’s this close then Bad really isn’t going to like whatever it is he has planned.
Bad could listen, and probably should, but he doesn’t bother. He gives the cuff around one of his legs one final bite of defiance before quickly laying down.
The less aggressive he looks, the more likely it is he’ll just be passed over. The humans get bored quickly when the target of their ridicule fails to respond, so if he just pretends he’s asleep or dying, then they might leave him alone.
Unfortunately, this time isn’t like the others.
The curtains sweep open in a flood of light, and Bad’s eyes widen at the sight of what looks like the entire town gathered in a central square. They’re armed with flames and pitchforks, and Bad would like nothing more than to fling himself into the coming night and flee.
Instead, the chains around his body grow taut, yanking him forward. He stumbles with it, grinding his jaw against the tines digging into his skin. The cage door swings open, bizarrely, and the only reason Bad doesn’t fight them more is because he does want to leave the cage, and he’ll take any opportunity to do so.
He stumbles out onto a stage, tail flicking uncertainly at his heels, keenly aware of the dozen guards holding onto his chains.
Most of them are positioned behind him, keeping him from pouncing forward. The only person in front of him is the leader, grinning crookedly, holding the thinnest of the chains loosely between his pale fingers as though that’s all he needs to keep Bad at bay, as though his entire set of guards digging their heels into the wood isn’t the only thing stopping Bad from leaping at him.
Bad snarls anyway, a low, rumbling sound that would’ve sent every forest creature to their knees in fear. His dark fur bristles, but with most of it pressed flat with congealed blood or thick chain, it’s not as impressive as it usually is.
The one holding his lead doesn’t even flinch. “Watch, as I show you how we have freed ourselves from the tyranny of the forest, how I have mastered even this uncontrollable beast!” he says, and too late Bad realizes that he’s holding a torch in his other hand, too.
He thrusts the torch in Bad’s face, letting it spit hot sparks into his fur and eyes. Bad flinches with a whimper, paws scrabbling uselessly on the polished floor as he strains in vain to get away. The chains catch on his fur, pulling out tufts with sharp jolts of pain that only make him thrash even more.
The chains tighten. Bad chokes as the one around his neck presses into his windpipe, and the whine that tears out of him is lost under the thunderous shout of the townspeople as they—they—
They fall. They’re shoved aside, they’re shouting in surprise and confusion, as two figures rush towards the guards and crash into them with fury and desperation, and the chains slacken enough that Bad can turn for a better look.
He needn’t have bothered, because the voices that cry “Bad!” are sharp and haunting and he could have recognized them through a storm and sea if he had to.
“Sapnap! Dream!” he calls, but it’s mangled through the twine twisting his mouth shut. Bad forces his jaws to creak open anyway, ignoring the fresh blood that spills along his muzzle, howling, “What are you doing here? Go! You need to be far away, go, go! Go back to the forest!”
They don’t listen. Sapnap reaches him first, eyes wide, arms wrapping around Bad’s neck in a surge of warmth Bad hadn’t realized he’d missed so much, and can’t stop himself from leaning into.
“Bad,” Sapnap says, as Dream gives a full-blooded growl to the guard that tries to edge in on them, “we were looking all over for you, we—how do I get this—Dream! Dream, help me!”
Despite the danger and the rising voices from the crowd and the guards around them, Bad’s heart melts. “You can’t,” he says, or tries to say, through gritted fangs. “You need to go, please. Please.”
“No!” Dream snaps, furious, eyes all but gold with his wolf-soul. He reaches to Bad’s muzzle, breaks skin on the barbed twine, but still fumbles clumsily to try and get it off.
Sapnap joins him, tugging at Bad’s restraints desperately, and all Bad can do is swallow the grunts of pain from the metal digging into his body.
“Enough,” he says, trying to stay calm. “Sapnap, Dream, you need to…”
He trails off. There’s another human on the stage now, someone standing toe to toe with the leader and all but shouting in his face.
Bad inhales, and tastes wolf in the air. Not human, then. Or half, the way they are.
The one who met him in the dead of night.
Three wolves, he thinks, despairingly. He can’t protect three of them, he can barely manage himself.
At least they are all in their bodies. Maybe, if they’re lucky, the townspeople won’t think of them as anything more than wandering children. Maybe they won’t know that they’re wolves, too.
Still, when blades are drawn and weapons are leveled at his family, Bad shoves aside all his aches and pains to stand over Sapnap and Dream, crowded against his iron-caught legs. He can’t roar, can’t howl, but he can growl deep and dangerous, torn lips drawn back over bloodstained fangs.
“Bad,” says Sapnap, and then with utter hate, “George.”
The other half-human, the newer one, looks at them with desperate fear. “This isn’t going to work,” he says, “Dream, Sapnap, you have to leave!”
“No!” Sapnap retorts, and Dream is still pulling at Bad’s muzzle, his fingers slashed and bloody, and Bad whines as he tries to pull it out of his reach.
“He’s right,” Bad presses, and the chains rattle as he shoves the two aside. If they were as wolves, they wouldn’t be pushed as easily, but even malnourished and bleeding, Bad is stronger in this form. “You two need to go. You can’t—you can’t break metal.”
Dream snarls, determination loud and clear on his face, but Bad lifts a heavy paw to press against his chest.
“You have to let go,” Bad says, tasting his own blood and Dream’s, running into his mouth. He watches the crowd close in, watches the guards approach, watches that other one (George?) get shoved aside. “Be safe, I love you. But you have to go.”
And Dream—
Sapnap grabs Dream’s wrist, nearly beside himself with fury, and Bad has always been slow to anger and slower to hate, but even he feels something curdle in his chest when his family rip away from him with blood and tears and sweat.
He looks up at the leader, teeth bared.
And he lunges.