Promising that she would give the matter of the reverse-baiting a great deal of thought, the djinn and Kelly left to ‘confirm some things,’ leaving the wolf and the two cows together in the house. Deciding that she might like to introduce herself to the other Andersen sister, she padded over to the living room where Candi was showing Jersey how to comfortably operate the new industrial milking machine that their mum had arranged for.
“Obviously you’ll need to put it somewhere private once your little ones are out and about,” Candi had been saying, “but for now anywhere with decent blinds and sound-proofing will fit the bill, and you can use a gag for the latter in a pinch.”
“We’fve had some exfverience with that,” the wolf chuckled, holding up one massive, clawed hand.
Letting out a startled ‘moo’ of surprise as she turned to regard the unexpected creature, Candi almost dropped the glass bell she’d been holding. “My goodness! How are you so quiet when you’re so bloody enormous?”
“Trade secret,” she smiled; parking her monstrous bulk on the floor near the twins’s bassinets so that she could be close to all the members of her little family, she rested her head in Jersey’s lap and was pleasantly rewarded with some affectionate pets. “I like that fhrase, ‘vfloody enormous.’ Your sister called me the same thing when we met, though I wasn’t fvluffy-moded at the time.”
“Well, you certainly know how to pick ‘em, then,” the taller cow remarked to Jersey. “I’ve always thought of Dornollë as something of an amazon, so it’s a bit of a shock to find someone she looks average-sized next to.”
“We appreciate the compliments,” the smaller cow grinned, patting the wolf between her fuzzy ears.
“Not to pry, or anything,” Candi continued, eyeing the gigantic predator, “but are you going to be, err, ‘fluffy-moded’ the whole time?”
“Profvafly not, no,” Callie answered amiably. “Usually I change fback pretty easily.”
“So why haven’t you?” the thicker blonde wondered. “Not that I’m complaining, mind, since I’ve always wanted to see what a wolf’s ears felt like to touch ⸻ not that you have to let a daft cow put her hands all over you or anything. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“She’s had a daft cow’s hands all over her before,” Jersey giggled, a slightly lascivious edge to her soft soprano that was somewhat sharpened by the persistent sorcery. “No reason to hold back now.”
“Are you sure?” Candi asked hopefully, scooting closer along the couch. “I mean, people ask to feel me up all the time, which is a bit rude ⸻ not that I mind, mostly, but it’s the principle of the thing.”
“Doesn’t bvother me any,” the wolfgirl replied with a languorous shrug of her immense shoulders. “It honestly fveels pretty nice, all things considered.”
Struggling to control her glee at the prospect of getting to pet a giant-sized wolf, Candi budged close to Jersey, their milk-tanks sloshing together as they both went for the fluffy monster’s ears. Deciding to facilitate the process, Callie shifted her top half up onto the couch, laying across both women’s laps; held down by the surprising amount of weight, Candi nevertheless found it quite gratifying to be able to stroke the other girl’s luxurious coat, and her enjoyment of the activity only increased once she learned that Callie wasn’t opposed to neck and chin scritches, either. Excitedly indulging in the chance to experience an apex predator’s ruff, the taller of the minicows fussed with every bit of the wolf that she could reach, including marveling at how incredibly tiny her hands looked next to her paws.
“Sorry for interrupting you earlier,” Candi eventually rejoined, maneuvering the conversation away from what a ‘pretty girl’ the tail-wagging wolf was, “but why is it that you can’t turn back, again?”
“It’s a matter ovhf time or … ⸻ exhaustion,” Callie explained, attempting delicacy with her more lascivious aspects.
“Exhaustion?” the minicow echoed.
“Basically, she has to be drained of energy,” Jersey continued for her girlfriend, “whether it be her typical or sexual stamina.”
“I … see,” Candi hummed, unable to hide her excitement at the prospect, the points of her nipples hardening beneath her clothes. “Well, if you girls don’t mind me lending a hand, I think that could work out well for all of us: I’m just about due for one of my fixes, and then I can show you how all this milking equipment works.”
Fixing her girlfriend with a meaningful glance, Callie was surprisingly delighted to find that Jersey had no problems with the arrangement; noticing the other girl’s steadily-clouding affect that mirrored Candi’s own expression, the wolf decided that it was probably better to assist the two minicows than to stand on propriety.
“Is this really okay?” Callie tried anyway, glancing back and forth between the two girls as she sought express permission. “If what Genie said afbout the spell is true, I might not fve able to stop unless I, uh ….”
“... Breed me?” Candi finished for her with a laugh. “You’ve got nothing to worry about there, sweet. Not to insult you, but I expect only Dornollë is capable of knocking me up anymore.”
“I’m … also kinda bvig,” the wolfgirl warned as she rose up to her full height, towering over the other women.
“So’s Genie,” Candi answered readily, biting her lip as she eyed the monstrous predator with a growing hunger. “Whatever you’ve got, I promise I can fit it.”
“Then let’s set up the harness and start stuffing some cows,” Jersey laughed, just as excited by the chance to experience the milker as the other girl was to sample the beast.
Once she’d worked-out all of her wolfier tension and her little cow was properly drained (from both her udders and otherwise), Callie took Jersey aside for a somewhat serious conversation, though their respective fatigue ended up turning it into more of a cuddle-discussion.
“So,” the amazon began awkwardly, squeezing her mate’s shoulder as they lounged together on an oversized recliner, “listen, I wanted to talk about the, uh … ⸻ the charm.”
“The one Bishop cast?” Jersey tried, conscious of her girlfriend’s discomfort. “It’s not that big of a deal, really.”
“You don’t have to play tough,” the taller girl insisted, believing she had a much-better understanding of the situation than her lover. “Like, I don’t know how much you remember of the train ride home ⸻”
“Enough to know that I liked it,” the bimbo interrupted, cutting off her wolf before she could engage in her favourite pastime of finding fault with herself. “Around where you started hitting the really good spots my recollection gets somewhat hazy, but in a pleasant sort of way.”
Staring down at her girlfriend, Callie fixed her with a look of disapproval that they both knew was really aimed back at the taller girl. “You don’t have to pretend anything just to make me feel better about what happened,” she argued, frustration cowering behind her teeth. “Like, you were really out of it, okay? I kinda ⸻ … no.” Self-directed anger hissed between her fangs. “I didn’t ‘kinda’ anything. I knowingly took advantage of you when you weren’t in your right mind.”
“So?” Jersey shot back, fighting against the amazon’s monopolisation of the narrative. “I was completely in control of my faculties before the charm, where I remind you that I was happily consenting to all sorts of prurient business, and even afterward I wasn’t helpless.” Huffing in irritation, she wiggled in closer under the other girl’s arm, stubbornly battling the amazon’s self-castigation with physical affection. “The magic doesn’t make me do things, it merely rewards my brain with feel-good chemicals if I do. That’s hardly any worse than eating a chocolate if that’s how you want to frame it.”
“Chocolates don’t get anyone intoxicated,” Callie countered, annoyed with the minicow’s oversimplification.
“If they have rum in them they do,” the shorter girl replied in a half-playful, half-antagonistic tone.
“You know what I mean,” the amazon muttered exasperatedly.
“I do, and I don’t care,” Jersey snipped back. “You’re trying to erase my agency in all of this, and I don’t like that ⸻ well, okay, I do like that in a sexy context, but not in the non-sexy way where you waste all our time self-flagellating.”
“I’m not ‘wasting time’ ⸻”
“And it’s not me we should be worried about anyway,” the bimbo continued, blazing past the other girl’s contention. “Genie and Kelly cautioned us as much, too. You’re the one that’s going to be feeling the effects most-strongly ⸻ and if you want to argue over who wasn’t ‘in their right mind,’ then you certainly weren’t capable of consenting in the rail-car either.”
“I know!” the amazon snapped, her frustration boiling over as she sat up straighter, holding her lover’s eyeline with an apprehensive concern. “I know I wasn’t entirely in-control of myself, and that’s the whole point. The worse this charm gets, the harder it’s going to be for me to resist, like, I don’t know … ⸻ mauling you, or whatever.”
“I’m worried, alright?” Callie confessed, hanging her head in guilt and shame. “I’m scared that I might force myself on you and ruin everything that we have together.”
If Jersey couldn’t feel safe around her, then what was the point of being a wolf in the first place?
Calm hands squeezed her arm in a reassuring touch, centering the wolfgirl’s attention. “I know you’d never do anything like that,” the minicow said with a soft sincerity. “For all the violence you’ve proven yourself capable of and how much you seem to enjoy it, I’m certain that you’ll never hurt me.”
Casting her gaze down and away, Callie wrestled with her emotions. “I would like to believe that’s true,” she murmured in a low voice, as if even the volume of her words now implied an attack, “but I know what I’m like. It’s an inevitability.”
Jersey graced her lover with a sweet smile, the tender sentiment slowly eroding the calloused defense the amazon had been forming around herself. “You’re not built that way. You’re far too kind and too compassionate, and you care so much about me that it hurts ⸻ and I can see that. I can tell when you’re suffering for my sake, when you let your protectiveness grow out of hand until you turn your claws back on yourself.”
“Listen,” the wolfgirl started again.
“You listen,” the smaller girl insisted, putting a finger to her lips. “I trust you completely, and all I’m asking is that you return that trust. Please accept that I know my own desires very well, and believe me when I say that nothing you could do to me would ever make me think any less of you or change how I feel about you.”
“So, what,” Callie scoffed dejectedly, “are you trying to say you’re giving me permission like you want me to attack you? That’s utterly ridiculous.”
“I’m ridiculous,” the little cow insisted. “Look at me! I’m all tits and arse, and the only part of me that’s not invincibly thick is my waist ⸻ or at least, not until a few months from now when I’m busy carrying around your second litter.”
Despite her desire to protest, the wolf couldn’t hide her reaction to the gratuitous acknowledgement of her mate’s considerable charms, nor the powerful effect the words ‘your second litter’ had on her; fixing the amazon with a knowing grin, the thicc bimbo laid a hand across that stiffening bulge, explicitly encouraging her girlfriend’s responses as something entirely natural.
“I asked Genie to give me the perfect body for you, and she did,” the little cow said reassuringly. “That’s my gift to you ⸻ to both of us. I want you to use me, in any way you feel the need to.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” the wolfgirl rejoined, a mounting desire rumbling in her chest. “You can’t possibly mean that.”
“I can, and I do,” Jersey stated confidently. “Whenever, wherever, however: I’m yours for the taking.”
“Jersey,” the wolf snarled, the itch in her fangs signalling the familiar desire to devour her mate. “I’m begging you to be more forward-thinking. Sure, I have your consent now while everything is still new and fun ⸻ but what happens when it’s not? What happens if I try to use you when you don’t want it anymore?”
Shifting slightly, the petite blonde rolled one leg over to the other side of the chair, mounting her lover’s lap as they came to rest face-to-face.
“Then it’ll be even hotter,” she hummed seductively, sliding her fingers into her wolf’s glossy mane.
Seizing hold of the offered vulnerability, Callie tried her hardest to prove her point in hours of exacting, carnal punishment ⸻ but despite the comforting refrain of tortured, rapturous mooing, Jersey never once asked her to stop.
After their first vigorous introduction, Candi only stopped by occasionally to help Jersey with either the twins or adjusting to her new needs. Beyond that they kept in semi-regular contact, having bonded over some similar interests as well as their shared affection for the women in their life. Intrigued by Candi’s Veil-skirting messaging application, Jersey proposed some project or other that the two seemed quite taken with, leading to a minicow collaboration that they described as having ‘promising applications in today’s world.’
While things at home weren’t as dire as they first appeared, Callie hated having to wait for Genie and Kelly to work out a plan rather than simply striking out at Bishop and the cult straight away. As far as she was concerned, every moment the sorcerer spent alive was another chance for him to cause serious problems in the world, and his willingness to let an old man sexually assault a teenager more than a third his age was a worrying indicator of his particular set of morals.
Any civilised society would've doubtlessly wanted Bishop imprisoned, but for the crime of putting his hands on her mate the wolfgirl wanted to put him in the ground.
Forced to continue attending school as if nothing was wrong, Callie was somewhat unsurprised to find that Megan had taken a few sick days. Figuring she was likely convalescing at her mother’s house after the ordeal she’d had at the Genesis cotillion, the amazon kept her worry to the merest simmer; Genie had of course assured her that she was able to break most of the lingering enchantment, but Callie didn’t feel as confident when the other girl didn’t have her own two-hundred-kilo wolf to protect her ⸻ and, as much as she would’ve liked to fill in that role herself, she had her hands full concentrating on her own family’s defense.
The week crawled by one day at a time, with very little change save for the frustrating march of the presidential administration’s insane declarations. After a government shutdown had paused social support benefits across the country, the young couple had taken to donating Jersey’s excess milk ⸻ of which there was a considerable amount ⸻ to needy mothers around the city who could no longer afford to purchase formula to feed their infants. Merely a small part of a far-larger epidemic of nationalist cruelty, it was an ‘acceptable’ consequence of the uncaring regime being more than fine with starving its poorer citizens to put pressure on the legislating body to outlaw ‘transgenderist ideology.’ Attacking the weakest and most-vulnerable members of society, the power-mad presidency fueled the fires of fascist ‘patriots’ everywhere, emboldening people like those who had attacked Callie back at her Seattle apartment.
In the wake of growing civil unrest, Dario hadn’t tried any further to recruit the amazon to whatever it was he’d been planning, but he did take a moment of his time to ask her to install a secure messaging app on her phone in case of ‘dire emergencies.’ Neglecting to explain what sort of scenario that might entail, the otherwise cheerful boy simply impressed on her the idea that as the government continued to pile on the pressure, something would eventually have to give.
Unfortunately, that moment came sooner than anyone was ready for.
It was Wednesday morning when Callie was unceremoniously called into the school’s counseling office.
A simple room with some filing cabinets, a desk, and a half-dozen motivational posters plastered to the walls, it wasn’t an area she’d ever visited. Back when she’d first attended school, the only time she’d ever seen a similar place was when she used to get into rather violent fist-fights with her less-understanding classmates; naturally the school had done very little in the way of any actual ‘counseling,’ simply disciplining her and calling it a day.
Expecting only the City High counselor herself, she was instead greeted by two adults she didn’t know at all, plus the principal. The latter gestured for her to take a seat before he brusquely motioned to the two suits, one behind the desk and another standing back by the door; once she sat down, the man by the door would be behind her, and she hated the look he shot her as he began to scribble something down onto a clipboard.
“Have a seat, Mr. Brambell,” the officious-looking woman behind the desk said with a sickly-sweet smile, a false emotion that had been painted-on by years of practice at pretending to be human. “I have some questions I’d like to go over with you.”
She shot the woman an annoyed look as she took a chair on the other side of the desk. “It’s ‘miss,’ thank you. And you are …?”
“Linda and Charles,” she replied, failing to give last-names; maybe it was an attempt to be chummy, or maybe because they didn’t want Callie to be able to ask about them later. “I’m from the Department of Education, and Charles is a solicitor for the city.”
“What kind of ‘solicitor’?” Callie asked, wondering what it was they were trying to obfuscate.
“If it’s alright with you, Mr. Brambell,” the woman continued, bulldozing past her questions, “I’d like to ask you about your time here at City High School.”
“I said, ‘what kind of solicitor’?” she repeated, glowering at ‘Linda’ while she crossed her arms defensively.
“We’re the ones asking questions,” the man, ‘Charles,’ intoned gravely from behind her. “We’d prefer it if you provided us with your full cooperation, like Principal Dennis here.”
Turning her withering gaze to the principal, Callie wasn’t surprised to find that the man was unwilling to look her in the eye. Leaning back in her chair, she crossed her legs, walling herself off from whoever these people were.
“Good!” Linda rejoined with her plastered-on grin, as though the girl’s standoffish behaviour somehow constituted cordial agreement. “Let’s start with an easy one. Your name is Mr. Callie Bramble, yes? Aged seventeen.”
“It’s ‘miss’,” she corrected again, a sour tone to her tenor.
“Are you aware of the State of California’s duty to comply with the Title IX federal civil rights act for the protection of women and girls in US schools?” she asked, brushing past Callie’s ill humour without a mouthful of rehearsed words.
“Same as everyone else, I guess,” she shrugged. “Why does it matter?”
“And are you aware,” she continued, running a finger down a checklist sitting on the desk in front of her, “that every student is required to make use of facilities, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, that correspond to their biological sex, an innate human quality that is both immutable and unchangeable after birth?”
“Answer the question, Mr. Brambell,” the man behind her said sternly.
“I refuse,” she replied, letting her glare rest on the other woman’s eyeline.
“Answer the question, Callie,” the principal urged in a much-kinder voice. “It’ll be over faster if you don’t make trouble.”
“I’ll answer questions once they stop calling me ‘mister’,” the wolfgirl stated firmly, not even bothering to look at the sniveling school official.
It was obvious that they weren’t really looking for any answers at all, having already decided what the correct responses were supposed to be. Callie was included as either a formality or a pretext, and the amazon couldn’t decide which it might be. Either way, she wasn’t going to let a couple of the administration’s patsies rake her over the coals, and she certainly wasn’t going to cave to their intimidation.
“Is your refusal to cooperate predicated on your indoctrination into extremist transgenderist ideology?” the woman behind the desk asked, the leading inquiry matched with several sharp scribbles of the solicitor’s pen.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” Callie snapped back. “If you’re not going to treat me like a person, then there’s no reason for me to be here.”
Moving to rise, her momentum was arrested by a sharp hand on her shoulder. Turning slightly, she shot daggers at the ‘solicitor,’ a growing violence burning in her eyes.
“Move. Your. Hand.” she growled, venom dancing on her tongue, her fangs dripping with fury.
“Our office recognises that the student became agitated during the interview,” the man said to the woman behind the desk, resolutely holding Callie in place; the amazon could tell the ‘our’ referred to some judicial body, but despite the implied threat she still held her ground.
“Is use of force normal in your home?” the woman asked, launching into yet another barbed query. “For instance, when I say ‘discipline,’ what are the words that come to mind?” The amazon had heard a question like it before, back when the state hadn’t been willing to do anything about her abusive father.
Snarling, Callie ignored the woman as she held the man’s gaze, animosity blazing on her tongue; “You’d better fucking move your hand before I move it for you,” she snapped, teeth sharp with combative fury.
The man motioned to the principal, who rushed to the door as though he had been waiting to flee the entire time. As he exited the room, three uniformed police officers entered in his place, picking up where the solicitor let off; one threatened cuffs as the other two held her down by her shoulders, their thick hands gripping her tightly.
Smiling evilly, the woman continued. “When was it that your guardian, Ms. Kelly Andersen, began to teach you lies regarding the sex binary, and did she ever repeat similar false statements to Jessie March?”
“The fuck does my mom have to do with this?” Callie demanded, the grips on her shoulders tightening the more she swore and struggled. “She didn’t ‘teach’ me anything, alright? I’ve been trans my whole life.”
“... Legal guardian … encouraged extremist … and abusive programming …” the woman mumbled to herself as she scribbled on the papers in front of her. Looking up from the desk, she locked eyes with the wolfgirl once more, empathy entirely absent from her gaze. “When was it you first discovered your ‘mother’ had been soliciting sexual clients for Miss Jessie March?”
Stunned, the amazon worked her jaw in slow motions, struggling to process the insane statement. Of course she understood all of the words, both individually and in a sequence, but they were so nonsensical when applied to her mum and her sister that it was sheer lunacy to even contemplate.
“What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, suddenly far more concerned for her little family than she was for her own person. “What do you mean ‘soliciting clients’?”
“Did your mother force you to file the Voluntary Declaration of Parentage to cover up her criminal misconduct? And, furthermore, did she pay for third-party services to defraud the paternity test?”
“Those are my pups,” Callie snapped, outrage burning so brightly in her chest that it threatened to consume the world around her. “If you go anywhere near them, I swear to god I will bury you in a grave so deep that they will never, ever find whatever scraps are left of the body.”
The wolfgirl’s conscious thought ended there, erased by twenty-five million volts of electricity shot into her back by the officer’s stun gun. Even then, it still took a second officer discharging their own ‘nonlethal’ weapon to actually incapacitate the wolf. Dario would relate to her after the fact that several students had claimed to see her bodily eject a cop through the door of the counseling office and into the hallway, but she had been unconscious when they dragged her out.
Callie awoke in the back of a cruiser, sitting at a red light. Surrounded on all sides by metal bars and uncomfortable upholstery, she was anxious (but not surprised) to find her wrists bound in handcuffs behind her back, evidently having been thrown into the vehicle unceremoniously.
In light of what she could remember had happened back at the school, she wasn’t feeling particularly charitable.
Witnesses to the incident later reported that the passenger-side door had exploded outward and onto the sidewalk, followed closely by a ‘silver blur’ that disappeared down an alleyway. Responding officers discovered that the steel retaining mesh had been torn down the middle and bent to either side, as though something very large had forced its way into the front seat. One of the men on-scene described the brutalised remains of the driver and his partner as having been ‘fed through a woodchipper.’
Unable to recover any data from the shredded bodycams, local PD couldn’t accurately determine what the officers had been transporting.
Stalking through the city streets, Callie was grateful for the charm that kept her clothes from being obliterated when she wolfed-out but was still sad that she had to toss much of what she’d been wearing into the dumpster behind a restaurant. Scraping her shoes in the mud helped to cover up the bloodstains long-enough to walk home, but she pitched those into a trashcan a block and a half away as well. Cutting behind the house, she snuck in through the back door, conscious of needing to avoid having the neighbors ask why she’d come home barefoot.
Jersey threw herself at Callie as she entered the kitchen from the mudroom, the little cow red-eyed from crying; as the wolfgirl’s arms curled around her, she broke down into sobbing once more.
“What is it?” the amazon asked in a soft voice, her eyes roaming around the living room.
Some of the furniture had been knocked around, the shattered remains of a lamp in a half-swept heap where Jersey had evidently been trying to clean up. The front door sat ajar, the frame splintered where the deadbolt had been, a mangled screen-door clacking against the vacant portal. Muddied footprints stained the entryway, indicating at least a half-dozen people.
Unable to make coherent noises, the smaller girl clutched at her clothing, dampening Callie’s shirt. Wailing pathetically, she leaned against her taller mate for support, sucking in stuttering breaths as she tried and failed to relate what happened.
“Why’s the door like that?” Callie continued, her anxiety spiking. “Where’s Xena? Did she get out?”
“G-genie,” the little cow choked out. “Genie took her to the vet. The men … ⸻ they hurt her. Xena wouldn’t let them.”
A heavy weight sank into the pit of her stomach, a knot of guilt and rage twisting around itself. A voice inside of her screamed that she should've been there, that she should've known this would happen ⸻ that she had failed in her duty as a protector. The pitiless mess spread out before her shouted her failures in a terribly quiet litany, the prose damning her for allowing such an atrocity to happen. Anger and sorrow rose up in a wave into her throat, strangling her with it; even bloodsoaked as she was, she knew she should've done more, somehow.
Conscious of her shivering mate, she wrestled with her violent emotions, projecting what little calm she could fake.
“Wouldn’t let them what?” the wolfgirl encouraged, thumbing the tears away from her girlfriend’s eyes, letting her panic and fury simmer behind her teeth.
“Sh-she wouldn’t let them take Kelly,” the little cow blurted out, forcing the words between gasping wails. “Candi and I had the g-girls, and the men were shouting and Kelly ⸻ ….”
Pressing her face against the taller girl’s chest, she trailed off as she struggled to catch her breath. It took several long minutes for her to collect herself; every time she finished crying long enough to start speaking, she only managed a syllable or two before breaking down again. Worried, Callie held her close, gently stroking the other girl’s back in soft, long pets.
“Candi and Genie took me and the twins, and h-hid us.” Jersey finally whispered, her crackly timbre marred by tears. “B-but Kelly … ⸻ Kelly’s gone.”
“They arrested her.”