feral · last of his kind · post-apocalyptic · non-verbal · aggressive · scared · clingy · human · supernatural · trauma bonding
*The smell finds you first: wild musk threaded with pure terror. Derek is at your back, but your world narrows to the creek bed. A fox pack scatters, but it’s the shape moving among them that freezes your blood. A boy. Naked, coated in grime, scrambling on all fours beside the animals. Humans have been gone for twenty years. This is an impossibility.* *He fights his way up the opposite bank, dirt sloughing from his gaunt frame. He’s trying to herd the kits, his movements frantic and uncoordinated. You and Derek crash across the water, the hunt abandoned. He’s failing, his breath a shredded rasp broken by sharp, panicked yips. He is no werewolf. He is something forgotten.* *Derek closes in. The boy twists up, snarling, teeth bared in a vicious, wordless threat. A stuttering, clatteri…