Roxy trekked through the woods near her home, leaves and twigs crunching under her sneakers as she walked the familiar ground. A breeze wafted through the trees and she relished the feeling as it tousled her short, black hair, freshly cut the night before. She always tried to not let it grow past her chin and it was refreshing to know she wouldn’t need to worry about it for a while.

She often walked through these woods, the peaceful sounds of the wildlife in the undergrowth and the feeling of comfortable isolation soothing her anxieties better than any other remedy. She practically grew up wandering aimlessly through the trees, trying to spot animals or catch falling leaves to press in a scrapbook, getting hopelessly lost on more than one occasion. Today, she was just trying to get away from the stress of schoolwork and her mother’s constant badgering about how she had ‘ruined her hair again,’ as was the case every time Roxy cut her own hair, even though it looked perfectly fine. Roxy walked for a long time, no direction in mind but faithful that she’d be able to find her way back when she needed to return. Well, as long as the sun was still up, at least.

As she mindlessly meandered through the woods, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun on her tan olive skin, a sound tore her from her meditative calmness. A whimper, a cry for help from some injured woodland animal. Roxy knew the dangers of approaching wild animals, everyone who lived in Dewsbury knew them, but that didn’t stop her heart from wrenching with every yelp that filtered through the trees. Eventually, her undying curiosity (read: lack of self-preservation instincts) got the better of her and she made her way in the direction of the sound, careful to not step on any crunchy leaves or twigs.

She stumbled out into a clearing and was immediately frozen in her tracks by the sight before her. A massive, golden-haired wolf was lying in the centre of the clearing, whimpering and trying to tug one of its huge hind legs out of the jaws of a bear trap. Or maybe a wolf trap, if those were a thing? Considering that the last time a bear was even sighted in this part of Washington state was before Roxy was even born, she was reasonably confused.

She stepped in for a closer look. The beast noticed her presence and stiffened, baring its fangs and growling deeply, a sound that reverberated through the air and shook Roxy’s rib cage. Dark, crimson eyes bored into her soul and Roxy found herself completely frozen in place.

“H-hey, it’s alright buddy, I'm not gonna hurt you, I-I just wanna help,” Roxy said in a soothing voice, raising her hands with a calming gesture. She didn’t expect the wolf to understand what she was saying, but she was hoping that the tone of her voice helped calm it down a bit. Much to her surprise, the wolf immediately backed down, the growl cutting off as it lowered its head in uneasy acceptance.

Wow, that’s one smart animal.

She took a cautious step closer to the beast’s head. Lowering herself down to one knee and ignoring how the rough ground dug into her bare skin (why did I decide to wear shorts today?), she very slowly reached a hand out towards the creature, her palm up to show that she wasn’t holding anything. The wolf shifted its head closer and sniffed at her hand cautiously before giving it a curious lick. Roxy squealed at the sudden wet sensation and pulled her hand away before realising her overreaction and laughing to herself.

“Aww, you’re not scary, are you? You're just a big softie!”

The wolf let out a little bark, as if in agreement, and attempted to move closer before suddenly yelping and pulling back, clearly having forgotten that its leg was trapped.

“Oh my god, I completely forgot! Sorry, puppy, let me help you out of that thing,” Roxy said soothingly, carefully stroking the beast across the head, enjoying the way that it seemed to lean into her touch.

The girl stood up and walked over to the wolf’s hind leg, feeling its red eyes following her as she moved. She took a second to examine the bear trap before taking a deep breath and slotting her hands in the space between the metal jaws. She pulled with all her strength and felt the metal shift ever-so-slightly under her grip. Thankfully that was all the wolf needed to pull its leg out and allow Roxy to let go before she pulled every muscle in her arms.

The wolf sat up and licked its wounded leg for a bit before fully standing up and walking over to Roxy. It was then that she saw just how truly massive this creature was. Roxy was a fairly average height for her age, standing at around 5’5”, yet this creature stood at least 2 inches above her. The wolf lowered its head towards her and Roxy was given a split second to start feeling nervous before its giant tongue flicked out and licked her face.

Roxy laughed and fell backwards as the wolf pounced on her and began assaulting her face with its tongue before nuzzling its head against her. The girl cooed at the behaviour before pulling herself back to her feet and reaching up to scratch the wolf behind the ear.

“A creature as beautiful as you has gotta have a name. How about...Bear?” she asked, more to herself than to the wolf. To her surprise, the animal huffed its dissatisfaction at the name and Roxy’s eyes widened. “Wait, can you... understand me?”

The wolf yipped and wagged its tail swiftly through the air, creating a noticeable breeze. Roxy took a minute to digest that little piece of information before continuing.

“Wow. Ok, uh... you don’t like that name?” the wolf huffed again. “Ok… are you male or female?” It cocked its head to the side and Roxy mentally hit herself. It obviously can’t answer that, dumbass, try something else.

“Ok, how about this, bark once for male, twice for female.” Two barks rang out through the clearing. Roxy laughed, despite herself. This whole situation was way too weird. “Okay, good to know that you can count, I guess. So you’re a girl wolf, then?” The wolf boofed at her. “How about… Artemis? Like, after the Greek goddess of the hunt!” Roxy suggested. The wolf immediately started wagging her tail and nuzzled up to the raven-haired girl again.

“Artemis it is.” Roxy said with a smile, hugging the wolf and burying her head into the thick fur on her neck.

Hmm, smells like pine.

—

Roxy trudged through the halls of her school. It was Monday morning and classes hadn’t started yet. She kept looking out through the tide of students for the faces of any of her friends, but her eye ended up caught, as usual, on one particular student, walking through the halls with her usual air of uncaring obliviousness.

She was someone that Roxy had had her eye on for quite some time, tall with long limbs and clear musculature, a wild mane of unkempt blonde hair cascading down her back and shoulders, little streaks of white peeking through the fluff. Her white school shirt was always untucked from her skirt, and she was always sporting some kind of new scratch or bandage every time Roxy saw her. Today, she had a bandage wrapped around her calf.

Roxy wasn’t sure what had her caught up on the wild girl. It wasn’t her tall frame or muscular figure, nor was it her expressive face or bright blue eyes. There was just something about her, something that her other classmates lacked that made Roxy’s whole body burn with curious desire. Shame she had never even spoken a word to her.

The girl stopped in her tracks suddenly, causing a couple students walking behind to bump into her. She didn’t seem to mind however, shutting her eyes and lifting her nose to the air, almost like she was trying to smell something. Suddenly, her sky-blue eyes opened and locked onto Roxy, causing the shorter girl to jump and quickly look away, suppressing a shiver.

When she looked back, the blonde was right in front of her, and suddenly her feet left the ground as she was pulled into a tight hug.

“Ah- u- why?!” she squealed as her face was suddenly pressed into the crook of the other girl's neck. She tried to take a breath to calm her rapidly beating heart and instantly regretted it as her nose was filled with the weirdly intoxicating scent of the wild blonde. She was lowered to the ground, face burning and heart beating a million miles a minute from the sudden close contact with the object of her infatuation. As much as a secret part of her longed to be closer to the mysterious girl, that was not what she had been expecting.

Before she could even say anything in response to whatever that was, the other girl was already walking down the hallway in her original direction, and from this angle Roxy could just make out the hint of a wide smile on her face. She watched her walk away, entranced by her energy and intrigued by the odd interaction, and definitely not locked on the sway of her hips. The raven-haired girl eventually managed to pull herself out of her gay stupor and continued walking down the hall, headed for class, only one thing on her mind.

Huh, she smelt like pine. Weird.

—

Roxy sat down across from her friends at her usual table for lunch. Ross was lying face down on the table while Leif was blankly chewing on a sandwich she brought from home.

“Ok, so,” Roxy started, prompting Ross to lift his head from the table to look at her, his fluffy brown hair bouncing slightly in the process. “Do you guys know that one girl? Tall, blonde, really blue eyes, kinda spacey?”

“Oh, you mean the one that you openly gawk at every time you see? Yeah, I think I know her.” Ross replied, smirking as Roxy’s face steadily reddened.

“I- wha- no- no I don’t!” Roxy stammered out, watching with dismay as Leif started laughing.

“Don’t try to hide it, dude, it’s so obvious that you’ve got the hots for her and honestly, I can’t say I blame you. She is fine,” Leif said, eyeing Roxy knowingly. “Anyways, what about her?”

Roxy took a second to swallow down her embarrassment at getting outed like that before continuing.

“Anyway, the weirdest thing happened this morning. I was just walking through the halls, I saw her and suddenly we made eye contact. Then, out of absolutely nowhere, she comes up to me and hugs me! Like, fully lifted me off the ground and everything! Then, before I could even say anything, she just walked away down the hall like nothing even happened. She didn’t even say anything! I was so confused!” 

The table was silent for a moment as her friends stared at her incredulously before they both burst out laughing, much to Roxy’s chagrin.

“Yeah, good one, Rox,” Ross managed through his laughter, “but, next time, I’d try to make it a little more believable.”

“I’m not lying, you dick!” Roxy hissed through her clenched teeth, face turning red as she realised the obnoxious laughter was attracting stares from other tables. “And keep your voices down, people are staring!”

Leif was the first to stop giggling, sighing as she wiped a tear from her eye. “No offence Rox, but it does sound pretty far-fetched to me. I mean, you have literally never even spoken a word to her in your life. You don’t even know her name! Why would she just hug you out of the blue?”

“That's what I wanna know! Whatever, let's just move on, you guys clearly don’t believe me anyways.” Roxy pouted.

The lunch continued on as normal for the next few minutes, the three friends sharing jokes and talking about their weekends, although Roxy never brought up the wolf she met in the forest, knowing her friends would make fun of her for being a Disney princess or something.

Suddenly, all conversation halted as Roxy felt a presence sit down on the bench next to her and she recognised the scent of pine. She turned her head and was greeted by a grinning face, icy blue eyes peering at her curiously. It was the girl from this morning, once again appearing to Roxy out of nowhere. From this angle Roxy could see that her canines were pronounced, slightly longer than what would be expected of a normal human. It almost looked like she had...

Fangs…?

Roxy caught herself staring and realised the girl had started speaking. Quickly pulling herself together and decidedly ignoring the warmth on her cheeks, she interrupted. “Um sorry, I didn’t catch that, What were you saying?”

“Oh, I just wanted to apologise for hugging you out of nowhere earlier,” the girl's voice was husky and relatively deep. Out of the corner of her eye, Roxy noticed that her friends, who had been giggling at the gay disaster that was the raven-haired lesbian, suddenly froze when they registered what the blonde had said. “I realise in hindsight that might have made you uncomfortable and I'm super super sorry if it did, that wasn’t at all my intention. I know most people don’t just hug other people for no reason, and yeah, I just wanted to check to make sure I didn’t, uh.. cross any lines or anything.”

The girl finished her apologetic ramble and was pouting at Roxy, big blue eyes reminding her of a sad puppy. Roxy pulled herself together before replying.

“Uh.. o-oh no don’t worry about it! It wasn’t a big deal, I wasn’t expecting it but like you didn’t cross a line or anything, you’re fine...” Roxy laughed nervously, looking up at the girl and feeling her face slowly grow redder again for about the fifth time in as many minutes. Suddenly, someone kicked her under the table and Roxy realised she was staring again. She glanced over at Leif who was gesturing something between them with her eyes encouragingly. Roxy remembered herself.

“Oh! Uh… I'm Roxy, by the way… And you are?” She looked at the girl expectantly as her blue eyes lit up like the sky on a summer day and Roxy felt her heart flutter as she broke into that adorable grin again.

“I’m Samantha! But people just call me Sam,” she said excitedly, looking away from Roxy to the other members of the table. “By the way, I was wondering if it was alright for me to sit here today? My usual table was taken by that group over there when I got here.” Sam gestured over her shoulder to a group of students and Roxy’s mood plummeted as she recognised the table’s inhabitants. Rich girls and sporty guys and pretty much everyone who thought that they were better than their fellow students, colloquially referred to as the ‘popular kids.’ They were mean, controlling, and occasionally even downright sadistic, taking demented satisfaction in humiliating and hurting their classmates at the slightest provocation.

“Ugh, I hate those guys,” Roxy muttered under her breath, and Sam sent her a questioning glance. “you’re welcome to sit here with us as long as you want, I wouldn’t want them to target you because you tried to get your table back or anything.”

“Target me? What do you mean?” Sam looked genuinely confused. Had she really never had an issue with those people? Roxy would have thought they for sure would have tried something with how much of an outcast Sam was. She’d only ever seen her hanging out with one other person before. That being said, the girl did strike quite the intimidating figure, what with her tall frame and muscular build. And beautiful hair. And sparkling blue eyes. And adorable smile. And-

Roxy remembered that she had a physical presence and that she was actually having a conversation right now.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing,” the shorter girl finally replied, wiping her hand across her mouth as if she had been drooling which, for all she knows, she might have been. Eventually the conversation between the four teens returned to normal, with Sam even occasionally laughing along to the jokes that began to fly again as the group got comfortable with the new girl’s presence.

There was a lull in the conversation as Roxy focused on eating her lunch, trying to ignore the warmth radiating from the girl sitting to her left, who had definitely shifted closer to her at some point, considering that their bare knees were now slightly touching, sending shivers down Roxy’s spine at every contact. Something tapped on her foot and she looked up to her friends, who were now staring at her. Leif made eye contact with her before glancing over to Sam, silently telling the Raven-haired girl to look over.

Roxy turned her head to her left and was greeted with Sam staring at her, mouth slightly ajar and a light dusting of pink on her cheeks. Roxy shot her a questioning look that prompted Sam out of whatever stupor she was lost in.

“Oh, uh.. Sorry, you just have a really cute nose.”

Roxy was certain that you could fry an egg on her face with how hot it suddenly was, her tan complexion no doubt turning a brilliant shade of red. She could feel her stomach churning with flustered butterflies as she tried and failed to stammer out a response.

“uh- you- I- aha- wha.” Roxy stated intelligently. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Ross and Leif giggling and whispering to each other. “Umm.. Th-thank you.” She finally managed to squeak out. Sam’s smile was nothing short of beaming, ecstatic that her compliment had been received well. She turned back to her meal, bright smile never dimming. If Sam had a tail, Roxy was certain it would be wagging right now.

—

Ava walked into the cafeteria, eyes open, searching for her sister. She scanned the room until her eyes locked onto that familiar mane of white-gold hair, sitting with a group of unfamiliar people. She sighed, praying that her socially oblivious adoptive sister hadn’t made a fool out of herself again. Sam had been acting weird all day, always seeming to be searching for something. She'd walked into first period with a massive smile on her face that, while certainly not unusual for the excitable blonde, was usually reserved for things that she actually liked, and school was certainly not one of those.

Ava approached the table, eyeing the students sitting around it, the most notable of which was a dark haired girl sitting next to Sam, staring at her with her mouth slightly agape, so purely brick-red in the face that Ava was sure she was about to catch fire. Sam was grinning to herself as she ate, her own cheeks visibly pink and completely unaware of her sister’s presence, which was unusual for the girl considering her heightened senses.

“There you are, Sam. What are you doing sitting over here?” Ava questioned, causing Sam to finally notice her.

“Oh, hi Ava!” she said excitedly. “There were already people at our usual spot, so I sat here instead. These guys were nice enough to let me stay.”

“Yeah, Sam seems pretty cool,” a brown haired boy sitting at the other end of the table said. “Although, if she keeps chatting up Roxy here, I fear she might pass out.” At the mention of her name, the dark haired girl (Roxy, Ava guessed) groaned and buried her burning face in her hands.

Ava raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t comment on it. Instead, she grabbed Sam under her armpits and dragged her from the bench. “Alright, come on mutt, let’s give the girl some space.”

“Aww, but Avaaa, these guys are cooooool.” Sam looked up at her, pouting and staring into her soul with big blue puppy-dog eyes.

“I’m sure they are, but you were supposed to be in detention today and let me tell you, Mr. Henderson is not pleased.”

“Aw shit,” Sam huffed as she allowed herself to be dragged away from her new friends, earning weird looks from nearby students. She looked back to the table and loudly shouted a goodbye as Ava pulled her out of the cafeteria.

—

Once they were out in the hallway, Sam finally pulled herself up and walked alongside her sister like a normal person, headed towards the detention hall.

“So, who’s the girl?” Ava questioned as they walked through the mostly empty halls, her shoulder-length brunette hair swaying with every quick step.

Sam had been spacing out but was pulled back in by the question. “Oh, that’s Roxy, I met her over the weekend.” She responded matter-of-factly.

“Wait, I thought you were running around as a wolf all weekend?”

“Yeah, I was.”

“And she wasn’t scared off by the fact that you’re a werewolf?!” The brunette hissed in a slightly-too-loud stage whisper.

“Well, she doesn’t know that part,” Sam yawned, her canines glinting in the light as she opened her mouth wide. “She stumbled across me while I was in my wolf form and I stayed in it the whole time. As far as she knows I was just an abnormally large and incredibly loveable wolf.” The wild girl smirked. “I liked her enough that I wanted to try and make friends with her as a human as well. You know, like you’ve been telling me I need to?”

“Wow, she must be pretty damn brave to be able to just walk up to you as a wolf like that. Hell, even I get intimidated sometimes and I've known you since you were a puppy!” Ava said, more to herself than anyone else.

“Yeah… She’s pretty great…” the blonde sighed wistfully, not noticing the light smattering of pink that had returned to her cheeks or the slight smile on her lips as she thought of the other girl. “Although... It probably had more to do with the fact that I was maybe sorta kinda...” Sam swallowed before looking at the ground guiltily. “Stuck in a bear trap.”

Ava stopped in her tracks, turning to her sister, green eyes bulging. “you were WHAT?!”

Sam bit her lip, trying to force the tension out of her body before continuing. “Yeah, it’s actually really lucky she came when she did, otherwise I probably would’ve been stuck there waiting for whoever set the trap to come check it, and they probably wouldn’t have been nearly as nice as she was...”

“Well shit, Sam, I'm glad you’re okay but you’ve really gotta be more careful running around like that, hunters are always more active this time of year, and that’s not even counting the kind that specialises in you.” the brunette scolded, pointing a finger at the taller girl before composing herself and calming down at Sam’s thoroughly chastised expression. “Well, what happened after that?”

“She uh.. She played with me for a bit and umm...” Her cheeks reddened and her heart fluttered a little at the memory. “She gave me a name.”

At this point, Sam’s whole face was crimson at the admission and Ava was practically beaming at her.

“Awww, that’s so adorable! What’d she call you? C’mon, you can’t not tell me!” The brunette was all but begging.

“That’s none of your business.” Sam stated firmly before turning to continue on their path down the halls. Ava pouted but nonetheless acquiesced to her sister's harsh tone. They walked in silence for a little while before the shorter girl broke it again.

“So, are you gonna ask her out?”

Sam’s face immediately returned to its previous red state. “Jesus, Ava! I've known her for all of two days, I don’t like her like that!”

I think?

Ava laughed to herself before continuing. “Well, I've seen you get the hots for people that fast before and that was without the whole ‘saving you from potential death’ bit. Plus, you apparently had no issues with chatting her up earlier, either.” The brunette said with an audible smirk.

“She has a cute nose! I wanted her to know that! There was absolutely nothing behind it!” Sam sped up and walked ahead of her sister, praying to the moon that she didn’t notice how red her ears were.

“Sure, sure.”