SKIN (WATTYS UNDISCOVERED GEM)

Chapter One: Naked

For the past eight years, Lennox was forced to fold himself into a form he was insatiable in.
Lennox traded his paws for human legs, claws for fingers frail but thick, durable Quin had told him. Underneath the shape of this body, the one that could barely contain the Alpha, his limbs were strong and limber, but naked without hair. 

Hidden beneath his freckled skin, an untamable itch remained, calling out to the insatiable beast lurking just below the surface.

When Lennox moved back into his other form, his human side, he found himself spellbound by his reflection. Before he was eighteen, Lennox only saw his face in the murky reflection of river water.

Mirror was what Quin called his favorite pastime. 

Like he was in a trance, Lennox stared for hours. He moved his lips up in a sneer and showed off his dull white teeth. What would've been terrifying in his wolf form only came across as a slight grimace. 

After days of studying his face, Lennox realized his nose was crooked. His scars, noticeable even on his cheeks, covered countless inches of his tan skin. 

They carried words he couldn't say, stories hard to describe when one only knew only a handful of vocabulary. Before he found himself at the mercy of Quin's kindness, before he ever stood upright on two legs, Lennox's scars and stories hid beneath his tawny fur. In this soft and strong human form, they were obvious against his skin.

Tiny dots of brown lit up his body in a broken pattern of spontaneous dust, a constellation Quin called freckles. The trait was so strong the word 'Freckle' stuck around as a nickname before Lennox revealed his true identity to Quin.

For the weeks he spent healing, Lennox settled in front of the bathroom mirror and watched his mouth form words. Quin would sit on the toilet-lid and read off words from a thick book she always tucked beneath her arm. Through months of repetition, Lennox learned the English language by the grace of her patience. 

Quin spoke slow and careful, first beginning with the basics of vowels days after she found him. Before she worked as a nurse for thirty-odd years, she earned a degree in and used it to help Lennox break down English in an understandable way. 

"Shut up and stop growling," Quin demanded on one of the many nights she spent as his shadow, unable to quit on the young man despite the angry growls that constantly escaped him. "I'm trying to help you. Let me help you." 

At the time, Lennox hardly understood anything the woman said, but he recognized the raw conviction in her voice. She spoke to him like he meant something—like she believed in his abilities. Lennox stopped staring at himself in the mirror and instead, repeated the words she spoke.

Lennox barely managed to wrap his tongue around his mouth in order to form the awkward sound of 'hello,' but days of practice proved to be worth it. At his progress, Quin allowed him to shift back into the comforting familiarity of his wolf.

There wasn't much the man knew on the first night spent at Quin's, when he was taken in and sewn up. His lack of knowledge wasn't due to anything but the wolf inside him. Animals needed no language to understand, no pattern to follow, no morals to uphold.

Before Lennox arrived as an eighteen-year-old boy on Quin's doorstep, beaten, bruised, and on his way to dying, he was raised as nothing more than a wild animal.

The Alpha knew nothing of the human world, a place he was warned against and dragged away from. Only when he ran, when he feared what his father became, did Lennox learn of a world outside of teeth and blood. At his escape, Lennox left behind the forest and traded his only home for the safety of Quin's arms.