Two hours from the nearest grocery store; four hours from the nearest city of any size. But where else would you study wolves in their natural environment? Longfellow keeps running through my head: This is the forest primeval. It's just past noon, but the trees tower so far overhead my sturdy little Jeep is lost in twilight, almost to the point I need to turn on the headlights. The road is still paved, at least, though the asphalt is so cracked and worn I wonder if it'll survive the next winter.

The cabin finally comes into view and I breathe a sigh of relief. Partly because for the last forty-five minutes I wasn't sure I was headed in the right direction, but mostly because it's a lot bigger than you'd led me to believe. I'm going to be here until the spring thaw, and if things between us are ... well, too tense, then at least we'll have enough space to sleep in separate rooms. There's a small, optimistic ember in me that hopes that won't be the case. But it's been two years since we split, and I still remember the last couple of fights we had, and goddammit why did I agree to this in the first place?

Then you appear on the rough wooden porch, and I remember why. A couple years older, hair a little longer (and wilder, which brings a grin to my face), and dressed like a lumberjack in long sleeve flannel and denim, but the same woman I was crazy about for what felt like forever. You're smiling, which is a good sign, and when I mount the porch you plant a kiss on my mouth, which is even better. Some dark, delicious perfume clings to you, making my skin tingle, and I confess I linger with my hands on your hips a trifle longer than you should for an ex-fiancee.

Then you're showing me around what'll be my home for the next half year or so, and the only place I'll see when the snows come deep. Not two bedrooms but three, one yours, one a spartan guest room, the third currently a sort of office-cum-storage room, two desks cramped side by side, one boasting an ancient workstation that looks like it's still running Windows 95. A smallish library, packed with local history and guidebooks. A decent kitchen and a pantry three times its size, creaking with food for the winter. A cozy sitting room with far more squashy chairs and love seats than we'll ever need, with a giant fireplace dominating one wall. And a musty cellar you tell me is always locked. There's something furtive in your eyes when you say it, but I don't really notice it at the time.

It's your pride and joy that comes next: past the empty kennel where you might keep a tagged, injured wolf if you had a larger team (I eye the tranq gun with a wary eye, considering and rejecting suggesting that maybe we should have a high powered rifle instead) you lead me to a grassy ridge behind the cabin, its far slope sweeping down to the edge of a churning brook. The landscape is absolutely bucolic, and I find myself wistfully thinking this would be a fabulous place to spend a honeymoon.

"Now watch," you grin at me. Something strange in your eye, something unsettling.

Arms folded on my chest, I watch as you slip down to the edge of the stream, crouching down, making soft whistling noises. My heart leaps into my throat when, scant minutes later, a gigantic wolf emerges from the thicket. It lopes toward you, not particularly hesitant, splashing across the water, and tackles you.

I almost turn and run for the tranq gun, but then I hear you laughing, stroking behind its ears as it laps your mouth, rolling on its back in a gesture of clear submission. You look up at me with a laugh, rubbing its belly. "This is Atlas. He's not the alpha -- that's Zeus. Zeus doesn't roll over so easily."

"Should I come say hello?" I can hear the doubt in my own voice, the wonder that you've become some sort of wolf whisperer.

"Not just yet. They need to get to know you first."

I don't ask how that's supposed to happen, though I'm still thinking about it when I'm in the shower, luxuriating in the hot water washing away the grime of my road trip, wondering if the place is equipped with a tankless heater, or if we're going to be boiling water come mid-January. As I'm toweling off, I realize with a groan that I'd forgotten to pack deodorant. Going through the drawers and medicine cabinet, hoping for a stick of something that isn't too feminine (and really hoping I don't find some other guy's Old Spice), I find a little leather satchel in one drawer, like a grooming kit. I'm stunned when I open it to find a pair of hypodermic needles and a couple of vials bearing handwritten labels. "Serum 113, Serum 114." Your handwriting. Some clear liquid, I have no idea what. Stimulants to help you through long nights, maybe? Tranqs of your own? I wonder if I should ask or leave well enough alone.

Whatever I might think is immediately wiped from my head when I step out of the bathroom and find you waiting for me. Not wearing a stitch of clothing, skin flushed, tongue wetting your lips, eyes glittering with a feverish excitement I can't remember seeing since the earliest days we were dating. You attack me -- there's no other word for it. Soon we're wrestling on the floor, tangled on the bed, you riding me, you demanding I take you from behind, a position you used to claim was undignified. I can't even try to argue. That perfume you're wearing drives me absolutely berserk, tickling the darkest parts of my brain, and no matter how hard I drive my cock into you, no matter how fiercely I grip your waist or suckle on your breasts and neck, you only hiss for more, more, more. I notice you haven't been keeping yourself groomed -- not only is there a downy patch of hair between your legs, but your legs themselves sport a thin coat that hasn't seen a razor in months. It doesn't deter me. If anything, it feels ... quite pleasant. Soft, silky, delicious against my body. By the time I collapse from exhaustion I'm beyond caring if this was a mistake.

I wake to the sound of howls.

I've seen your research before, I'm no stranger to the sound, but never have I heard them so close, or so many of them. You're nowhere to be seen. I roam the cabin naked, heart pounding as I tug on my boxers, not finding you until I step out onto the porch. There you stand, sleekly naked, redolent of that delicious, dark perfume. Staring into the starlit night, staring at the moon, breathing hard. I step closer, a hand on your waist. I realize now that soft, downy hair on your legs actually covers most of your body below the neck -- it's just too lightly colored to be seen in the light. It feels as sinfully soft as ... well, as fur.

"Hon," I ask softly, thinking of the hypodermics, "why do they let you get so close?"

That's when you tell me. The chemistry lab in the basement; the extractions you've been making from tranquilized wolves; the serum you've developed and injected yourself with half a dozen times. I listen with growing dread. I always knew you loved wolves; I had no idea that love had become such an obsession.

"I can get closer to them than anyone else in the world," you whisper at last. "They scent me and think I'm one of them."

Lightly I run my hands through the downy coat of hair on your lower belly, shuddering as I hear your pleasured gasp. My nostrils flare, drinking in that dark perfume that I now understand isn't perfume at all. "Is ... is that all the serum is doing to you?"

You turn and our eyes meet. Yours reflect the light. Like a she-wolf's.

"I don't know," you whisper.

But we both know that's a lie.

I just don't know what happens next.

That's the setup: estranged but possibly still loving couple holes up for the winter to study a wolfpack, with my character slowly realizing your character has taken some very unorthodox, very dangerous measures to get closer to the beasts. Kinks for this would be primal play, slow-burn transformation, beast and cuckold (though humiliation isn't quite what I have in mind, and I intend on playing the wolves, though I'm happy to share that role), and just generally savage, wicked fun as you become more and more wolfish in appearance and mindset. I really like the idea of both of us struggling with whether you should continue on this course or not, regardless of what the outcome might be. PMs preferred, with moving over to Discord if we click.