Easy peasy lemon squeezey! Can I get some caught in a snare for werewolf!Imector? There's so much that you can do there, I'm curious to see how that would go
MMmmm okay, so, expectation spoilers for later chapters of the werewolf AU. I’ve put them in rot13 for full disclosure?
Urpgbe fgvyy gheaf vagb n jbys qhevat shyy zbbaf. Vzryqn oebhtug uvz “onpx”, ohg ur'f fgvyy n jrerjbys, grpuavpnyyl fcrnxvat.
….I don’t 100% know if the snare would work the way I’m writing it to, so just know that I did the research, but discarded so the plot I wanted to write would make sense. |D
Héctor had gotten better at handling the nights of the full moon; while he still hated the lack of control that came with the shift from one from to the other, he could handle it. Mostly. It helped that his family was there, grounding him, keeping him from slipping to much into wolf mind, and wolf instincts. While some of them could be useful, he didn’t want to lose himself - not again.
What didn’t help were that some of the instincts were just plain ridiculous. Take the idea of a territory, for example. He was just one man, (even if he was a wolf some of the time), he had a house, he had his family, he didn’t need to lay claim to all of Santa Cecilia.
But whatever instincts bubbled up and refused to vanish were the ones insisting that this was his territory - all of it. Thankfully he didn’t have to do much; there weren’t any other wolves in the area he had to defend “his” territory from. He could usually sleep easy by doing a circle around the town, leaving scratch marks in the dirt and in the trees that left his scent. (The need to scent mark in general was the worst - it made him feel like even less human then he did already.)
At first he had tried to stay indoors all night every night during the full moon, to quash down the instincts, and to be a good husband - a good man. And it had worked, for a time, being home, being with family, he was able to focus on that, and it did help.
But he had started to get anxious, a feeling that didn’t quite go away when he was human the next morning. He had been tense, waiting for… Something. He didn’t know what, but it was coming. Imelda had found him pacing in the courtyard, the next full moon, as he tried to work off his nervous energy before the night was up, but - heaven help him - he wanted to run.
He didn’t know long Imelda had been watching him from the doorway - while he had known immediately when she’d shown up, he wasn’t very good at keeping track of time. He tried to calm down, tried to resist the nervous energy coursing through his veins - It was early in the morning, and Imelda should have been in bed, sleeping, not staying up and watching him pace like a mad thing.
Eventually she had moved until she was standing close enough to run one hand through the thick fur near his ears. He leaned into the touch, as much as he could without tipping her over.
“Héctor,” she had said, voice barely louder then a whisper. “If I leave the back gate unlocked, can you open it?”
He could, easily. He didn’t have hands for the locking mechanism, but the gate was simple enough. Though he had to admit, he wondered why.
“Try not to let people see you,” Imelda had continued, hand shaking as she continued to dig her fingers into the soft fur at Héctor’s head, “And be home before Coco wakes up, I’m begging you.”
Héctor had wanted to stay, to prove he was capable of choosing what to do, instead of feeling forced by whatever bits in his self that were no longer human, but getting permission was too much for him to turn down. He nuzzled her hand gently, then turned and ran for the gate, Imelda chasing after him to unlock it. She needn’t have bothered, as he’d jumped the wall easily.
And he had been home before Coco woke up.
He was always home before Coco woke up.
He would always be home for Coco. He had left them already too many times, he couldn’t leave them again.
He would always be home for Coco - he had promised, and yet…
Someone had set up a snare in the forests around Santa Cecilia.
Made to go around a smaller animal’s neck, Héctor had stepped inside it, and accidentally set it off. His first thought had been to panic as the snare tightened it’s grip around his foot. Made of wire, whoever had made it had technically done a good job; it was strong, far stronger then the snares normally used for hunting, and while Héctor was strong, the snare had been there a while, and it had tree roots keeping it in place.
He couldn’t help the whine that exited his throat as he struggled, and the faint scent of copper began to fill the air. It was that that brought him to a halt; struggling would only tighten the loop. He knew that, what was wrong with him?
Well, he knew the answer to that too.
Turning, he tried to remove the cable with his teeth, but his were too large, and his claws weren’t much better. His ears went back as he started to panic; the only thing he could think was to wait until sunrise, and either hope that he was able to get his foot out then without any trouble, or finally get proper hands with proper fingers and undo the snare then.
What a mess! There’d be no guarantee that he’d be home before Coco woke up, nor any that he’d be able to sneak into town unnoticed. He had broken his promise to Imelda again. And even if it was unintentional - he’d hurt her enough. Did his intentions matter?
He started to gnaw again at the cord, at his foot, at anything to get it off so he could get home. He wasn’t quiet about it; what was the point? It was far too early in the morning for it to matter. The sun hadn’t even risen yet, and he had to get home.
There was a shift in the scent in the air, and then there were people coming. It didn’t matter who they were, he was really in trouble now, because people would shoot at him, they’d chase him and they’d make him forget, and then Imelda would be sad again and it would be all his fault -
“Héctor?” The voice said, and Héctor turned, his own blood still smeared across his muzzle. Behind him stood Imelda’s brothers, and while he normally could tell them apart, he wasn’t in the mood to try and figure which one had spoke, and which one was holding up the light.
“What happened?” One of them said, and for a moment there was a war brewing inside Héctor between the bits that needed help and the bits that wanted the two to leave him alone. He knew that they wouldn’t hurt him; they seemed to like him well enough, but what if he hurt them?
“Easy, easy,” a twin - Oscar? - was saying, and Héctor realized he had been growling. He forced himself to stop, and instead lay down. He was tempted to roll over, show he wasn’t going to hurt them, but the snare on his back foot and his proximity to the tree would have made that difficult. Instead, he made sure his tail was tucked under, and did everything he could to be smaller, to apologize.
Felipe cursed, as he moved around Héctor and saw the snare. “Héctor, can we take this off of you?” He was moving slowly, they both were, and Héctor could practically smell their fear. He nodded his head as best he could, before curling up as best he could so that his maw was hidden. He wasn’t sure what had driven them to search for him - had he really been gone that long? - but he couldn’t help but be grateful as they worked on the snare.
“I’m sorry,” Oscar said, coming up to the front, “but I think we’ll need some special tools to get this off of you.”
Héctor let out a low whine.
“But Felipe and I think we can cut the snare out of the tree,” Oscar continued, giving Héctor a brief, tentative pat on the head, “So we can at least get you home.”
Héctor wagged his tail in gratitude. He knew it wasn’t exactly wolf behavior, but he’d been watching the dogs in Santa Cecelia to get an idea of how he should behave around people. The twins seemed to understand, and they kept digging at the point where the snare had gotten stuck.
“We’ve got it,” Felipe finally said, “Can you walk?”
Héctor stood up as best as he could on only three legs. He was fine, he could do it. He stumbled a bit, when he put his weight down on the snared foot, forgetting, but he righted himself shortly after.
“You’re usually home by now,” Felipe said, after they’d been walking for some time.
“We were worried,” Oscar admitted, light turned down once they reached the main road, and the light of the full moon. The sky was starting to lighten; dawn would be coming soon. Héctor hated the full moon, but he thanked his lucky stars for family like the twins.
After all, thanks to them, Héctor would be home like he promised.
(And hopefully Imelda wouldn’t be too upset about the snare.)
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