The power. The utter, untamed, power that surged through his veins reminded him of nothing else he had ever felt before. The hyena's eyes flashed once more and he turned at the sound of a body falling behind him. His pack around him turned, one by one, and began sharing their mirth aloud, laughing as his kind did before they pounced on the weakest and smallest, the most vulnerable, of their prey. Before he turned away his eyes flashed again and another surge of power nearly overwhelmed him. He turned, a slight smile curling his lips as he thought of prey. And laughed.
He had climbed off the bus, the dirty human side of him still trying to figure out how this new part of him fit together with the old. Not overpowering, not over-possessing, just… meshing. Or trying to. He felt his mind and soul meld together slowly, filling him with a completeness, a oneness of purpose. Very few people in this world know what it is they are here to do. Prophesies and foretellings aside, no-one he knew had any idea what they could do with their lives. He stood in the sunlight, vaguely aware of the others around him, and looked down at his furless, clawless, hand clenching slowly as if feeling his power. His pack moved down the steps of the bus behind him and he raised his head feeling their presence. With a nod he dispersed his pack to their homes as they were expected to do, knowing that they would meet up later in this small town.
He woke from his nap refreshed and stretched the kinks away. A vague reference to Spider Man flashed through his head, of Peter Parker waking with new muscles and improved vision. He smiled at the thought of him being a super hero and moved to the window. Without thinking, he popped the seal and rolled out to the roof and then to the ground below. Landing on his haunches and dropping to let his hands hit the dirt, he straightened and popped the kinks out of his stronger feeling neck muscles.
The bronze was loud, filled with many warm bodies, but he instantly smelled the faint odors of his females. Not the girls of his pack; they were fellow hunters and otherwise interested. But for him, the alpha male, nothing less than the best would do. He stopped, momentarily distracted by a passing female, but a quick look-over found her lacking and he continued across the room.
He wasn't fully meshed yet. He still felt somehow less complete than he thought he should. Such power filling his body and a million new sensations pulling at his senses and all of it was distracting him from his normal conversation abilities with his girls as he tried to be himself and failed.
And then they came in.
His pack gathered just inside the entrance of the club and looked around. Kyle, spotting Xander, froze with their eyes locked and slowly the other members followed suit. Xander stared down the rest of them, asserting his dominance, and one by one they lowered their eyes to him. Kyle led them across the room toward him and stopped a shy ten feet from him and the table his girls were sitting at. They moved around him as if finding a new target and moved around Xander's table as a single group. Xander felt part of their attentions stay on him and marveled slightly at its difference. If felt light, almost weak; half the strength of his own. No wonder he was the alpha. He was distracted again from his musings by the beta male's teasing of the large student sitting behind them. He laughed along with the rest of them and turned back again, flashing between animal and human thought processes before realizing his girls weren't enjoying the show. He raised an eyebrow and explained the joke to them. They looked at him questioning and he took a mental step back from his surroundings in wonder. Why were things appearing so much different to him than they were to his pack? They had no problems making human style jokes and understanding human style problems. They even felt more human to him than he did. Something was wrong.
He had to teach his pack the way to be more true; to be more animal.
That night they met together out in the park, the closest thing to wilderness found in sunnydale. He admonished them with his teeth and claws, his growls carried the weight of command. He cuffed Kyle once across the face for impertinence and glared the weaker hyena down back into submission. He was king. He was god. He was alpha. And he wouldn't let them forget it. They would listen and they would learn. He left them there to talk amongst themselves but was caught up by the brunette one shortly. She had left the group and wanted to follow him instead.
She actually thought herself fit to be his mate. With a growl he turned her aside and as he turned to leave again was frozen by her own deep challenging growl. He almost beat her down then to teach her respect but stopped as her growl became not words of challenge but words of wisdom. If they were to live among the rest of the town without being persecuted or forced to live in alleys, they had to keep some of their human ways. Let me help you, she had said as she became uncomfortable close to him. Let me show you the way. He let her touch him once and stopped her with his grumbling growl. His growl became words, words which they shared deep into the night; words of compromise, but still only words.
The next day found his pack moving as one. He didn't see his girls for most of the day and that was good as he let himself adapt further to his new life. He sat through classes, unconcerned with the prey around him. No, not prey, humans; the humans around him. She was right and he would have to adapt some. The pack was his, though; not hers. And they would follow him. They all met together for gym and stayed together onto the same team. He didn't speak a word to either of his girls, though they were in the same class, and they wound up on the other side. Which was fine with him as he didn't know what to say to them yet.
The battle began. This wasn't a hunt where the strong picked off the weak one at a time. This was war, where the strong battled the strong. His pack was stronger and they knew it. The balls began flying through the air and they responded, well up to the challenge. The blond goddess was beautiful to him as she moved. He watched her with one eye as the battle raged on around them. She was amazing. He knew she would be his, as he had known since she had arrived, but now he was becoming something that she could admire as much as he did her. He just had to figure it out. And he had to get rid of the other, less fitting, female. She was pure human and weak. To prove it he hit her with a ball and watched for a second as she slinked to the sidelines like a poor pup. He didn't even waste the time to laugh as the battle moved him on in its wake.
In the end, when all that stood were his own pack facing Buffy, he knew that he could best her. She was not weak. She was strong, she was powerful; she was worthy. He would have her. When he and his pack left a meaningless classroom later the weak one stopped him with her words. With a mental nod to his compromise from the night before, he turned her down mockingly. As the strong one moved up behind her and confronted him, he backed down respectfully; laughing as was the custom of his kind when provoked by one of their own. Now all he had to do was get the slayer by herself. But first, his pack was growing hungry.
He slammed her back against the soda machine. "C'mon, Slayer, I like it when you're scared. The more I scare you, the better you smell." She squirms in his arms and he moves his face around as though trying to get a better whiff of that tantalizing aroma. Finally he finishes speaking and puts his mouth to other uses. The skin of her neck is tight as she clenches her teeth but it quivers as his lips make contact, sending an electric shock through his body. His teeth gently find a sensitive spot on her throat and she gasps in pain or pleasure. He nuzzles her softly, his warm breath causing her skin to pimple, raising the small hairs and sending chills down her spine. She squirms again as she struggles in vain and his arousal increases. He feels his body shove out the pheromones of his kind and this time nicks her throat with his teeth. She gasps again and her body jerks as her nerves react to the new sensation.
"Xander you have to stop." From her tone it's hard to tell if she really wants him to but he couldn't care either way. He pulls his face back from her throat and takes another long whiff of her scent. So provocative, so alluring, so… perfect.
"You don't mean that, Slayer. You never mean that. The truth is you like what I'm doing to you. Your body can't lie." He presses against her and feels the involuntary arching of her back as her body heat rises again.
"Xander you don't want to do this."
"Running out of things to say? No more witty little bits of wisdom from the Slayer to the powerful adversary? That's okay, there are other things to do with your mouth." He presses against her again and squeezes her arms. As she tries to move away from him again she lets her mouth fall open in a silent 'oh' and he covers it with his own. The seconds before she pulls away again are long and exciting, doing more than enough for him to complete the act he'd come here for.
"Xander… This is wrong." Her body can't lie. And there's no chance now for her to not know what she's doing to him. She's not even fighting back. In fact… her legs open slightly as he presses against her this time and the fingers of her right hand pushing against his jacket suddenly clutch at the material between them. He meets her mouth with his again and grabs the back of her neck with his hand trying to move them horizontal. She rolls them over, her mouth playing tantalizingly across his lips as she move on top, and he lets her; knowing he was right all along. She draws back slightly, a playful smile on her lips and he smiles knowingly back at her. She's straddling him now and his eyes are on her face as she slides her body further down his, her chest just inches from his torso. The first inclination something's wrong is when her hand closes on the leg of the desk just behind her and it begins moving toward his forehead before he has time to react.
He was caged. He didn't like being caged. He had to find a way out. And, worse, he had to do it with his words. Willow kept guard over him and cruelly taunted him with his freedom. She kept the key to herself and he had to play it innocent. He played on her heartstrings, knowing he had to lead her along in hopes of getting the key or waiting for his pack to find him. She even had the gall to say that the Xander in him knew Buffy was trying to help him. She didn't understand. I am still me, thought Xander; I'm just also more than me. But she moved faster than he thought. And hitting the cage did him no good whatsoever.
He was free. And leading his pack on a hunt that would last all night. The thrill of the night air was fire against his skin and his pack answered his every call. Running after willow had been a fruitless endeavor but the night was young and the pack cherished his presence. Now other fruit presented itself and he moved the pack into position silently. The car was the perfect trap and he heard the unwitting, slow, weak human's voices announcing their status as prey.
The boy especially.
And then there was her. She taunted them, as they taunted prey. And she attacked them, as they attacked those weaker than themselves. And then she had the gall to look down at him, in those wondrously tight pants of hers covered in their mixed scents, and show him that which she would deny him if he couldn't keep up. But she didn't understand, didn't know how it felt to be more human than man, something even his pack didn't understand. He was stronger, the hyena god within him warring with itself and its own power; his human soul playing the third part in a two part show. He would show her he was strong. He would chase her down and show her first hand just how strong, his pack on his heels.
She ran into the enclosure and stopped, just long enough for him to tackle her. She hit the ground beneath him, soft and form fitting; exciting him beyond measure.
Then there were words.
The beast within him found its attention caught and turned toward the man in blue. The man's eyes flashed and Xander felt the movement of magic around him and his pack. Something went out of him, out of all of them, and for the first time in days Xander understood what had been fighting inside of him. It hadn't been the soul of an animal and his own soul opposing each other. Two hyenas had tried to claim him as their own, to be the alpha of this new pack. His pack had felt their connection to the beast less strongly than he did. It hadn't been the greater power that made him alpha. He was destined to be alpha from the very start. It was the damned interloper of a punk hyena that tried to best their own alpha for position in his form. He felt the beasts struggle for which would be called out of him and for an instant looked down into Buffy's wild eyes as she kicked him off of her, the red paint of the circle framing her against the floor. He remembered her eyes as he hit the floor with the smile of a hyena still on his face.
Her flashing green eyes.