Part I here

On a good day Augusta could have passed for a woman under 40. Even without make-up and in jeans with a gingham shirt she looked a good way off 50. It would have surprised even some of those in the pack that out in California her grandson led a pack and had grandchildren of his own. She sighed and supressed a surge of pain at living descendants so rarely seen. At least her firstborn lived on hand.

Jared was a rock and in his choice of Rain; he had done well. Melanie was another matter of course. The very idea of cutting her hair so short, Augusta pursed her lips. It amused her at least that the girl was not going to sit easy for a while. Not after that particular challenge to pack custom. She would have to do better if she was one day going to fill Clarice’s shoes.

That was if Jared did not move on first. The thought came unbidden, and she tried to supress it. Maybe Adam would be a better choice for pack leader when the time came. Or he would be if he ever got a mate. John too for that matter and Augusta made a pout of disapproval, throwing up stress lines to her lips that hinted at her greater age.

To distract herself she ran an eye around the compound at the youngsters pretending to work. The full moon was nigh and no one had a mind for anything else. Usually such misconduct might have drawn a sanction, she thought wryly, her gaze particularly drawn to a group of young women having a water fight instead of attending to laundry. However, when the moon called discipline was wont to slide.

Then across three dozen yards of compound and almost nine decades she saw him watching her. A playful smile danced on his lips and he tilted his head in appreciation. Garrick looked like he would devour her and she blushed, dipping her head like a girl. When she glanced at him again he nodded at the excited youngsters as if to say ‘remember?’

Augusta gave him a small nod and shrugged and they both laughed as if they confronted each other alone. Then one of the men spoke to him and the moment was gone.

Across the compound Garrick and Jared were debriefing the guards to work out how Alice Eden had gotten to their gate unchallenged.

“Just who let her past?” Jared said angrily.

Randal was torn for a moment before deferring to Garrick. “Hemmings,” he told the pack leader, “Must have been. She was on the outer perimeter.”

“A woman,” Jared spat as if some point had been proved.

Garrick shot his son a firm glance, but decided not to rebuke him. “Alright men, lets break this up,” Garrick said dismissively “and stay alert.” As he spoke he held his son in a stern gaze.

“Well alright,” Jared reluctantly conceded once all but Sundance and his father had gone, it wasn’t his fault he was a product of a different age, he told himself, “Rachel is a good kid usually, better than some of the men, but… shit…”

He took a deep breath and looked to the heavens while flexing his hands in frustration.

“There is more to this than meets the eye,” Garrick answered his son carefully.

Sundance nodded at this, the old Navajo could sense it too.

“Yes well maybe, but now it is going to look like I am singling the girl out,” Jared punched the air. “If it had been one of the men I could just have chewed him out and given him a beat down and everyone would get the message. Now if I have to tan the woman’s backside for her the pack will milk it for its comedy and make excuses because she is a girl.” Jared made an appeal to his father with his eyes and swiftly moved on. “How the hell did that Eden woman slip past us?”

Garrick nodded again and gave his son an easy smile. It wasn’t that his son couldn’t change with the times; it was just that the realisation that times changed came with greater experience.

“I’ll handle Rachel Hemmings,” the old man chuckled, “She will take it better coming from me and the pack will know it is a serious matter. Send her to me.”

“My pleasure,” Jared sighed and backed away slowly in case his father would say more.

Garrick gave one emphatic nod and gestured that his son should go.

“I don’t know what happened, but I don’t think it would not have mattered who had been guarding the outer perimeter,” Sundance said sagely.

“Perhaps, but the Eden woman is just that…” Garrick shrugged.

“A woman,” Sundance finished for him. “Yes I sense that too. All the same she approached unnoticed and something doesn’t smell right.”

“No, no it doesn’t,” Garrick agreed.

*

Garrick was waiting in the barn when Rachel Hemmings walked in. She had a proud defiant look, but the old man could sense her apprehension even if she hadn’t quickly licked her lips nervously as she approached.

“You sent for me Sir?” she said.

She was an athletic looking woman with mid-brown shoulder length hair. She was dressed in leg-hugging denims and a short bum-freezer leather jacket that accentuated her comely figure to good effect. Unlike many of the females, who favoured high school girlish in their demeanour, she held herself as a warrior. The pack leader liked that and was reminded of Augusta when she was younger.

“I did,” Garrick smiled, his eyes twinkling paternally.

“It is about that damn woman slipping by me Sir?” Rachel spat, but her anger was directed at herself and not the pack leader.

“Did she slip by you?” Garrick asked, “Or could she have come in a different way?”

Rachel studied the old man for an inkling of what he was thinking. A futile pastime, she knew, the old wolf was a master of more than she would ever know.

“Must have, slipped by me I mean Sir. I can’t see how should have got through the rough ground or the woods,” Rachel sighed, “Anyway, does it matter Sir, I was on point; it is on my head?”

“I was rather thinking that it would be ‘on’ your other end,” Garrick said sharply.

Rachel coloured and he hands moved to cover her bottom. It had been a while since she had been disciplined in that way. Not that she probably didn’t need it now and again, she thought ruefully.

“Yes Sir,” she muttered miserably.

“You rode with this Eden woman back to town?” Garrick continued.

“Yes Sir,” Rachel answered.

“Did anything seem strange to you? About Ms Eden I mean?” Garrick asked casually.

Rachel pushed out her lower lip thoughtfully and shook her head. “No Sir,” she said slowly, “Nothing that would excuse my failing.”

“This is more about responsibility than failure,” Garrick replied, “It is important that you know that.”

“Yes Sir,” Rachel said with a shy smile. That, at least, made her feel better.

“I remember you as a cub,” Garrick said affectionately, “Always had a comeback as I recall.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “I had a big mouth,” she agreed and deliberately cupped the seat of her pants in both hands.

“You remember the routine,” Garrick sighed.

“All of it Sir?” Rachel blushed. She was thinking of the times she had to stand with her bare-butt hanging in the breeze while she faced the exterior of the barn wall. She had always thought it so unfair that all the boys got was a beat down once they turned 16. That was until she saw such a beating.

“All of it,” Garrick said pointedly.

Rachel sucked in her cheeks and thought about Randall and the others joshing her for weeks to come. Then she thought about dead youngsters lying slain by hunters and all on her watch. It had happened. She couldn’t look the old man in the eye.

“Yes Sir,” she sighed in heavy resignation.

As Garrick reached for his belt buckle the errant girl slipped off her jacket and then reached for her own. She paused only briefly before dropping her pants to her ankles. Garrick waited with his broad leather belt folded in his hands.

Rachel eyed the open barn doors that let out into the compound. There were a couple of men a way off and several girls having a water fight just across the yard. She stooped to tug her jeans clear of the floor and shuffled over to the saddle stand that Garrick had obviously pulled away from the wall. Letting go, she tugged her panties down in on motion and leaned over the wooden frame.

“Get yourself right over,” the old man said in a gravel voice.

Rachel let out a breath and obeyed. The heat rose to her face with some vigour as she shimmied over the curved polished wood and presented her bare bottom upwards and out towards him.

“What happens next?” Garrick asked by way of humbling her and perhaps to test her memory.

Rachel’s eyes darted in her head as she struggled to focus on the barn wall to her front and resist the impulse to turn her head.

“You are going to strap my bottom,” she said at last now recalling earlier shameful defeats for her acts of defiance so long ago.

The leather lashed out and stung her proffered behind. Rachel’s eyes bugged wide and she gasped.

“How long and how hard?” he asked as he thrashed her again.

“As hard as you think needful and until I express copious regret,” she hissed as she rode the burn, her bottom doing a little wiggle dance to shake out the sting.

“And then?”

“My punishment begins, since no spanking truly can start until the girl getting punished sincerely wants it to stop,” she replied almost wistfully. She remembered Augusta’s lessons well.

The belt tore her a band of pain right where she sat and she yelped and pumped her legs.

“I seem to remember you were really quite defiant and it took rather a long time,” Garrick lashed her tail thrice more and watched her struggle not to twist.

“Yes Sir,” she hissed again.

“No doubt you can take rather more these days,” he observed as he brought the belt down all the harder.

Rachel groaned wordlessly and felt tears prick her eyes as she nodded.

“Then this will take a while,” Garrick sighed.

The girl bent over the saddle frame made a sound that was a parody of pained appreciation and ended it with a withering groan.

*

From her vantage point in the shrubs Stacy crouched open-mouthed at what she was seeing. Initially it hadn’t been a good angle for the earlier group huddle of men, but she had stayed put. It hadn’t taken long to be rewarded by a clear view of Garrick entering the barn.

“Damn, I missed the shot,” she muttered as she snapped the back of his head before he moved into the shadows. “What is he doing in there?”

The woman had arrived a few minutes later. One of the older girls, Stacy judged, but there was something about her demeanour that suggested something was up. As she had watched it was clear that Garrick was giving the woman a dressing down and she was taking it without answering back.

It had crossed Stacy’s mind it might be about Alice’s visit and she was just pondering this when the woman appeared visibly shaken and had begun to lower her pants. Garrick’s folding belt had dispelled any doubts about what was happening.

Stacy glanced at the wood piled along one side of the bar and smirked. A real woodshed then, she thought with a chuckle. The crisp thwack of leather on the girl’s bare bottom sounded loud even from where she crouched, although she was close enough to observe the smooth white rounds of bare bottom rapidly pinken and turn a glossy red.

Her camera phone had a sports mode setting and she buzzed off half a dozen shots of the action. This was for real and the girl was having a hard time of it. Although it was clear she was taking it bravely, she was jerking and grabbing out at the wood she was bent over to steady herself. Maybe it was an unconscious thing, but the girl kept shoving her butt out at Garrick like she was an old hand at this.

“Spankings in the barn,” Stacy whisper to herself excitedly, “Maybe this is the big secret.”

The idea was amusing, but the young writer sincerely doubted it. What she was watching was a good old fashioned country belting and nothing more. She couldn’t believe it.

She watched as Garrick belaboured the woman’s bare bottom with surprising power for an old man. The girl certainly felt it, judging by her supressed cries and the struggle she displayed in staying position. Her bottom too was mottled mauve and red suggesting a swollen soreness she wouldn’t forget in hurry.

Over in the barn Rachel strained to present her bare bottom for the sincerely severe punishment she knew she deserved. As a girl she had been mortified by such treatment and when it came to it, had always been a bit of a cry baby. She had assumed she would have been more stoical now, but the fierce fiery leather was unrelenting and she was on the edge of what she could bear.

Even as a late-teener she had accepted that Garrick and Augusta could hand out some serious tail thrashings; it came hand-in-hand with the nature of the beast. But she too was one of the pack and with her healing abilities and inherent resilience; no childish bottom warming was going to cut it. However, now that she was back across the frame and feeling the leather again she no longer knew if she could handle the ride.

This realisation turned her next groan to a pained grunt and then as he bottom was seared, a full throated yell.

“That’s it, let it out,” Garrick’s deep voice soothed, “I am not here to paint your tail with tickle-stingers. The punishment can’t start until you really begin to feel it.”

It was true and Rachel knew it. “Yes Sir,” she wailed, her voice now breaking as real tears flowed.

Garrick took a breath and circled the target for a moment. He scanned the martyred bottom to examine the scattering of dark red and bluish mottles over the red bumpy landscape. Already the girl wouldn’t sit for a day or two; a good example for the youngsters.

Then stepping back for a good swing he let the leather burn across the under curves of the woman’s bottom and drew a decent yell.

“Now you’re feeling it,” he sighed and added to her pain.

“Yes Sir,” she sniffed, her voice now strained. Her bottom was in tatters now, her pride was about to follow.

*

Stacy had dropped belly down to the grass and was enjoying the sensation of the hard ground against her tummy and upper thighs. She did not analyse why, indeed she was barely aware of it. Her whole attention was addressed to the woman’s punishment and her ever reddening bottom. Her savage tears too were a join to watch and the young writer felt an excitement she had never known.

She watched for a good 15 minutes until the sobbing woman was flopped in half in exhaustion so that her limbs draped in surrender below her now bulbously raw punished bottom that thrust to be the uppermost part of her.

Garrick spoke then and the woman nodded without, or so it seemed to Stacy, a hint of rancour in her demeanour. Then after a moderate wait so that she could cry herself out, the old man helped her up.

Stacy expected the girl to pull up her pants and panties, if she could stand to over the raw hillocks of bottom flesh. But instead she stooped just enough to pull the denims to her knees. Then with the most miserable expression the writer had ever seen, she watched as the tearful woman hobbled out of the barn and turned to face the wall on the side facing the yard.

What happened next should have been shocking, but instead Stacy choked back a laugh of glee. The violently blushing woman drew a heavy breath and composed herself before dropping her jeans to her ankles and placing her hands on her head.

“When did I become so cruel,” Stacy chuckled.

It was then that she recognised her own arousal and it was her turn to blush even though no one was looking. Distracted by the punishment, she had forgotten to take more photographs. Damn, she thought, as she ran a few off of Garrick’s retreating back and the sorry looking girl’s red sore bottom in profile.

“What the hell?” she muttered, not only confused now by what she had seen, but by her reaction to it.

*

Rachel’s nose and eyes were running down her hot red face as she tried to steady her breathing. The heady shame of stepping out into the yard with her pants and panties around her ankles was an old friend, although it had been years since she had been punished in this way.

As she left the barn it was with a determined effort she avoided making eye contact with anyone who might be around. A miserable fate only avoided by holding her gaze to the planking on the side of the barn, a wall that quickly got closer as she hastily pressed her face to it. It felt somewhat futile to guard her dignity now, but all the same she supressed any latent crying and clasped her hands firmly behind her back as Augusta had taught her. This left her fingers hovering tantalisingly close to a much needed rub just inches above her still throbbing bare bottom. But indulgent in such an act would have been a serious breach of time out protocol and besides it would have given two dozen smirking eyes way too much satisfaction.

Damn, she thought as she shuffled her feet into a better position for a long vigil. I can handle this, this is the easy part, she told herself, but at the first suppressed hoot of laughter her street cred leaked down her face again and she had never felt so miserable.

“Looks like Rache ain’t so tough after all,” a male voice sniggered, “Man, look at those buns.”

“Shut up,” said another man angrily, “She took her licks.”

Rachel couldn’t put a name to either, but she felt a rush of gratitude for her defender and steadied herself with a huge heaving sigh that fell just short of a sob. Then an all too familiar female voice made her contribution.

“Oh so up herself Hemmings is back in kindergarten with the teeners,” Marsha MacLeod sneered.

Another woman sniggered at this. Rachel only clamped her jaw in determination. I earned this, I earned this… she steeled herself.

Augusta had strolled onto the side porch and took in the scene. Rachel Hemmings would live it down, she shrugged. Not many had escaped Garrick’s wrath over the years, men or women. A beat down was worse. Even Augusta had stood facing the barn just a few weeks before her marriage to Garrick; and she had deserved it.

It was something that Marsha MacLeod ought to remember, Augusta thought when she overheard the catty woman’s comments. No doubt she was envious of the high regard Rachel Hemmings was held among the men with any sand.

“You got somewhere to be,” she snapped at the two giggling women hanging around the barn.

“No ma’am, I mean yes ma’am,” Marsha gasped, the smile vanishing from her face.

“Then I suggest you get to it before you find yourself facing the barn wall yourself,” the Alpha female growled.

Rachel almost risked a side glance at these words but her discipline held. She consoled herself then with a memory of Marsha MacLeod after her last visit to the barn. That bitch had spent much of her teens feeling Garrick’s leather. Where Marsha had been just a run-of-the-mill butt to be blistered, Rachel had just as often received the sharp maternal attention of Augusta with a switch cut from the elder woman’s apple tree. They had been close. Despite everything Rachel smiled, I almost miss it, she thought.

“What are you laughing at,” Augusta yelled over.

“Nothing ma’am,” Rachel blurted, her voice muffled by the wall and her smile evaporating.

“Silly girl,” Augusta sighed and shook her head as she went back to what she was doing.

*

For once Stacy Dane had taken a seat in the window of the diner, more preoccupied with her own inner turmoil than observing others. Outside the azure blue sky was vivid above the verdant green trees of the forest, altogether the bright late-afternoon gave Main Street another aspect.

Stranger still was the sight of the soft white moon just floating above the sky-point pines like a row of teeth set to devour it like some giant peach. There was something surreal about the full moon in day time Stacy thought. But then given what she had seen at the Stone ranch that was rather appropriate.

She had lain awake all night replaying the images in her mind, troubled that she was neither horrified nor amused. How did she feel? Of course there had been something erotic about it, she told herself, determined to analyse her feelings head on like a good writer should. But more than that, there was an abiding primeval truth. The scene between Garrick and the woman had been a symbol of true belonging. She had submitted to something greater than her, something to which she owed. But how did she feel? She needed one word to describe it as she was taught in her creative writing classes. She took a deep breath and opened the gates of honesty: longing.

The realisation was a shock. Was she longing to be beaten? She thought again about the scene and her nocturnal reliving of it. After all she had identified with the woman, not Garrick. She glanced at the moon. It was hypnotic and for some reason her skin itched with a tickle well beyond a simple scratch. She longed to belong; she thought sadly and made a wish upon the moon.

Back at the Stone compound things were fraught. Only the older ones guarding the roads and the gate held their discipline. The youngsters all but staggered about in the yard as they hugged themselves and stared up at the moon. The elders, always able to change at will, could cross over effortlessly at such times. Even the young bloods, usually trapped in their human form could transform at any time, a choice that would be taken for them with the coming of the night.

“They’re getting jittery,” Sundance snorted.

“Yes,” Garrick agreed. He liked to play aloof at such times but the call of the moon was coursing through his blood. “A few hours more and the hunt will begin.”

“It is a good time,” Sundance intoned sagely. “At sunset the moon will be close to its zenith and will set long before sunrise. For the young that is good.”

Garrick nodded, a frown crossing his face. Nocturnal moon rises often meant that moonset fell in the morning, which was Hell for the discipline of the pack. Especially among the young who could lose themselves in the change long into the daylight hours.

To be continued…