Class Taste

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Arian Mabe

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Chains clinked. The black wolf edged his way across the living room, a towering pile of pizza boxes cradled between two large paws. Forced to take small, mincing steps with a chain stretched between his ankles, silver toned manacles resting heavy above his hind paws. They acted as a constant reminder of his place. It was not as if they were intended to prevent him from running away, after all.

Don shuffled closer to the sofa set around the natural corner of the room, large enough to seat seven or eight prey animals with a squeeze and shuffle. A plush purple, the sofa was the choice of a female with fine taste, although he was yet to be invited up on the thick cushions to take the weight off his paws. No expense was spare on the sofa, but the wolf's manacles were silver toned only, falsifying their gleam. Don's ears drooped, blue eyes hazed over. The master and mistress of the household would never waste such an expense on him.

Squatting awkwardly to lower the pizza boxes on to the coffee table, he whimpered as a box slid askew. Panic fluttered in his chest but the Thompson's gazelle, one of the prey animals of the household, lying with her cloven hooves up in the lap of a male giraffe, paid him no mind.

Crowded on the sofa with five other mammalian prey animals, she was in her element, her brown eyes warm as the soft, living room light complimented her orange coat. Black triangles angled down her muzzle from eyes to nose with a white underside to her jaw and neck while the fur on the upper side of her muzzle shone deeper russet brown. Two striped horns rose from her skull, giving her an air of nobility. Predators didn't have horns, or at least none that Don had seen. The wolf grimaced, remembering the number of times she'd caught them on the curtains, peeking out as a younger gazelle. He'd taken the blame for her and beaten for his troubles.

The group laughed and chatted with one another as if he was not even in the room as he remained in his squat, awaiting further instructions. His thighs burned, a fierce ache, but he did not dare rise. His mistress' partner, the giraffe, was the first to reach for a slice of deliciousness with hoofed fingertips, greedy eyes fixed on the uppermost box. Don's stomach growled as pizza boxes flipped open, releasing their aroma into the air. He licked his lips. He'd never had pizza before.

The gazelle snapped her fingers.

"Stop eyeing it, predator," she said in a bored tone, one ear barely flicking in his direction. "This food is not yours and you know that well enough."

The wolf swallowed and cast his eyes down. All he wanted was a slice, just to see how it tasted. It had to be better than plain vegetables. Anything was better than vegetables for dinner, day after day. Old vegetables, more often than not.

"Is your predator too much for you to handle, dear Persephone?"

A grey squirrel giggled and covered her mouth politely with her paw as she chewed, holding a slice of pizza away from her pink dress. The morsel dripped with cheese and Don leaned forward, mouth watering.

Would one taste hurt?

"Of course not!" The gazelle shot back, eyes blazing.

Don gulped and froze, muscles trembling from holding his position. He couldn't risk moving, not with Persephone engaged in conversation involving him right above his head. Though he could have not existed at all, for their conversation did not require him to speak.

The gazelle shook her head and slouched back on the sofa, shoulders hunched. Don supposed she was in her early twenties - he couldn't remember how old she'd been on her last birthday - but it was not a matter that was important to him. He was always requested to wait on her at her parties, however: they were extravagant affairs. He never had anything to eat at them either. Her parents, the master and mistress of the household, could not have been around if she allowed her posture to slip. The giraffe, his long neck giving him greater sway, arched over to nuzzle her cheek, soft, grey lips playing over her neck.

"Isn't he really your parents' predator?" The squirrel pressed, licking grease from her fingers. "That means he doesn't listen to you. At least mine are mine and they do as they're told." She pointed at Don, who shook. "He's an untrained brute. Why is he not muzzled? All of _mine_are muzzled. As they well should be."

The gazelle sat up straight and swung her hooves down to the floor. She brushed the giraffe aside, ignoring how he reached for her, and he hefted his arm over the back of the sofa instead, rolling his eyes. His fingers tapped a mindless tune that only he could hear.

"He listens to me," Persephone snapped, back rigid. "Do you need me to show you just how obedient this brat of a wolf is?" Persephone jerked her horns towards Don, who tried to sink into the floor, wishing it would envelope him. "He shall do exactly as I say and be thankful for it too."

The squirrel eyed her, a challenge in the set of her shoulders.

"Prove it."

Don took a deep breath, scents thrumming potent in the air. Was she going to hurt him? What was happening? Why did she mind what the squirrel said so much? Why was it important? Determination clouded the natural scents, ringing through the clamour of multiple mammals seated around the room. He didn't have to sift through the scents to pick out Persephone's tone. A steely edge rang through her scent and he quailed into the ground. Pressing his muzzle into the carpet, he inhaled in short, sharp breaths, tail clamped down flat to his rump.

It was no good - no good at all! His heart pounded, sweat matting the fur under his arms as sickly dread roiled and twisted through his gut. He couldn't save himself - the same as always! What he wanted didn't matter; only what Persephone wanted would come to pass. And that would come with deafening certainty whether he agreed to it or not. He closed his eyes, forcing away the moisture behind him as his heart thudded painfully. Such was the life of a predator.

Sometimes it felt like it would be better if it all simply...stopped.

Standing over the prostate wolf, Persephone tapped a hoof.

"Predator."

Don pricked his ears unwillingly.

"Lie down."

The wolf's ears slipped back to his skull and he obediently stretched out on his front, pressing forward until his thighs lay flat on the carpet. That was easy. A flicker of hope took hold of his heard and he counted his breaths, willing that to be the extent of her punishment Perhaps it would be as simple as an obedience test, playing him like a trained dog. He exhaled slowly, calming his heart, eyes fixed on the gazelle's hooves. He could deal with that.

"And up."

He shuffled on to his knees, pushing up and away with his paws, but was shoved back down with a hoof between his shoulder blades. Holding his breath, Don wagged his tail, keeping it low and submissive. It could work. He could hope it would work. Though a prey animal would not recognise a lupine display of submission, perhaps it would show her that he meant no harm. He was no threat. The wolf trembled. He'd only wanted a piece of pizza.

"Paws stay on the floor, backside down," she clarified with a wet snort. "Do not play dumb with me, predator. You know far better than that."

Her fear was palpable on the air, garbed with a lick of doubt. Don whimpered and pushed his torso up while dropping his rump safely out of the line of fire. In the moment, he counted his blessings that his current household did not take out their frustrations on him in that way. His backside had taken more than enough abuse in his past for the wolf to staunchly bear through another whipping like that ever again. He thrust the images from his mind, stomach leaping into his throat.

His arms shook with the force it took to keep himself in place, knees bent and legs angled away to drop his tail as low as possible. He licked his lips, mouth dry. It seemed silly to have wanted the pizza after all that. What a waste of want that had been! His lip twitched, wanting to snarl, though he held himself in check. The gazelle paced around him and he battled down his fear, locking the hatch. What did she want with him? His eyes narrowed. He'd done nothing wrong. Nothing at all. So why was he the one being punished yet again?

Sliding the belt from her fashion sari - something inspired by true dress, or so she said - Persephone ran it between her fingers and doubled it back on itself. The woven fabric would be worthless for a true beating, a punishment to leave an impression, yet its implication made her friends balk, bursting into a chorus of mutters. The gazelle's paw tightened on the tool. It gave her power.

The squirrel shook her head and reached out as if to stop her friend, jaw slack in a fashion that Don may have found amusing if not for his predicament. A soft mewl escaped her lips like a breath of wind, too frail to make a difference. She was not the brightest of Persephone's friends, it had to be said. Don could have laughed if he'd had an ounce of humour, even dry humour, left in him. She wouldn't have had any idea of the trouble she was causing, what drama she stirred up through foolish words. Bitch.

"Persephone..."

The gazelle silenced her with a look that could have stayed an executioner's paw.

"Remain in position, predator."

Persephone towered over him. For a gazelle, that should have been impossible but Don shuddered away as her arm swung back, a shadow dropping over his exposed back as her weapon of choice cut across the soft overhead lighting. Anger licked at the pit of his stomach, ever hungry. She didn't even have the strength to take him on, one on one, without a substitute whip in her paw - a measly scrap of a leather belt! Prey needed tools to subdue predators as they held no natural weapons to compare.

That didn't mean the situation didn't blow donkey balls though, to be punished for something he hadn't even done.

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Fucking hell...

The line of the wolf's jaw hardened. He tucked his tail down. Maybe she wouldn't hit his kidneys this time. Either way, he'd bloody well survive and come back fighting! She wouldn't have him! The bitch of a gazelle didn't know who she was messing with.

When the whistling blow came, it was lighter than expected, yet only half a second later the third and the fourth and the fifth snapped down. A flurry of strikes rained down on his back, the burn spreading and rising to a crescendo. His fur was thinner there with his summer coat coming through and he ground his teeth together, jaw throbbing with pain. But that was clean pain - he could focus on that.

The woven belt had been deceptive - it stung! Don closed his eyes, blocking out the glare of the world and the fascinated prey on the sofa. Distracting himself from the tedious curve of pain, he counted as high as he could remember and started again when he had reached that point, over and over again as pain mounted. Drool pooled in his muzzle, dripping down to the carpet in long ropes of spittle. He panted.

The squirrel giggled. He knew it was her. Only she had such a high pitched voice. The wolf broke as a vicious strike caught him atop the previous and howled, head whipping back. Sweat soaked his fur and the acrid stench made his nose wrinkle, distaste battling with fear. The squirrel cooed, murmuring something that he could not catch yet did not need to in order to understand. She took pleasure in his subjugation - it had been her motivation all along, such a ruse. She had never cared for his wellbeing, that Persephone would not beat him. Just like the rest of them. Breath tore through Don's lungs with difficulty and he stared at the same point on the carpet, a black speck of dirt embedded into the high class tawny. They were all the same, no one different to the rest of the herd.

Whereas the pain came to an end after a couple of minutes, maybe even three, the humiliation scarred Don's soul. The wolf dropped his torso and snuffled into the carpet, nose streaming and eyes watering. Putting her belt aside on the table, Persephone yanked him up by the leather collar and he yelped, counting his blessings that he no longer wore a muzzle to cage in his fangs. That hurt like the blazes when the collar was pulled and cut into his lips time and time again to score crimson lines.

She struck him flat across the muzzle with the palm of her paw and he couldn't stop himself - he hurt too much already. Instinct took over and a snarl ripped itself from his throat, lips curling up from teeth. It was weak, however, a dream of a memory from the time when his kind had voice, back when they had a snarl. Don's muzzle creased and he held the warning: stay away. Fuck it if he was punished! He clenched his paw. He was punished when it was not his fault so he may as well earn it.

Persephone smirked and petted him between the ears like she would do a pet, harder than necessary.

"Look at that muzzle, so fine."

The gazelle crooned as she tilted the wolf's head from the left to the right, admiring him from all angles as his amber eyes remained stoic and impassive, snarl dying slowly. He willed his hackles down. If he fought back physically, he'd be locked up again! In the dark with no one for company. The wolf swallowed his snarl and dropped his eyes, loathing the need. He whined, fear still rumbling about his muzzle in the hint of a growl, eyes rimmed with an edge of white.

"This is why we chain you, sweet pea." Her voice was sickly sweet as she traced a finger over his muzzle, ignoring the reappearing, deepening snarl. "So you cannot submit to baser instinct like your kind did long ago. You _cannot_have everything you want with no repercussions. Life is not like that anymore and it never will be again. This is a better time with prey binding you to submission. Wolves like pack behaviour, don't they?"

She giggled, eyes brighter.

"And you know where your position is in this pack. Right at the very bottom rung. Below it, even."

She pushed him to the floor, disinterested with him now that she had made her point as clearly as only she could. Pressing his muzzle into the carpet, the pain dropped from Don's muzzle and he stared forlornly at the legs of the coffee table as Persephone's friends devoured the pizza, the gazelle in her rightful place in their midst. His lips once again covered his teeth as if to act as a gag, and the wolf curled into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest. He did not pretend that he wasn't crying, tears rolling down his muzzle and dripping off the end of his nose. It didn't matter. He whimpered, his back a mass of pain. No one would notice anyway.

The wolf flinched from their laughter and happy voices, sharing food as if it was the most normal thing in the world - well, perhaps for them. All he'd wanted was one, bite, just one, single bite. Had that been too much to ask? And he could have snapped and he could have snarled again, taking what he thought he deserved in the heat of the moment. Yet the rocking, whimpering wolf beside the table made no such move, though the heat of anger seared painfully through the cavity of his chest. He was not sure there was anything left there anymore. And he did not snarl, no he would not snarl.

He did not snarl because he was a predator.

*

"What's got your tail so stiff?"

A wild dog, African, lay flat on his back on his narrow bed with a thin, threadbare mattress and jiggled his hind paw over the edge. His coat splashed through with orange, brown and white in no discernible pattern, shades blending seamlessly into one another as if he had been groomed with an artist's brush, though his dark eyes followed Don's restless pacing with hardened focus. His large ears, rounded at the tips, pricked to catch the smallest sound and he folded his paws together behind his head, ever watchful.

The wolf strode the length of the dormitory bedroom in the basement and threw a mental punch at the patch of damp streaking the corner of the ceiling where it met the wall - too high to reach. The master and mistress would never fix that. And the predators were the only ones ever to be found in the dorm, so why would they concern themselves with a trivial need? Don growled. No! They had parties and college and high flying jobs and _lives_to be getting on with. No need to worry about the needs of those they owned, living by their grace and generosity.

The canine snapped his fingers.

"Don!"

The wolf shook himself, amber eyes hazy.

"Sorry... Sorry, Rafa," Don said, tongue thick in his mouth. "Didn't mean to ignore."

Studying him, Rafa did not say anything, the white tip of his tail flicking. Like the wolf, the canine wore nothing but his fur, which, for him, could have been pattern and cover enough. Sometimes Don found himself jealous of the colours in his fur and wished he could be garbed as such in finery.

The wolf paced the length of the room, turned on his heel and strode back again, stirring up dust in his passing. No one else had returned to the dorm, presumably occupied with other tasks within the household, and Don had nothing to occupy his mind beside endless walking within a room he could not escape until the morn. Even relieving himself was strictly controlled and, well, once a predator had entered the basement for the evening they were not expected to be seen in the public areas of the household. There was no way to reach their bathroom without disturbing the master and mistress.

And Persephone.

Don growled and paced some more, hind paws sore from being on them all day. He should have been resting yet his mind raced from one thought to the next, discarding each in turn as nothing of great interest, unable to settle.

"So what has got you acting like this?" Rafa probed. "Haven't you got your book to read?"

Don shook his head.

"I lost it."

Rafa sat up, eyes wide.

"You lost it? But you read that book every night."

"I know." Don turned his shoulder to the dog. "But I lost it."

Rafa shrugged. It was hard going to lose a possession even if it did not truly belong to them.

"I can't stick this anymore," Don snapped, slamming his palm into the wall. "All this...constant doing! Don't we ever get to just forget all of this? Just maybe do nothing? Nothing at all?"

The wild dog rolled his eyes.

"We're predators, Don, no forgetting about. How do we forget what our lives are?"

"I don't know..." He interlocked his fingers behind his neck and paused, leaning forward to press his forehead to the cool, grey wall. "I only know that this...this life is killing me. It's crazy. Stupid. Wrong. Obscene."

"That's a big word for you."

"Oh, shut up."

Don stood perfectly still as the wall warmed to touch, coolness swiftly evaporating. Other predators milled into the dorm in ones and twos until all were present, greeting one another with their usual chorus of barks and mewls. He ignored them all, thrusting down the urge to turn and press his burning back up to the wall for a scrap of relieving cool. It would be too short lived to make any real difference, just like anything else.

That had to change. The wolf narrowed his eyes, vision enveloped by grey, grey, boring grey. And perhaps sooner rather than later, if he had anything to do with it. He snarled at nothing. He would have everything to do with it.

He became aware of someone standing behind him, tapping a paw on the stripped floor.

"What's wrong with you?"

Don shrugged and pushed himself away from the walk, half-turning to glance over the curious younger wolf, a grey male that boasted startlingly blue eyes. It had been his eyes that had secured his place in the household. With all the finery they could ever wish for, prey coveted beauty.

"I'm getting asking that a lot today."

"Then why don't you answer the question?"

The youngster challenged him, back straight down to his unyielding tail. At any other time, Don would have risen to the challenge, the open threat, in the only way he knew how, but found the youngster beneath him this night. Snorting hot air, he flipped his paw and joined Rafa on his bed. The poor excuse for a place to rest their heads was barely big enough to fit both of them. Rafa's paws hung off the end when he lay on his back with his legs straight.

The wild dog yawned.

"Don got whipped."

"Really?" The grey wolf's face fell. "What did you do? Did you drop a plate? Scuff up the floor? It has to be something bad, you haven't have a beating in...in...years!"

"Knock it off," Don growled. "Who cares what happened? It's no less than the rest of you lot would've gotten if you'd been in my place. She was trying to make a point and, well, I happened to be there. Sucks to be me, doesn't it?"

"Sucks to be all of us," Rafa chipped in.

"Yes..." The wolf said slowly. "It sucks to be all of us."

Leaping up from the bed, though he had had little rest, the wolf took centre stage, encircled by bright-eyed predators. He spread his arms wide, encouraging them in closer and closer, close enough to hear him clearly. The wolf had never learned to throw his voice. He barked, tail set in challenge. Even Rafa lifted his head from the bed, acknowledging the call, and, albeit behind the curve, rose to his paws, tail wagging.

Pack mentality.

End preview.

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Thank you for reading this preview of Class Taste! The full story is available to purchase worldwide via Kindle and Smashwords as an eBook! Thank you for supporting!

Kindle (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R75NHC3

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Kindle (AU): https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07R75NHC3

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