Skyler burst into the foyer of Karnstein Manor. Liesel nearly jumped out of her pallid skin. "What in the holy name of Mother Night is going on, Skyler?!"
"I'm late to the sleepover," Skyler explained.
"That doesn't give you the right to just charge in without saying please or thank you," Liesel sniffed. "I don't know what your human family taught you, but vampires teach their children that entering a home uninvited is one of the most uncivilized things you can do. Even Rasputin of all vampires will never cross a threshold until he's told he's welcome."
"Sorry," Skyler said. "Hope I didn't scare you too badly."
"Don't worry," Liesel smiled. "My energies will realign in an hour or two. Maybe I'll go meditate."
At that moment, a punky-looking vampiress dressed from head to toe in studded black leather strutted into the room. Her dark brown hair was dyed blue at the tips and styled into a side-shaved undercut. Her roguish face was studded with numerous piercings. It was Liesel's girlfriend Claudia.
Claudia bounded over to Liesel and kissed her on the cheek. "Hey there, Lee-Lee! The night's young and I wanna spend all of it with you! Whadda ya say we hop on my motorcycle and take a ride down to that dance club, Inferno? Maybe after that we can swing by the zoo and get you some of that animal blood you insist on eating."
A grin split Liesel's face. "Sounds great! I can feel my chakras normalizing already. Remember, tiger blood's my favorite, Claudie."
Claudia chuckled softly. "I'll remember, Lee-Lee."
Liesel turned to wave to Skyler. "Bye-bye, Skyler! Have fun with Tats and your pack, and remember to always knock or ring the doorbell from now on."
"Will do!" said Skyler. "Bye!" Once Liesel and Claudia were gone, shi raced up the stairs to Tatiana's room. Tatiana, Selena, and the pack sat in a circle next to Tatiana's coffin.
Skyler took hir place in the circle. "Sorry I'm late. I take waaaay too many extracurriculars."
"It's okay," said Selena. "You haven't missed much. We were just chatting. You know, catching up."
Skyler looked at hir two long-time friends (and sometime minions) Ashlee and Zoey. "So, how's your quest to get pregnant going?"
"Great, I think," said Zoey. "We obvi can't tell if it's worked yet, but Ashlee pumps me full of her baby batter every chance she gets. It'd be some kinda miracle if I wasn't preggy right now."
"Yeah you'd have to be, like infantile or something," Ashlee giggled.
"I think you mean 'infertile,' honey," Zoey snickered. "That one'll have to go on my upcoming 'Top Ten Ashlee-isms' Youtube vid."
"Don't be too sure," Ashlee giggled. "I got, like, a bazillion more where that one came from."
"And they get cuter every time," Zoey smiled at her ditzy girlfriend. "Speaking of cute, I'm glad you decided to embrace your body hair."
"It was you that inspired me," Ashlee said as she stroked Zoey's soft arm hair. "You just look totes adorbs with it!"
Selena glanced at Skyler. "You're sure you don't plan on taking any hair chews, Skyler? I've already double-checked with Brianna, Layla, and Sofia."
"Totally sure," said Skyler. "I don't wanna reduce it like Chloe or Summer, but I've got all I need. Remember, I'm non-binary, not a transman. Body hair's cool, but I don't want a ton of facial hair or anything."
"To each their own, I guess," Riley shrugged, "but what I don't get is why the fuck Chloe and Summer wanna mutilate their gorgeous body hair with the removal chews! Even in her human form, a werehyena oughtta be hairy as hell."
"I didn't know Hell was hairy," Ashlee whispered to Zoey.
"It isn't," Zoey whispered back. "As far as I know, anyways."
"Riley," Summer sighed, rolling her eyes, "could you please try to respect my decision? You thought I was hot before I transformed and grew all this hair, didn't you?"
"Well, yeah," Riley said, looking away uncomfortably. She scratched nervously at the shaved sides of her pony tail. "It's just that you look even more amazing now. I don't get how you don't fucking love this."
Summer placed a consoling hand on Riley's muscular, tattooed arm. "Don't worry, babe. I'm not ditching the hair look completely like Chloe. I'm gonna keep some of the growth, just thin it out to make it look a bit more feminine. That's just my personal style. I can't wait to see how hairy YOU get."
Riley's cocky grin returned. "I'm gonna be the hairiest bitch in the entire fucking pack, Summer, bar none!"
"Just remember," Abbie said, grinning fiercely, "The Mistress of the Hunt isn't chosen by a hairiness contest."
"Oh, I know," said Riley. "I just like being the best at everything."
"Well, I hope you're willing to settle for second best sometimes," Abbie responded. "Because I am NOT letting you take the Mistress of the Hunt title away from me."
Tatiana and Selena shared a look, mutually deciding it was time to change the subject before a spontaneous sparring match broke out right in front of them. "So," said Tatiana, "how exactly do these hair chews work?"
Selena picked up the instruction card that came with the hair chews. "It says they come in two types: growth chews that add hair in the green sack and removal chews that thin it out in the red sack. To use them, you take one of the caramels, place it in your mouth, chew it thoroughly, and then swallow. Results may take a few minutes to make themselves apparent. How many chews you take will determine how dramatic your results are. There's a chart."
Selena showed the room a diagram showing the results of the hair chew dosage on a human with average body hair, ranging from one to five chews. "The way our transformations have changed our human forms, we may as well have all taken one hair chew already, so we can subtract one to get the dosage we need. That means it would take two hair chews to make me as luxuriantly hairy as Mom."
"Is she really that hairy?" Tatiana asked, looking at the outrageously hairy customer in the diagram. "Much more hair, and that'd basically be fur."
"Absolutely," said Selena. "All the other women in my old pack are insanely jealous of her. Even Luna and Diana can't compare next to Mom's cavewoman pelt."
"You werebeasts never cease to amaze me," Tatiana marveled.
"Hey, Tats," said Kadie. "Wanna try a hair chew yourself?"
"I doubt it'd do anything," Tatiana shrugged. "My hair stopped growing when I was turned. The length its at is the length it's always gonna be. Besides, a hairy vampire just isn't proper. I mean, unless you're Grigori Rasputin, but nobody outside of his raggedy, vagrant clan wanna be near him."
"Rasputin's a vampire?" Kadie grinned excitedly. "I KNEW IT!!!"
Tatiana nodded. "He's the patriarch of the largest vampire clan in Russia... and the smelliest."
Kadie elbowed Layla. "And you didn't believe me!"
"Can you blame me?" asked Layla. "I had no reason to believe there even WERE vampires at the time."
"And now we're werehyenas!" laughed Kadie. "Isn't life funny like that?"
"I think it's time we actually took the hair chews," said Selena. "Everyone tell me how many they want. I'm taking two, myself."
"One," said Kadie. "That's enough to grow a happy trail like Riley's, I think."
"One's enough for me, too," said Zoey.
"Same," said Ashlee. "I wanna get nice and fuzzy, but I don't wanna go totally cray-cray. One's good."
"I'll go the extra mile," said Ellie. "Gimme two. Maybe a nice, shaggy body can distract me from how criminally skinny I am now."
"I think I'd like two," said Taylor. "Someone as important as the shaman shouldn't half-ass her body hair."
"I'll just do one," said Harper. Her inner furry had wanted to take five, but her sensible side wanted something nice and simple that was easy to explain away to ordinary humans.
"I'll take one of the removal chews," said Summer. "That way I'll be fetchingly hairy, but not exactly hirsute."
"I'll take one of the growth kind," said Beck. "I want my damn lip hair!"
"I'm taking two," said Abbie. "I dig the shaggy look."
"Two removal chews for me," said Chloe. "As much as I love being a werehyena, I don't love body hair nearly as much."
"Just one of the growth chews for me," said Maddison.
"You're all a bunch of fucking pussies!" Riley scoffed. "I think I'll have THREE growth chews. Like I said, I'm gonna be the hairiest bitch in this entire fucking pack!"
"Nobody else want any?" asked Selena. Skyler, Brianna, Layla, and Sofia shook their heads. "Alright. Just lemme pass the hair chews out to you."
Selena distributed the desired number and type of hair chews to her pack. The girls greedily popped the hair chews into their mouths one caramel at a time and chewed thoroughly. Everyone stripped naked to better see the results of the hair chews once the magic took hold.
"Now we have to wait a few minutes before our new body hair starts growing," said Selena. The freckled redhead snuggled into Tatiana's perky bosom as she waited. The vampire slyly stroked at Selena's already thick, coarse red bush. The rest of the pack began to make themselves comfortable as well, eager to see the fuzzy fruits of Morgana's magic.