Last Wolves of Paris

By T.G. Joye

A string of gruesome murders spurs Bertrand Smith, a werewolf sex worker, to try and catch whomever is responsible for murdering multiple women in his neighborhood. When the killer develops a taste for werewolf flesh, Bertrand makes himself a target on purpose, nearly becoming another victim.

A mysterious inspector calling himself M

• Language: English
• Publisher: T.G. Joye
• Release date: Oct 26, 2025
• ISBN: 9798349610783

T.G. Joye

T.G. Joye is a man of many faces. Born a little girl who yearned to be an adventurer, he mostly found adventures in books. Now a grown man, (yes, some girls grow up to be men later,) his adventures mostly consist of exploring cities along the United States Eastern Seaboard and attending various conventions. While he's not fond of showing his face, he is fond of talking about animals, manga, and his enduring love for stories about misfits and underdogs. A hunger for protagonists more like himself drove him to start writing books featuring queer and transgender characters. He currently resides in North Carolina with his husband and two cats.

Book preview

Part 1

Paris

Chapter One

T his one has organs missing, same as the last, Madame Fayette said in a hushed tone while we frowned down at the body together. I don’t understand how an ordinary man could kill a fully grown werewolf.

Madame Fayette and I had come to the Paris morgue to identify the poor woman. Or rather, what was left of her. Curious Parisians crowded around us, eager to view the mutilated woman behind the glass. Try as they might, the morgue workers could not hide the deep cuts and wounds across her abdomen and chest. While the ice and straw packed around the bodies helped, the smell of the decaying flesh, the crowd, and the river Seine mingled and made my stomach churn. Times like these made me wish I’d not been born with a werewolf’s keen senses.

Unable to take the riotous sounds and smells any longer, I walked outside to be free from the crowd. Madame Fayette went to make arrangements to bury the woman on display. She’d worked the street near our brothel, and I could not recall her name. Emilie, maybe? She was the fifth sex worker, and second werewolf to turn up dead and missing organs in a little over a month.

Five working women total dead within six weeks. Sex workers led hard lives, even those who worked the best brothels in Paris. Some clients think we belong to them, body and soul. We become playthings, dolls to be broken on a whim.

I’m not sure when werewolves moved into sex work. Maybe we’ve always been here? While murdered prostitutes weren’t new, two dead werewolves were unusual. Under the worst circumstances, the most ordinary werewolf was stronger than most men.

What are we going to do about this, Bertrand? Madame Fayette asked as we trekked home. My brothel head, pack mother, and the woman who became a mother to me after my birth mother died, Madame Jolene Fayette was as close to me as my own flesh and blood.

I don’t know yet, I admitted, but I’ll start with asking around the neighborhood and putting together a citizen’s watch.

We walked our street, and I made myself busy asking after Emilie. Very few people had noticed anything suspicious leading up to her death. I’d heard stories about a man who’d been thrown out of multiple brothels for biting people, but no one could connect him directly to Emilie. The same man had been at our brothel just days before the murders began six weeks prior. He’d fought me on his way out. He’d earned the nickname The Biter and most people avoided him in our neighborhood now.

Frustrated with my fruitless investigation, I gathered every bouncer, hired hand, and sturdy person from every brothel willing to listen to me. Many were werewolves themselves. We went to a nearby tavern to discuss a plan and decided to patrol the streets at night to try and catch this murderer ourselves.

Unfortunately, the city authorities issued a curfew that very night. Undeterred, we agreed to meet at a secret location within a local butcher’s cellar.

How are we going to patrol with the gendarmes out in force? one grizzled man asked the next evening, spitting for emphasis.

If we stick to the alleys and stay off the boulevards and out of the colonnades, they won’t catch us that easily. I pointed at a crude map on the wall. These are all the friendly brothels and street workers who’ve agreed to help us when we need to hide from the gendarmes. If we expand this network, we should be able to keep a larger force safe.

I spent all my spare time organizing and updating our maps while patrolling our arrondissement at night. Gendarmes and city officials forced more working women into brothels and off the streets, driving tensions high within our poorer, more overcrowded part of the city. No one resorted to barricades, but scuffles with the authorities made our work difficult. Night after night, we prowled through the dark, hunting the hunter stalking our community.

I sometimes wonder why my mother brought me here to Paris from Montreal. She’d claimed she was worried about our former home being slowly overrun by English settlers, but there’d been a massive upheaval here in France before our arrival.

Our home became a British territory, and I think my mother feared British attitudes towards me most of all. They still enslaved people like me, and I’d seen how the English sneered at my white mother when they saw her with me: a dark-skinned child. Our original home changed a great deal over just a few short decades itself, and the sharp influx of English speakers was too much for her.

Changes here in France were greater than in Montreal. The country saw a brutal revolution and its first Republic, an Empire under Napoleon, then the return of the Bourbon Monarchy before our arrival. I witnessed the removal of the Bourbon king by the House of Orléans as a young man. For better or worse, France was my home now, and this dirty, teeming part of Paris was the only place I felt I belonged.

Our citizens’ brigade made no notable discoveries for the first week or so of our patrol. I tried to compile a list of unruly patrons to pinpoint a suspect, but the names I collected proved too many to investigate properly. Multiple people brought up the Biter, but nothing I heard connected him to the murder victims directly. He did have an eerie habit of showing up a day or two before someone went missing, though. Nothing else noteworthy happened for nearly two weeks, and we considered disbanding the citizens’ brigade altogether.

Until, that is, a sixth body turned up. The deceased was partially hidden by refuse, undiscovered by patrolling gendarmes, giving us time to examine it. I dug like a wild animal to uncover the victim.

This one is a man; that’s odd. I whispered, shifting soggy wood and other litter aside for a better look.

He was unrecognizable at first, and I forced myself to take my time brushing refuse off the body. An ugly feeling seized my gut as the dead man’s face became familiar to me. This man was a werewolf who’d joined our citizens’ brigade. Along with his missing heart and kidneys, he had shallow cuts on his back. I found a curious black substance along the cuts in his clothing and on his skin along his wounds. Was he using some kind of drug to subdue his victims? Fully absorbed with my observations, I didn’t notice anyone else around me until other brigade members apprehended a man lurking in the dark.

Unhand me! the man protested as several werewolves dragged him further into the alley towards me.

I caught this fool watching us in the shadows, one of the women restraining the man half-whispered.

Is he missing organs? the strange man asked, nodding at the corpse—a brazen move, considering he’d been captured.

I stood and crowded close to him to make him as uncomfortable as possible. How do you know about the missing organs?

His eyes, hard and defiant amber flecks, met mine. I’m investigating some previous murders for a wealthy patron.

Oh, great. Some rich man’s pet inspector, I thought. I opened my mouth to ask another question, but shouts and whistles signaled the arrival of gendarmes, and we had to scatter. I noticed the strange man stooping to dab at the substance around the wound, and he removed something from the refuse before he melted into the shadows himself.

Last to leave the alley, I became pinned by the pursuing gendarmes, and I surrendered willingly, unable as I was to run. They hauled me to a magistrate, who appeared none too happy to be woken up in the wee hours of the morning.

And what are the charges? The magistrate tried to hide a yawn behind his hand.

Murder, your honor.

I didn’t murder anyone! I snapped back.

Accessory to murder, then.

The magistrate waved a hand to silence us. Young man, you were caught with a dead body. He yawned again. He’s a bit clean for a gruesome murder though, don’t you think? the magistrate asked flatly.

One gendarme protested, and a few stepped back to take a better look at me. I was dirty from digging the body out of the garbage, but not a bloody mess.

Take him to La Force and open an investigation. The magistrate waved us away. Accessory to murder is possible, and I’ll give you that at minimum.

The gendarmes moved to drag me off.

The only thing I’m guilty of is breaking curfew! Fine me and let me go! I fought a bit more, hoping the gendarmes would see reason.

Dear Lord, boy, an older gendarme scoffed. It’s La Force, not the Chateau D’if!

Prison was not as bad as I expected it to be. I had my own room, free access to various facilities within the building, and I was allowed to work during the day since I was not yet convicted of a crime. It felt a bit like being punished for something childish, though being accused of aiding in a murder was a far cry from a childish act.

Monsieur Bertrand Smith? The guard’s voice at the door to my cell made me glance away from the book I was reading.

Yes? I sat up, curious. It wasn’t yet time for me to leave for work, so there had to be news.

We found another woman murdered last night. The prison guard sighed, shaking his head. Seeing as you were here all night, you are clearly not responsible or aiding the killer, and you may go.

Despite my relief that I was being let out, my guts twisted at the unfortunate news of another death.

I gathered the few possessions I’d been allowed to keep with me while incarcerated for the last handful of days, and the guard walked me out of La Force prison. The cool morning air made me shiver as I walked back to Madame Fayette’s brothel. My mind felt muddy, conflicting thoughts and emotions bouncing around my head. I was glad to be declared innocent, but I was also angry that the gendarmes and our citizens brigade had failed to prevent yet another murder.

I arrived back at Madame Fayette’s brothel and decided to take a bath to clear my head. I entered the building and headed straight for the bath house. Most everyone else was either asleep or busy with early morning chores, and the bath house was blessedly quiet. With the water pumped and the fire lit, I basked in the fire’s warmth while waiting for my bath’s water to heat.

Madame Fayette stalked into the communal bath house as I started to disrobe. Bertrand, we have a serious problem.

She stood with her arms crossed and waited to continue while I undressed and folded my clothes. While I was used to keeping it hidden, unbinding my tail always provided instant relief. Very few weres managed to keep their tails, as doctors commonly removed them at birth.

I removed my prosthetic leather penis last. The sight of the flaccid leather phallus made Madame Fayette raise an eyebrow, but she said nothing. Not being a man by birth, my day-to-day prosthetic was more for me than for others.

I already know about the murder. I released a contented sigh, lowering myself into the bath. The hot water relaxed my muscles,