Joey was really excited for Christmas. He wasn’t sure at all what his pack were getting him for Christmas, but he hoped it was going to be something good. This was after dealing with the usual “requirement” of dealing with the tiring normal family trying to find some present for the year.

The small box covered in wrapping paper was interesting. Joey opened it slowly, tearing only small amounts of wrapping paper to be presented with a fairly standard black box. Opening it was a dog tag. Not the dog style of dog tag, but the army style of dog tag. It was slightly confusing to Joey why they decided to get him this, but looking closely at the tag, engraved in what seemed to be the lightest possible engraving was a single word in bold text, “MUSCLE”.

Joey didn’t feel like he had loads of muscle, but clearly his pack thought he did, or something like that. For the sake of accepting a nice gift, he smiled and carefully placed the tag around his neck. He was sure when it landed on his neck the chain heated up for a second and felt like it almost was going to burn him but shook it off as probably just imagining things after a long day.

Mostly ignoring this Joey played around waiting for a Christmas meal to be prepared, he felt slightly tense in his upper body. It was a strange feeling, almost as though he’d just been for a workout at the gym for several hours yet he had barely moved off people’s sofas for the whole day.

When almost drifting off into a dull daydream thinking of gym, lifting more than he knew he could manage he had a hand waved in front of his face and his alpha telling him that the dinner was ready. Snapping back to reality almost immediately to see a smiley alpha Joey almost jumped to the table not quite realising how hungry he was.

Little did Joey realise but with almost every bite of the dinner his muscles were growing ever so slightly. And after about half-way through his skin was drying out, into large scales. But everything was just so comfortable and nice.

After the dinner and lounging on the sofa and putting a pack favourite film on to watch, Joey barely noticed as his clothes strained on his size which was growing minute by minute. Growing tired as it was a long day, a big meal and a long film, Joey’s eyes strained to keep watching until it was too late and they closed allowing him to drift to a sleep. All while the tag felt slightly uncomfortable, enough to remember it was against his chest but not enough to think or even want to remove it.

Waking up slowly Joey didn’t realise how long he’d been asleep. Waking up and stretching his arms he saw solid muscle over his… scales of skin. Where the was flesh was now a thick scale covering up thick and dense muscle. Muscles. It clicked all of a sudden. That’s what the dog tag was all about.

He looked down to see tatters of clothing that he was wearing when falling asleep. Picking off one of the pieces to look down at the dog tag, the engraving was a lot stronger now. Close to even being punched out of the metal.

Then all he heard was the words he was listening for, “Want to go gym?”