"Will it hurt?"

The wolf's muzzle curled into a knowing smile, as though she had answered this question a hundred times before. Her lips parted, revealing a broad tongue and dark gullet, framed by teeth as sharp as knives. Her hot breath washed over Chrissy's face as she spoke.

"Don't worry, little one. It won't be too bad."

"How do you know?"

The wolf blinked. "What?"

"How do you know!?" Chrissy repeated, her voice tinged with frightened hysteria. She was going to die: she had no doubt about it. The chance to escape had long since passed. She had failed, and with that failure came a perverse kind of courage. "You can't *ask* your prey afterwards how it felt, right? So how do you know it doesn't hurt?"

The wolf held Chrissy by the scruff of her neck, their noses close together. She had been about to start eating when Chrissy had asked her question; now the wolf looked nonplussed as she pondered the answer.

"I suppose," the wolf said, "that I know because of how they act once they're inside my belly."

"They don't struggle?" Chrissy asked.

She wasn't sure why she was proceeding with this line of interrogation. She didn't actually believe that delaying the inevitable would give her a chance to escape. The wolf was *massive* compared to her, at least four times her height. Gray fur covered a wide, broad-shouldered body, and powerful muscles rippled beneath her fur every time she moved. She currently wore a sports bra and shorts, which showed off her midriff and defined abdominal muscles. The hand holding Chrissy by the scruff was so big, she wouldn't have been surprised if it could wrap around her waist, and the fingers dug deep into her fur. The wolf was an amazon; Chrissy would never be able to wrench herself from her grasp.

And Chrissy was just a tiny rabbit, her curves softened by a bit of pudge. The wolf had had no problems subduing her and stripping her down to her cream-colored fur. She had never stood a chance.

"Well, of course they *do*," the wolf answered, conversationally. "Especially at first. But then they always kind of calm down after a few minutes? So I've always assumed it can't be that bad."

Chrissy's eyes wandered down to the wolf's stomach. She was wearing a sports bra and shorts -- it seemed that the wolf had nabbed Chrissy on the way to the gym -- which meant she had an excellent view of her midriff. The wolf didn't have much of an hourglass figure: her body was wide, just like her shoulders, giving her a stocky look. But her stomach sported defined abdominal muscles, visible even through her fur. That stomach, like the rest of the wolf, looked *powerful*. Could being inside it really be "not that bad?"

"Anyway," the wolf continued, "you'll see for yourself soon enough. I need to finish my breakfast and get to my workout."

The wolf lifted Chrissy up, until she was dangling over the wolf's head. The wolf opened her mouth wide, the gaping maw forming a dark abyss beneath her.

Chrissy squirmed, but it didn't make a difference. She had no leverage, suspended like this. The best she could hope for was to hit the wolf in the eye with a flailing limb, and she had the feeling this particular predator would be too smart for that.

Indeed, the wolf wrapped her other large hand around her ankles to prevent her from kicking as she guided them into her maw. The fur of her feet and legs became soaked with sticky saliva as the wolf's mouth engulfed her, and her torso soon followed: she was barely a mouthful for this predator.

She stopped moving. For a moment, Chrissy found herself in an odd position: her arms were still on the outside of the wolf's muzzle, and had caught on the sides of it, halting her downward progress. A cage of white teeth surrounded her, her back resting on the wide tongue, her chest squeezed against the wolf's palate. From the waist down, she was inside the wolf's slick, undulating throat. The wolf exhaled, and a warm, moist gust of breath ruffled her fur. She could feel the warm, sticky saliva pooling around her, soaking into her fur and connecting to the walls around her in thick ropes.

Then the wolf swallowed. The powerful tongue pressed against the back of her head, forcing it against the slick flesh of the roof of the wolf's mouth. Her arms were forced above her head as the tongue shoved her downward, and her entire body, lubricated by that pool of saliva, slid into the wolf's throat.

Chrissy let out a yelp of surprise at the sudden movement. She had to stop herself again, somehow! She felt her hands brush against something, and she grabbed with both hands without hesitation.

It worked: she stopped again.

It took her a moment to realize that the smooth, slick objects she had clung to were the wolf's sharp fangs. It took another moment to consider that, at this point, the wolf would just need to chomp her mouth closed to send Chrissy down her gullet, sans fingers.

The wolf didn't bite down, though. She let Chrissy just hang there, the warm throat tugging her downwards. Her tongue caressed Chrissy's arm, and the wolf released another sigh, the warm air blowing around Chrissy's body. Maybe she tasted good?

Chrissy felt her fingers slipping, and she tried to readjust her grip. Unfortunately, she managed to prick her palm on one of the sharp teeth, and in surprise, she released her grip.

The wolf had been waiting. As soon as Chrissy was no longer holding on, she swallowed, sending another torrent of saliva (it must have been building up while she was waiting) down upon Chrissy's head. The wolf's teeth clacked shut, just barely missing Chrissy's fingers, and in one smooth motion, Chrissy slid down and splashed into the wolf's stomach. A powerful, acrid smell assaulted Chrissy's nose, and her limbs were squeezed into a fetal position. 

She gasped, and though the air was thin, she found she could breathe; was the wolf swallowing air? She had to get out of here. She tried to stretch out, only for the stomach walls to immediately snap back. She attempted to claw her way back up, but she could barely move her arms, much less find the entrance to the throat amongst the slick walls.

The wolf let out a belch, causing the stomach to squeeze Chrissy even tighter. Wet noises filled Chrissy's large ears, punctuated by the wolf's heartbeat from somewhere nearby. The walls moved, massaging her body and kneading the fluids into her already-wet fur.

And she had already started to tingle. The tingle quickly grew into a burn, spreading out over her entire body.

"H-hey!" Chrissy shouted. "Let me out!"

Her only response was another small burp and a *thump thump* sound as the wolf patted her stomach.

The wolf had lied. This was agony. The wolf's digestive enzymes were already taking her apart. She began to writhe, kicking against the walls with her strong legs. She shrieked, but accidentally managed to get some of the stomach acids in her mouth. She tried to spit them out, but she could already feel the burning sliding down her throat. The fire was everywhere, around her, within her. There was no escaping it, nowhere to go no matter how much she writhed.

Chrissy could hear the wolf talking to someone; judging from the conversation, the wolf had arrived at the gym. Only the wolf's words came through with any kind of clarity. The thick muscles surrounding Chrissy muffled the other person's speech to complete inaudibility.

Chrissy redoubled her struggling anyway. Did the person the wolf was talking to even notice? Did Chrissy even make enough of a bulge on the wolf's taut stomach for someone to know she was there?

It only got worse when the wolf started her workout. Chrissy couldn't tell exactly what she was doing, but occasionally her abdominal muscles would flex, crushing the rabbit into a painfully tight space. Each time, the pain only grew worse. Occasionally, she would feel a snap or a pop as she was mashed into oblivion. Occasionally the wolf would take a drink of some kind of sports drink; the cool liquid would provide momentary relief, but the burning would immediately flare up again.

Chrissy continued to struggle, but she only had so much energy. Soon she had screamed herself hoarse, and her muscled burned, both from the enzymes eating her up and from pure exhaustion. Eventually, she collapsed, sinking back into a fetal position in the wolf's tight stomach.

She wasn't sure how much was even left of her by the time the wolf had finished. The fire consuming her had never abated, though it seemed to have dulled in her limbs; Chrissy suspected that this was because there wasn't much left of them. In the dark chaos of the wolf's stomach, she was having trouble telling where she stopped and where the sludge surrounding her began.

Judging from the sounds, the wolf was showering now. The stomach sloshed as the wolf hummed to herself, dancing a bit as she washed herself after her workout. She didn't care that Chrissy was still here. The little rabbit didn't even register to her. She had just been... protein for her workout.

The shower ended, and everything became quiet. Then Chrissy felt something -- one of the walls pressing against her. She heard sounds, and had to focus to get her brain to decode those sounds into words.

"You still there, little rabbit?"

Chrissy whimpered, and managed to shift around slightly.

The wolf answered with a reassuring pat. "You see, it's not so bad, right?"

For a moment, Chrissy was shocked. Was the wolf... *mocking* her? Making light of her agony? Even now, the fires consuming Chrissy were inescapable, and she no longer had the energy to fight. Why was the wolf being so cruel?

Except... maybe she didn't know she was cruel. Chrissy thought about what had happened: how she had struggled at first, then finally run out of energy. The wolf had assumed that Chrissy had become comfortable, rather than so broken that she couldn't fight back anymore. The wolf's reassurance seemed genuine: what if she *actually believed* that this process wasn't that painful for her prey?

Chrissy had to tell her! She was beyond saving, but maybe she could make the wolf think twice about her next prey. She opened her mouth to scream, to tell the wolf that she was in unbearable pain.

She concentrated, focusing on drawing out what few reserves of energy she might still have. With a herculean effort, she managed to lift her upper body, drawing in the burning air to force at least one word from her half-digested lungs. "H... H..."

*"Hurts..."*

And then she collapsed back into the chyme.

"That's right, you just settle in," the wolf said, her tone kind. "You seem like a strong one; you'll probably still be around all afternoon. You might even last until tomorrow! I know, maybe I'll send you down some ice cream later. I bet you'd like that!"

Chrissy sobbed. She hadn't heard it. Or at least she hadn't understood it. How many others had this already happened to? Had others tried to tell the wolf the truth, just like her, only for their words to be lost in a haze of pain and suffering?

It hardly mattered, she realized. Even if the wolf *did* know the truth, it wasn't going to stop her from eating. Things wouldn't change, not really. And no matter what the wolf believed, Chrissy's fate wouldn't change: she had at least a few more hours to get through before this would finally end.

And they were going to hurt.