17

clementine

I FELT THE full moon coming a few days beforehand, and they did too.

The fucking became more frequent and more brutal. It wasn't uncommon for me to be coming down the hall with a basket of laundry or walking out to the chicken coop to look for eggs and one of them to come up behind me, scrabble with my pants, push them off and sink into me before I could even catch my breath.

Then, they'd fuck me hard and fast, panting wordlessly at my back before pulling out and spattering either me or the nearby ground with their release and gasping out some kind of apology.

"Shit, Clementine, I couldn't stop myself. I didn't hurt you?"

"I heal quick, remember?" I would wheeze. I didn't mind, really. These little interludes should not have been pleasurable for me, I don't think. They wouldn't have been if I hadn't been a tithe, if the moon hadn't been growing in the sky, but somehow, as it grew full, my body swelled and grew more and more sensitive and more durable. The pain felt good. The forcefulness felt good.

I found I could not complain about being in a house with three men who wanted me so bad they couldn't stop themselves from having me. I didn't mind that at all .

The evening of the full moon, they gazed at me hungrily at the dinner table. They didn't talk much, and I didn't either. I felt twitchy and eager and ready for them to take me again. I wanted them in their shifted forms. I wanted that very badly.

"I was thinking," said Kestrel in a gravelly voice, "about chasing you tonight under the moon."

"Yes," I said, crossing my legs, feeling all hot and bothered. "Give me a head start and come after me, maybe?"

They all groaned.

We all picked at our dinner.

And then we didn't wash up.

We stacked the dishes slowly, all of us stopping occasionally to look outside at the sky, which was getting darker and darker.

Eventually, Kestrel looked at me in a way that shook me to my core, and his voice, when he spoke, was strange and garbled. "That head start…"

"I want to watch the shift," I said, breathless and eager. Maybe that was a violation or something, maybe that wasn't fair of me to want it, but I didn't care. The moon was riding me, and I couldn't stop myself from wanting things and I couldn't stop myself from asking for what I wanted. Begging if need be.

I wanted to watch.

I wanted to see them change into the beasts that had claimed me in the first place.

Kestrel let out a sound that was mostly a growl. Then, he took me by the arm, maybe too hard, but I didn't care. I liked it, actually. I gasped and my body rippled with the charge of the promise of pleasure. He dragged me out of the house and the other wolves followed.

We went out onto the lawn and they began to circle me.

The moon was overhead, visible, but it had been visible for a while and they hadn't shifted yet. I wondered why and when it started. I thought about how the moon was visible sometimes during the day and how that never seemed to make werewolves shift .

And then, I got distracted, squinting up at it, thinking that none of it made any sense. Because the moon was always there, whether you could see it or not, and the stages of the moon were just about the light hitting it, so the moon wasn't any different on a full moon than it was at any other time, wasn't closer or larger or creating a different gravitational pull. And then I began to wonder if it was about the light itself. The reflected light of the sun on the moon, maybe that was what caused the shift, and maybe it had to get to a certain level of brilliance.

But then scolded myself, because really? I was thinking this while my mates were starting to methodically take off their clothes?

I got undressed, too. We all got undressed. We folded up our clothes and grinned at each other, breathless, eager.

Paladin came around and took the clothes and ran them over to the porch, while I protested that I could have done that (and really, couldn't they have gotten naked before leaving the house?)

Kestrel panted, his voice still garbled. "It's not easy to think things through as the shift gets closer. It gets harder and harder."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I can help. I could have told you guys to strip before we came out here."

Kestrel came to me, naked and beautiful, his body gleaming in the moonlight, and kissed me hard.

I clung to him until he broke away from me, throwing back his head in a way that looked painful. I tensed.

But the shift happened gradually, not with a lot of screaming and bones cracking or anything like that.

They started to circle me, and I stood in the middle, watching them move, and I began to realize that they were all a little furrier and then I started to realize their faces were changing, their snouts elongating, and then I started to realize their teeth looked longer and then… at some point, it was done.

They kept circling me, but they all kept looking up at me, urgent desire in their gazes, and I thought that—before— their faces hadn't seemed so easy to read in wolf form, but that now, I knew them so well, I understood them.

They wanted me to run now.

So, I did. I took off running, out through the fields of the farm. When I looked back, they were all watching me, looking strained, barely holding themselves back. I kept running, and I heard all three of them howling behind me, and it went through me like a rush of a frothing river.

I kept running, but when I glanced back again, they were coming for me now. They were so fast. They were gaining on me.

I let out a cry of mad laughter. This was fun and thrilling, and I wanted them to catch me, but I also wasn't going to just let them catch me. It was a game.

I pushed myself to run faster, to really try to get away.

But it was inevitable. They tackled me into the grass, all three of them, and they rolled me onto my back and began to lick and nip at my belly and breasts and the inside of my thighs and I groaned and arched my back into their tongues and then their paws and claws.

Paladin speared my pussy with his thick wolf cock and I came, screaming out my pleasure at the night sky.

Kestrel thrust his cock into my mouth and I took it eagerly. He tasted like adventure and excitement and sex.

Lazarus lathed my breasts and my mound with his wolf tongue, and I crested again, clenching on Paladin's cock as it thrust into me.

Paladin came quick and Lazarus ripped him out by the nape of his neck and plunged his cock into me.

Kestrel burst into my mouth and I swallowed him down.

Then Paladin and Kestrel took over licking me, both of them concentrating on my pussy, and I came again and again and again.

Eventually, they nudged me to shaking feet and shoved me off.

They wanted me to run again.

I ran.

Not fast, not in a straight line, nothing like that .

I was laughing and sex-drunk and happy, sure they'd catch up to me at any moment.

But the wolf that came for me, the one that tackled me to the ground and whose furry body smothered mine so that I couldn't move, that wolf wasn't one of my mates.