8

kestrel

PALADIN WAS GONE , and he hadn't done anything, as usual.

It wasn't that Paladin shirked his duties on purpose. He really just forgot. I knew it. He'd always be really apologetic when I reminded him of whatever it was he was supposed to be doing. For whatever reason, he couldn't keep it all in his head.

It annoyed me, but I also had a very difficult time being angry with him. He was Paladin.

I kind of loved him, you know.

I was pretty sure Lazarus did, too.

Lazarus and me, we were sort of friends, I guess.

Or, uh, colleagues? Like, we respected each other and we recognized that teaming up made sense to our survival, and we'd grown used to each other in the interim. We had genuine regard for each other, but it wasn't like what we felt for Paladin.

If Paladin hadn't been here, it might not have worked anyway. He was sort of the peanut butter in our sandwich, the sweet, sticky part that made everything taste good.

Anyway, all of this made it hard for me to be annoyed with him. I knew I'd find him somewhere, probably playing Tetris on his phone or something, and I'd be like, "Hey, you said that you were going to clean out the chicken coop today," and his eyes would get all wide, and he'd be like, "Sorry, I'll get right on that." And he would, if I hadn't gotten really annoyed and just done it myself at that point.

Which I did do. It just seemed easier sometimes. Things needed done, and I could do them.

Today, I was out looking for him, but I didn't find him.

I found Lazarus, out in the fields wrestling with our plow, which seemed to be broken. He'd gotten it working a little bit earlier in the week, but it had broken again. I'd asked him if he wanted me to help him take a look at it, but Lazarus was the kind of guy who didn't do well with sharing problems, exactly.

I got it. I wasn't always up for the group approach either, but sometimes, just talking something out with someone would help you shake things loose.

He, however, liked to think on his own, try things, then go back to the drawing board. If I offered him advice, he wouldn't say anything, but he'd be irritated. He'd take it like an insult, like I doubted his prowess or abilities or something.

I tried to stay clear when Lazarus was in his fixing-mode.

Today, I only swung by to ask if he'd seen Paladin, but he had not, so I ended up walking the perimeter of the farm, looking to see signs of his having been there.

Then I found him, and he wasn't alone.

They were out by the bird bath. It used to be in the back yard, because this farm had probably once been run by some old-lady-farmer's-wife who did things like keep hummingbird feeders and have a bird bath.

When we took it over, I moved the bird bath out here.

She was holding hands with him, and she was laughing, and they were looking around at everything, and it hit me right in the middle of my chest, like a punch to my solar plexus, how nice it was to see her out here, how much I liked her laugh, how pretty she was, how strange and tangled up my feelings were about her.

They weren't all good feelings, that was the thing.

I did feel protective of her and a little in awe of how pretty and poised she was. I did think about how good it would be to see something pretty and graceful at the breakfast table, how it would settle something in me to have that focal point to my life, a woman, someone to do all this for .

But there were other parts of it, too, and they weren't good.

I wanted to fuck her.

I saw her and got an immediate erection, and I remembered how she'd been on her knees, taking my cock down her throat, and I got this sea of images in my brain, all kinds of fucked up things. Restraining her, holding her down, coming on her face, smacking jiggly parts of her body just to watch them jiggle, forcing her to beg for all kinds of things, never letting her wear clothes at all, just keeping her inside the farmhouse, maybe in a little apron that covered her tits and pussy but left her shapely little butt bare…

I must have made a noise.

They turned around, and she saw me. She let go of his hand and came for me, like a moth drawn to the flame, really, an eagerness coming off her in a way I could actually scent.

"Kestrel," she said breathily, stopping right in front of me. She bit down on her bottom lip, unconsciously seductive, or was she doing that on purpose? "That's who you are, right?"

Paladin told her my name. Like I was supposed to be impressed that she knew me? I folded my arms over my chest.

She dragged her toe on the ground, gazing up at me from behind her lashes. Oh, fuck, that was deliberate. "Hey. I'm Clementine."

"You told us that before." Wow, my voice was going to sound like that, huh? All choked and affected and scoured. Shit.

"Yeah." She laughed a little. She dropped her gaze.

Paladin stepped behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder .

She glanced at him and then back at me.

"Take her back," I said to him. "What the fuck, Paladin?"

I started to step around them. I was going to go right back into the house and pretend she wasn't there.

She stepped into my path, and Paladin's hand on her shoulder fell away. She looked into my eyes, searching my expression for something.

"What do you want?" I demanded.

She dragged her teeth over her lower lip nervously back and forth, and I honed in on that lip of hers.

"Seems like maybe you came out here because it wasn't enough for you at the full moon," I said. "Seems like maybe you're some kind of sexual deviant who wants to be degraded and used. That it?"

She swallowed. "I don't know."

I let out a caustic laugh. When I tried to walk around her this time, she let me.

"It was my first time," she called after me. "So, I guess I don't really know what I like."

I halted. So. That was weird. I'd never… I mean, I doubted that any woman I'd ever had sex with had been a virgin, and I didn't think I even cared about shit like that, except that I liked that. And that feeling of protectiveness, it surged. And she felt… like mine. Or ours. Or…? Fuck me.

"Seriously?" Paladin was whispering to her.

"I know, it was crazy, but I don't regret it. I'm kind of glad. It was intense, but most women seem to really have awful experiences losing their virginity, and I had more orgasms than I've had in my life. I think maybe I got the better deal in the end."

I turned around to look at them. I stalked back. "You trying to move in? That it?"

"No, she's getting a degree," said Paladin. "She wants to be a lawyer. She doesn't want this at all. She even says she doesn't believe in the mating bonds. Like you."

I looked her up and down. "You don't even know what it's like out here, Clementine."

"I mean, I might," she said. "I watched a few of those documentaries, like the ones where they were trying to infiltrate the various factions who are all doing raids on each other for food and resources. There's probably some group here that functions like werewolf mafia or something. Hoards things. Demands you guys give them things to keep them from killing you, like food."

She was smart, then. "Like women," I said. "You come here, and try to move in, they will take you. And you don't want to be someplace like that, trust me."

"Oh," she said, clearly unsettled by this.

"I'm sorry," said Paladin. "Like I said, it was selfish of me—"

"Well, I don't want to move in," she said. "So, I could just come by sometimes, maybe. Until, um, it wears off in six months?"

"Come by?" I said. "For what?"

"To hang," she said. "Like we go on dates. Or, um, just…" She blushed. "To fuck."

"That's what you want," I said. "That's why you're here, after all."

"Well, you only get access to a woman once a month," she said, lifting her gaze, bold. "You really turning this down?"

I laughed. Okay, she had balls, I would give her that. "You think you'll like the way I want to have my way with you?" I taunted, my voice a leer.

She nodded, sucking in a sharp breath. "I really do, actually."

Shit.

I advanced on her. "Take your top off."

She looked at Paladin, who shook his head at me, disgusted, and then back at me, and then reached down, hooked her fingers into the hem of her shirt and tugged it up, revealing a little no-nonsense nude bra underneath. It had a little bow between her breasts, but it was otherwise unadorned.

I slid a finger under one of the straps. "What would you say if I told you that if you lived out here with us, we wouldn't let you wear a bra? "

She let out a shaky breath. "I mean, I thought we established I wasn't going to live out here."

I laughed. I tugged down the strap, exposing one of her breasts. Wow, just as pretty as I remembered, maybe even prettier. I cupped it, giving it a little squeeze.

She gasped.

"You like that?" I teased her nipple.

She let out a little moan.

I wasn't sure what I was even doing at this point. But I had a huge hard-on, and I was pretty sure Paladin was turned on, too, and she was looking up at me with this look in her eyes, this needy look, and I was too far gone.

"Go find Lazarus. He's out with the plow," I said. "Tell him we'll be in my room."

Paladin hesitated. "I don't know, Kestrel. I didn't bring her out here for this. It seems… wrong."

"I know," I said. I caressed her face. "That's why a little slut like her likes it, though, isn't that right?"

She sucked in a wild breath.

I leaned in and whispered in her ear. "You came out here to be a fuckthing, and don't even try to deny it. You want us to fill you up, prod ourselves into all your tight little holes, and you want it bad."

She mewled, pressing into me, rubbing her breasts into my shirt, like a little kitten who wants to be petted.

"Say it, tithe," I said.

"I want to be fucked," she said. "Please?"

I swatted her ass, and nodded for her to lead the way back to the farmhouse, and she did it. The scent of her arousal was heavy in the air behind her. I followed it, feeling growls rise in my throat, as if I was half on the edge of being able to turn right now, as if her scent was bringing the fucking wolf out of me.

I managed to wait to do anything until I got her back to the bedroom. I sat down on my bed and told her to get on her knees.

She did, kneeling between my legs. She knew what I wanted .

"Take me out," I told her, leaning back, letting her unbutton and unzip me, free my cock.

She tucked it right into her mouth, groaning around it, sucking me like she couldn't get enough of me.

It felt fucking awesome, and I just let her do it. My eyes rolled back in my head and I let her suck and bob, and her little mouth was talented and wet and warm, and I was right there really fast.

I pushed out of her mouth and spattered her chest and her one bare breast and her no-nonsense bra, coming all over her, and it felt like I claimed her, like every rope of white liquid against her skin meant she belonged to me.

She panted, looking down at herself, at the come all over her skin.

"Taste it," I said, feeling perverse.

She fucking did it. She rubbed her finger into it and popped the finger into her mouth. She licked it clean, holding my gaze, and I felt…

Shit.

Okay, then. Now, I was dredging my fingers through it and pushing my come-covered fingers into her mouth, and she was licking me clean and gazing up at me as she did it, like some kind of perfect sex kitten, and I was getting hard again.

Lazarus and Paladin appeared in the doorway. I looked up at them, and she looked up at them, licking my fingers, one of her boobs hanging out, smeared with my come.

"What the fuck?" said Lazarus.

I cringed.

"I'm not doing this," said Lazarus and walked out of the room.

I got up, putting my dick away, the hard-on I was working on deflating. I went after him. "Hey, she was into it," I called after him.

We were outside the bedroom in the hallway, now.

He stopped, turning around to face me, angry. He put a finger in my face. "That's not going to make any difference in the end, and you know it. "

"Yeah, but she… I think she was flirting with me," I said.

"And you've never been flirted with before," he said.

I grimaced.

His gaze flicked away, as if something else had just occurred to him. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Flirting with you," he echoed.

"Look," I said, "if this is the speech about how I'm some dumb kid who doesn't understand women or whatever, save it, because if you wanted to be in charge here, you could be, and you submit to me, so—"

"Tithes don't do that," he said. "Not typically."

"What are we talking about?"

He turned and went back the hallway into my bedroom. I followed him. When we got in there, she was naked and so was Paladin. He was fucking her, missionary fucking her, just the two of them smashed together like that, face-to-face, and they were kissing and…

I felt like I was intruding.

It looked intimate and sweet and like nothing I was even capable of doing.

I backed out of the room, and I grabbed the back of Lazarus's shirt and pulled him out of there, too.

He shifted on his feet in the hallway, and now I could see that he was working on a bulge at his crotch. "She did this on purpose," he said.

"I mean, I don't know," I said. "Paladin must have contacted her online. He told me that he'd found a social media account—"

"No, not her." Lazarus gestured towards the bedroom door. "Griff's mate. That woman. She did this on purpose. She must have known it would do this. I actually read something on a werewolf forum once, something like this." He strode off down the hallway, walking with a purpose.

I blinked after him.

"Come with me," he called over his shoulder.

I went with him.

We had an ancient laptop that we shared between the three of us. It was thick and clunky, and it struggled with the software updates it tried to implement. He picked it up and logged in to his account on there. He squinted at the screen for a while, and then he slid it over to me. "See." He tapped the screen. "There."

It was just a sea of words to me. "What are you going on about?"

He took the laptop back. "Well, this post was advocating one-on-one werewolf to tithe sex on full moons. Said that when that happens, it's more likely to trigger mating bonds. Said that they'd been trying it and it was working."

"Bullshit," I muttered.

"I know," he said. "I know you don't want to believe in it. I get it. But I think it's real, because that's what nature is like, Kestrel. It's brutal like that. Us turning into wolves out of nowhere, against our will? Her falling in love or lust or whatever with us and destroying her life because she's whipped for our cocks? Hurricanes coming through and destroying houses? Plagues? Wildfires? That's exactly the kind of fucked up shit nature does. Nature does not care. It just takes over."

"You think she's our mate," I said.

"I do," said Lazarus. "And that's exactly why we need to get her out of here and back to her life as quickly as possible. And why we should steer clear of her next full moon and every moon after that. We're a lost cause, Kestrel, but she's a vibrant, beautiful woman with her whole life ahead of her."

I nodded slowly.

"It'd be selfish to claim her."

"No, agreed," I said. "Agreed."

"Of course, you did knot her, you jackass, so hopefully, she's not pregnant."

I squared my shoulders, acting like I hadn't been thinking about that for the past two weeks, but, of course, I had. "Couldn't stop myself," I mumbled.

He shut the laptop with a snort.

clementin e

AFTER KESTREL AND Lazarus walked out, Paladin sat down on the bed and patted the space next to him for me to sit down next to him.

I climbed up there and sat down. I was very turned on, not quite the way I'd been turned on at the full moon, but powerfully so, much more so than I'd been from the erotica I'd been trying to read, much more so than from fantasizing about their cocks.

Why did I like sucking Kestrel so much? Why did his come still taste salty and wild and like the sky, somehow?

Paladin touched the place where Kestrel's semen was smeared into my skin. "I'm sorry he was like that with you. He's not always like that."

"I didn't mind," I breathed.

"You are so pretty and so perfect," breathed Paladin. "If I could touch you, I wouldn't…"

"You can touch me." I thrust my bare breast at him.

He sucked in an audible breath, looking me over.

Suddenly, we were kissing, and he was struggling out of his shirt, and I was struggling out of my bra, and then we both paused to frantically shed our pants.

Both nude, he pressed me back into the bed and climbed on top of me.

Oh.

The feeling of our smooth skin pressing together, all over, it was phenomenal. I let out a small moan.

He kissed the tips of both of my breasts and smiled down at me, his expression full of awe as he looked at me.

I reached between us and found his cock. I didn't really know what I was doing with it, but he made a strangled noise of approval. And I found that I just wanted it. So, I tucked it into my incredibly wet pussy. Whatever Kestrel had done to me, it had turned me on so bad.

Paladin's cock felt different now that it wasn't a wolf cock. It wasn't that it was smaller exactly. I couldn't quite say. But it was good. I let out a long, slow groan as he began to thrust in me.

"You feel amazing," he gasped .

"You too," I said, hooking my arms around his neck and pulling him down for another kiss.

We kissed, and he fucked me. Then he broke the kiss and pulled back enough to gaze into my eyes. He stared at me, his expression half-lidded bliss, and he fucked me.

He fucked me and fucked me and it felt phenomenally good, all over good, and my pussy was so pleased to have him back inside me. I felt filled and complete. I thought to myself that this was what I needed, to be fucked like this daily, that it settled something inside me.

But I didn't come or anything.

Paladin moaned that he couldn't hold off any longer, and I started to tell him to come, that it was okay, but then the other two, Kestrel and Lazarus, burst back into the room.

It was like when they'd been shifted and Kestrel had pulled Paladin out of me before he could knot me. Kestrel yanked Paladin off my body, forcibly pulling his hard cock out of me.

I made a noise of protest.

Kestrel grabbed Paladin's pants, thrust them at him, and pushed him out the door.

Lazarus looked me over. He looked older than the other two, but I wasn't great at judging ages. "Get dressed," he said to me in a guttural voice, and then he stalked out of the room.

I sat there, feeling annoyed, feeling unfinished, unsatisfied, and I did not get dressed.

I had this urge to demand that someone come in here and get me off. I was so turned on, and so eager for it, and it was a very frustrating feeling.

But that didn't really seem likely. I'd pissed them off in some way. Kestrel had been angry and also hot for me. Maybe Lazarus was too, considering the way his gaze had moved over my nude skin.

Lazarus ducked his head back inside the door. "You're not dressed."

I sputtered.

"You need help?" said Lazarus, coming back inside. " That it?"

I shook my head.

He bent down and fished my bra off the floor. He turned it this way and that. He was a big, burly man and the bra looked ridiculous and dainty in his hands. He settled down on the bed next to me. "Hold your arms out, then," he said in a gravelly voice.

I did not need this man to dress me, but I did hold my arms out, and he slipped it on and then stretched it around the back. I leaned forward and let him fumble around, trying to do the clasp. I smirked, thinking that I could tell him that this was not the way to put on a bra, that you did the clasp first and then turned it around, but it was kind of fun.

He made a huff of annoyance, tugging me closer so that he could get a better look.

I took this opportunity to climb up on his lap. I straddled one of his thick thighs and pressed my aching pussy against it.

He fumbled with my bra and I began to gently rock myself there. Oh, hell, that was just what I needed. Wouldn't take me long. My breath caught as I rocked.

"What are you doing?" he breathed.

I tilted my head back, looking up at him. "Please?" I whispered. "I'm close."

He swallowed hard, and I saw his Adam's apple bob.

"You all got me so worked up," I whispered. "I need a release."

"Fuck," he said, no bottom to his voice.

It built like a sweet melody, picking up volume and speed as I rocked gently in the same rhythm. It felt better and better and even better. Lazarus brushed his fingers over my lips, my chin. It sent me soaring, and then there was a sweet, explosive crescendo, as I came right there on his thigh.

He let out a noisy breath.

I climbed off him. I'd left a wet spot on his pants. I touched it. "Sorry," I said.

"I'm never washing them," he told me, and he kissed me.

That was when Kestrel came in, swearing, and Lazarus climbed off the bed, sheepish and muttering under his breath.

"Get dressed," said Kestrel to me. They both left the room again.

I got dressed.

lazarus

I CLENCHED MY hands into fists to keep from touching her. I would have liked to gather her into my arms or to have her perched on my lap. She was small and soft and rounded and lovely. I didn't think I'd ever seen a more perfect woman.

The mating shit was no joke.

She was sitting alone on one of the couches in our living room, and the three of us were standing up and staring at her.

"I don't believe in the mating stuff," she said. "I already said that I don't want to move in. I don't want to live out here."

"So, what you're saying is that you broke the law to come into exile territory and then happily sucked Kestrel, let Paladin fuck you, and got yourself off on my leg, and that's just normal behavior for you."

She looked away.

"You are behaving erratically," I said.

"It's because I'm a tithe," she said. "I've been behaving erratically for a while now."

"If you can believe in the tithe stuff altering your behavior, then you can believe in the mating stuff," I said. "Because it's all the same thing. That's why tithes exist. Tithes are mate potentials. You get horny on full moons, and the reason is so that you'll find a wolf to bond to. Or more than one in this case."

She looked up at me, eyes widening. "What?"

"Look, it's just a theory," I said. "But I think it makes sense. Why else would it happen like it does? Female wolves, wild animal wolves, go into heat, you know, so that's what tithes do. Same kind of thing, really."

She thought about it. "I've read theories that the werewolves are just some evolutionary adaptation, people speculating that evolution isn't gradual, that it works in bursts. I don't know what I think about that. If that's the case, then what does that mean about the regular people? If this is the next stage of evolution, does that mean…?"

"Look, nothing means anything," I said. "Especially with evolution. Things adapt, but there's no plan or something. It's just chaos, random chaos, and sometimes you get the short end of chaos."

She let out a breath and nodded, seeing this as true.

"So, you steer clear of us, and we'll steer clear of you," I said. "It's better for everyone, but especially you. We didn't have a choice to be out here, but you do have a choice. Don't throw your life away on this."

Her lips parted. She got up off the couch, wrapping her arms around her body. "Except what if I don't have a choice either?"

"You do," I said. "Paladin says you want to be a lawyer or something, so that's got to be a lot of schooling, and you can't do that—"

"No," she said. "I can't. And it wouldn't work longterm. I said before that maybe, just during the six months that I'm being affected during the full moons, I could sneak out here like this, but if what you're saying is true, Paladin—" She turned to him. "Then if I do that, I'll probably be altered permanently. Or maybe I already am. We won't know about that for months, I guess." She shifted on her feet. "Unless I'm pregnant."

"You'll terminate if that's the case," I said.

Kestrel made a noise.

"No, I thought I would if it happened," she said.

Women often didn't. Pregnancy meant she didn't need to come to the gatherings. If she had an abortion, the need would come back the next full moon, and sometimes, it seemed to prolong the number of months that she was affected. I knew about that. Lots of women thought a werewolf baby in their belly was a ticket out of the whole thing. Of course, those kids weren't old enough for us to know if they were all going to shift into wolves, too.

"None of that matters, though," she said. "What I'm saying is that this is just happening to me, like you said. The short end of chaos. I didn't ask to be a tithe. I didn't ask to be obsessed with all three of you. I don't have any control over it."

"You can fight it," I said.

"Right," she said. "Like you're fighting being a werewolf? That working out for you?"

I flinched as if she'd slapped me.

"She can't be here, regardless," said Kestrel. "We all know the situation with Griff is tenuous and we all know that it won't be safe for her out here. And we all know that if someone tried to take her from us, we'd happily go to our deaths stopping that."

Her eyes widened. She stared at him, frightened by that.

Kestrel bowed his head.

"You'd die for this slut fuckthing, huh?" Her voice was caustic and pointed.

What the hell had he said to her? I rolled my eyes.

Kestrel lifted his gaze to hers, defiant. "Yeah."

"Shit," she whispered. "This is all real, this instant-bond thing. And it's really awful."

"Yeah, it sucks," I said. "No matter what, now that it's happened, it's going to suck. But you have a chance. So, go back home, go back to the city, and forget about us."

Now, she flinched.

"It's better," said Kestrel quietly.

She turned to Paladin, pleading with him.

Paladin hesitated, looked at me, looked at Kestrel, and then gave her a miserable nod. "It is better. We shouldn't see each other again."

"And next full moon? Not even then?"

"Find some other wolves," I said. "We won't even go out to the gathering." Then I realized that was Kestrel's decision, so I looked to him .

But he nodded, firm. "We won't."

She looked like she wanted to argue, but she fumbled around for something to say, and seemed to come up with nothing. She jammed her hands into her pockets.

"Good," said Kestrel. "That's settled."