Wolf-style fun means that there are no limits, just the way our males like it most.
After the feasting is finished, the more fragile members of all the packs retreat into the den below or the campsites they’ve set up in the hills all around. Once they’ve left us, it’s like the night around us changes shape. Ty lets out a howl of command.
There’s a pause, and then thebittenwomen come flooding in from their quarters in the next hill. Each and every one of them amped up and ready to get down.
It’s chaos. It’s dirty. It’s the way it always is—a concrete reminder that we arewolvesand we live the way we want, subject to no one’s rules but our own.
Males interpret this through wild, abandoned, excessive fucking. But when don’t they think with their dicks? I don’t hate that for them. All I want is to extend our moon-given wildness and post-Reveal freedom to everyone else, too.
Not by fucking scrums ofbittenwomen—though I’ll admit, they always look like they’re having fun.
I get up and dutifully make my way toward the group of other queens, and a few fated queens-to-be, like me.
Well, not like me. They’re younger. But they all know who I am, and the fated ones stick close—a good call on a night like this, when McCaffrey does as he likes with our new-to-him crop ofbittenwomen and Deirdre goes even harder than usual into herthe old ways or no waycrap.
We take over our own rock, up above the madness. Down below, the wolves are having what can only be described as a good old-fashioned outlaw party. The kind bikers were always famous for, but we originated.
Up on the queens’ much more sedate rock, we’re all very careful not to look as if we’ve noticed which kings feel that they get to keep right on partying as if they don’t have a queen, and which, like Ty, have removed themselves from that part of the free-for-all.
That’s between a queen and the king she’s bound to. It’s all about how he sees his relationship, because his word is always law. If he thinks that he should have access to all the pussy he wants as well as his dutiful mate? That’s her problem.
A problem she better not makehisproblem—because if she does, there’s no support. Not from anyone.This is the life,they’ll tell her. Her own father, even.You better find a way to get right with it.
One more reason I haven’t rushed to take my crown. No matter what Ty promises me now, it could change. People change. And if it does? I’m shit out of luck, the end.
This opening ceremony of the gathering lays it all out, every five years, in case anyone’s confused.
Once again, I have to wonder if thebittenfemales have the better deal. They usually come to the life because they like fucking hot, rough, dirty biker types, and when those biker types turn out to actually be wolves, they’re here for it. They usually like the wolves even more.
I think it must be fun, the life of thebittenfemales. Once a month, the full moon turns them into wolves and they get to go on their rampages and get carried away by their bloodlust—which usually involves domestic animals. Bloodlust is something thebloodedare taught to control, or face the consequences. Thebittencan’t turn their prey into werecreatures, though. Only thebloodedcan do that.
So the rest of the time, they fuck. There are far fewerbittenmen, and a lot of the female wolves find them fun, too. But it’s not quite the same.
Mostly because thebloodedwolves have extremely dirty minds.
And most of them have had a hundred years or more to experiment.
Down below, I see abittenwoman between two wolves, one in her mouth and one in her ass. She’s shaking and quivering, coming again and again as they thrust.
There’s no denying that it looks hot.
This is another thing the unmated wolf girls get to do on the night they declare themselves. Tonight is their chance to get a taste of what’s on offer, and very few of them turn down the opportunity. Sometimes, I think I’d love nothing more than to run wild at one of these parties myself and indulge every dirty little fantasy I’ve ever had.
But every time I tell Ty that, he smiles in that way that makes my toes curl and asks me which wolves I want all over me. And every time, I decide I’m good. My mind might like a fantasy, but my body has only ever wanted him.
“I’m not entirely sure you should be sitting here with us, Maddox,” Deirdre says with a titter, breaking into the dark, erotic display going on before me. I jerk my attention back to the gathering of queens. To Deirdre, who looks apologetic. She’s full of shit, but then again, that’s kind of her thing. Especially tonight. “You could be a queen, but you keep denying the call. I knowIwould never do such thing.”
“I’m worried about you, Deirdre,” I reply in the same sweet tone. Sweet, with blades. “Don’t you have young you should be caring for? Surely a queen as deeply concerned with propriety as you are should excuse herself from questionable parties like this and tend to her babies.”
Mariella snickers. When Deirdre glares at her, she shrugs. “I don’t care what you do, Deirdre,” she says, evenly enough that I’m reminded that she’s been queen of her pack a good long while. “I only wish you would do it more quietly. And with less passive-aggressive nonsense, if at all possible.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mariella,” Deirdre replies. Through her teeth. “My only concern, as ever, is making certain that we all uphold pack traditions, as we are called to do before the moon.”
The queens’ circle goes quiet at that, because who’s going to argue with the moon? Deirdre is probably as aware of the furtiveWTFglances between some of the queens as I am, though I’m sure she ascribes a different meaning to it. The truth about Deirdre, I suspect, is not that she doesn’t grasp that her role requires her to take a back seat to all the actual decision-making. I’m pretty sure what she really feels is that if she has to suffer, then everyone should.
“Too right, Deirdre,” I say in my most diplomatic tone. “I apologize. I always get overexcited on the first night of the gathering.” I smile at the young, fated mates sitting next to me. “Is this your first?”
But I don’t listen too closely to their stories, because I know them already. I know that the younger of the two is fated to old white-haired Janus, who is even now fucking threebittenwomen with abandon below. I know that this girl will be his fifth mate so far, and I can only wonder now if he’s been relieving himself of the moon’s choices as he grows bored. I’d always thought that they found whatever way they could escape and had taken it.
