Chapter 10
New Wolf Moon
Wolf week proper starts off with its usual bang.
The new moon rises. The Wolf Moon. Our moon. All the packs assemble, crowding in on our own hilltop and spreading out onto surrounding hills. One by one, each pack leader climbs to the highest rock, asks his pack to follow him, and they howl their responses.
It’s like a rally. It’s always positive. Not least because you wouldn’t want to be the lone negative wolf in your pack on the first night of the gathering. You wouldn’t want that kind of attention.
I’m a little too aware that there are those who wish me ill, and I can’t get Winter’s warning out of my head.
I make sure that there’s no one behind me when it’s finally our turn, and I also make sure that my howl can be heard above everyone else’s.
Just to make sure there’s no doubt as to my commitment in the moment.
I’m also aware that a howl can only go so far.
But I make it through with my throat intact.
I’m more relieved than I want to admit.
Ty welcomes all the packs, standing high above us and making the hills shake with our cries.
There’s never a part of me that isn’t proud of him, but I particularly love watching him do this.
I love watching him be elevated the way he deserves, his voice loud enough to be heard all throughout these mountains.
And beyond.
There are a lot of kings here tonight, but there’s only one Ty.
He’s head and shoulders above all the rest without even trying hard, though I know that’s a dangerous line of thought. King of kings, I think, but I’m going to have to convince him of that.
If he doesn’t bite me for daring to say something so forbidden in the first place.
“It is an honor for me to welcome you here,” Ty belts out, letting his voice ring in the old language.
“I know it’s been a tough three years in a lot of ways, but here in Oregon, we think we’ve cracked the code to the Reveal and figured out how to move forward.
How to make certain that wolf-led priorities deliver the best possible outcomes for all of us. ”
There’s a lot of howling at that, too. Whether some of it comes from jealousy, or all of it is purely aspirational as they contemplate becoming as powerful as we are, it doesn’t matter.
Ty is very difficult to ignore. He’s charismatic.
He’s compelling. He’s the alpha among alphas, and female wolves love themselves an alpha.
I can see more than one of them, mated or not, looking longingly in his direction.
I’m not even mad about it.
“We have all week to talk, reconnect, and make our different perspectives heard,” Ty continues in that same powerful voice.
“But tonight is the first night of our gathering. And it’s tradition to invite all unbonded and unmated females to come forward and make themselves known so that any male who thinks himself worthy can fight for their favor. ”
This gets a cheer even bigger than before. Because this is what pack first, pack forever—everyone’s favorite slogan—means in practical terms. This is how we keep the bloodlines spicy. This also means that we get to watch the males fight each other, always a good time for the spectators.
It also means that the party is starting.
Assembling the females takes a minute. There are always disputes.
Fathers who don’t wish for their daughters to present themselves to a gathering like this, usually because they have someone closer to home in mind.
Other males who object to a specific female claiming that she is unbonded because he would like it to be otherwise.
In our little corner on the hilltop, my aunts are preparing food. I decide it’s better eaten with opposable thumbs, so I shift and sit there by our own cookfire, breathing in the wolves all around me. So wild and, these days, free. We had to be a lot more careful five years ago.
“These females nowadays,” tuts one of my aunts. “Taking such pleasure in making the males scrabble in the dirt for their favor.”
“That’s a strange way to say that no one was particularly interested in your favors, Sigrid,” replies another one of my aunts, slyly.
Aunt Sigrid laughs. “Some females know their own mind. I knew who I wanted to win my hand, and so he did. It didn’t require a pageant and an after-party.”
My mother sniffs. “Bastien snuck in under cover of night and stole me from my family, as is right and proper. All of you are soft, silly girls who needed proof. Bastien didn’t need to prove himself to me. He saw what he wanted. He acted upon it.”
She doesn’t say like a real male. It’s implied.
Both of my aunts become very concerned about the state of our cookfire.
I have to bite back a laugh. I never knew my father, but the man they tell stories about sounds like someone I’d admire. Maybe even love. I like to imagine that if a pack of trolls hadn’t gotten the jump on him, he’d be proud of me in return.
Johanna always told me I was stubborn like him. I always took it as a compliment.
I watch the girls as they climb up to one of the lower-level rocks that puts them on a kind of stage. They vary in ages, the only requirement being that each one of them is past her first blood and claimed by no male.
I try to imagine what it must feel like to stand up there, looking down as the horde of males begins to assemble.
However those males appear to them at first glance, one of them will be their mate.
I’ve never heard of a mating ritual that ended with an unclaimed female.
I wonder if they’re excited? Disappointed?
If they regret putting themselves forward?
I never had a choice, and these females have a variety of potential mates to choose from. I try to imagine how that would feel. I watch the jostling males for a while, then look up to where Ty is lounging on his rock.
I’m not surprised when his gaze finds mine. Or that I feel it all over me, even from this far.
No, I think, while warmth spreads inside me. I didn’t miss out at all.
One by one, the females step forward to say their names and announce what pack they hail from. As they do, the males below them jostle some more, making noise and flexing their muscles. Letting the other males around them know that they are contenders.
When the females finish introducing themselves, Ty lets out a loud, long battle cry.
And the males begin.
Tonight’s fighting is more of a brawl—and mostly a show. Not exactly friendly, but not deadly either. Just various attempts to show dominance while trying to look good for the women watching above. A few punches. Some grappling.
No one is going for broke on the first night.
I see, with some surprise, that all three of my brothers are out there. They might be pains in my ass, but I also like their chances. When I make a sound, my mother looks at me.
I shrug. “It doesn’t seem fair to the other wolves that all three of my brothers are out there, making them look bad.”
Johanna isn’t much for smiling, but I swear I see the corner of her mouth indent.
When Ty determines that the show has gone on long enough—or is possibly worried that the males are beginning to make themselves look bad in front of the females since they’re not really fighting, not tonight—he calls an end to it.
And then the real party begins.
Just as some packs came early to make a statement, others only arrived tonight for the same reasons. It’s all about clamoring for position and consolidating power, but this first day is about fun.
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 the bitten women 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 are wolves and 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 of bitten women—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 of bitten women and Deirdre goes even harder than usual into her the old ways or no way crap.
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 make his problem—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.