Page 3 of Feral Werewolves
“Well, someone you like, though,” said Ninnia. “Someone nice and respectful who will ask what you like and who will worship you like the goddess you are.”
“Yeah,” I said. I met guys like that. All the time, actually. I’d done the apps, and I’d had dates with guys who said all the right things and who seemed super sweet, who never said anything inappropriate and who whispered,Is this all right?against my ear as their fingers roamed hesitantly down over my waist. I had something wrong inside me, though, because I’d say, coy and teasing,What if it’s not all right?And they would stop, confused.
I didn’t want to have sex with those guys, for whatever reason. I couldn’t figure out what the reason was, admittedly, but I felt like every sexual experience I was having was being negotiated, like the guy thought of himself as a loaded gun who was just trying to be sure he was meeting the legal definition of consent. It wasn’t sexy. It was awkward.
Once I said that to Ninnia and she said it was onlybecause it was new. “Once you get close to someone, the awkwardness fades and you feel comfortable exploring things.”
However, it wasn’t as if I wanted to have sex with the hairy jackasses at the bar, the scam-artists who were watching YouTube videos educating them in the art of negging, so that they could manipulate me into giving them sex, because I was in possession of a commodity they wanted to own—my pussy.
Ihatedthose guys.
They were dicks and they didn’t deserve my pussy.
Why did I flirt with them, then?
Yeah, well, it was that call-of-the-void thing, maybe? I was just playing a game with danger. I just wanted to go put myself into the hands of some monstrous thing that wanted to use me for his pleasure, just because.
And then, when I got there, when it came time to let him have me, I decided I didn’t want to surrender, after all. Maybe I wouldn’t let anyone have me at all. Maybe I was not a thing to be had.
I began watching weird blurry phone videos of gatherings, trying to figure out what it was going to be like on the full moon. Mostly, it would be trees and howls and women with torn clothes trying to run away.
There would be a flash of fur or teeth and then…
Howls and female shrieks. It was always impossible to tell if the shrieks were pain or pleasure. According to the tithes, both.
There were no shortage of accounts of tithes’s experience on the internet, but how many of them were written like Penthouse-forum letters—made-up erotica by people who’d never been tithes—was really hard to say.
Still, tithes did not mind the experience, that was the consensus. It was annoying because of their jobs or their lives or their boyfriends or husbands but they said they came out of it feeling peaceful and sated and settled. They said that during a gathering, the moon high in the sky, their bodies fully ready and eager for the experience, the sex wasnothing like they’d ever experienced. They were hair-trigger orgasmic. Orgasming from penetration alone, something only twenty-five percent of women could do and even they couldn’t do reliably, was common. The tithes were sturdy and capable of handling roughness—claws and even teeth caused wounds, but they healed incredibly fast. They were mounted and taken by multiple wolves, passed around and licked and nibbled and it all feltgreat.
Sometimes, they seemed wistful that it had ended, that one full moon, the urge hadn’t been there. Sometimes, tithes who were already spent would try to go to a gathering, but it never worked. The wolves could scent it on her, and they left her alone. They wouldn’t take a woman who wasn’t a tithe.
I didn’t understand that.
Why?
Why at the beginning, fourteen years ago, why did they do it then? Why did they rape women to death then, if they could stop themselves now?
Maybe it had just been horror and confusion at the beginning, mostly because it was new and they didn’t know what was happening to them. Maybe wolves had a better handle on themselves now. Wolves weren’t allowed to live in cities anymore, but sometimes some intrepid reporter would go out and interview one, and they’d say that, sure, they were aware of what was going on when they shifted, and sure, they could make decisions, and sure, they didn’t turn into raging, uncontrollable beasts.
But maybe they were saying that only because they wanted back inside the walls.
Maybe they just wanted their life-sentence of exile to end.
The consensus was that we couldn’t trust what they said.
3
clementine
MY FATHER SHOWEDup at my dorm because I’d been steadfastly ignoring all his calls and texts.
It was the fall of my junior year now. I’d stayed on campus over the summer, mostly because of my roaming phase, not wanting my father to see that. I didn’t want him to know.
Now, he did know, because the Council of Tithes insisted on sending out the stupid certification notices to your home address, and they had refused to send it to my dorm no matter how I’d begged and pleaded.
It was a requirement that I had to go and get a quarterly evaluation with the Council of Tithes. All women did. At my last one, they’d done the blood tests, and that was the end of it. I had my certification letter. Next full moon, I’d go to the check-in point at the wall with the other tithes and be sent out beyond the walls, and I wouldn’t be let back in until the sun rose.
I let my dad in and he pulled me into a tight hug, muttering something about how he was glad I wasn’t dead anyway.
