Page 5 of Feral Werewolves
We argued for another two hours, and I wouldn’t cave and we both cried more, and then I made him leave.
The full moon was in two weeks.
kestrel
TWO OF GRIFF’Sthugs showed up a week before the full moon even though I’d already been sent about seven textsand five emails which had all outlined all of the rules that were allowed for participation this time around.
Some wolves were wary of using the internet, because they thought that the government was using it to track us, or that—at the very least—the cell phone companies or Google or some shit might use it against us for all kinds of nefarious purposes.
But in this part of the country, the big head guy was Griff, and Griff was very on the grid, so everything was pages and pages of bureaucratic bullshit.
I was out weeding the vegetable patch when they showed up.
Paladin came up, and he was more nervous than usual, and Paladin was always nervous. He was shaking so hard that he could barely get his words out but eventually he told me that there were guys up on the porch of the farmhouse, and I left the weeding to go and greet them.
There were rules of how you did these sorts of things, codified expectations, and I knew better than to go against any of it. It wasn’t that I was really slavering to go after a bunch of tithes, anyway. Pussy was whatever-whatever. I didn’t miss it.
Okay, lie, but I’d spent just as many full moons out catching rabbits as going to those fucking orgies by the walls, fighting for a chance to hopefully stick my cock in some hole or other. If it got difficult, we could always fuck each other, anyway.
Still, sometimes I did end up there. We all did.
Call it instinct or a curse or whatever you wanted.
Sometimes, I just couldn’t help it.
If you didn’t agree to all the rules and you didn’t play the games that Griff wanted you to play, you weren’t deemed safe to be allowed to be at a gathering. And since everyone else was at a gathering and there was no way to detain rebellious wolves who were going to fuck up everything, there was a zero-tolerance policy.
Agree, tow the line, or they kill you.
I smiled real wide at them. “Please come in,” I said. I wasreally glad that we hadn’t drunk the last of the beer ration we’d gotten. Lazarus had wanted to, but I’d talked him out of it. “We have some cans of lager if you’re interested.”
They accepted the beer, because of course they did. The thugs always took whatever they were offered, like it was their due. Of course, they’d probably been traipsing all over the place, getting beer from every single pack out here, so they were probably drunk already.
Perfect.
“We’re just here to talk about some changes to the gathering rules,” said one of the thugs.
Yes, I know. I know that we’re supposed to hang back and give Griff and his guys the first crack at the tithes, and that we don’t get a tithe until she’s been thoroughly fucked by you guys first. I know this. There were seven texts, and I responded in the affirmative to every single one of them.I just smiled. “Of course. We want to assure you that we have no intention of not following the rules. We’re happy to comply. We all live better out here together if we’re at peace.”
Not like the beginning of this bullshit, where everyone was killing each other willy-nilly and there were little factions having wars over turf and wars over women and all of that shit. Women were rare out here. It wasn’t unheard of for wolves to come in and kill all the men in a pack to take their woman if they had one.
It used to happen all the time.
It was better now.
But, of course, Griff and his guys pretty much had all the women.
“Griff has a mate,” said one of the guys.
Amate? I was pretty sure Griff had access to twenty or thirty women in that weird little compound of his over the other side of the hills. “Congratulations to Griff,” I said, still smiling as wide as I could fucking manage.
“She showed up recently,” said the other guy with a shrug. “One of the tithes from the last full moon. She came and he sniffed her and they disappeared for three days and when they came back…” He shrugged, slugging at the beer.
The other guy shrugged too, laughing helplessly.
I waited. When they came back, what?
“Well, anyway, look, that bitch is essentially ruling the place now,” said the first guy. “Griff worships the ground she walks on and says that all her ideas aregreatand that we all have to listen to her perspective. And so, there are new rules. Griff says they want to keep it to three wolves to a tithe. He says up to five, if there’s not enough to go around, but… your pack is three, right?”
