Page 6 of Feral Werewolves
“Yes,” I said, furrowing my brow, extremely confused.
“If your pack claims a tithe, then she’s yours for the night,” he said.
I drew back, astonished. What kind of fuckery was this? That was never how it worked. Never. A pack didn’t get a girl. If I got a crack at a girl, she was lying in a puddle of wolf semen, already well fucked and nearly exhausted. I didn’t mind. The tithes didn’t mind either, I didn’t think. Sometimes, they’d moan about how they were getting subbed in some fresh cock, and they seemed to be pretty glad about that. But, to be fair, the tithes couldn’t help themselves anymore than we could.
“Yeah, I don’t see that it matters either,” said the second of the guys, shaking his head. “The tithes, they show up and they’re just sluts for it. They want as much cock as they can get any way they can get it. But Griff’s new bitch—”
“Mate,” supplied the other guy, rolling his eyes.
“Mate,” he agreed mockingly, clinking his beer can into his companion’s, “she says that the tithes want quality time with just a few wolves. She says that if there’s no connection between the tithe and the wolves, that she should try a different pack next time, because that will mean it’s more likely that more tithes mate.”
I just blinked at them. I didn’t know what to say. I’d been on the websites. There were forums for werewolves, and there was some communication between us and people in other parts of the country, other parts of the world.
So, anyway, rarely, apparently, a tithe mated to a wolf. Even more rarely, a tithe might mate to more than one wolf,to an entire pack.
The mating was different than the gatherings, apparently. For one thing, once she was mated, she stayed… whatever it was that happened to the tithes, where they could handle us fucking them in wolf form, that faded for them after about six or eight months. But a mated tithe, she wouldn’t lose it at all, apparently.
As for the rest of it, the bond stuff, whatever that was, I didn’t see that it was much different than any regular kind of love or whatever.
People said that it was, that it had to be some mystical, fate thing or else a woman would never want to jump the fences and come live out here with us, with the beasts. But I knew that wasn’t true.
I knew women did shit like that. Certain kinds of women did, anyway. Maybe not all of them, but there was a type. Probably the same type who became pen pals with serial killers or whatever, but it was a thing. There was a kind of woman who was attracted to danger. You put that together with the kind of sex that the tithes had, which was obviously intense, which they obviously liked, and…
Of course some of the women wanted to move out here full-time.
I didn’t think there was anything mystical to it at all.
Once I said all this to Lazarus, though, and he just laughed at me and said,Yeah, okay, but how come the mates can handle wolf sex for all time then?
I didn’t have an answer to that.
“Is that, uh, a good thing?” I said to them. “If there are more mates out here?”
“Oh, she’s on the warpath,” muttered one of the guys. “Used to be all the women were community property. A woman might show up, claim to be yours, say she prefers you or something, but you have to give her to Griff whenever he wants and you have to give her to anyone ranked higher than you if he wants, and we’re not ranked that badly, are we, Jones?”
“No,” said the other guy, who must have been Jones. “Not that it matters now, because half our incentive to climb the ranks went away. This bitch of Griff’s thinks the women should get to choose who they want to fuck.”
Right, and that would be bad, losing out on getting to fuck unwilling women, obviously.“What a cunt,” I said.
Jones gestured at me with his beer can. “Definitely a cunt.”
“Griff’s not long for being boss is what I figure,” said the other guy. “Somebody’ll challenge him. Maybe Red.”
I tried not to flinch, thinking of that. I didn’t know Red, exactly, but he’d ripped me open one night during a full moon. I probably should have died, but I shifted back before I could bleed out. Red was vicious and frightening. He liked violence a tad too much. Griff wasn’t exactly a measured and reasonable leader or anything, but Red was definitely worse. Fuck.
“Anyway,” said Jones, “so even if she gets a bunch of women out here, dotted all over the countryside, mated into these little packs you guys got, it ain’t going to matter. Because within a few months, Griff’ll be dead, and we’ll be out here taking all your mates back to the compound anyway. Just think of that while you’re hoarding some tithe this gathering, eh?”
I rubbed the side of my neck. “Yeah, I think I get the picture. Crystal clear.”
“Thanks for the beer,” said the other guy, finishing his.
Jones left his, half-empty, on the table.
They walked out without saying goodbye or anything.
I stayed at the table, still trying to process all of that. What the hell?
Lazarus came in from the living room. This farmhouse was built before we got here. There was a redistribution of land and wealth that happened right after the Change. All the wealth that had belonged to werewolves got seized when they kicked us out into exile. They used that to pay off the people who had houses out here in the middle of nowhere and then those people had to move into the cities.
