Chapter 13 — Teeth and Moonlight
1029 Words
Marlowe
Nobody told me the moon would sound like something, and by the time I understood what I meant by that, it was already too late to unhear it.
Nova grabbed my sleeve an hour before dusk, tugging me toward the tree line without much explanation beyond "you'll want to see this," and I followed her out past the fence to a ridge overlooking club land, half a dozen other prospects already gathered there in various states of nervous silence.
"Moon Rite," she said, like that explained everything. It explained nothing. "Patched wolves only. We watch from here."
"Watch what, exactly?"
She didn't answer, because the answer arrived on its own a few minutes later, and no explanation could have prepared me for it anyway.
They came out of the warehouse in twos and threes, already stripped down to almost nothing, moving toward the open ground beyond the fence with the loose, easy confidence of people who'd done this a hundred times before. I watched Bear go first — a massive gray shape tearing out of his own skin in under three seconds, bones cracking and reshaping in a blur too fast for my eyes to properly track, until a wolf the size of a small horse stood where a man had been standing a heartbeat earlier.
I'd known, intellectually, what this club actually was. Knowing it and watching it happen twenty feet away turned out to be two entirely different things.
One by one, the rest of them followed — a dozen wolves of every size and color, running loose formation out across the ridge under a moon that hung low and heavy and impossibly bright, and the sound that came up off that ground wasn't quite howling and wasn't quite laughter, something ancient and joyful and a little bit terrifying all at once.
Then King stepped out of the warehouse, and even from this distance, even already knowing what I was about to see, my whole chest went tight in anticipation.
His wolf came out of him different than the others had — not faster, exactly, but *cleaner,* like his body had done this so many times it had stopped costing him anything at all. What emerged was enormous even by the standards of the wolves already running the ridge, near-black, a jagged old scar visible across one shoulder even at this distance, moving with the same unhurried, deliberate weight the man himself always carried.
"That's King," Nova said, unnecessarily, watching my face with something like amusement. "Yeah. He's always been the biggest wolf in this den. Comes with the job, I guess."
I didn't say anything. I couldn't, really, watching that enormous black shape lead the others out across the open ground under the moon, blood and dirt and joy tangled together in a way I didn't have any framework for yet.
Then, halfway through the run, his wolf broke formation.
Not toward the pack. Toward the tree line. Toward exactly where I was standing.
He didn't cross the fence — some boundary held even now, some rule even his wolf respected — but he came close enough that I could see his eyes clearly in the moonlight, dark and focused and entirely, unmistakably fixed on me, and every other wolf on that ridge kept running while his stayed exactly where he was, watching, for one long, suspended moment that felt like it lasted considerably longer than it probably actually did.
"Huh," Nova said, quiet, and when I glanced at her, she was looking at me instead of the ridge, an expression on her face I didn't love the shape of at all. "That's... new."
---
### Alaric
I hadn't meant to break formation. Rook did it before I'd finished deciding whether it was a good idea, which was, increasingly, becoming the pattern of my entire life around this particular prospect.
*[There,]* Rook said, satisfied, the whole rest of the pack a distant blur behind the one point of stillness he actually cared about. *[Told you he'd be watching.]*
*Get back to the run.*
*[Don't want to.]*
*This isn't optional.*
*[Everything's optional. You just don't like admitting when you've made a choice.]*
I stood at the edge of the boundary, close enough to see him clearly even in wolf-sharp moonlight, close enough to catch the particular scent that had been quietly rearranging my whole nervous system since the day he first walked through my gate. He didn't move. Neither did I. The rest of the pack kept running the ridge behind me, and for one long moment none of that mattered even slightly.
*[Go closer,]* Rook said.
*No.*
*[Why not.]*
*Because there's a fence, and a rule, and a den full of wolves who'd notice if their President walked his wolf straight up to a prospect under a full moon like it meant something.*
*[It does mean something.]*
*That's exactly the problem.*
Rook went quiet at that, which I'd learned by now wasn't agreement so much as a wolf choosing his next argument carefully instead of wasting the current one. I held the boundary a moment longer, memorizing the shape of him standing there at the tree line, small and still and watching me back with an expression I couldn't read from this distance and desperately wanted to.
Then I turned, forced my body back toward the pack, back toward the run, back toward every ounce of discipline that had kept this club standing for years.
*[You'll go back tomorrow,]* Rook said, certain, already planning. *[Find some excuse. You always do.]*
*I don't need an excuse. I'm his President.*
*[Sure. Keep telling yourself that's the reason.]*
I didn't answer him. I ran the ridge instead, blood up, moon bright, every other wolf in that pack oblivious to the fact that their President had just spent thirty full seconds forgetting they existed at all — and somewhere behind me, at the edge of the tree line, I could still feel eyes on my back long after I'd stopped being able to see them.
Rook, satisfied, settled into the run beside the rest of my thoughts, and didn't let the subject drop for the rest of the night.
- Writer
