Moonlit Bite: Forbidden Howls

The blood moon hung low and swollen over the tree line, casting everything in a deep red wash that made the forest look like it was bleeding. I had been running the practice trail for an hour, and my legs burned, but I pushed harder. Lacrosse always cleared my head. It was her scent that stopped me. Lila. Jasmine and something warm underneath it, familiar after two years of being her boyfriend, her person, her alpha. I followed it without thinking, the way my wolf always did when she was nearby. A habit. A reflex. A mistake. I heard them before I saw them. A low, desperate moan floated through the trees, broken by a deep grunt that I recognised the same second my stomach turned over. I pushed through the last line of brush, and there they were. Lila, bent over the wide oak at the edge of the clearing, her uniform skirt shredded at the hip, her fingers clawing the bark, receiving a very hot doggy. Marcus behind her, shifted halfway, claws dug into her waist, eyes glowing the same gold they always did when he was about to score a goal or win a fight, gosh she was moaning like a whore.. My best friend. My best friend since we were eight years old. His knot was already forming. I could see it. I could smell it. The whole clearing reeked of them. Lila threw her head back and screamed his name. Everything inside me went very still before it exploded. I shifted. Not the careful, controlled kind I practised in training. This was the blind kind, the kind that comes up from somewhere deep and takes the wheel before your mind can catch up. One second I was standing at the tree line. The next I had Marcus by the throat and we were both crashing through the undergrowth, fur and fists and claws in the dark. He hit back hard. We were the same size, always had been, which made this worse somehow. I caught a claw across the cheek and tasted blood. His elbow found my ribs. We rolled, snarled, hit the roots of a fallen tree, and I slammed his head into the dirt and pinned him there, shaking. "Kai. Kai, stop." Lila's voice. I looked up. She was standing a few feet away, uniform askew, arms wrapped around herself. Her eyes were wet, but her chin was up. Like she was the one who had the right to be upset here. "It was just heat relief," she said. The words came out almost steady. "I was going into early heat and you were at practice and Marcus was there. It just happened." "Just happened," I repeated. "I know how heat cycles work. I couldn't control it." I stood up slowly. Marcus stayed on the ground. He wasn't looking at me. I noticed that. He had not once looked at me since I tackled him. "How long?" I asked. She hesitated. One second too long. "How long, Lila?" "Kai." "Tell me how long." The wind shifted through the trees and I didn't need her to answer. I could smell it now that the shock had worn down and my senses came back sharp and cruel. Months. That particular mix of their scents together had months layered into it, woven together the way scents do when something happens often enough to become ordinary. The senior class found us ten minutes later, drawn by the sounds of the fight the way wolves always are. They came through the trees in ones and twos and then stood in a loose half circle, phones out, watching. Some of them already knew. I could see it in the way they weren't surprised. "We're done," I said. I said it clearly, facing her, so there was no misunderstanding. "I reject this. Whatever this was." Her face crumpled. "Kai, please." I turned and walked back through the crowd. Nobody got in my way. Back in my dorm room I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark for a long time. The mirror above the dresser reflected the claw mark on my cheek, which had already started to heal the way wolf wounds do. I stared at it. I thought about every dinner I had been late to and blamed practice. Every text she had answered slow. Every time she smelled faintly wrong and I told myself it was just her soap. I put my fist through the mirror. The shards scattered across the dresser and some of them hit the floor and I stood there looking at my bleeding knuckles and something shifted in my chest. Not the wolf kind of shift. Something quieter. A decision settling in. No more of this. No more giving pieces of myself to people who were already handing those pieces to someone else. No more planning a future around someone who was building a different one behind my back. I was done. I was finished. I cleaned my hand and lay down on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling. At some point I slept. At three in the morning my door flew open. My mother stood in the frame, hair loose, still wearing the formal dress she'd had on when she left two days ago for what she'd called an alliance summit in the north. Her eyes were wide and too bright and she had the look she gets when she has already made a decision she knows I am not going to like. "There has been an emergency development," she said. "With the Nightfang pack." I sat up slowly. "What kind of development?" She crossed the room and sat down on the edge of my desk chair, which was not a thing she did. She placed her hands flat on her knees. "I married their alpha tonight. It was the only way to secure the alliance. The border disputes were escalating and the council had run out of options." I looked at her for a long moment. "You got married. Tonight." "It was not a decision I made lightly." "And you couldn't call me." "There wasn't time, Kai. I'm sorry." She didn't look away. "You have a stepbrother now. He's eighteen, he's been at Silverwood Prep in the north, he'll be transferring here tomorrow morning." She paused. "And he needs somewhere to sleep tonight. The guest rooms are already occupied with the delegates." I stared at her. "He's coming here," she said. "To your room. Tonight." I opened my mouth. Before I could say anything, the door behind her moved, and someone stepped into the frame. He was tall. Dark hair, a little long, pushed back from a face that had no business looking that unbothered at three in the morning. Tattoos crawled up one arm. A small silver ring through his left brow. He carried a single duffel bag and he dropped it just inside the doorway and looked around the room the way someone does when they're filing it away for later. Then he looked at me. His scent hit me at the same moment. Something dark and layered, like rain on hot stone, with something else underneath it I couldn't name but couldn't stop trying to. My wolf sat up and went completely, unnervingly still inside me. The corner of his mouth curved up, just slightly. "Guess we're family now," he said. His voice was low and unhurried. "Brother." I didn't answer. He sat down on the floor against the far wall, pulled a phone out of his pocket, and started scrolling like we were strangers on a train. I lay back down and stared at the ceiling again. The room felt different now, Charged with something I had no name for and no interest in examining at three in the morning, one hour after my life had already come apart once. I told myself to sleep. I didn't.