THE THREE MOONS PACK

10. You don’t choose your friends or your family

The vision of the toilet bowl not being unique enough for me to look at it more than necessary, I stood up and returned to the entrance.

“I... I can’t call Gina,” Koran said, finally.

“Why? You take out your cell phone and presto. Koran phones Gina. Belt problem solved.”

Koran gave me a murderous look.

“I told you I couldn’t. Do you have hearing problems on top of everything else?”

Oh-oh!

Was it a day for jokes?

I was exhausted. Too many incredible revelations, too many emotions, and surreal problems.

“Go lie on my bed,” ordered the blond giant in a gruff voice.

Not fit enough to rebel against the idea of squatting on his bed, I accepted, with limited gratitude.

It was soft, but that wasn’t the best thing. No.

The smell that permeated the sheets strangely soothed me.

The concept alone made me want to slap myself.

“Why does your smell calm me?”

I hadn’t asked the question out loud. Please!

Again, a little silence greeted my words. Fatigue and shame prevented me from lifting my eyelids to check what he was doing.

“It’s normal. I’m your Alpha.”

The lack of arrogance in the tone of his voice surprised me. Just as much as the sweetness I detected there.

“I don’t want you to be my Alpha. I don’t want to be a big dog on full moon nights...” I mumbled.

It was true. I didn’t want any of this. I just wanted my life back... and my father.

“You’re not just going to transform yourself on full moon nights, Beth. It’s just the first of three big mutations. The... moon acts on us as it does on tides, vegetation, and animals...”

“Madmen, too,” I interrupted.

He laughed at this.

“Yeah, the nutcases, too.”

Koran sat down on the edge of the bed. I felt him as the mattress sagged under his weight and the creak of the box spring.

“Explain to me why you keep going to school at your age.”

He let out a long sigh, I imagined him running his fingers through his thick golden hair. And shivered despite myself.

“Simply because of our physical appearance. The magic of the curse permeates every cell of our body, so we look like teenagers for about fifteen years. Our slow ageing forces us to reconsider our entry into the professional world. What boss would trust people who look seventeen?”

It made sense.

“Is that why Erwan skips his classes? He’s sick of it, the poor guy...” I chuckled.

“You can’t say he loved going when he was really seventeen... So, then... I’m serious, puppy. Once you’ve passed the three mutations, the moon will influence your behaviour, but not necessarily your physical transformation. At first, intense emotions will trigger your transformations. Anger, joy, sadness, pleasure... Afterwards, you’ll learn to control them.”

“If only I could not transform at all... Why before our majority? Why aren’t we wolves from birth?”

“Some think it has to do with our s****l maturity, others that it is because of the curse itself. You’ll not have the right to know the real story until after your three meta, but I can already tell you the simplified version. The story goes that a long time ago, in a place called Arcadia, a young nymph, Aphea, once caused the suicide of a suitor she cruelly dismissed. She was disowned by her family, condemned by the gods to eternal sorrow and cursed to suffer the same heartbreak if she ever fell in love... which she did with a Visigoth warrior. Their children were the first of our kind. There.”

“The Grimm brothers won’t know what hit them,” I whispered, opening my eyes.

I opened my mouth to bombard Koran again with questions. He stopped me with a wave of his hand.

“There’s no rush. I imagine you must have a thousand questions. That’s normal. However, you have just experienced your first-change, give yourself time. Rest, I’ll go get us something to eat.”

I scowled.

“You have the right to walk outside and not me?”

The smile that stretched his mouth frightened me, it was nothing human.

“Because it’s a full moon and outside there’s a bunch of super restless wolves.”

Yes, indeed, that was an excellent argument.

It was when Koran woke me up shaking me gently that I realized I had fallen asleep.

“Get up, I brought the meal.”

The smell of meat was more effective than a shower to get me out of the slumber of sleep. My stomach growled and I kept drooling.

On the formica table of his little bachelor pad were two juicy roast beef in a pyrex dish and a golden chicken with crispy skin.

I really must have looked like a mental patient, because my expression made Koran laugh.

Without waiting for him to invite me, I took a seat on one of the chairs and then armed myself with my fork and my knife. He laughed again at my pleading look.

“Okay. I’ll serve you... leave me a little of it anyway,” he muttered without being able to hide a certain manner of tenderness.

Each piece of meat cut by him and placed on my plate widened my smile.

When I was finally able to throw myself on it, I chewed with real moans of pleasure.

Suddenly, I noticed that I was the only one eating and I looked up questioningly at Koran, also seated on one of the chairs, facing me.

He stared at me with an intensity that stuck a series of shivers down my spine.

“What?” I said, my throat dry.

“Do you have to make that much noise while eating?”

If his sentence was a reproach, the way he pronounced it gave it a very different meaning. The cajoling intonation contained enough seduction to explode a nun’s hormone level.

“I... I’m sorry. I was... very hungry and this meat is delicious,” I mumbled, turning my attention to my slices of beef.

“I must already control myself, avoid giving me a glimpse of your song to the moon.”

I blushed and just nodded, keeping my nose on my plate.

Then I felt it. This tension in the air, present when something is going to happen. Like an invisible heaviness. We could hear each other’s breathing as easily as if it were the sound of a huge plane.

I froze.

“No,” I whispered, without facing him.

“No, what?” he said very slowly, leaning on almost every letter.

A warm and compact air surrounded me, taking me into its tornado.

This was Koran’s desire. I recognized it after feeling mine at the gym. Electrifying every nerve ending in my body, the sensation became intoxicating. It almost made you undress and beg for caresses.

My breathing became erratic, and Koran accentuated his power.

I couldn’t help moaning and that was the signal he expected from me.

I grabbed the table while watching him between my lashes.

Without saying a single word, Koran took me in his arms and put me on his bed.

He then took off my sweatshirt and my t-shirt. I was completely weak, and I let myself be like a rag doll.

Koran slid a knee between my legs to create enough space and stuck his hips to mine.

Instead of shocking me, the hard flesh he pressed against my crotch made me completely lose my mind.

A wild madness possessed me in a brutal wave.

I was no longer alone in my body, there was the other... the wolf.

And the wolf wanted to unite with him.

He, the dominant male, the strongest of the pack.

Koran put his mouth against mine with perverse sweetness, teasing the flesh of my lips. His tongue took over, and that made me completely lose it.

He drank every indecent sound I made, turning my blood into devastating lava.

Then, Koran went down onto my neck, kissing the second bite, as if playing with his nerves, torturing himself by not giving in to his desire to sink his teeth there, again.

With one hand, he pushed back the hair falling over my eyes.

Breathing heavily, my gaze dived into Koran’s, which was no longer human. Two yellow eyes reflected my desire.

Far from making me scream, this animal colour stirred up my desire for him.

Without ceasing to look at me, Koran ran his fingers over my cheek, skirted my jaw, and only stopped for a brief moment in the hollow of my throat. Then they resumed their slow run until they touched the lace of my bra.

I held my breath while supporting his gaze.

I stuck my nails in his hips, almost through his T-shirt.

A low rumble rose from the depths of his being, without even passing through his throat.

My greedy hands tried to slip under the thin fabric of his garment.

His skin was as hot as mine.

The touch gave me a feeling of intoxication comparable to several glasses of tequila. I was drunk without drinking a single drop of alcohol.

Koran let me continue to conquer his body.

I read in his eyes a kind of burning curiosity: how far will I go in my initiatives? It excited him.

While my feverish fingers caressed male abdominals for the first time, discovering with delight their hard and satin texture, Koran, with gestures of unbearable slowness, slid the straps of my bra along my arms.

He spent a long time devouring me with his yellowish eyes: my neck, my collarbones, my chest. As if he wanted to print this image in his memory.

As for me, I was almost crazy not to be able to take this damn shirt off him.

Koran straightened up, kneeling on the mattress, gazing at me for a brief moment from his height. Then he held out his hand to help me reach him.

We were face to face, eye to eye, with the sound of our breaths as the only background noise.

With a flexible gesture, he finally took off his top.

I was dazzled by the perfection of his chest.

His silky golden skin, his musculature sculpted by the greatest of artists.

Gently, Koran tilted his head until his mouth kissed mine, one of his hands came to rest against my neck, while the other slid on the small of my back. His kiss was both tender and wild. I savoured it.

We were deaf to everything that wasn’t our two eager bodies. It was perhaps for this reason that we didn’t hear the door open suddenly.

I didn’t have time to understand as I saw two pairs of arms encircle Koran to pull him off the bed.

At first, stunned, I looked at the two men who were keeping Koran out of my reach.

Koran groaned fiercely, his jaw snapping in the air to bite his attackers.

My wolf instinctively took over and I also let out a kind of fierce groan. I stood in attack position, with my hands on the mattress, almost on all fours, with my lips curled up aggressively.

My humanity was fading in favour of my wolf.

“Calm, half-breed!” one of them spat, a tall, slender redhead.

“We’re preventing Koran from having your death on his conscience, so kindly put your fangs away, miss.”

This one, on the other hand, was familiar to me with his unique accent and his blond hair.