The Wolf Moon (an erotic paranormal romance) (The Wolf Ring) (6 page)

He no longer
itched. Instead he was filled with unbearable heat. He wasn’t sure what was
happening to him, but he knew that the moon somehow had helped to change him.
The moon, and the forest… and Rhea.

He could almost
feel the moonlight burning his skin, making his blood boil with need, and
suddenly he couldn’t hold back any longer. His hips jerked of their own accord,
and he thrust into her, hard and deep, crying out with the pleasure of it. She
cried out too, and her legs wrapped around his thighs, giving him better
access, allowing him to thrust even deeper.

He lowered his
head, pressed his face into her hair, and pounded into her.

She smelled like
sweat and sex. Like the moon-silvered forest. Like everything wild and alive.
The incredible scent of her drove him to the edge of sanity. He thrust
savagely, in violent, uncontrolled movements, fucking her like an animal. He
was
an animal, mindless and wild, driven
solely by instinct.

The desire to
bite her welled up inside him, and this time he couldn’t fight it. He opened
his mouth and bit into her shoulder, hard. At the same moment he felt her
biting into him. It hurt, but he was so far gone into sexual madness that he didn’t
care. He bit hard, drawing blood, and slammed into her in a frantic rhythm.

He felt her body
contracting as she came, and then rapture claimed him, too. An unearthly
ecstasy poured over him and through him, flooding him with scalding heat,
transforming him into something feral and savage.

It was the
greatest pleasure he’d ever known.

He couldn’t stop
fucking her. Their bodies moved together, in a violent, erratic rhythm, and he
heard her screaming, felt her body contracting around his, over and over. She
was coming endlessly—and so was he. His orgasm just wouldn’t stop, and he
couldn’t stop screaming, either.

At long last the
intense rapture faded, and he found himself slumped against her, pressing her
into the tree, panting harshly. He recognized that being pushed into the bark
couldn’t be comfortable, so he straightened up, not without effort, and let his
rapidly softening body slip out of hers. He looked down at her.

“Mine,” he said,
or tried to.

But what came
out was a growl.

Chapter Six

Rhea saw the
startled awareness in Graeme’s dark blue eyes begin to change to panic. His
body was undergoing a transformation, which was difficult enough for anyone.
But if the transformation wasn’t successful—

Her animal
instincts had betrayed her, pushing her into a mating that she should never
have allowed. Faced with his desperate need, the scent of sex rich and sweet in
her nostrils, she hadn’t had the strength to say no, and now…

She’d bitten him
in the hopes that it would allow him to transform. The transformation could
happen in one of two ways—those who wore the rings were transformed by the
ring, and those that they chose as their mates and bit were transformed without
a ring. It was natural, therefore, that in the throes of first mating, her kind
bit one another.

But she could
see already that it hadn’t worked. Graeme couldn’t be transformed by the bite
because he was already in the process of being transformed by the pendant he
wore. But because the silver pendant had been hammered down at some point in
the past, and its magic thus partly dimmed, Graeme couldn’t transform
completely until the full moon.

She was
confident that he would be able to transform then. His grandfather Gray had
first transformed in the light of a full moon while wearing the very same
pendant.
All of the
Ring had heard the story, many
times. So in a few days…

But she couldn’t
wait a few days to deal with this. She had to help a panic-stricken man caught
between two forms, right now.

The first
transformation was always painful. It couldn’t be otherwise, when one’s very
flesh and bones had to be rearranged. There was always a fleeting moment of
terrible agony. But after that, there would be no pain, and the transformation
would happen easily.

The problem was
that Graeme was trapped in the midst of his transformation, unable to shift to
either human or wolf form. He was caught in the midst of the pain, unable to
move forward or backward.

Until the full
moon, he would be in anguish.

He reached up,
feeling frantically at his face. His dark hair had spread over much of his
body, his face had lengthened, his canine teeth had sharpened to fangs, his
ears stood out from his head, and he had sprouted a bushy tail. But he still
stood upright, and he still had human hands and feet, albeit with claws. He
looked much like a Hollywood representation of a werewolf.

And he looked
terrified.

“It’s all
right,” she said, reaching out to him. He shied away from her hand, and she
didn’t blame him.
 
He must be in dreadful
pain, so much so that even a light touch might hurt. She tried again. “It’s all
right, Graeme. In a few days…”

He stared at
her, his blue eyes wide. Even though he could no longer speak, his horror was
clear. His expression said clearly that he couldn’t bear to live like this for
several days.

She closed her
eyes, remembering her own first transformation, recalling the dreadful pain of
it. Hers had been a fleeting stab of pain, as it was meant to be.
But for Graeme…

 
No, she couldn’t let him live in that sort of pain
for days. It would be inhuman.

“All right,” she
said. “Come with me, Graeme. Maybe they can help.”

He cocked his
head.
Who?

She sighed.

“The Wolf Ring,”
she said.

*****

Every step was
pain.

Graeme staggered
through the woods, trailing Rhea more by scent than sight. His eyes blurred
with the agony that stabbed through him at every step, and his gait was
unsteady. His body seemed caught between standing upright, and dropping to all
fours. His legs felt too short, his arms too long, and as a result his balance
was off.

He remembered
the feel of his own face.
A snout.
He had a snout.
And fangs, and ears that stood out from his head, and…

He looked down,
seeing the dark hair all over his arms, the claws at the end of his deformed
hands, and shuddered.

He’d become a
monster.
A freak.
A
mutant
.

But this
couldn’t really be happening. He struggled to push the animal part of his brain
away and bring his human logic to bear. This was impossible. Yes, Rhea had
talked about transformation more than once, but he barely knew her, and had no
real reason to trust her. It was clearly impossible that sex—even incredibly
intense, mind-blowing sex— had caused him to turn into a hairy monster with a
snout and long ears and fangs. This wasn’t a movie, and it wasn’t a comic book.
He was an ordinary man, not a mutant.

Therefore, he
must have been drugged. It was the only explanation. She’d given him some sort
of hallucinogen, and suggested to him that he was going to transform, and thus
he was imagining he’d turned into… this.
Whatever
this
was.

What he was
experiencing could not possibly be real.

The pain
couldn’t be real, either. But it
felt
real. Every lurching step sent a stab of agony through him. Every brush of
branches against his skin burned. Every whisper of the night beat against his
eardrums, intolerably loud.

He wanted to
drop to the ground, curl into a ball, and
wrap
his
arms over his head. And that seemed like the most sensible thing to do. If he’d
been drugged, then following the woman who’d drugged him to whatever she’d
planned for him was the most foolish thing he could do. Lying down and letting
the drug clear his system would make far more sense.

And yet he
couldn’t stop following her. In some strange way he didn’t quite understand,
he’d bonded with her. They were inextricably linked somehow.

It’s just the drugs,
he told
himself. But drugs or not, somehow he had no choice.

He had to stay
with her.

He was hers.

*****

Clouds gathered
in the sky, covering the brilliance of the moon, and the forest became too dark
even for Rhea’s enhanced human senses. She turned to Graeme and spoke gently.

“Watch this.”

He lowered his
head and stared at her. She concentrated, and her body shifted. A few seconds
later, she stood there, staring up at him. She knew what he saw—a silvery wolf
with dark brown eyes.

His mouth fell
open in shock, and he staggered backward, making whimpering sounds. She knew he
was trying to talk, but was unable to do so with his elongated canine mouth.
She stepped forward and licked his hand reassuringly, wagging her tail.

Slowly, he
relaxed, and his paw/hand rubbed awkwardly behind her ear, as if she were a
house dog. She wagged harder, trying to comfort him. Then she licked his hand
one more time, and turning, led him deeper into the forest.

Rhea was almost
as frightened as he was. She’d left the Wolf Ring after Bryce died—after Bryce
had been killed—and hadn’t been back since. Most of the members of the Ring
were decent people, but the law said that none of them could interfere in a
fight, or stand up against the alpha who won his place fairly.
And as a result…

She remembered
watching Bryce battling for his life, snapping and snarling, struggling as a
larger wolf pinned him to the forest floor and…

She pushed the
memories away. She’d left the Ring because by Wolf law—a law that was generally
considered obsolete, and which hadn’t been invoked in a hundred years—she
belonged to the wolf who’d killed her mate. Bryce had been the leader of the
Ring, but now Arthur led them.

Rhea hadn’t been
willing to mate with Arthur, not with her mate lying dead on the ground, his
throat torn out by Arthur’s jaws. Arthur had given her two choices—to mate with
him, or to leave.

She’d left.

Since then,
she’d been an outcast from the Ring. In the forest, she’d avoided their territory,
and they hadn’t acknowledged her in human form. She saw the shame and sorrow in
their eyes when they passed her on the street, though, and she knew that none
of them wanted her ostracized. They were afraid, because Arthur was cruel, and
a vicious
fighter,
and none of them quite dared take
him on.

She wouldn’t
have gone back for herself.
But for Graeme…

She knew that if
Arthur hadn’t mated, he might still try to claim her. But he had likely found
another mate already, and if not, she doubted he’d want her with the scent of
another man fresh upon her. And if she crawled on her belly and begged meekly
for forgiveness, they might take her back, and help Graeme. After all, he was
part of the Ring now, the grandson of one of their greatest leaders, and the
Ring helped its members wherever possible.

At least, it
always had… until Arthur.

She became aware
that her tail was tucked between her legs and her head was down. Defiantly, she
lifted her head and her tail high, and trotted toward the Ring’s territory, Graeme
crashing along behind her.

*****

Graeme was aware
of little more than the pain, but when twenty or thirty wolves melted out of
the underbrush and Rhea stopped, he staggered to a halt as well.

The largest of
the wolves, a great black beast with a tattered left ear and piercing green
eyes, stared at them for a moment. And then its lips drew back, showing sharp
ivory fangs. It stalked toward Rhea, every line of its body proud and
commanding, and she dropped to earth in an attitude of submission.

Despite the
pain, something raw and ugly surged through Graeme. He didn’t like seeing Rhea
submit to a male that way. He wanted to reach down with his clawed hands, pick
up the black wolf, and throw it against the nearest tree. He held back the
animal instinct, and waited, trying to figure out what was going on here.

The black wolf
sniffed the silvery wolf that was Rhea thoroughly,
then
lifted his head. The green eyes glared straight at Graeme, and the lips curled
even more, displaying the terrible canine teeth.

Without the
slightest intention of doing so, Graeme showed his own teeth as well. He heard
a sound rumble from his chest, a feral snarl.

The wolf stared
at him for a moment longer,
then
shifted. Its body
changed quickly, its outlines rippling,
then
reforming
itself into a dark-haired human male. The guy was big, as tall as Graeme, and
as well muscled. And just as naked. One of his ears was tattered, echoing his
wolf form, but otherwise he was a good-looking guy except for a hint of cruelty
around the mouth, and a cold glint in the emerald eyes.