I was twenty-one years old. I was in college. I had the whole world ahead of me. I was studying pre-law, and I thought I’d be successful and affluent and happy.
But no one wanted anything to do with me after they knew. And I knew that being a werewolf lawyer was a laugh. After the incident, I was taken to the SF, and I was forced to register. So, now, any one who wanted could look up my name on the registry, and they’d know my secret. I’d never get any clients. At least not clients who weren’t already werewolves. I went from having the whole world ahead of me to having nothing.
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that I turned to crime. After all, the mainstream world would never accept a werewolf. No matter what, I was an outcast. Stealing seemed like the thing to do after all of that. And it turned out that I was good at it too.
I gazed out the window, lost in my thoughts. I wasn’t bitter over my past. Not anymore. But occasionally, I did feel a bit wistful for the life I’d lost. There had been promise there—the idea that I could have friends, eventually a husband and children perhaps, a career I could be open about. All of that was gone.
But I wasn’t bitter. This was the way things were. No apologies.
There was a knock on my hotel room door. “Room service.”
I hadn’t ordered any room service. “Wrong room,” I called.
“This is Room 214,” said the voice on the other side of the door.
Sighing, I went over to the door. Sounded like the screw-up went deeper. Someone had written down the wrong room or something. I was going to have to make sure that I didn’t get charged for this—that Sal didn’t.
I opened the door.
But the people on the other side didn’t work for the hotel, nor were they delivering room service. There were three men in their fifties or sixties. They weren’t spring chickens, but they looked to be in good shape. They had corded muscles in their arms. They clenched their hands into fists.
I tried to shut the door.
They stopped me.
I backed away, looking around, trying to think of an exit.
They came after me.
There was nowhere to go. The windows didn’t open, and anyway, I wasn’t jumping out. I was two-stories up. I yanked open the door to the bathroom.
One of their hands seized my wrist and yanked me backwards.
Pain flashed. It felt as if my arm was being ripped out of its socket. I lashed out with my other arm.
Another of the men caught it. They boxed me in, blocking all my escape routes.
“What do you want?” I managed.
In answer, one of them pulled out a roll of duct tape and slapped a piece over my mouth.
I made a muffled cry.
They forced my hands behind my back and taped them together.
I struggled, kicking out with my legs.
But the men only chuckled. One hoisted me up over his shoulder as if I was a burlap sack.
I wriggled there, screaming against the duct tape.
They taped my legs together too.
And then they all strode back into the hallway, as though this was no big deal. As though they did this every day.
There was no one out in the hall. I looked down at the carpet, which was teal green with a burgundy vine winding a pattern through it. Overhead, the fluorescent lights buzzed.
I yelled, trying to make as much noise as I could.
No one came.
We burst into the stairwell, and the men jogged down the two flights to the main level. I jostled on the man’s shoulder as we did. It was hard to keep my arms up against my back, but if I let them fall, it hurt. My muffled cries echoed in the enclosed space.
Still, no one responded.
The men went out an exit into the parking lot.
A car was waiting right there, the trunk open. They shoved me inside. It smelled like motor oil in ther, and it reminded me of Hudson.
The trunk slammed down on top of me. After a few minutes, the car started moving. I was in the most uncomfortable position imaginable, my limbs smashed together, my face pressed down against scratchy carpet.
Why had these men taken me? Did they know I was working for Sal? He and the other men who’d hired me had told me that there was a feud between their family and the one that dominated this town. So, maybe if they knew that Sal had hired me, they were going to use me to send a message to Sal.
I really hoped not. Because I was obviously helpless against them. I wasn’t a particularly physical person. I could hide and run and manipulate, but I couldn’t fight people.
Whatever they did to me, I wouldn’t be able to stop it.
After some time, the car stopped.
The men pulled me out of the back, and one of them threw me over his shoulder again. I tried to get a good look at my surroundings, but it was dark. It seemed like a gravel parking lot, flanked by woods, and we were going into a big, boxy rectangular building. I couldn’t tell what it was, not in the dark.
Once inside, the man deposited me face down on a wooden bench.
The men all trooped past me.
I craned my neck to see where they were going. I seemed to be in a very large room. There were lots of men and women all gathered together there, most holding drinks. It was a… bar?
I squinted. It didn’t seem dimly lit enough for a bar, but it definitely wasn’t as bright in here as it had been in the hotel hallway. The room definitely had posters from various beers on the wall, and there were little tables set up with metal chairs.
There were so many people there.
The men who’d brought me were talking to another man, this one even older, with a white, grizzled beard. They gestured back at me.
The old man nodded at them, as if agreeing.
One of the men came back for me. He picked me up again, but this time, like I was a sleeping child, one arm behind my shoulders, another behind my knees. It hurt my arms again, which were still taped behind my back. He carried me into the room and then set me down on my feet.
I couldn’t stand, and I started to fall.
The man caught me, holding me upright.
The old man looked into my eyes. He leaned close, sniffing me. “Oh, Margerie was right, wasn’t she, sweetheart?” He smiled at me. “You’re a wolf.”
Was this about Sal or not? Who was Margerie?
All of the people in the room were looking at me now, and I scanned their faces, terror coursing through me.
I was astonished when I saw Hudson among them. And then, on the other side of the room, Kale. Had they done this to me?
The old man put his fingers on my neck. He grasped my skin, like he was picking up a puppy by its scruff. “Shift,” he whispered.
The animal inside me seemed to submit almost immediately to his soft voice. Any control I’d had over myself melted away, and the wolf was ripping its way out of my body, stretching my skin, cracking my bones, transforming me.
I shrieked in pain and horror, shrieked into the duct tape, even as I felt my face twisting and moving, the bones rearranging into a muzzle.
Claws tore through the tips of my fingers. I snapped the duct tape holding my arms and landed on all fours.
I could see the skin on my fingers peeling away, the fur appearing beneath.
And then the pain blinded me, and the transformation took over.
I didn’t know anything else.
CHAPTER THREE
I woke up in a tiny room, lying on a cot. I was naked, but I was covered in a thin sheet. I felt heavy and tired and out of sorts but also exhilarated. I’d only felt like this once before, and that time, I’d woken up with blood all over my body. I could still remember the taste of it—that copper tang. I’d enjoyed it.
I shuddered at the memory.
But then I realized that I wasn’t alone.
Hudson was in the room with me. He stood at the door. It really wasn’t much of a room. It was practically a closet.
I sat up on the cot, pulling the sheet tight ag
ainst my chest. “Hudson?” I whispered.
He eyed me. He looked more captivating than ever. His shirt was unbuttoned, and I could see the fine dark hairs on his chest, and I remembered how soft they were. I’d thought he was like a wolf, and he was one.
“I told them someone needed to explain to you what was going on,” he said. “They took that as me volunteering.” From the sound of his tone, he hadn’t actually wanted to see me.
I chewed on my lip, feeling nervous. “Are you people going to kill me?”
He looked offended. “Of course not.”
“Is this about Sal?”
“Who’s Sal?”
“No one.” I fiddled with the sheet, feeling vulnerable and helpless, two things I really hated feeling.
“Who are you?” he said.
I shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t smell it, and neither did Kale. We didn’t know you were a wolf. It took someone as old as my mother to notice.”
“Margerie,” I said in understanding. “That’s your mother, isn’t it? She smelled me and told…” On second thought, I didn’t understand anything. “Who did she tell? What’s going on? Where am I?”
“How do you hide your scent so well? How do have your wolf so deeply buried?”
“I’m legal, not like you,” I said. “I went through the training.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not it. I’ve smelled SF-neutered wolves before, and you’ve got something extra going on. It’s like you’re not even a wolf.”
“I wish,” I said tightly. “How about you give me some answers, huh?”
He smirked. “You’re something else, you know that?”
“Where am I?”
He heaved a huge sigh. “You’re in the clubhouse. It’s a meeting place for our wolf conclave. Basically like an American Legion or a Lion’s Club. Except we’re all wolves. Mostly, just the older guys actually hang out here. As you might have noticed, that’s most of what we’ve got here. Older people. There’s not much of a younger generation.”
“Why am I here? Why does it matter that I’m a werewolf? What do you want with me?”
“I guess you know that it’s very hard for werewolves to conceive,” said Hudson, as if I hadn’t spoken.
“Answer my questions.”
“So, that’s why there aren’t many younger wolves. The older wolves just didn’t reproduce. A lot of them were bitten, not born, and that seems to be were most of the new wolves come from these days. But there’s a tradition here, and it’s all about genetic werewolves carrying on in the traditional way. And there’s a problem with that because there aren’t very many of us. There aren’t any young female werewolves left. The few that were around got married off, and they’re not getting real busy making babies.”
“As interesting as your town’s history is, I don’t see what this has to do with—”
“Even if there were a bigger generation, there’d be problems with inbreeding. Generations ago, the wolves around here were all very incestuous. But now they’re trying to put that behind them. So, there needs to be fresh blood brought in. Well, fresh wombs, anyway. And you happened to stumble through our town. They’re not going to let you go.”
“What? Why not?” It took me a second for it to dawn on me. “Oh, God. You’re joking.”
“Not joking,” he said.
“They’re going to… breed me?” I was horrified.
“They’ve done it before,” said Hudson. “It’s the way my mother ended up settling down in this town.”
I shook my head. “No. No, I can’t do that. I won’t. That’s… rape. That’s illegal.”
“Yeah, it’s also illegal not to register with the SF as a werewolf. I assure you that the conclave doesn’t care.” Hudson shrugged. “My mother says it’s not so bad. She says that once she saw her child, she fell in love and didn’t care how I was made. Now, she’s as strong a part of the conclave as anyone else.”
I reached out and caught Hudson’s arm with both hands. “You have to get me out of here.”
He yanked his arm away. “I don’t have to do anything for you, you lying whore.”
* * *
I had been given some poorly fitting clothes and taken out of the closet room. Now I stood in front of the old man and several of the other older men as well. They were all sitting at a long card table, peering at me.
Two of the men who’d grabbed me from the hotel flanked me, each holding onto one of my arms. I couldn’t run.
There were young men in the room too. Hudson and Kale were both there, in addition to two other men. I’d never seen them before, but they both appeared to be in their twenties. One looked very young, possibly barely out of adolescence.
I felt numb. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me, in America. This was the most barbaric, most primitive thing I’d ever heard of. It was just another reason why I should have stayed far, far away from this job. But there was nothing I could do about that now. I couldn’t untake the job. I was here. This was happening.
Still. It didn’t mean I was going to let it happen. I simply wasn’t sure how I was going to stop it yet.
The old man spoke. “Hello, Piper.”
Well, he knew my name. And he was saying hello to me. Was I supposed to consider that polite? I didn’t say anything. I fixed him with a glare, trying to put all my disgust towards him into one look.
He didn’t seem fazed. “Hudson has informed you why we are keeping you here, hasn’t he?”
I just glared. I could say something, tell him exactly what I thought of him and what he was doing, but that wouldn’t help anything. I knew from experience that people didn’t take well to insults. My business brought me in contact with a lot of people who lived outside the law, people who’d had time to make peace with the fact that what they were doing wasn’t strictly “right.” Those people didn’t care if someone pointed out what they were doing was wrong.
I didn’t know enough about this old man yet. If he were a regular, normal person, the best bet that I might have would be to appear weak and helpless. Beg for mercy. It was often difficult for people to inflict intentional suffering on another human being. We just weren’t wired to take pleasure in it.
Well, normal people weren’t, anyway. But if this old man were a sadist, then acting weak would only fuel his fire.
I couldn’t tell.
But I didn’t want to act weak. It went against my every instinct, and it felt to me like giving up. I spent most of my time trying to hide my weaknesses. It made me very uncomfortable to try to expose them.
Still, it might be my only chance. I shut my eyes, and I let my posture slump. Almost immediately, tears rushed to my eyes. I didn’t have to fake them. I was terrified and worried and angry.
The men holding onto me were surprised, and they lost their grip on me.
I fell to the floor in a puddle of sobs. “Don’t do this to me. Please.”
“Pick her up,” said the old man.
The men hauled me to my feet.
Through my tears, I surveyed his face. He was grimacing. So he didn’t enjoy my pain.
“I’m so afraid,” I continued. “When they took me from the hotel, they hurt me, and then I got locked in that tiny room, and then you say that I’m trapped here, and men are going to rape me. Let me go, let me go. Please.” Tears streamed down my face.
The old man flinched. “Put tape over her mouth again,” he muttered.
Shit. He might not enjoy human suffering, but he was hardened to it. He was totally sure that what he was doing was more important than hurting me. He’d do it, even if it was wrong.
Tape was thrust over my mouth again. I had to struggle to get my crying back under control. Now that I’d opened the floodgates, I felt vulnerable and afraid, and giving in to the tears seemed so comforting and rational.
The old man was talking again. “Let’s get this over with, then.” He turned to Kale. “You said that you didn’t think anyone wou
ld be looking for her?”
“She said she ran away from a bad situation,” said Kale. “She doesn’t have much money, and she didn’t have anyone to call in an emergency. I think it’s unlikely.”
God, fuck Kale. He was still his cold self, not even batting an eyelash as to what was happening to me.
At least Hudson had the decency to look uncomfortable.
“Right, well, I’m going to release her to one of you, then.” He looked out at the gathered young men. “I think it should probably be either Kale Morgan or Hudson Slade, since she seems to know both of them, and probably would be most content with one of them.” He turned to the other men sitting at the table with him. “Any objections?”
All of the other older men shook their heads.
“All right then.” The old man nodded at the two men I didn’t know, and they both went up to shake his hand. Then they left. The old man addressed Hudson and Kale. “It’s between the two of you, then.”
Hudson and Kale exchanged a venomous glance.
The old man sighed. “Well, I don’t suppose either of you are going to give ground to the other, are you?”
“Maybe the girl’s right,” said Hudson. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this to her.”
“She’s scared,” said the old man. “But she’ll come around. They always do, once their bellies start growing.”
Hudson’s jaw twitched. He shot a glance at me, and then quickly looked away.
Help me, Hudson, I pleaded at the back of his head.
But Hudson squared his shoulders. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
My heart sank. When push came to shove, he was just as horrible as the rest of them. They all owed their allegiance to this conclave of wolves, and it superseded their own ideas of morality.
“She’d be more comfortable with me, I imagine,” said Kale. “She’s already been staying at my house.”
“Whatever,” sneered Hudson, “she won’t want you now that you’ve taken her free will out of the equation.”
“She won’t want you either,” said Kale.
Under a Raging Moon: Part Two Page 3