The Mating Habits of Werewolves
(Werewolves of Windermere, Book I)
Sample Excerpt
I HADN’T PAID ANY ATTENTION to the Alphas before, but it was hard to miss their joyous excitement. Now that I cared to look, it wasn’t hard to see that some of my cousins were missing from the celebration, and Alphas I didn’t know were there instead.
“Where’s Kenneth?” I asked Clara in a furious whisper.
She exhaled slowly. “He went to the Blackson Pack down in Liverpool. They sent Tonio in exchange.” She licked her lips. “There’s been a lot of socializing with other packs the last year and a half and now it makes sense. New blood.”
“Oh, God,” Kirby murmured, leaning in. “He’s been planning this.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment and missed whatever they were whispering over my head. I couldn’t stop thinking of my flat in St. Andrew’s, of my boyfriend Dan, of my thesis, of my friends, of my goddamn life! It was all there, but it wasn’t mine anymore. Just like that, Brennan had taken it all away.
“...too many Alphas,” Clara was saying when I zoned back in.
“What?”
She looked pityingly at me. “There’s too many Alphas and he can’t get more Omegas...”
She was right. Omegas only left their birth pack to follow an Alpha - either a close relative or a partner they had met and been courted by at a Summit. An Omega couldn’t walk out of their pack any more than a child could because they would be, as far as Alphas were concerned, just as vulnerable.
“Maybe he’ll let us choose,” Kirby suggested, sounding like she found the thought comforting. Like she thought that if we could decide which of the men in this room got to fuck and breed us, then it wouldn’t be so bad.
Ω
I cornered Brennan as soon as the room started emptying and Clara and Kirby followed me to his study. They were both wary, but confident that I could speak freely with our Dominant.
“What the fuck is this?” I spat the moment the door closed.
He turned to me, looking genuinely surprised. “I just told you.”
“You just told us?” I repeated. “Like that? In front of everybody? Like we are just animals to be fucking bred?”
He frowned at me, like I was being ridiculous. Like I was being hysterical just like Omegas were said to be. “You are not animals, not any more than I am. You are Omegas.”
“We are people, Brennan!” I shouted. “We deserve to be fucking asked.”
“Oh,” he nodded, “but I am going to ask you. You can choose.”
“We can choose?” Kirby squealed from behind me. I turned on her, almost as angry with her as with my brother. But she seemed perfectly happy to ignore me in favour of the Alpha who held her fate in his hands. Surprising, isn’t it?
“Yes,” Brennan nodded enthusiastically, like he was finally being understood properly. I could tell he thought he was being kind, but I was too furious to care about his delusions of magnanimity. “I have done some research for you, but within reason it’s your decision who you mate with.”
Kirby relaxed at this concession. I was about to snap that I didn’t care to choose who got to use me as a fucking incubator when Clara volunteered, “I don’t think I’m ready.”
She said it quietly but not timidly.
Brennan nodded at her and put a hand on her arm, even though he had to sidestep me to get close enough. “I know how you’re feeling. When Adora told me...” He smiled nervously, “well, I was not feeling ready, believe me, Clar. But that’s life for you. It turns out we are a lot stronger than we think.”
The message was clear: we were not getting out of it.
I wasn’t going to take it lying down, though. “I don’t want to do it,” I said, enunciating clearly.
Brennan turned to me in surprise, and the edge of anger in his expression sent my wolf cowering. I locked my muscles to keep myself from backing away. “I have made plans for the pack, Dev. I can’t change them just because of you.”
“I have made plans for my life, Bren,” I said, using a diminutive like the Alphas always did to us. But Brennan didn’t care. He was an Alpha and he was my Dominant. He didn’t need posturing, he had me by the balls and he knew it.
He sighed. “You are going to have to adjust,” he told me gently. “We will all do our best to help you.”
And then he turned his back on us, so secure in his invincibility that I wanted to rip his spine out. I couldn’t have, of course. My wolf wouldn’t have attacked its Alpha any more than it would have allowed me to jump off a cliff. Brennan shuffled some papers. I thought, it was a gesture to put us in our place, but it turned out he was looking for something. When he found it, he turned back to face us.
He handed a piece of paper to each of us. It was some sort of diagram, and I couldn’t help but look. I was used to diagrams. I loved diagrams. Not this one, though. Clara’s breath hitched a second before it hit me what they were: family lines and breeding characteristics. He had made a study of each of us and each of the Alphas he thought would be suitable to breed us, rating them according to the dominant and recessive characteristics he wanted in the next generation of the pack.
“I’m willing to let you choose between the top three,” he explained, then hesitated and snatched the paper I was holding loosely in my hand. “No, top two for you. It’s too much of a difference.” He tried to give me the paper back, but I backed away, swallowing hard and breathing shallowly. I needed to get out of there. “Devlin...” he started, but I was gone before he could add anything else. He had said more than enough for me to know I didn’t want to hear it.
Ω
Transforming was the only thing I could do not to go crazy right then. I dropped my clothes behind the porch and shifted faster than I could ever remember doing, before or since. I would be a terrible parent, I thought. As a human I would have cried, but wolves don’t really cry and, as the animal mind took over, I felt better. Wolves don’t really care about the future either. All that mattered to the wolf was that we were in pack territory again. We were home and there was no danger anywhere in the vicinity - not even if we decided to run for days. The human part of me liked that too, so we took off, faster and faster. Soon I was panting but I didn’t care and neither did the wolf; it understood my need to get away even if it didn’t understand what I was running from.
Brennan had to come and get me himself. It had been at least a day, perhaps more, but I didn’t care. When you are a wolf for long enough, time becomes immaterial. Pretty much everything but food, water and mating does. As long as I stayed away from other wolves, only the first two mattered. But when Brennan howled, my feet moved without conscious thought on my part - I went because my Alpha was calling. He waited until I had shown him my belly before he caught me by the neck and dragged me into the house. He shifted first and I followed instinctively. We were both naked, and I was smudged with mud and covered in loose bits of grass.
“Have you had enough of an angsty fit?” he asked, sounding annoyed. I tried to speak, but found myself coughing instead. Hair - it always got in my mouth when I shifted back. My brother knelt and rubbed my back, then stayed there next to me. He wasn’t that much larger than me, physically speaking, but it didn’t matter. I felt dwarfed. His hand on me was like a steel buckle I could never shake. I couldn’t even think to shake it. He started carding his fingers through my hair and I tilted my head back. I didn’t mean to - I just did. “You are a man grown, Dev, you can’t let your emotions get the better of you.”
I swallowed in lieu of nodding, and he rubbed my ear in what he must have thought a consoling manner and got to his feet. “Go up to your room and get cleaned up. It’s time you met Rami and Naveen.”
And that was the first time I heard their names. Not the way one hears new names and nods, mostly assuming one will forget them until reminded a couple of times or until the person does something exceptionally good or bad. Their names were an announcement. One of those names, I knew, I would never forget. I would never be allowed to forget.