THE THREE MOONS PACK

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

As I lifted my eyelids, I realized that I had accomplished the formidable feat of having pain in my eyelashes.

Fabulous.

Then my first thought was of the warm body against mine.

Slowly, I turned my head towards it.

Erwan.

His face looked so peaceful, almost... happy.

Freeze frame.

He was almost naked.

Me too.

If only I could move a toe without screaming in pain...

Erwan stirred.

“Mhm... Are you awake, Baby? Give me two minutes and I’ll fix you something to eat. You must be starving.”

I threw him a sidelong glance as he left, but couldn’t help but smile.

During his absence, I tried to move the aching limbs of my body without screaming.

Erwan is my brother.

I’m going to turn into a wolf.

Erwan is my brother.

He’s my brother.

I don’t want to be a wolf.

I don’t want him to be my brother.

When he returned with a plate piled with tasty slices of steak, my stomach growled and twisted in brutal hunger.

I had managed to sit on the edge of my bed, but with the feeling of having passed under a train.

Erwan placed his precious burden on my desk, and I was angry that I couldn’t throw myself on the meat, whose smell made me salivate.

“Don’t move, I’ll help you.”

Erwan slipped his arms under my armpits to lift me completely, delicately.

I almost collapsed against him, my legs trembling like dead leaves shaken by a strong wind.

“You okay?” he asked, worried.

I nodded, swallowing a pitiful sob.

Then, in one flexible movement, as if I didn’t weigh anything, he took me in his arms, like a princess or a bride crossing the threshold of her house for the first time.

He put me on the chair.

“Eat,” said Erwan. “To recover from your first-change you need a lot of protein.”

I looked up at him.

“What do you mean? Should I only eat meat?”

He stroked my head with the back of his hand.

“Yes. Well, mostly. We’re carnivores. Your beast needs it to develop. The pain felt during the transformation is only the result of a deep lack of s*x and protein. Since you can't have s*x, take revenge on the beef, Baby.”

The teenager said the last sentence in an ironic tone.

Footsteps echoed in the living room.

At the time, I didn’t react to the fact that I heard them so clearly, I just choked on thinking that maybe it was my father who was coming back.

“It’s not your father...” Erwan began, as if he had read my mind.

“No?” I said, surprised at his positive tone of voice.

“No.”

The door of my room flew open...

Koran.

A rabid Koran who passed his chocolate eyes from Erwan to me several times in a row.

“You world-class jackass!” he yelled at my new half-brother.

To conclude, he sends a powerful uppercut into his jaw.

Despite the pain, I jumped up from my chair to intervene. A dull and aggressive sound came from my chest.

My word... was I growling?

My intervention earned me at first only a surprised, then a hateful look.

“All this is your fault, yours and that of your cowardly father! Err didn’t need this! Go back to where you come from!”

His words hurt me, but my anger made me want to bite more than cry.

My lips, unconsciously, curled up and my growl became louder, deeper.

Koran threw himself on me, his enormous right hand gripped my neck and he pressed me against the wall. I tried to shake his grip by scratching his fingers furiously.

The blond giant’s breathing became wheezing.

Suddenly, he crushed his mouth on mine.

Without having time to go any further, Erwan came to strike him from the side, dragging him into the hall.

Koran was on his back on the floor, Erwan on him.

Jaws snapped in the air.

Their behaviour was no longer human, just like their voices.

“Never touch her again, Koran,” warned Erwan.

Erwan grabbed Koran by the collar, taking his shoulders off the ground, before pushing him back violently.

“Don’t insult her either! She’s a wolf! If you or one of the pack’s idiots dare to sniff around her, hurt her... I’ll take it personally! Am I clear?!”

With a flexible movement, Koran freed himself from his friend’s grip. The two got back on their feet to gauge each other.

“It can’t be this way, Err. You’ll be twice as cursed. You’ll only suffer more.”

“If we had both grown up together, my wolf would never have seen its soul mate in her!” murmured the teenager in a flat voice.

“Give yourself time, Err,” said Koran in a softer voice. “Give your beast time to get used to the idea.”

“You’ve not yet met your soul mate... So you shouldn’t be talking about this,” whispered Erwan, his expression sombre.

“How do you know?”

“Gina isn’t...”

“It’s not Gina. I know it’s hard to stay away from her. Comparable to being skinned alive because our wolf can no longer bear this frustration. The worst part is that sleeping with others doesn’t even make us feel better.”

Koran’s statement astounded both Erwan and myself.

“Who is it?” asked Erwan, more sympathetic.

The blond giant, halfway between his friend and me, looked away.

“No matter, I can’t be with her, just like you, you can’t be with the little puppy. Sometimes we have to go beyond our animal nature to survive as a human. We aren’t just animals, we are more than that. More than this damn curse!”

The teenager closed his eyes.

Then Koran turned to me.

Under his gaze, I finally realized my outfit. Erwan had stripped me of my clothes last night, during the first-change.

It amounts to nothing more than my underwear, and so I blush.

“Eat, get dressed, and join me in the living room. We’re going to see the Alpha of the first branch.”

Erwan had not wanted to accompany us. My first-change is now behind me. He felt that during the two remaining days of the full moon, it was better for him to stay away from me to respect my privacy. He explained to me that the moon influenced and accentuated the need to hunt and copulate (not his word).

I was in a sort of trance, a spectator of my life. I couldn’t believe it. Whether it’s this werewolf thing or the brother story.

I had to be at the two-thousandth message on my father’s cell phone and his silence began to seriously worry me.

Discreetly, I glanced at the driver of this shiny SUV.

“My father hasn’t shown any sign of life for two days. I’m going to contact the police...”

“There’s no way you can do that. He’s just among his people a hundred kilometres to the north. I guess he’ll come back with his tail between his legs once all this mess is sorted out. Your old man is a coward. Even today, I don’t understand how your mother could have preferred him to Angus.”

“He’s not a coward! There must be an explanation for his disappearance!” I cried.

Koran sneered wickedly.

“If it makes you feel better to believe that!”

I stuck my nails in my thighs. Part of me agreed with the blond giant, but I refused to admit it out loud, especially when faced with this lunatic.

I was too nervous to be satisfied with the silence, so I chose to change the subject.

“Your soul mate... why can’t you be with her?”

Okay, I confess to being consumed by curiosity as well.

His jaw contracted and he shifted into gear, making the gearbox scream.

“It’s none of your business,” he growled.

I sank into the seat, annoyed.

The landscape is only an incessant parade of trees. I was going to fall asleep at this rate.

“My family will never consider her worthy to give birth to the descendants of our line,” he snapped abruptly.

I turned to him again, crossing my arms under my chest.

“Why?”

His long fingers nervously tapped the leather steering wheel.

“That’s how it is. It’s not something that can be remedied.”

“Are you suffering a lot?”

“More than I would like. An uncontrollable feeling, I can’t bear it.”

I gave a joyless laugh.

“Koran, a control addict, surprising...”

He didn’t answer, his eyes fixed on the road.

I took a long breath.

“Why are you taking me to...”

“The Alpha? Because a decision has to be made. If your father left you here, it’s for two reasons. The first is that our mutation is different from meta-dogs. The second is that we sincerely hate each other. However, wolves have enough perspective not to kill you outright, just because you are...”

He gave me a dark look.

“…a half-breed.”

My saliva suddenly tasted like bile. My father’s family was ready to take my life just because I was half a wolf.

It all made no sense. It was completely surreal. Especially the possibility of me being a werewolf.

“Am I... at risk? What will the Alpha do to me?”

Koran’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

“I don’t know. But my father is a fair man. I think he will ask our Etmac first if you are more wolf than dog.”

“Etmac?” I repeated, lost.

“She’s a kind of shaman, witch, medium... a little bit of all of this.”

I closed my eyes for a second. I had landed in another universe.

“Tell me... about the changes...” I asked him hesitantly.

I was amazed at the softness of his voice.

“You just had the first-change, it’s the least painful. The second will be more. As for the third... it will be hell. I wanted to help you last night. I stayed outside when I smelled Erwan’s scent.”

This admission destabilized me.

“Don’t start getting carried away, puppy. I marked you, so it was natural.”

Ah yes, about that...

“Why did you mark me? To prevent Erwan from approaching me?”

Koran’s mouth curved into a flesh-eating smile.

“Exactly. To discourage him. I’m the future Alpha of the first branch. And he, that of the second. Once marked, it’s like I’m signalling to the other males that you belong to me and wanting to take you means to challenge me directly.”

I gasped in indignation.

“I don’t belong to you!”

Koran laughed almost cheerfully.

“I did it twice. Just my presence in your backyard pushed back about twenty males attracted by your scent. There were two or three who tried to defy Erwan. But believe me... They ran away at lightning speed when they saw me. Now it’s like you’re walking around with my name tattooed on your forehead.”

And he found it funny, this psychopath!

I was still staring at him when his eyes met mine.

“Your little soul mate may not like it,” I said sarcastically.

His smile turned bitter.

“I think there are many things she doesn't appreciate. Only the future will tell us in which direction things will evolve.”

His thoughtful look intrigued me.

“Is she pretty? She must be a hot little number to outdo Gina,” I joked.

He laughed out loud.

“If only it depended just on that! Unfortunately, the physical isn’t what makes you choose your soul mate... At least, not only that,” he clarified.

I pretended to be shocked.

“What? Is your soul mate butt-ugly?!”

Koran stared at me intensely for several seconds before returning his attention to the road.

“No,” he said slowly. “She’s not ugly. She just has this beauty that grows every time you look at her.”

The rest of the journey took place in silence, each of us lost in thought.