THE THREE MOONS PACK

6. You can't judge a book by its cover

There was someone outside the front door of my house. Or rather a shapeless, black mass. With a pounding heart, I approached.

Erwan!

A swollen face, a split lip, and dried blood on his brow.

“Hey, Baby, can I crash at your place for five minutes? If Koran sees me in this state he...”

The teenager’s nostrils quivered as if he was sniffing me. His eyes almost burned.

“Damn...” he whispered.

Erwan looked so grave, so serious all of a sudden that it doused my growing irritation at his persistence in calling me Baby.

“Is that why you disappeared for days? You had...”

There, I waved my hands to refer to his condition.

“You were in trouble,” I finished.

He managed to c***k an amused smile.

“Yeah, you could say that, considering the beating I got.”

“Who did this to you...?” I began while helping him to get up from my doormat.

“My father.”

This shocked me. As much for his ease in admitting such information to me, as the fact that it was his father who had beaten him almost to death.

Erwan leaned on my right shoulder as I tried to get my keys out of my jeans pocket.

He laughed softly and went to fetch them himself. Feeling his hand in my pants pocket made me blush.

But strangely, I expected to feel a violent desire. My lack of reaction troubled me.

The teenager stiffened and his features tensed.

“The bastard...” he growled, handing me my little keychain.

I opened the door.

“What?”

Erwan sneered.

“As if you didn’t know!”

My cheeks coloured. My intuition knew he was referring to Koran. I helped him to sit in the armchair that the blond giant had occupied.

“There's his smell everywhere. He could have peed in all four corners of this room, it would have the same effect on me!”

His accusing tone provoked a feeling of guilt which annoyed me. I wasn’t dating Erwan, I wasn’t guilty of any crime!

“He bit you, didn’t he?”

As his question wasn’t really one, I didn’t answer.

“Baby... He had no right to do that.”

I looked up at him and met his eyes.

“You know, no matter how hard I try, I have trouble following you all. Especially your delusional conversations.”

Thug raised an eyebrow.

“Didn’t your father tell you that you were a wolf shifter?”

My bones froze.

“A what?”

Erwan opened a space with his hands as if to make a mouth shape, before closing and opening them alternately.

“Large teeth, lots of hair, howling at the moon... woof woof.”

I burst out laughing.

“Is that all you’ve got? Okay, I’ll see what I can do to treat your wounds.”

He watched me for a long time between his black lashes.

“Useless. Tomorrow I’ll be like new.”

“I doubt it,” I replied.

Erwan smiled mysteriously, then took off his jacket.

Straightening up to his full height, shirtless, I didn’t know if I was disturbed by the perfection of each of his muscles or the impressive number of bruises.

“So, Baby, are you helping me?” he cooed, his eyelids almost closed.

Koran’s bite pierced the side and back of my neck.

Erwan didn’t move as I put my feverish fingers on the two bruised places.

No.

However, when I understood what he meant by waving at his belt buckle, I panicked.

He wasn't going to undress completely, was he?!

I saw with fear and fascination that the teenager was wearing ultra-tight midnight blue underwear as his pants joined the rest of his clothes.

Koran’s bites throbbed as if my heart had migrated under the bruises.

“Fight it,” Erwan ordered me.

I glared at him.

“If you spoke in a language I understand, for a change?” I muttered.

“Touch me.”

I choked on a sarcastic laugh.

“Well, let’s see... What’s the relationship between touching you and fighting it? Fight against what?”

“Fight against his mark. The mark of Koran, the future Alpha of the first branch of the Bhrean pack. To do this, you must touch one of your own. From the second branch.”

I stared at him without understanding. I heard his words well, but half of their meaning completely escaped me.

Except...

“What do you mean, one of your own? What does that mean?”

His smile faded.

“Because my influence over you will always be more powerful than his... little sister."

I passed out, cold.

When I woke up, I realized several things.

The first is my position lying on my bed, in my bedroom.

The second was the fact that I wasn't alone: Erwan was sleeping next to me, his head resting on half of my pillow.

Despite myself, my blood started to run faster in my veins.

Then his statement slapped my mind.

No.

I can’t be his sister. Erwan and I were the same age.

My mother had died of a ruptured aneurysm five years earlier.

As if he had felt my eyes on him, the teenager raised his eyelids to return my gaze.

“You’re full of nonsense!” I suddenly exclaimed.

“Why do you think your father brought you here? Why do you think he cowardly abandoned you in a strange city?”

Anguish surrounded my heart.

“He didn’t abandon me,” I replied. “He had to leave for work. He’ll be back very soon.”

“Tonight is the full moon. And your first mutation,” he said.

I jumped out of bed.

“Let’s stop the delusions with this wolf thing. And I’m not your sister!”

I had to calm down. This guy was crazy. It wasn’t his fault.

After a long breath, I glared at him.

“How could I be your sister? Is there no limit at all to your madness?”

Erwan just stared at me for endless seconds, then straightened on his elbow and put his chin in the hollow of his palm.

“I only learned about it last night. By my dear father. I had the idea of telling him that I had found you... interesting. It was when I told him your name that things got out of hand. He thought his fists would be a more effective argument than talking to me. Eventually, he calmed down enough to explain.

Erwan chuckled. I was silent. I couldn’t believe a word of what he was telling me.

“Your mother is from this town, Baby. She and my father were united according to our laws. Only one day she came across an injured wolfdog and treated it. When he resumed human form, your mother understood that he was a meta-dog. I guess they fell in love with each other... and ran away. My father refused to let her take care of me: I was her first male born, and if she wanted to leave, he would let her go but without their son. That’s the version I got.”

I felt the need to sit down. My head was spinning and my stomach wanted to return what it contained. I dropped onto my desk chair.

Erwan continued his revelations, mercilessly.

“Which explains your funny smell. You’re a meta half-dog, half-wolf. Your father came back here because the metas of our race aren’t governed by the same laws of transformation as his. Ours is more violent and is done in three stages before being entirely a shifter.”

“You’re delirious,” I murmured, feeling myself paler by the minute.

“You know deep inside that I’m not, that’s why you haven’t thrown me out. Somewhere you know the truth.”

No. No, no, no.

“Koran knows it,” he finally said. “My father told me that it was his duty to keep an eye on me when he learned that your father was coming to live here with you.”

“It’s impossible. This story... it’s nonsense. I’m going to call my father,” I announced, getting up.

“You can always try, but I doubt you can do it.”

My attempts to rationalize all this amused him.

“Baby, your father thinks that you are in the hands of our aunt, Janice. Our mother’s sister. However, Janice has had a car accident and is stuck in the meta hospital for two more weeks. She was the one who was supposed to accompany you for your first-change, tell you your story and all the usual things that go with it...”

An all too familiar sensation since this morning invades my body. The tingling nibbling me from the inside, the temperature too high, not to mention the tightness of my lower abdomen.

It wasn’t normal... What if Erwan was right? What if I was a fairy tale monster?

The spasms in my stomach became more violent, so much so that I put my hands on it in the hope that this gesture would calm me down.

“This night is likely to be painful, Beth, let me help you...”

I perceived sincerity in his voice. And for the first time, he had just used my name.

“In what way... how will it hurt tonight?”

I couldn't finish my question, I was too hot. I was burning.

“It’s starting. Don’t you feel it? Trust me. I’ll help you.”

“What are you saying... what’s going to happen to me tonight?” I spat.

The words refused to come out of my mouth clearly. I didn’t want to believe him... Yet a small part of me was telling me that it was true. His silence made me look him straight in the eye.

Erwan’s breathing was rapid, his chest rising and falling far too fast. A wild grin stretched his bad-boy features.

“Pain. And the violence of your physical desire certainly comes from the fact that you're ovulating. With the approach of the full moon, all the males in the area will come together. But there’s no way that a single one will put a dirty paw on you. Tough break.”

“It’s absurd. This is all too crazy. We must stop playing,” I said between my teeth.

The teenager clenched his fists so hard that the blood left his tight fingers. His eyes were no more than two slits of obsidian.

“I got used to the idea of this curse. Do you think it’s easy? I was human once. The problem is that you haven’t undergone the three transformations, so you cannot understand!”

Erwan’s words made me dizzy... accentuating my pain, a thousand needles stuck in my flesh.

I was going to pass out. Again.

Erwan rushed to support me.

“Just know that... you're not condemned to a lonely life. You will find your meta soul mate."

“I’m not a wolf... I’m not a wolf.” was my last thought.

I sank into the tortured darkness of the first-change, as it’s called.

The hours that followed were horrible. Every part of my body hurts terribly. As if someone wanted to carve me up from the inside. Invisible claws and fangs. I even felt my bones c***k at times.

Between two crises, barely conscious, I heard a soft, masculine voice whisper reassuring words, full of love.

I also perceived the welcome freshness of a washcloth and hands regularly massaged my muscles stretched to the extreme.

Then came dreamlike visions, as precise and appalling as nightmares, even more real.

Erwan changed in front of me into a magnificent black wolf with yellow eyes. He invited me to follow him into a dense forest. I wasn’t walking, I was running on all fours... My gaze dropped to see that my colour was an immaculate white.

Suddenly we were no longer alone, hundreds of bright yellow eyes surrounded us.

All black wolves. Everywhere.

A huge male approached me, his fangs uncovered, and a hateful growl came from his chest.

“You will never be with us! Leave my son alone, bastard!”

I screamed and struggled violently.