"Strength and Duty"

“You look like food,” I stare at my little sister in all her semi-nude glory.

She might not have filled it out completely, but she was well on her way. Her bare feet held lightly furred legs under a light pink dress with large cut-outs exposing her back, breasts, thighs, and muscled belly.

“Maybe I will have two things to celebrate tonight,” my mother bursts into the room with a red rose for Marta. The rose signified her virginity, and it also let the wolves know that she was my father’s daughter and, just like me, she couldn’t be touched before marriage.

The run was mandatory, and lesser wolves would find holes to stick appendages in for short periods, but a select few in the upper royals would be looking for their mate. Petitions would pour in. When the elders agreed to the match, the girls would be whisked off for the ceremonies and bled for their marks.

My sister had three years to make a love match as a second daughter. The privileges given to the children that were born second or even third were the things that I jealously dreamed about. Who was I to dream, though? Especially when nearly every female wolf wanted my position and Glynn?

He wanted me in black. Only my heart will be black tonight.

“Goddess of the moon,” my sister turns to me, eyes bulging.

“What?” I stand stone cold and nervous.

“Nothing, I just didn’t know you could look like that. Glynn is going to lose his shit tonight.”

I did the opposite of what he told me to. Instead of black, I wear the most skintight crimson dress I could find. I took that dress and ripped it shorter. Danger is what I wanted to portray and not some docile submissive cuckquean mate.

“Glynn will be too busy running after tail tonight,” I assured the room, but I didn’t believe it myself.

There was something in the air tonight that was guided by Mother Moon that set my blood on fire. I ripped the dress a little higher and pulled my breasts more taut in the top part. Self-conscious, I still wanted to be noticed.

The alarm sounds. It is time for the run.

*

The pads of the wolf's feet on the ground complete a thunderous round of applause by the teens and young adults who will participate in the run. Many of the males are looking at me and Marta with drool and piercing eyes. Glynn hasn’t arrived yet, or at least I haven’t seen him. I keep my head down.

This is my time to show that I’ve learned what is expected of me as an alpha queen. I run tonight in support, and had we had our full wedding ceremony, we would be expected to be in the throes of each other in front of everyone. Nudity and sex are just animalistic.

I didn’t always feel that way. Growing up, I valued my privacy, but this dress left little to the imagination anyway. So as the feet started toward the hills, I followed without thinking about my dress, which would be ripped to shreds soon anyway.

A wolf howl bursts from the front, and suddenly another explodes behind it and another. The bursting of skin and the crinkled bones are signaling those behind to shed their human flesh for the night's true purpose.

I feel a knock on my side, and I nearly topple over myself.

“I told you to wear black!” Glenn growls at me deep and heavy.

“Stop,” I put my hands up to pause the growling, snarling beast that is Glynn.

“You are out here embarrassing me in that slut rag,” he pulls at my legs and thighs with his paws.

“You wanted me to be attractive, so it shouldn’t matter the color,” I pull back, bopping him on the snout.

He takes me down in one swoop. My bones can’t hold anymore, and I feel them starting to burst under my skin. His tongue licks along my collarbone and down my shoulders as his claws dig deeply into my thighs and hips.

I find my guard down as I kiss his tongue with my still-human mouth. He snarls again, taking and ripping a line down the red dress. I snarl back and dig my claws into his stomach and hips. He is gyrating as his body becomes more human on top of me.

We are both covered in fur, but our bodies are more human now. I kiss his now smaller mouth and play with his fur. We know that we can’t mate in our wolf forms unless we are united in ceremony. I feel him grow between my legs, and I leak just underneath.

“What are we going to do?” I ask, but his eyes are already the cloudy roundness that looks past me and into desire.

“I want you,” he rumbles so deep that it shakes the trees.

“We have to do the ceremony in front of an elder. They have to make sure I’m pure and offer me to you,” I remind him of tradition, and his cloudy eyes start to go back to brown.

“Yes, yes,” he snarls.

“Fucking dogs,” a voice calls from above us.