The Moonlit Curse

Ch 37: Call of the Alpha

August stood over Kiya's unconscious body. He couldn't bring himself to move yet. Her chest rose and fell with slow, even breaths, and her heart beat in a steady rhythm. She did it. She survived her first shift into her wolf form. The bite mark at her shoulder was stitching itself back together as the final act of the curse fully melding with the rest of her body. He doubted there would even be a scar left behind.

The first thing he noticed was that Kiya's wolf was small. Only a few inches over six feet compared to the eight or nine that was typical of other werewolves, and miniscule compared to his thirteen-foot frame. It wasn't unusual for younger werewolves born with the curse to be small while they were still growing up. But he couldn't remember ever seeing someone who'd been bitten to be so short.

Oh well. She might be small, but her proportions were correct. Nothing looked broken or out of place. Her diminutive size would make it easier for her to hide and stay out of trouble, especially if the other alpha was as big as Hadyn said.

Relaxing back to sit on his haunches, August stopped looking for something to be wrong and just looked at her.

Kiya's fur was longer than his, giving her a bit of a shaggy appearance compared to his sleeker coat. It was a rich, dark brown along her back and up the top of her head and ears. Closer towards her middle, she started to lighten with a mix of grey and lighter brown, with a much lighter grey strip along her belly, under her chin, and at the tips of her ears.

She was beautiful.

Slowly, Kiya's eyes fluttered open, the red glow came to life. Instantly, her nose started twitching and taking in the scents around her. Slowly, she shifted all the way onto her belly and started looking around the cave. Finally, finally, she noticed him. Her tail started to sweep back and forth. Then the simple wag turned into an excited full-body wiggle as she spun around to face him and leapt at him. She nearly knocked him over with the force and rubbed her body against his while he recovered.

Goddess above, if only he could show the human Kiya what she turned into. All of her fears and anxieties would have disappeared if she knew she would turn into this happy, excitable, affectionate werewolf. She was hopping up and down between all fours and upright on her back paws, before spinning around and making a loop around the cave to take in all the different scents.

She paused at the tunnel opening that led outside and looked back at him. August let out a low growl, warning her to stay in the cave. She tilted her head to the side and whined, lifting one paw to venture further down the tunnel. The growl turned into a sharp snarl that reverberated around the cave.

Instantly, Kiya came back to the center with her tail tucked between her legs and lowered herself to her belly at his feet. That wasn't good. She didn't show even a hint of resistance to the alpha command. All the time they had spent honing her natural defiance in the days leading up to the full moon was for nothing.

Shit.

A moment later, she was sitting up again, having heard the same sounds of the door opening and closing on the other side of the tunnel. Hadyn walked into view, his light brown fur glistening with droplets of melted snow. His gaze went to August first and they both went stiff, hackles rising and lips curling back to show deadly fangs.

Kiya, entirely unaware of the social situations between the two alphas, bounded forward excitedly. Hadyn turned and snapped at her, snarling and commanding her submission. August moved without being fully conscious of it, springing forward to get in Hadyn's face and force him away from Kiya. Hadyn rose up on his hind legs to stand over them both. August was about to stand as well to challenge the much smaller male, when he heard Hadyn's voice cut through fog in his brain. "Damn it, August, stand down!"