Thrown to the wolves.
When the moon is bright and full, the werewolves wait for their tithes.
If a woman is meant to be a tithe, there are signs. A hunger within her, a need for what the wolves will take from her, a body that changes to be receptive to the sheer force of their savage desire. For her, it will be an overwhelming pleasure, so intense that she will be nearly as mad with it as the beasts are who take her.
When the morning comes, the tithes go home, some with werewolf babies sown in their bellies, some not.
It’s a rare woman who bonds, who goes cross-eyed with the frantic want for reuniting with some wolf that had his way with her under that wild and gleaming moon. It’s an even rarer woman who bonds to more than one wolf.
When Clementine feels it, she knows she should fight the urge. She knows she should cling harder to her life here, inside the walls of the city, safe from the beasts outside. But maybe she’s always known she belonged out there, out in the wilderness with her wolfmen.
