Full Moon Mating - Restraint
#5 of Full Moon Mating
The wolf was at its weakest on the day of the new moon. In the middle of that day, Kylie was most herself again, the most human she could be since being bitten by a werewolf. It was a liberating, if fleeting, sensation, to be free of an animal she didn't want living inside of her. It slept peacefully while she went about her day doing errands around town.
With the full moon not set to rise for some time, Kylie allowed herself not to worry just yet about how she would restrain herself at the next transformation. All of her previous attempts had failed, and each broken chain left her discouraged and miserable. If she couldn't control the wolf, she couldn't control her life. So she put it out of her mind, promising to pretend that everything was normal for one day out of the month, when she didn't feel any trace of the animal's urges threatening to take over.
The post office. The shoe store. The supermarket. All very normal errands that made her feel normal, like she still belonged among other normal people. She walked past countless people on her errands, and was happy that, on the day of the new moon, none of her hungers for human flesh surfaced. Her werewolf senses were dulled, fully suppressed almost to the point where she missed them. Without the human musks and artificial odors of the supermarket shelves affecting her amplified olfactory sense, Kylie felt somehow small and incapable. She grinned to herself in delight. This is how it's supposed to be.
As she walked down one of the aisles, she could overhear a couple talking about a movie they just saw earlier that day, and she resolved to watch a movie at home once she finished the groceries. A movie with a tub of ice cream, followed by a warm bath with soft music playing in her bathroom. All very human pleasures that she found that she had missed after months of lamenting over her curse. Information was scant about lycanthropy, most of it purely fiction from websites that were more naughty and speculative than insightful, which made research a very difficult and very time-consuming endeavor, drawing Kylie away from the things she enjoyed most about life. One thing was for sure, Kylie was going to beat beat her werewolf, suppress it so deep that it wouldn't hurt anyone. She was going to take back her life so that she could enjoy all the normal, human pleasures her animal threatened to take away.
Kylie rounded the corner and turned into the meat section. On a new moon, she could walk past the packaged meats without the werewolf becoming overly excited and making her react in ways that made her look foolish in front of others.
Her shopping cart banged against another. In her carelessness, she hit the cart of another customer.
"Oh, I'm sorry!"
The man in front of her smiled politely. "No problem," he said, pushing his own cart around and past hers. When they were shoulder to shoulder, he stopped.
"Excuse me..." he began to say.
Kylie looked up and gave the man a closer inspection. Not so tall, hair cut short and combed back, the face of someone's good son. She had never met him before, but he was familiar.
"Excuse me," he said again with less lucidity. She heard his voice, and her blood turned to ice.
"No," she said sharply. But he was. Kylie didn't really get a good look at him that night. His human features had yet to reassert themselves and she was in her own panic when she transformed back. But it was him. The werewolf that changed her.
"It's you, isn't it?" he said almost eagerly, a reaction that offended Kylie.
The wolf inside of her began to stir, but it had yet to focus on him. She was still too shocked to react.
"Look," he continued, "I just wanted to say--"
"I told you, I have nothing to say to you."
She rolled away quickly, turning into an aisle that she had already seen before. No doubt the man followed her. He walked in step behind her, without his cart.
"I'm Evan," the man said.
"I don't care."
"We have to deal with this," he said, this time in a low voice so no one could hear them talk werewolves.
Kylie was angry, becoming angrier still. "Deal with what? How? You bit me, so you get to claim me somehow? That's how animals do it, right?"
"Listen, I don't like it either, you think I wanted to be...this? I couldn't control myself when I found you. I still can't. I just want to say I'm sorry."
"You already apologized."
She wasn't looking at the canned food in front of her. All she could focus on now was that last full moon, when she changed and she followed his scent deep in the forest, where their beasts ravaged each other in a torrent of animal passions that offended her human psyche. She felt she couldn't control her own body, so that even when it felt good, it sickened her in all of those human moments that night when she changed back.
In those moments, Kylie's wolf slept in satisfaction. A clue to conquering her curse. A clue that was not an option. She would not mate her way to forced humanity during the full moon. She wanted nothing to do with this man or his apologies.
"You already apologized. Now leave." She started to walk past him again.
"C'mon," the man called Evan insisted, "Whatever you think I want, you're wrong. But we have to talk about this curse, it's the only way!"
"You want to talk about it?" she said as she could feel her voice rising. "I changed that night because of you. I turn into this wild, horrible monster that wants to eat small animals or worse, and the only way to avoid that is have sex with another werewolf. That's all I can say about it, how about you?"
Evan put a hand on her cart and pulled it to a stop. His voice was more even. "I'm not crazy about it either. But we have to stop ourselves from hurting others. Other people. Haven't you thought about that, protecting other people from what we are? From turning them into us?"
Kylie thought about it for a moment. The prospect still disgusted her, but she had to be a fool if she didn't think about it.
"And maybe we could actually like each other," Evan said.
A mistake. There was the faintest trace of carnal desire in his voice, and it bothered her. Her cheeks became warm and her hands threatened to bend the metal handle of her cart.
Kylie took her hand and clutched his shirt. "You stay away from me!" she said, pulling him closer to threaten him. "Whatever this curse is, I will handle it by myself. I don't need your help, and I don't want it. Why don't you go make another werewolf if that's what you want? You seem to be good at it!"
She pushed him back, and she saw holes in his shirt where her fingers had gripped him. She looked at her hand, seeing that she had ripped fabric underneath her fingernails. Claws. Claws that were slowly retracting to their normal shape, but had transformed in all of her anger. She felt the wolf inside her waking up. It was too weakened to be unleashed during a new moon, but it was there nonetheless. It horrified her as much as it angered her.
Kylie threw the tattered fabric to the floor, walked away from him and left her groceries behind. She would watch a movie at home without the tub of ice cream in her cart.