CHAPTER 10
KOEN
Standing on the foot path outside Raul's apartment building Koen had to take a moment to catch his breath and roll his stiff shoulders, just letting the cool night air ruffle his clothing and loose mussed hair.
He scented the air about him and picked up Rudi's familiar scent easily out of the many over powering ones around him. Her scent was still fresh, full of anger, shock and horror but he couldn't hear her which meant she'd slipped her skin to escape the area. Her reckless choice angered Koen but he quickly brushed it aside as not being worthy of him, it was his fault Rudi was acting reckless in the first place. With a sigh he started down the foot path with real reluctance, he didn't want to leave his mate, everything in him clamoured to turn around and go back in.
Amazing to learn he wasn't even out of Raul's presence for more than five minutes and already he was stiff, tense and frustrated he thought to himself with sardonic humour. Even his skin longed to be pressed up against Raul's despite having just done so. His body despite the dull stinging and bruises that covered it, resented him with the same violence his spirit felt to be moving away from Raul.
He really hadn't meant to stay away from Raul for two days and truthfully staying away had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done. Feeling Raul's need for him and his sexual frustration had nearly driven Koen out of his mind. But he needed to just follow his very un-wolf like habit and think, trying to get his practical, cautious head around such an enormous and life changing thing as a mate was daunting.
Koen knew he'd been a spoilt brat and still was in many ways. His reckless nature had caused him to fuck up big and for the sake of his own tainted soul, he'd truly believed he'd needed exile from all he knew to learn to become a better 'wolf. He knew now it hadn't been fair to deny his family, just as it hadn't been fair to deny Raul, but he had needed the time away to grow up, just as he'd needed the time apart from Raul. He had thought he had grown up till the last month had taught him differently. Koen couldn't even use his old wariness against not wanting to be involved with a man again, as Raul wasn't just any man or any 'wolf either.
Koen stopped at the end of the darkened street he was walking along to wait for a gap in the traffic and crossed the street, his senses tuned to follow Rudi. Koen knew after the full moon they'd spent as mates he could never go back, but that didn't stop him from trying to reason it all out.
But it came to fuck all except two days of missing Raul and two days of fighting off his own incredible horny urge to hunt down Raul and get his hands on him. Two intense, feverish days of wanting nothing else but to get his cock, his teeth, his fingers, fuck even his tongue into Raul had nearly driven him insane. Feeling a dim echo of Raul's own sexual frustration and desire had near killed him.
Even now after he'd had him twice the smell of sex and Raul on him had him still craving to do nothing but fuck him over and over again. Koen knew what it was to experience the fierce, raw, often blindingly intense emotions and urges that came with being a 'wolf but nothing had ever been like this. Koen had always liked and enjoyed sex, had even been wild and desperate to fuck on occasion, but he'd never been mindlessly in thrall to his own base desires.
Just the incredible horniness and blood lust was enough to drive Koen crazy. Having been through many full moons in his time he thought he'd known what blood lust was. But what he'd felt before was a dim echo to the urge he had to sink his teeth into Raul and suck out his blood.
He remembered when he and his siblings had been small they would sneer with disgust at their parents, who would come down to breakfast most mornings with fresh bite marks and they'd know they'd been feeding on each other again. You only feed on for prey, not your sweetie, you didn't seek the hot blood out of a deer and cuddle it as well. To a child such things are black and white, but now Koen understood what drove them to bite each other.
It came from their basest most possessive wolf desires, this dark desire for the very life flowing through your mate. Wanting to feed on the essence of him was to possess all of him and have him in you, to feed your hunger, as he already fed your soul, your heart and your everything. To allow him to bite you, was to allow him to possess all of you, to feed his hunger.
Koen hadn't realised he'd stopped, his hands balled into fists, his whole body trembling with where his thoughts had gone. He fought to slow his ragged breathing and his own instinctive need to go back and seek out his mate. With great difficulty and with all the strength of will inside him he managed to wrestle back the primitive drive and shackle it roaring in a corner while he finished what he set out to do.
"Soon." He promised himself.
Having got a grip on his demons he finally looked around at his surroundings and realised to his surprise he was some blocks away from Raul's apartment. He was standing in the middle of a park, he could smell Rudi ahead of him somewhere. He sat on an empty swing and idly used a foot to push himself gentle back and forth.
"For what it's worth I'm sorry. It wasn't meant to happen this way." Koen finally said, his quiet words seeming to echo in the quiet park.
A snarl was the only answer he got.
"I know it must have come as a great shock to you. I had never any intention of ever fucking or even having another relationship a with man or 'wolf." He went on when the angry silence grew with no word.
"It's not so much that you were fucking somebody else, although seeing you fucking HIM, when you've been fucking me all these months was a fucking eye opener. No it wasn't that shock that blew my ass out of orbit. That special horror was reserved for seeing you with your teeth in him." Rudi snarled.
"You never once bit me or allowed me to bite you and seeing you with your teeth in him made me feel far more betrayal then seeing you lying between his legs with your cock in him." Rudi went on savagely, her eyes glinting with anger, shock and hurt.
Koen realised with some surprise that she was right, although he'd ever really been aware of it, now that he thought about he, he had never let Rudi bite him and had never felt more than a fleeting lustful urge to bite her.
"Still I was coming to you tonight to tell you in person that I couldn't continue on and that it was time for us to go our separate ways. But as you have seen with your eyes tonight, I got side tracked." Koen admitted honestly, putting as much apology and as much of his regret into his words and his scent as he could.
Rudi's harsh bark of laughter rang mockingly around them.
"Oh that's rich of you, thank you so much for your consideration then. I'll have to remember that you were on your way to break up with me, before you stopped to dip your wick." She sneered.
Koen shrugged, helpless and at a loss as to what else he could possible say to make this right. But there was nothing he could do, nothing he would change, except that he regretted what Rudi had seen.
Seeing his expression darkened Rudi's expression further with rage as she stalked forward and slapped him hard across the face with her claws out. Koen didn't flinch back, he merely raised his chin and met her angry, betrayed eyes as he felt the blood trail down his face, letting her see all he had to say and couldn't get out in words. Rudi's eyes flashed back; with a loud growl of utter rage she slapped him again.
To Koen's surprise he heard a deeper, louder growl echo Rudi's and then a blur shoved between them, sending the female 'wolf sprawling.
"Don't touch my mate you bitch." Raul snarled his golden eyes dark and glittering with possessive fury as he moved to stand between Koen and Rudi.
"No one touches my mate but me. Too long I had to watch you take and touch what was mine, but not anymore." Raul went on his low, vicious growl a tone Koen had never heard from him before.
Rudi picked herself up and shoved the black wolf with a sneer. "You should take pride in what you've done, I don't think I'm the bitch here. I saw you lying there under him, spread out like a bitch in heat. Chasing after him like a panting dog. No _man_ should ever take it like a woman." Raul sneered right back and returned her shove.
"Now, now. A _man_ I am not sweetheart, but a 'wolf as you well know. You should know better that a satisfied 'wolf never strays. I'm not surprised I had such an easy task of it, when Koen was already stuck with a cold bitch of a girlfriend."
Koen really wanted to step in and defuse this awkward situation but he knew he wouldn't be welcomed. Fights over mates were individual things and he knew Raul needed to defeat Rudi to drive it home that he was his, just as Rudi needed to revenge herself against the 'wolf who'd stolen her mate. So he merely settled himself back on his swing to watch. He winced as the verbal blows turned to physical ones, and then the fight moved from human to wolf.
In a fair world perhaps Rudi's outraged anger would have beaten Raul's jealous rage but while Rudi was fast and strong, Raul was bigger and stronger. It wasn't long before Raul had Rudi's smaller, lighter coloured wolf pinned to the ground, his jaws locked around her throat. Koen could hear Rudi's angry snarl and could see from her glowing eyes that she wouldn't submit. Snarling at this disrespect Raul shook his head and her throat locked in grip of his bloody jaws, drawing an unwilling whimper from Rudi as she slumped unconscious from a mix of fear, exhaustion blood loss and pain.
"Raul! Mate! Let her go." Koen called out, putting the full force of his dominant power behind his command.
He was afraid if it went on much longer Raul would kill Rudi, already his jaws and the thick ruff around Rudi's throat was dark with blood. Some fights over mates did go all the way to death and he didn't think he deserved anybody dying for him or for his mate to kill for him.
At first caught up in his anger and blood lust Raul didn't hear the command, so Koen repeated it with another surge of his power backing it up. Raul stiffened and reluctantly he eased off Rudi, all but spitting her throat out of his mouth. He used his paws and the night dampened grass to wipe the blood off his muzzle. The black wolf stalked towards Koen, ignoring the sprawled, beaten but still alive body of Rudi and nudged at Koen hard.
