Chapter 9: It's Official

Ran did not see Caph until the next Full Moon Gathering. He was supposedly caught up with college stuff and that suited her just fine. With all the rumours about them flying around, she didn't see a need to engineer another public date to satisfy her uncle.

Even her assistant Delta and the Gammas she worked closely with believed she was in love with a werewolf who they all just learnt existed, attending college in the neighbouring district.

Before her uncle's public demand that she court Caph, Ran was known for her dismissal of romance and all its frivolous emotional entrappings she called 'a waste of time'. Yet her pack bought the story, hook, line and sinker.

No wonder humans ruled the world. Werewolves were stupid.

Caph appeared at her doorstep the night of the Gathering and followed her to the edge of the forest where the rest of her pack was supposed to meet. 'Your pack is big,' he remarked. There were about a hundred werewolves, all ready to leave in their wolf forms.

'Isn't Cassiopeia bigger?' she asked.

He shook his head ruefully. 'There's only fifty of us, including those that don't go to the Gathering.'

No wonder his father agreed to her uncle's arrangement. Traditionally, werewolves from an ancient purebred pack like Cassiopeia would not marry into other packs where the werewolf blood was diluted by human blood. Anordinary member of a purebred pack had a higher status than a ranked member of the ordinary packs.

A werewolf like Caph who was an unranked member of the Cassiopeia pack and son of the Alpha was the human equivalent of a prince.

But if Cassiopeia was dying out, then it made sense to use their reputation to form alliances with wealthier, more influential packs while they still can.

Ran and Caph shifted as they approached, heat washing over their bodies as they morphed and their wolf form wrapped around them. Acamar howled to signal their departure and the werewolves streamed like a river through the trees, across the forest, to their usual clearing on the moor.

Even before they reached the centre of the Gathering, werewolves from the other packs in their human forms crowded around to catch a glimpse of the latest 'it' couple. Ran found herself feeling very self-conscious when she shifted back to a human, in her drenched clothes and hair because of her shift.

Being the centre of attention in such a state made her skin crawl.

Obviously, Caph had no such qualms. He immediately struck up a conversation with a few werewolves he recognised from the previous Full Moon Gathering.

Ran stared at him speechlessly as he spoke to people who were technically foreign to him like they were from the same pack. How did he do that?

The werewolves who noted her innocent reaction to Caph's social skills interpreted it as being starstruck by her lover.

By the time Ran realised what was happening, it was too late to feint apathy.

When Acamar gave his report on how the Eridanus pack was doing, he announced the marriage arrangement of the late Alpha's daughter, Ran of Eridanus, and the fourth son of Cassiopeia's Alpha, Caph, sealing her fate by making it official.

Ran glanced warily at Caph who was smiling proudly with his hands in his jean pockets. She wondered if he realised the gravity of their situation. Their act had to be flawless from now on. It was official.

After the First Shifting Ceremony, the bonfire was lit and music was blasted from large, ancient-looking speakers. Werewolves began to mingle, starting boisterous conversations with one another, downing cups of cow's blood so they'd have enough strength to party for the rest of the night.

Usually, at this point, Ran would retreat from the clearing to do some stargazing at the top of a tree in the forest. But people kept coming up to her and Caph to congratulate them on their betrothal. She also noticed Acamar keeping an eye on her nearby to make sure she didn't do anything to embarrass him after having given the official announcement of their arrangement.

So Ran kept one hand in Caph's large electrifying grasp, smiling at strangers until her face hurt.

Then, when the public's excitement of them finally died down, Caph asked her to dance to whatever bop was blasting incongruously through the dark moor, reigniting the fires of curiosity around them.

Ran gritted her teeth and conveyed her displeasure to him via her cold black eyes.

He took her hand and slid an arm around her waist, pulling her into a spin. 'Enjoy the moment,' he said.

Even though the arm he had around her was not touching her bare skin, she could feel the heat radiating from him—and her body reacting to it, yearning for more.

He guided her through a dance too fast-paced to be ballroom dancing, their faces coming close every now and then before she was spiralling away from him, connected only by his firm grip on her right hand. Every time they whirled apart, she found herself yearning for the electric heat of his body close to her.