The Grove Pt. 02

A week passed quickly following the event of discovering the grove, and then discovering that we shared our world with werewolves. Highly intelligent and efficient beasts, the males of the village were tasked with simply growing the population and protecting the borderlands. The females pledged under the totem of their goddess, Luna, and defended the village with their warrior prowess and deity appointed magic.

Human to werewolf relations had not been considered until one day, a woman going simply by Red had stumbled upon a werewolf that led her off the path to her grandmothers and toward the grove. When the ritual magic of Luna had filled her with a desire to mate, the werewolf claimed Red and she gave birth to a full werewolf pup. Given that werewolf females were rare, human females were now the breeding source for their population growth.

When a werewolf reached adulthood, the grove's magic would be far reaching and pull an offering to it for his first claim. I learned that my werewolf's name was Rumiel from the village girls, and that I could not leave his side until his seed would take. I felt overwhelmed by the thought that I was going to breed with him until I could bear a pup.

As young as he was, he could sense my lingering fear at night while I heard the painful birthing spasms of the women who were in labor. He would nuzzle into my neck and crane his arms around my body. His warmth would wrap around me, his musk would fill my senses, and I'd feel at ease once more.

Though, I can't deny that him being young and virile meant we had plenty of blissful mating sessions through the woods that the werewolves called Sundrea. Clothing was permitted once you were pregnant, but for the interim, I had to always be naked in front of Rumiel so I was ready for when he wanted to mate.

Today was no different from any day this week since our first union. I had been walking alongside him while he completed a brief patrol around an area that was his responsibility to guard. It took about two hours before he was relieved by another werewolf and we wandered toward an area of the forest that had clover growing all over the floor.

I knelt down on the clover and started searching for one with four leaves when Rumiel approached me while I leaned over with my pale backside in full view. I could tell by his breathing that a heat snared his loins and he rolled me over onto my back, then pulled my legs toward him. I smiled and felt a rising heat stir inside of my womb at the smell of his saturating musk, with a pride swelling in my chest that I could fill a beast with such desire.

His wolfish snout rooted between my labia and rested pressure against my clit. Pushing his maw into my opening, his long and canine tongue hungrily lapped into my inner walls, making soft, wet saliva sounds each time his tongue snaked into my cunt. My breathing hitched in my belly, each whimper from my lips was timed with his persistent tonguing of my swelling folds.

I sighed and felt the heat rise to my cheeks, bowing my knees out as far as they would go while Rumiel's tail wagged intermittently, puffing as he sucked the desired juices from my spread sex. I reached my hand out toward the top of his head and petted the fur between his ears until my thighs started shaking. My breaths were huffing deeper and closer together, and I couldn't stop my pelvis from raising up against Rumiel's probing maw.

Rumiel was taught by his human mother that pleasure for your mate would elevate the number of times she was willing to be mounted. I was in bliss every time Rumiel tasted my pussy. The outdoor exposure would brush cool air over my breasts and the wide open space raised my arousal that anyone could stumble upon us. When my hips would begin stirring against his maw, Rumiel would lap across my eager clit, listening to how quickly my breathing would elevate under his tonguing.

"Oh, I'm gonna come, Rumiel!" I uttered through a thread of moans between my heaving breaths. My hands clenched at the clover beneath us and all of the muscles of my body tensed when Rumiel slipped out of me and flicked the soft, flat edge of this tongue firmly over my clit until my bumpy insides seized with my release.

My cries of passion filled the air until I was spent and my body relaxed against the cool clover ground beneath me, feeling a collection of wetness settle between my thighs. I panted heavily as Rumiel released a deep and canine groan from his maw and crawled over my quaking, naked form.

Hooking my legs over his shoulders, his full knotted length was swollen and dripping with precum from the tip that I desperately wanted to suck. Guiding his veiny erection to press against my wet folds, he slipped down until he was at my opening and pushed until his knot docked with my slit.

"Mmmh!" I hummed in relief as Rumiel filled me, and he leaned forward to push my knees against my chest, mounting his legs on either side of my raised ass. Not wasting time, Rumiel bucked down rapidly against the flat surface of my thighs, hammering his growing knot against my pelvic bone. It was the only sound that was rivaling the erotic notes that carried into the thick wooded air from my gasping lips.

Sweat beaded on my heated skin as the time stretched on with his eager hips rubbing his arrow-shaped crown near my cervix. Our bodies rocked quickly against the softened ground with my feet swaying in the air above us, and his wolven form hunched over mine while he rutted his knot demandingly between my thighs.

Oh, Rumiel. My sweet, horny beast.

The huffing from his chest was deep and quick, reminiscent of his canine heritage, panting with gaping maw with his tongue dangling from his sharp row of teeth. The stirring of his wolf-like whimpering was changing into growls that were a prelude to his release. I could feel that deflated bulb tightly balloon to almost double the size while trying to force its way into my soaked folds. Rumiel was close, and since I hadn't pleasured his cock with my mouth today, this ejaculation would have the most volume bursting inside of me.

I heard a distant growl behind me and angled my head toward the source direction in sudden awareness. Rumiel slipped out of me quickly, stood to attention with all of his fur raised in aggression, and his shaft was sentient in its retreat to his furry sheath. Low and rolling growls constantly threatened from his belly at the unknown intruder I couldn't see. His nails, usually resting around an inch, had extended until they were double in size.

I heard an ethereal sigh all around me that seemed to come from everywhere while I calmed my aroused breathing. When I heard it grow louder and surround me, I heard a female's voice hum into clarity to say a single word.

"Run."

I got up from the ground and ran behind Rumiel toward the village. He rushed past me and the sound of barking, growling, and whimpering from several werewolves that were with him were fading as I sprinted toward the village. I happened upon another wolf that had been patrolling the adjacent area and my panicked hand shook in the direction I ran from.

"Rumiel's being attacked!" I said no more than that and the werewolf unleashed a shrill, single note to the canopy, and started a howl among the others in the area that responded. I could hear growling all around me and padding paws sprinting toward the direction of Rumiel. I picked up my feet and ran the rest of the way into the village, where the female werewolves let me inside.

A pack of the she-wolves started to circle out from the immediate boundaries of the village they had built, with that same ethereal magic I had listened to earlier now filling the air. One of the women with a growing belly in the second trimester gently held my arm and guided me.

"We need to get to the gully!" She said in a hurried manner while she was leading us to a collection of tall stones that led into a deep chasm that was overseen by the bulkier she-wolves of the village.

"What's happening, Amber?" I asked while I helped her climb into the vein below that all of the women of the village were entering and lighting torches along the way.

"A rival is invading the territory. Could either be werewolves or minotaur. Were you with Rumiel?" she asked. I nodded.

"Yes, we were in the middle of mating and he was about to knot with me when we heard an unfriendly growl." Amber hissed in a breath and squeezed my hand.

"Oh, Mara, I'm sorry. Rumiel's probably going to be pretty rough with you when he comes back to the village, being denied a knotting." Amber sympathized, and I felt a small pang of worry before the idea of him pounding into me recklessly filled my body with wanton heat.

"I'll be okay." I assured her with a soft grin.

"Oh, I'm curious, have you heard the voice of Luna yet? Has she accepted you into the pack?" Amber asked me curiously. That voice I heard in the woods.

"I heard the voice of a female tell me to run when Rumiel and I were threatened. I felt some sort of magical energy all around me when it happened." Once we made it to an open cave at the end of the gully, Amber stifled back a squeal of joy and hugged her arms around me.

"I'm so glad for you, Mara! Luna has accepted you as Rumiel's mate! Now you'll be able to communicate with the werewolves of this pack through the bond!" She said excitedly. It all made sense now how the women knew the names of the wolves and how things worked around here.

"How long do we wait down here?" I inquired curiously.

"Until the she-wolves determine that the threat is gone. Sometimes, the more aggressive packs can attack throughout the day until nightfall. Red died about a year ago in an unexpected assault, so we do this now to prevent a similar fate. It's more acceptable for a werewolf to die in battle than his mate." I frowned in hearing how Red had died, but that she was still so well revered as the first of us.

"Amber," it suddenly occurred to me that she said something to me and I looked toward her, "did you say there are minotaur?"

"Yes, I did. I've never personally seen one, but, just one of them can handle about four werewolves. They're massive in size, and when they learned the werewolves had human mates, I think the population growth has made them aggressive toward all packs." I felt my stomach sink.

"I had no idea any of this existed." I said. "I was only an hour from my town. Why is this not more known across the towns?"

"As it was told to me, Luna explained to Red that she had a choice to make. Leave her grandmother behind and join their world, or stay among the humans. Once Red made that choice, it left behind a rift that will periodically open to lure another person into the world. The grove just makes it easier on us to accept this parallel existence." She explained.

"So does the township I come from even exist over here?" I questioned.

"It probably doesn't, but anywhere that there is a village, like my own, there is a magic-imbued stone pillar that landmarks it so that creatures do not build there, I think." Amber explained. That didn't make sense to me, but a hypothesis swirled in my head.

"Or maybe it's there so that the magic works to lure people from the village?" I presented it as a question to see how Amber would react. Processing what I said, she lifted her gaze to me.

"That's probably it. That sounds better than what I thought." Amber responded.

I wondered to myself how Red's werewolf was able to cross over. The tale told in the human world of Little Red Riding Hood depicted Red as a little girl, and the wolf as an evil entity. Knowing that Red was a matured young woman and the werewolf slaked his lust into her made much more sense than a sentient beast simply wanting to dine on the flesh of her family.

For the next few hours, the females above us protecting the gully were restless. They shifted positions often, and the bond had bloomed within me over these passing hours. I could now hear voices in my head from each she-wolf as they relayed information and barked commands to one another.

I helped Amber and the other women who were sitting on the hard stone floor by massaging their lower backs and necks to help comfort the difficulty it was in sitting or laying down for a long period of time with growing weight in their wombs. I wanted to build trust and be accepted by the time I was pregnant with Rumiel's pup.

The sound of crickets screaming through the air that was thick with a thunderstorm approaching indicated that night had fallen. The warm moisture filled the darkened gully and the smell of dew beaded flesh from all of the women gathered in a single location saturated the space. We waited while rationed food was delivered to us in portions to help each female get through the night. My portion was light, but I didn't mind. I was not yet pregnant like most of the women in here.

It hadn't been long since our meal for the night was finished that I could feel the tension from the she-wolves lessen through the bond. A relaxed sensation surrounded me from the wolves that approached me, specifically, and collected me from the gully. I was led out in a single file, curious as to what had happened and if the rest of the women would be guided out soon.

Guided to a tent that I was simply told I'd never want to have to enter, I felt my stomach drop and looked around at the bi-pedal wolves escorting me with nervous energy. When the veil was drawn back from the entrance of the tent, I saw the fallen body of Rumiel lying motionless on the blanketed ground. Waiting behind the remains of my clawed and beaten werewolf had been the eldest she-wolf who was the shaman of the pack. Next to her was an elderly human woman draped in long robes, with her silvery-black hair braided down the length of her back.

I quickly rushed to Rumiel's body and lifted it into my arms, feeling his limp weight rest against my front while I breathed in his musk and closed my eyes, soaking in the arousal I had burning between my legs and the pain that washed over my heart that Rumiel was dead. The shaman women said nothing while I rocked back and forth on my knees, sobbing into Rumiel's fur, caring little that corpse blood from his wounds bled over my skin.

"We know that this time is difficult for you, Mara. You have lost your mated wolf, and the loss is sincerely felt by all and by Luna." The old woman spoke to me while my hand petted through the short fur on the top of his head, calming my breaths and tears to better receive her words and understand them.

"You've experienced a full week of mating with Rumiel. We will have to wait a full moon cycle to see if his seed will take. If after a full cycle you are not with child, then you will be returned to the grove and another male of our pack will hear the call." I understood what she was saying, but I couldn't believe that even with the death of my beloved Rumiel that I'd be sorted back into the breeding grove for a new mate.

I pressed my lips together and sniffled, silently contemplating my options while the she-wolf approached me. Upon my belly, she used deep purple gray paint made from the petals of a midnight orchid to trace a full circle on my belly with a line swiped down from my belly button to my womb, intersecting the circumference.

A full lunar cycle?