Under a Raging Moon: Part Three

by Chambers, V. J.

  Both Hudson and Kale wanted as far from the conclave as possible. Hudson was happy to help his mother out financially, but he didn’t want to live with her anymore. Kale didn’t want anything to do with his family, not really. Anyway, that meant that the two of them both had to get new places to live, in a new town to boot. I still was renting my apartment, but I didn’t have any ties to that particular city or that particular place. So, none of us really had roots or ties.

  That was a good thing in that it meant we were all free to do as we wished. But it was also kind of annoying, because it meant we really didn’t know what to do next.

  Instead of making a decision, we holed up in expensive hotel rooms, traveling around the country, and fucking more. Which was, well, eye-rolling, lip-biting ecstasy, if you want to know the truth. I had never had so much amazing sex. The guys were practically insatiable, and we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other.

  And—of course—during the course of screwing a lot, we got into our first argument. I’d never been part of anything like that before. It was one thing to be in an argument with one other person, but with three people, alliances could form, leaving one person out in the cold. Or everyone could be angry about different things, making it ten times more confusing and frustrating than any monogamous fight I’d ever been part of.

  I almost took my money and ran away from the entire situation at that point.

  But… well, then we made up.

  And then we had make-up sex. And, uh, well, let’s say that if fighting in a polyamorous relationship is more intense, then making up is more intense too.

  In the end, that was what kept us all together. Everything between the three of us was more intense. Kale and Hudson had a deep, deep bond of friendship, stretching all the way back to when they were kids together, and that kept them tight and able to accommodate each other. They were willing to work out their various issues and boundaries. And my bond to them had been forged in danger and blood. We’d all killed to protect each other, so we were devoted to each other. All of that added up to intensity. Incredible intensity.

  At any rate, we managed about six months of bumming around the country before we finally decided to settle down. By then, we’d had the time to have a discussion about what we wanted. Kale and Hudson had both grown up in a rural area, and neither wanted to live in a big, bustling city. However, they both appreciated how much nicer it was to have amenities close by. I liked the idea of something rural, but not backwoods. And so, we ended up in northern Virginia, outside of the craziness of the D.C. area, but not so far out that the roads weren’t kept up.

  We knew the money we had wouldn’t last forever, so this area allowed us to open Kale’s landscaping service to people in the area, and it allowed Hudson to buy his own garage and open it up. I’d gotten pretty good at working with money while being a thief, so I did the books for both of their businesses, which was a good job for me to keep doing after I got pregnant the first time.

  We hadn’t been planning to get pregnant exactly, but we were never very good at actively preventing it either. Contrary to what the guys had predicted, our relationship had always been about the three of us together. It never resembled two monogamous relationships—me with each of the guys. At the beginning, the guys sometimes talked about trying to have one-on-one time with me, one-on-one sex, but it never really happened. We all slept together in a big, king-sized bed, and we shared everything. Sure, there were occasionally times when either Hudson or Kale was the only guy inside me, and the other guy was only tangentially involved. (Or even asleep on the rarest of occasions.) But that was atypical. We were usually all involved in our lovemaking. And because there were two of them, and there was always an edge of competition to what they did—a friendly competition, not a bitter one—I think that meant we ended up having a lot more sex than most people in established committed relationships. And, being werewolves, it wasn’t easy for us to get pregnant anyway. I think we all knew that pregnancy could happen, at least in the back of our heads, and we were all okay with it happening.

  When it did happen, though, it was a little bit of a shock. A good shock, of course. All of us were excited. And I was lucky again, because being a pregnant woman with two doting fathers-to-be only means more manpower for midnight ice cream runs.

  There were parts of the pregnancy that were somewhat awkward, like going to the doctor’s office for the first time with two men in tow, who both said, “Yes,” when asked if he was the father of the baby. We managed to explain the situation to the OB who’d be delivering the baby, but I wasn’t sure that anyone else in the office ever quite got it. And most people were completely flummoxed by the idea that we weren’t finding out who the father of the baby was.

  We just never did.

  That drove Kale’s family nuts. It made Hudson’s mother so angry that her health declined badly, and she had to go into a nursing home. Well, to be honest, I can’t be sure if that was the cause. At any rate, she wasn’t the least bit pleased. We tried to assure them that they were all grandparents, but they didn’t take too well to it. They wanted assurances that my baby actually had their blood, and we weren’t going to bother figuring that out. It wasn’t important to us whose sperm had created our child, because we knew that we’d all been present at the baby’s creation. Our baby had come from our love, and that was all that was important to us.

  The guys’ parents, however, well, they didn’t quite see it that way.

  The situation was complicated by the fact that neither Hudson or Kale had faced the conclave after leaving, and now there was a new werewolf baby that wouldn’t be growing up under their watchful eye. No one in the community was particularly happy about it.

  But we were adamant about that too. We weren’t about to keep the baby away from family. We wanted our child to know Hudson’s mother and Kale’s parents. But we weren’t going to raise this child in the conclave, and we weren’t going to support their archaic practices. If they died out, maybe it would be a good thing, because they didn’t respect the rights of women.

  There were a lot of heated discussions and hurt feelings. I wondered if it would ever get any better.

  My parents were much more supportive, of course, but my father still thought the whole situation was weird.

  Once our little guy was born, though, everyone softened their stances. Nothing like a baby to get people to stop holding grudges. Graham was so cute from the moment he appeared in the world. Just a tiny little pudge who seemed to smile from day one. I don’t know if there was a little boy on earth who was more loved. We adored him, and he cemented the bond between us—it was unbreakable at that point.

  Kale’s parents never did stop trying to convince us to get a paternity test, but they did accept little Graham as their own grandchild and showered him with love and affection as well. We also often took the little guy to visit Hudson’s mother, and she adored him.

  There were always challenges. Being unconventional doesn’t make things easy. There were mothers who refused to allow their kids to come over for play dates when they found out Graham had two daddies. There were teachers who were scandalized by our lifestyle.

  Sometimes it took a toll on us. Sometimes it was hard. The outside world was tough on us, and we were three individuals with our own ideas, and we didn’t always see eye-to-eye.

  But it was the bond that made it work. We were so tightly connected to each other that we couldn’t live without the others. So, we weathered the struggles. We forged our tight connection, and we faced the world.

  We weren’t normal. We were polyamorous werewolves, so normal wasn’t even on our radar. But in most ways, we really were just like everyone else. The most important thing was that we were a family. And, despite everything, I felt like we might very well be the happiest family I knew.

  Want more?

  Then check out the story of Piper’s parents, Cole and Dana. The first book in the trilogy is currently FREE. Find links here.

 
; Been there, done that? How about Calla’s and Ryder’s story, Midnight Moonlight? Find links here.

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