1 Thicker than Thieves

Dark lashes. Full lips. His long, slender thighs wrapped tightly around me as I pant above him.

I smile in my sleep, vaguely aware that I am dreaming. I can hear my alarm blaring in the background, but it seems distant and unimportant right now. So, I choose to ignore it in favor of continuing this very pleasant lucid dream, acting out in the dreamscape what I could never have in reality. I groan as the man below me shivers, a sweet "Cam" escaping his parted lips.

My brother, Nico, once told me he had wet dreams about his soulmate, Daisy, the week before he turned sixteen. Not an uncommon occurrence from what I gather. One of my buddies, Oscar, even dreamed about his mate before he had ever met her. For weeks he went on and on about this green-eyed brunette with a heart-shaped freckle under her left eye. We all thought he was nuts, until he met her at a party hosted by another werewolf pack in the next town over.

Well, I certainly am having a wet dream and next week is my sixteenth birthday, but whoever I'm dreaming about certainly isn't my soulmate. In fact, I don't think he is anyone in particular. Just some fantasy conjured up in the mind of a hormonal teenage boy, still oversensitive from the tail end of his heat. I can't make out any of his features clearly. Is he blonde or brunette? Blue eyed or brown? I don't know, and I don't care. All I know is how good he feels. How tight.

"Cam!" He moans. I grunt, relishing in the imaginary feeling of his body against mine. Is this dream more vivid, because I'm still coming down from the effects of the full moon?

"Cam!" He calls more urgently this time. His voice doesn't sound full of want anymore, more just frantic yelling. I furrow my brow, trying to will back his sweet moans.

"Cammy!" That's what finally snaps me awake, chasing away the last remnants of my pleasant dream.

"Don't call me that," I growl, half to the dream boy already gone and half to my sister who was shaking me awake, calling my name over-and-over again.

"I wouldn't have to if you would wake up the first time!" I look up at Ellie to see her already dressed for school, pouting at me. "Your alarm has been going off for, like, fifteen minutes. It's super annoying. Plus, Davy is already downstairs in the kitchen waiting for you. Come on! Mom cooked pancakes!"

She jumps off the bed, hurrying across the room as if to leave, before she seems to think the better of it and pauses just before opening the door. "By the way, what were you dreaming about?"

Heat rises to my face and she smirks at me knowingly. "Davy right? You were moaning and groaning when I came in here. Plus, I can smell you from across the room. Not gonna lie, kind of gross bro."

"Shut up!" I throw a pillow at her, which hits her right in the chest. She just laughs. "It's just morning wood," I mumble. "If you can't handle it, you shouldn't come into a man's room in the morning."

"Man huh? And where might I find me one of those? Certainly not in this room!" she teases.

"Just get out of here so I can get ready?" I groan in frustration.

She finally opens the door, stepping into the hallway. "You know you love me," she smirks before leaving me alone. Finally.

I roll my eyes, but I know it's true. As sad as it is, my sister, Ellie, is my best friend. With only ten months between us, we shared everything growing up, not just our baby blues and blonde curls. As children we would play together in the woods, getting supremely dirty, despite my mother's insistence that our behavior wasn't the way "proper omegas" should behave. We shared similar taste in music, fashion, movies, and books. We both were complete math nerds and hated history. And, after significant begging and pleading, we were allowed to join the coed volleyball team last year by convincing our parents that we could "control our wolves" around unsuspecting humans. (Not that being omegan werewolves really gave us that much of a natural advantage over humans.)

Ellie was the only one who supported me when I cut my hair last summer, under the excuse that I hated the way it clung to my neck in the South Carolina heat, when really, I just didn't like having long hair. Ellie agreed I looked better with my undercut, even though Mom was mortified.

We even shared our first weak prepubescent heat together. Ellie: an over-excited eleven-year-old thinking she was becoming a grown-up woman. Me: a terrified twelve-year-old confirming what my parents had suspected for years: that I was a rare omega male, an intersex werewolf destined by the Moon Goddess to strengthen the pack's next generation by bearing children... regardless of my gender.

After that, Ellie and I shared every full moon cycle together, the time of the month when we are most fertile. When we both started being interested in boys, we talked about which ones we found "cute" … and then "hot" … and then "sexy".

We are thicker than thieves and tell each other everything… well almost everything.