SELENELION LUNAR ECLIPSE

THE AWAKENING

I was born during a total lunar eclipse. No werewolf was born during a lunar eclipse, but I was. The magic of wolves is stronger depending on the phase of the moon they are born in. Even those born in a new moon have a wolf and have strength, not as much as someone born in a full moon, but they do have it. But I, the only one born during an eclipsed moon, do not perceive the magic of my wolf, nor do I even know if I will ever have it. I do not have the strength of werewolves, nor the reflexes, senses, or healing power. Even my brother Klaus, at ten years old, still without his wolf, was stronger and faster than I am.

My family, the Guldbransen, is one of the most influential and powerful families in the kingdom. My father Herald and my mother Ada are members of the royal council and members of our pack’s assembly. I am the fourth of five children. There is my older sister Ida who is twenty-four and my older siblings Dornan and Jondalar who are twenty-two, and my younger brother Klaus who is twelve.

They decided to call me Selenelion, a name I hate, so everyone, or almost everyone, calls me Selene or Sel.

The wolf usually starts to appear in the head around fourteen or sixteen years old, but powerful wolves and everyone in my family perceive their wolf and transform for the first time at twelve years old. It’s something rare, something that only occurs in strong wolves and full moons. All my older siblings did, all except me. Today there is a full moon, and my little brother Klaus’s wolf is ready to come out.

We celebrate an ancestral ceremony called the awakening, the night he will transform into his wolf, and we will finally be able to see him completely. Werewolves born on a full moon have a powerful wolf, so in order to bring it out, the awakening has to be... special. I cannot deny that I am happy and feel joy for Klaus. He is the apple of my eye and the one I love most in this world, but thinking about what will happen today makes me feel an immense emptiness inside.

I never had an awakening and as I am about to turn eighteen, I highly doubt I will ever have one. A loud bang in the room next door quickly pulled me out of my thoughts. I left my room to head to Klaus’s. Upon opening the door, I found him with a red face from anger, kicking what appeared to be a pile of fabrics. He lifted his head as soon as he noticed someone had entered and seemed relieved to find me instead of someone else.

"What’s wrong, Klaus?" I asked him. I realized what was wrong as soon as I noticed that the pile of fabrics was the ceremonial suit for tonight.

"If mom thinks I’m going to put on this ridiculous thing, she’s delusional." he grumbled.

I approached him with a half-smile on my face. I didn’t want to laugh, but I had to because he was adorable when he got angry like that. At twelve years old, he was already taller than me, and his muscles were starting to show, his strength to increase and he was already a little man, but at the same time he was still a child and my little brother. I picked up the suit from the ground and stretched it out in front of us so we could get a good look.

"It's really horrible." I chuckled and Klaus let out a weary snort.

It was a brown nightgown tied with leather laces, with white rabbit fur covering the entire back and shoulders. The hem was adorned with runes embroidered in gold thread and ends with a lot of rabbit tails as if they were fringes.

"I′m not going to wear it." he said sharply.

He crossed his arms and dropped into his bed with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. I left the horrible nightgown on the desk and lay down next to Klaus.

"Brother, you have no choice. Everyone has to wear it in their awakening ceremony, it is the tradition. It will only be a few hours."

"Sel, will you also wear your ceremonial costume?" he asked staring at me.

I had just realized it, I opened my eyes wide and took a deep breath. We both burst out laughing loudly.

"We’re going to be a couple of jerks!" I said laughing.

Suddenly the door opened with a thunderous bang and my two older brothers Jondalar and Dornan came in like a hurricane. They stopped in their tracks and began to sing a guttural song while beating their chests with their left fists. Klaus and I looked at each other again and couldn’t stop laughing at our intense older brothers. They began to hum faster and louder and hit harder. They slowly approached us until they ended up jumping on us and began tickling us and crushing us with their huge bodies. After a while, when our ribs hurt from laughing so much, they decided to have mercy on us and got up.

"Today is your day little brother." Jondalar shouted as he pulled Klaus to stand next to him. He put his arm around him and began to rub his head with his fist to make him angry. Klaus tried to break free but it was impossible, Jondalar was a mole, he was 1.92 meters tall and had muscles in his muscles. Suddenly Klaus caught Jondalar off guard and twisted his nipple and managed to run out of the room.

"You can run now, little puppy." Jondalar shouted before running out of the room with his blond hair after our little brother.

I laughed again. Dornan threw his hand and I grabbed onto him to get out of bed. He put an arm around my shoulders and we left the room together.

"How are you, little sister? I know that today must not be easy for you" he told me.

Both Dornan and Jondalar were crazy and intense, but Dornan had always had a loving and loyal side that is what made me love him with all my heart. He had always known how to comfort and take care of me in a way that not even our parents had known. Dornan and I were the only ones who didn’t resemble our mother. he had our father’s brown hair and dark eyes. The others looked like our mother, blonde with green eyes. I, even though I have the lightest blonde similar to my mother, have gray eyes, neither green nor blue, and completely different features. They are all tall and muscular, while I am shorter and thinner.

Dornan and Jondalar share the same birth year, Dornan was born first in January and Jondalar in November. They have been doing almost everything together all their lives.

I looked into his black eyes and gave him a half-smile. I didn’t need to say anything, he tightened his grip on my shoulder a bit more and leaned down to kiss my head.

"Let’s go feed this little body of yours." he said, pushing us down the stairs and into the dining room.

We entered the dining room and the rest of our family was there. My sister Ida with her notebook and her phone. She was furiously typing things on the screen while flipping the pages of the notebook back and forth. Our father, Herald, sat at the head of the table casually reading the newspaper. He smiled widely as soon as we entered and took a long sip of his coffee while hiding behind the newspaper again. Mom, Ada, was next to him trying to reason with Klaus, who wouldn’t stop chewing the toast, bacon, and eggs reluctantly. Dornan sat next to Jondalar, who already had a full plate and was devouring his food as if he hadn’t eaten in over a month. Dornan piled his plate so high that there was no more room and started eating in the same exaggerated way. I noticed that today was a lot of food for those of us who were there. I swear those two could finish off an entire herd of cows if they were allowed. I sat next to Ida so I wouldn’t have to watch those two eat and upset my stomach more than it already was from nerves.

I barely ate a piece or two of bacon and a toast. During breakfast, I tried to talk to Ida, but she was overwhelmed with her phone. She was trying to make everything perfect for the ceremony: the flowers, the catering, the music... she was a control freak and had been since childhood. Don’t get me wrong, she was very good at everything she did, but there couldn’t be one thing out of her control, or she would go crazy.

The doorbell rang, and Olga, who was our housekeeper, went over and opened the door. I heard several pairs of footsteps approaching us, and I tensed up.

That’s why there was so much food, I thought.

Through the dining room door entered Ayax and Eriksen, my older brothers’ best friends. The four of them had grown up together, studied together, played sports together, worked together, everything they could do together, they did; they are inseparable. They greeted us all and sat down to eat with the same appetite as my brothers. Both of them looked at me and I realized that they had caught me staring at them. I gave them a little smile and looked away. They were among the most well-known guys in our pack; they were tall, muscular, and incredibly handsome.

Ayax had brown hair and hazel eyes; he was tall and very athletic. What stood out most about him was his impressive and cheeky smile that he always had on his face. He was a player on the football team and another born under a full moon, so everyone knew him.

Eriksen had wavy black hair and beautiful honey-colored eyes; he was as tall as Jondalar and just as muscular. Although he was nice and sometimes even funny, he was almost always tense and serious, with his usual frown. Ida gave me a little kick under the table, and I choked on the last piece of toast. I saw her playful smile that said, ‘stop staring at them,’ and I felt like killing her.

She elegantly got up with her long blonde hair falling over her shoulders and without further ado, she said

"Come on Selene, we need to make you beautiful for tonight, the pack and many guests will be there looking at you, maybe you’ll find your match today. I remember that ceremonial dress was a bit long, we should make it shorter and sexier." she sang out loud so everyone could hear her.

I heard a utensil fall and a glass break. We all looked towards Jondalar, Dornan, Ayax, and Eriksen. They were looking from Ida to me with red faces in anger.

"No way!" Jondalar burst out.

"You’re a hypocrite." Ida shot back, ready for the attack "The girls you go out with barely cover everything that needs to be covered, and you love it. Selene can wear whatever she wants."

She had just taken the words out of my mouth. Ida had always been the most feisty of all, always standing up for me in front of our brothers, and I was very grateful for it. I spent almost all my childhood with my older brothers and their friends, they had always treated me like the annoying little sister who bothered them or chased them by annoying their plans. Although they treated me well and liked to please me when I was with them, they cared little if I came or went, but for a few years they began to be too protective with me. Ida, being the oldest, did not experience anything like that and that is why she gave me a hand whenever she could. Because of my brothers no boy approached me, I had three friends counted and nobody didn’t even invite me to parties because no one wanted to make them angry. Meanwhile, they, the four of them, went to all the parties they found in the city and slept with all the girls they wanted.

Jondalar jumped up, throwing the chair back about to say something silly. Before he could say anything, Mom stopped him in his tracks with a loud roar. Mom had never needed words to keep us under control. She didn’t even have to lift her eyes from her breakfast. Jondalar sat down again, his eyes fixed on Ida and then on me, whispering something I couldn’t hear. The two of us left the dining room laughing. I turned at the last moment and saw the four boys staring at us, and I stuck my tongue out at them. Only Ayax laughed as he shook his head amused.

We went up to Ida’s room. It was immaculate, the bed nicely made and covered with a turquoise quilt, the desk had a laptop and a vase with fresh flowers. On the wall hung pictures of family, her half, and her friends. The curtains matched perfectly with the quilt and the rug, everything was decorated perfectly. She opened the cupboard in the room and I saw only a couple of dresses hanging on one side and my ceremonial outfit on the other.

Ida left three years ago to live with her half, Killian. As it always happens with werewolves, it was love at first sight, the bond united them and since then they hadn’t parted. I was very sad that she was leaving, but Killian had proven to be a perfect companion for my sister and I appreciated him for it.

"You should have seen the faces of those cavemen down there." Ida laughed.

She took out the ceremonial suit and I was left with my mouth open. She had already modified it and it was spectacular.

"I wasn’t going to let you go to the ceremony in that horrible thing." Ida huffed."I had to wear it at twelve during my awakening and at fourteen during Dornan’s awakening, but I won’t let you, almost eighteen, wear that ridiculous thing."

"Thank you, thank you and thank you." -I said as I threw myself at her to hug her tightly.

"You have to leave them all speechless today." she winked at me and I rolled my eyes.

"Ida... you know that..."

"No."she cut me off, waving her hands."No bad vibes today. Come on, I’ll start painting you."

After a couple of hours, Ida seemed satisfied with the painting on my body. The awakening ceremony hadn’t changed as far as I knew in the last hundreds or thousands of years. We wore ancestral outfits of our ancestors and painted our bodies with tattoos and runes that spoke of the moon, the power of wolves, and the pack. I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked spectacular. She drew lines, runes, and circles all over my body and even though it was something tribal and out of current times, I liked it.

The door opened and there was Dirda talking to Eriksen in the hallway. She kept the door open while she finished talking to him, not realizing that I was there in front exposed, only covered with my underwear. Then Erik looked at me directly and ran his hand through his hair as he usually did.

"Spectacular." he said, looking at my body from top to bottom before continuing down the hallway and leaving.

Was he referring to the tattoos? I kept thinking.

Dirda entered and closed the door.

"My goodness, it really is spectacular." she said, looking at me and referring to the painting.

Dirda was one of my best friends. I have to admit that I didn’t have many. All the girls in the pack wanted to be my friends to get to my brothers and their friends, but I quickly saw through them and ignored their fake friendships. Dirda, however, was genuine, and I knew she was my friend because she liked me, and we had fun together, not for any other reason. She didn’t need to hang around with me to get a guy; she was spectacular, tall, dark-haired, with long, straight hair, full lips, and electric blue eyes. She had that unique beauty that made everyone stare at her when she walked by. Plus, she didn’t need to try to hit on my brothers or their friends; they were practically meant to be together. Jondalar, Eriksen, and Dirda were all born at midnight, the same night, under a supermoon. Not a second before, not a second after. The old women predicted that this had to be a sign that they were linked and destined in some way.

Everyone thought that when the three finally awakened their wolves, two of them would bond as their other half, as a pair, but that was not the case. I remember that day even though I was an eight-year-old girl. The ceremony for the awakening of the three was held together, the old women ordered it that way since they were born at the same time.

The three transformed simultaneously and awe swept over all present when they returned from their awakening as three huge white wolves. No one had a white wolf, no one but the most powerful alphas. Not even the old women knew what to say. None bonded as a pair, and that only showed one thing, that one of them or perhaps all would become the alpha of the pack.

Alphas did not find their other half until they took their true place in command. It was strange for a she-wolf to take the place of the alpha, but Dirda was just as strong and capable. So any of the three of them could become the new leader of the pack and then, perhaps, bond with one another. Dirda with Jondalar or Dirda with Eriksen.

That night had its own party, and after the initial astonishment, we all had a great time dancing, drinking, and eating. Everyone except the current alpha, Fredrik. The appearance of the three white wolves meant that in the coming years, his pack would stop seeing him as the strongest and would replace him with the next alpha.

"Come on, we still have a lot of work to do." said Ida while pulling me towards the bathroom, pulling me out of my thoughts.

We spent the rest of the time there while she styled my hair into braids and curls and did my makeup. We ate there while we chattered and berated the boys. Although I was younger, they always made me feel one of them.

Before six o’clock struck, Dirda and Ida were ready in elegant clothes and I only needed to put on the ceremonial costume. With Ida’s arrangements it consisted of a brown leather top with rabbit fur on the shoulders and back, leather straps that fell over my belly like fringes and a short skirt that fit me perfectly.

It fit me like a glove and at the same time it was comfortable and beautiful and it was not ridiculous at all as I had thought it would be.

"Today all the single men in the ceremony are going to drool over you little sister. We should get you a date." Ida said.

Dirda made the smile on his lips disappear and turned around cursing.

"Stop being such a nun Dirda, you should also give yourself a tribute from time to time." My sister said playfully while moving her hips sensually.

Dirda picked up a cushion from the bed and threw it at her head. Ida acted as if she had been seriously injured, dramatically clutching her head. The three of us started to laugh and hugged each other before leaving through the door. Everyone was waiting for us downstairs: my parents, my older brothers, Eriksen, and Ayax. They all stood there with their mouths agape upon seeing us. I noticed the eyes of the four boys taking me in, and I felt a shiver.

Jondalar quickly turned with a wave of his hand, and Dornan huffed in annoyance, clearly not pleased with the adjustments Ida had made to the suit. My parents, however, smiled, which was significant because they were very strict about traditions and avoiding transgressions. Klaus appeared from the stairs behind us, and I noticed he was furious when he looked at me.

"We were going to look ridiculous together, Sel, now you look great and I look like an idiot." Klaus complained.

The boys started laughing at him, which helped lighten the mood a bit. Mom and Dad came to help Klaus so that our older siblings would stop bullying him, and we all headed toward the cars.

I noticed Ayax’s hand on my waist and how he pushed me toward his car. I looked at him and gave him a warm smile that was both embarrassed and heated. We had touched each other before, but this time I felt his fingers caressing my skin, and it didn’t seem like an innocent gesture, but rather an intentional caress. I pushed the thought out of my head because that wasn’t possible... Or maybe it was.

He opened the passenger door for me, but before I could get in, Jondalar pushed me and entered first.

"Little sister, you go back." he said.

I went to the back seats and saw Ida sitting on the other side. I sat next to her, and when I went to close the door, Eriksen came in. He had to squeeze against me to get in, and I squeezed against Ida. Ayax’s car was a spacious one, but Erik was still very big and stocky.

That day he had messy wavy black hair, was freshly shaved, and was wearing a white shirt and jeans. He was the most handsome man I had ever seen in my life and that I believed existed, an adonis. He had full lips that invited kisses again and again, a straight nose, and eyes with a gaze that could melt even a glacier. Ayax sat down gripping the steering wheel and looked at Erik.

"Aren’t you going to take your car?" he asked surprised.

Erik shrugged and leaned back in the seat, throwing his arm over my headrest.

"I’m very comfortable here, and besides, I don’t want to worry about drinking and not being able to drive." he said carelessly.

I sighed upon hearing his words; he might be comfortable, but I was so squashed that I could barely breathe. Our legs and torsos were so close that we looked like Siamese twins. I nudged him to give me a little more space. He looked at me, I gestured at him, and he laughed but didn’t move an inch. I kept staring at his smile which didn’t appear often and I returned the smile with the silliest expression in the world, while trying not to drool.

Ayax started the car and I finally looked ahead.

Control yourself, Sel. I thought, but having him so close made it very difficult.

I had been secretly in love with Erik since we were kids and being so close, touching each other, was making me very nervous. I could feel my heart racing.

Jondalar and Ayax started talking about something regarding the party afterward, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Ida took out her phone and called someone to tell them we were on our way and to start getting everything ready.

Then Erik put his hand on my thigh.

"Stay calm, Sel, you don’t have to be nervous." he whispered, leaning his head toward my ear.

A shiver ran down my spine. He began looking distractedly out the window without removing his hand. Although I knew he was trying to calm me down and he was only doing it because he saw me as his little sister, I was trembling inside and couldn’t say that it was all because of the awakening.

I would like to ask you for forgiveness because English is not my main language. Perhaps there are things written incorrectly. I ask for your understanding and pacience. thank you.