Only At Night update (Patreon)

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said somberly, not really sure how sympathetic to be. I liked cheese as much as the next guy, but I was pretty sure I could do without if it came right down to it. Heck, it’d probably be easier than being a vegan.

Carina giggled. “I’m not unburdening my soul to you, big guy. I’m thinking out loud. Well…” She ran a finger over her cheek until it reached her lip, where she popped it into her mouth and sucked it clean. “There’s a lot I’m not thinking out loud. It’s pretty early in the morning still.”

“It’s eleven PM,” I told her.

“Then it’s pretty late in the day.”

“Would you like a tissue?” I asked her.

“Yeah. Nightstand.” 

I looked over and sure enough, there was a box of tissues at the ready. I grabbed a fistful of them and passed them to Carina. She started wiping her face off, despite the obvious enjoyment she’d taken in cleaning herself off the other way. Maybe she was watching what she ate.

“Okay, so you’re lactose-intolerant. So?”

“So can you use your points on that?” Carina asked. “Upgrade me?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “If it did, I’d go around curing people of cancer or something. But I can’t just own someone…”

“Can’t you? That’s what alphas do, more or less.”

“I’m not an alpha.”

“So you wouldn’t do me doggy style?” she asked, tossing the wadded up tissues in the bin. “If you got the chance?”

My manhood tried to regain its hardness, like a dying man clawing his way across the desert, just a few feet from water. I was really tempted to spend some points on that pesky refractory period, but from the talk we were having, it seemed like she had something in mind for them. “I mean—I wouldn’t want to come off as insensitive…”

Carina rested her chest on my groin, making the warmth and softness of her cleavage inescapable, and it was almost painful how much my cock wanted to get hard again. I could feel the lust boiling in my lap, but Carina had really done a number on me. I was drained. 

“In my world, what we just did? The facial? It’s sort of how someone is… claimed. One partner submits to it, receives it, and the other takes possession of them.”

I sat up. “Are you telling me I own you?”

“No, God—it’s a connection. It’s spiritual, it’s… auras. Just check, okay? I wanna see if it counts enough for your mojo to work on me.”

I did as she asked, summoning up a menu, and it’d be safe to say I was flabbergasted for the first time in my life. There were Carina’s stats, floating around and over her like she was a picture in a textbook.

“Wow,” I said quietly. 

“All systems go?” she asked me.

“Yeah… I can see your age on here.”

“Like I care. Where do you get your ideas about women from, stand-up comics in the 90s?”

“And your weight.”

She tickled me. “Mind on the mission, bub.”

I looked for options. I could see several, but a lot of them were dummied out, gray like a button in Windows that you weren’t allowed to select. Her weight, her height—on me, those things were selectable, but I couldn’t do a thing with Carina’s.

“Hey, would you mind if I made you taller?” I asked her out of the blue.

She adopted a quizzical expression, which was so cute it made my member give another painful pang. I was actually getting slightly hard and it wouldn’t be long before she felt that thrum against her skin. That would save me a boatload of points.

“I suppose you could,” she said warily. “Why? Do you think I’m not tall enough?”

“No, no, you’re great,” I said, watching as the button darkened and became selectable. “The… system or whatever isn’t letting me mess with things unless you’re cool with it, apparently.”

“Hunh,” Carina said. “Maybe my magic is interfering with yours.”

“Or maybe it’s a mental thing,” I said. “I mean, I really don’t want to do anything you’re not—“

“Yeah, yeah, you’re sensitive,” she said. “C’mon. I want to be more tolerant of lactose. I want to promote lactose inclusion…”

“Okay, alright,” I muttered. I’d been trying anyway to block out how good her body felt along mine, the urge to push more firmly against her warm flesh and see what kinds of friction we could generate—not to mention the question of me being her alpha. I was getting the feeling it was some kind of honorary thing, a title, not literal, but still… it seemed big. I couldn’t keep from mumbling about it as I scanned through her menus. “So… do you want an alpha?”

“Well… yeah…” she said, her voice finally lowering, becoming a little less bright. She shifted, offering some blessed release from the lust that otherwise would’ve grown overpowering, and rested her chin on my hip as she embraced my leg. “It’s sort of the thing. You know how every little girl plans her dream wedding? Every lycan thinks at least a little about… the scenario.”

“Scenario?”

She shifted even more—seemingly truly bothered by whatever it was she was thinking. I was starting to really regret asking about this, but it was too late to take it back. She turned over on her back, looking up at the ceiling as she rested her head on my waist. I reached down to run my fingers idly through her hair. Carina didn’t appear to notice.

“When a lycan is born, her alpha is usually either her father or a friend of the family—a godfather, sort of. It’s not sexual… almost never.” She shook her head. “That would be like incest in your world. But as a lycan grows and develops, the expectation is that they’ll find someone to bond with, either in the pack or outside it, and they’ll go and start their own pack as alpha and beta. Some don’t… they start in their original pack and don’t have kids, or they have kids but don’t become an alpha or accept their lover as an alpha. But having an alpha and starting your own pack, it’s like going to college, getting a degree, having a house with a white picket fence. It’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“And you haven’t?” I asked experimentally. “Until now?”

She finally seemed to notice, or acknowledge, that I was comforting her. She turned her head slightly into the contact. “It’s complicated. But I guess consider this a trial period? There are a lot of shades of gray in the shifter world. It’s not something you can really explain—you feel it. An alpha and a beta can include everything from a… 1950s housewife and her man to some guy chaining his wife to the bed.”

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“Consensually,” she said quickly. “There are levels to it, is what I’m saying. It can range from being totally submissive to more of a big brother thing.”

“Okay,” I said. “So what level are you? I mean… you don’t believe in playing the field?”

She turned her head even further, enough to look me in the eye. “I thought that’s what I was doing. But no, I don’t believe in fooling around. When I’m dating someone, that’s practice for being married. Practice for being mated for life. I’m sorry if that’s too intense for you, but I—“

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “Intense seems like part of the game plan here.”

“Good,” she said. “So how about lactose lives matter?”

I returned my attention to her interface. Lucky for me, I noticed the debuff right there, so she wouldn’t think I was goofing off too much. It would cost me quite a few points, but I’d gotten my daily refill, so why not?”

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s a toggle. You want me to go for it?”

“Do it,” she said.

I selected it and boush—one hundred points went down the drain. Only when I looked at my counter, I had more points than ever: 1900. I blinked in confusion. I didn’t claim to be a math genius, but it was pretty clear I’d somehow started out with 2000 points instead of 1000. It had to have something to do with Carina, right? Had I gotten some kind of ‘power-up’ from sleeping with her? Or was it more like leveling up? I had no idea—this had never happened with a woman before. But then, I’d never been an alpha before. Was that it? Did Carina have her own reservoir of points that I could now draw on? Did everyone have points or only supernatural beings? Was this part of the pack-bond she had talked about? Her life-force? I was sure I wasn’t hurting myself by spending points, but did that apply to her? Could I drain her by spending all her points? That wasn’t how it worked for me, but I think we’ve established that I’m not exactly the baseline.

Suddenly, I saw Carina slap herself.

“Hey!” I cried in a panic. “Stop that!”

“Relax,” she told me, getting up, the bedsheet flowing off of her body. Despite her beauty, my concern for her proved to be a better cold shower than my utter depletion before. “I’m just seeing if anything’s changed. I don’t feel any different…”

“What does not being lactose-intolerant supposed to feel like?” I snapped, a little put out over how she’d frightened me.

She was gracious enough to ignore the jibe, although she did cast a sour look my way. Speaking of points, I think I’d lost some with her. “Good point,” she said, her tone making it clear she didn’t appreciate my tone. “Get dressed. Let’s go test this out.”

“You don’t have any milk at home?” I asked her.

“Why would I?” she retorted. “You think I have a cat?”