Full Moon Fiancé

Mates and Dates

Diana had to admit that it wasn’t what she was expecting to hear. For a minute, she just stared blankly. She felt herself shake her head as if she had water in her ears, hoping to clear her mind. Finally, she said, “explain.” It was a question, in her mind, but she was surprised to hear it come out as a statement. A demand. And the Westerlys took it as such.

They hesitated, for a moment. It was Joshua who finally spoke up.

“Wolves usually shift by their 21st birthday,” he said. “You know, the first time that we… uh,” he looked to his parents for help.

“Yeah, no I know what you mean,” Diana said with an impatient wave of her hand. “Go on.”

“Well, I… didn’t.” He gave a small shrug, almost self-conscious.

“Shift?”

“Right.”

“And that meant you weren’t a werewolf?”

“Well,” Thomas said, “not definitively. Because he is. But we thought, at the time…” he exchanged a look with his wife. “Both Anna and I come from early shifting families. I had mine just after my 18th birthday, and Anna, just before her 18th.”

Anna nodded mutely. “Some shift as early as 17, rarely. And maybe a few shift as late as 22, very unusually. Around 19 is pretty average.”

Diana felt something shift inside her as she remembered, “You… asked me out just after your 22nd birthday,” she looked at Joshua. She remembered the moment like it was only yesterday, the day he had knocked on her apartment door, flowers in hand. He’d whispered that he had waited too long, loved her for too long, without action.

He nodded. “I didn’t ask you out before, because…”

“Because?”

“I wouldn’t have been able to… I can’t… it’s forbidden to date or marry a human,” he said finally.

“Exactly. Some exceptions are made for silly high school romance, of course.” Thomas said, waving a hand. “But once a wolf has his first shift, or when he’s of an age when it can be expected to come soon, he is expected to find his mate. Or choose a mate, if he goes that route.”

“Find… choose? Mate?”

“Most wolves have a predestined mate,” Joshua explained. “We can sense it in each other. Not every wolf does, though, and sometimes some wolves choose to mate with someone they don’t have the bond with, for love.” He looked down at his hands. “It’s more common lately to marry for love, but it’s easier to find your mate these days. Because it’s easier to travel. Some wolves date each other for fun, to pass time, so to speak, until they find their mates.” Anna pursed her lips across the table, clearly disapproving of that concept.

“Wait,” Diana held up a hand. “What about…” She looked at Joshua, and she knew he knew what she was asking before she even finished her sentence. He nodded.

“Evangeline is a wolf,” he confirmed. Evangeline Porter. Joshua’s college girlfriend. Diana had always been threatened by her, a little. She was poised and coiffed and had an energy about her that Diana had envied.

“She had… sorry, what’s the word? Shifted?”

“Yes, at 19,” Joshua said. “Well, at the time, when we met,” he paused, looking guilty. Diana remembered it well, that summer that the Westerlys had gone on a family vacation to Montana, leaving her to ‘housesit’, which all involved had known was simply a kind way of not kicking her out. “She had the mate sense, from me, you know.”

Diana remembered well the many excited text messages and emails Joshua had sent her over that long, lonely summer. She remembered how jealous she had been, because James had been able to go as well, his family being close enough to the Westerlys to be invited along. She had not. She remembered not fully understanding why he had seemed so sure, so suddenly, that she was the one for him. She remembered the pangs of jealousy.

“I see,” she finally said. “So when she broke up with you?”

“Yeah,” Joshua said, quietly. “She thought I was defective. That was the word she used.” He hung his head. Diana had never heard the full story of his break up with Evangeline. He had never wanted to talk about it.

“Well, of course, now we’ve had the last word,” Thomas said, a little smile playing on his lips. “It’s unusual, sure, but you did shift in the end. A wolf after all,” he clapped his son on the back. It was clearly meant to be a comforting gesture, but Diana could see that it did not provide Joshua with any comfort at all.

“And once Evangeline found out, of course, she could hardly wait to get back together with Joshua, I’m sure you can imagine. I think everyone involved is just lucky she had not chosen a new mate, really. She’s 26, after all. She was beginning to look like a Rogue,” Anna clicked her tongue judgmentally.

“Wait–” Diana sputtered. Joshua didn’t meet her eye, staring at a coffee cup with a pained look on his face. “Back together?”

“Of course, dear,” Anna said. “They’re mates.”

Diana felt as though she’d been stabbed through the heart.

“Mother,” Joshua said in a low voice. “I haven’t accepted her as my mate.”

“Well you ought to,” said Thomas in a reproving voice.

“She left me,” Joshua said. “I haven’t forgotten that, even if you have.”

“So… wait, are you two together, or not?” Diana asked, afraid though she was of the answer.

“Yes,” Joshua said, “I suppose we are, but I… haven’t decided yet if I want to make her my mate, officially. If I want to marry her.”

Anna rolled her eyes.

“Oh.” It was all Diana could think to say. “And that’s why you… pretended you’d died?”

“No!” Joshua’s voice raised. “I didn’t want to do that… that was, uh, unfortunate.”

“I don’t get it.”

“My car crashed that night because I shifted. Unexpectedly. Remember how I had been feeling strange for a few days beforehand? I didn’t realize it, but it was because my body was readying for the full moon. We always shift for the first time during a full moon. It was so strange… so painful. I had no idea what was happening. I thought I was dying. And then, the car crashed, and I staggered into the woods because… well it was so painful, I hardly knew what I was doing at all. Where I fell, where they found my clothes, that’s where I shifted.”

“Oh…” Diana said again.

“I ran. I didn’t know what else to do. I came here.”

“We were so happy, of course,” Anna cooed at her son. “But it created problems. Joshua had built a life. A human life. Not just you, but his ties to the community. We discourage that type of thing, you know. Unless there is a good reason, of course. We’ve had some politicians, some doctors, some bankers, naturally. Especially in the modern day, we work hard to appear just like humans. No one really gets to be a man of leisure anymore, everyone wants to know what you’re doing. Charity, work, school, something.”

“But I was too… entrenched.”

“That’s right,” Thomas said. “He was working at a human run law firm, he was engaged to a human, he was friends with humans… it was messy.”

“A human run…” Diana looked at Thomas, “your firm isn’t ‘human run’?”

“No,” laughed Thomas. “No, we hardly employ any humans. Most of our clients, too, are wolves. Best that way. Neater.”

“So, after we consulted with some other Elders, we just decided it was cleaner to have Joshua fake his death. Just here, just in this little town. Luckily, of course, our town has more wolves than average. Always has. A holdover from the days when so many worked in the gold mines we found,” Thomas said. “Evan– Chief Bernard– helped us set it up. A quiet affair. It freed Joshua up to go work elsewhere. In Montana, as general counsel for the bank Anna’s father runs.”

“I…” Diana didn’t know where to begin. “This is insane,” she finally said. “And James?” she asked. “His family? They’re wolves too?”

“Of course, dear. His family has acted as my family’s Betas for many years.”

“Betas?” Diana looked at Anna for a definition of the strange word she had used.

“Second in command, so to speak.”

“What, like, your family… runs things?”

“Some things,” Anna shrugged. “A pack in Montana. Illustrious. Old.”

“Pack?”

“Yes, we group together in packs. Some day, Joshua will be Alpha. James will be his Beta. For now, though, James works here. He is happier living with his family for as long as possible.”

“Well,” she hesitated, “if Joshua was not expected to be a wolf… then who would have been the next ‘Alpha’?”

“James,” Anna said. “Probably. Luckily we will never know for sure.”

“Is–” Diana’s voice cracked. “Is, uh, Evangeline still in Montana?”

Joshua avoided her eyes. “Yes,” he whispered.

Diana let her gaze rest upon the table. So many thoughts were swirling through her head, but one pushed its way to the forefront of her mind.

“So, I guess… what do we do now?”

“Now?” Thomas asked.

“Now that I know? What… I won’t tell anyone. Can’t you just… let me go?”

“No,” Anna shook her head. “Not just yet. My father is coming here from Montana. He will know what to do.”

“And in the meantime I have to…”

“You’ll just have to wait.”