The Reluctant Mate

Amanda

After the bizarre blood ritual, I adjusted well to my life as mate to the beta in my not-so-misogynistic werewolf cult. I eventually did start working for the pack as the beta female, although I kept working part time off pack land, and my official title was administrative assistant for the pack construction company because I couldn’t very well put beta werewolf mate on my resume. Porter never did get in any trouble for killing Steven, and I was relieved. Time went on, the pack grew, and at a certain point, werewolves seemed normal.

Whenever we weren’t butting heads about stupid things, Porter and I were happy together.

Except Porter wanted a baby. He never pushed me about it, he never brought it up, but he’d get this sappy longing look on his face when other werewolves or even humans touched on the subject, or when people had kids around. He was so bad at hiding it even though he tried to.

So one night I made—also called ‘ordered in’ by some picky people—a nice romantic meal, and I announced to him that I was going to be a terrible mother, after all, my mother was a terrible mother so it was probably inevitable, but if he was willing to compensate by not being a terrible father I was willing to produce one, singular, uno, lone, only child, because that way I wouldn’t have too many people to screw up.

He was so happy I thought he got a bit teary eyed, which he never ever did before that.

It took him something like ten seconds to get me pregnant once I was off the pill.

And then eighteen weeks later Samantha presented us with ultrasound pictures of two babies—which was twice as many as I had ordered. Since they didn’t come with a receipt there wasn’t much I could do about returning the extra, so I dealt with it. “It would be fine,” the bastard who was my mate assured me while I panicked, grinning like he won the lottery.

Pregnancy sucked. Porter sucked—he was extra clingy and overprotective about everything until I wanted to scream and throw things at him. Maybe I did throw one or two things at him. Who could say? My c-section also sucked.

But then I got two baby girls and they only sucked as far as feeding was concerned. Alina and Clarity, strawberry blond, and adorably identical, which was a shame because they instantly got dubbed the ‘beta twins’, as if they were a set, rather than two distinct individuals. No matter how many times I explained my issue, the werewolves just didn’t get it. Why wouldn’t my ‘pups’ be perfectly fine with a group identity? They were twins of the beta, so why not call them that? Three and a half years later, and the werewolves still didn’t get my issue with it.

And that was the nice thing about my human friends. They understood where I was coming from and always called my children by their names like I wanted, as soon as I made my opinion known on the topic. Of course, they had no idea about their status as offspring of a beta, but I had ensured that they weren’t shoved out of my life by the secrets I now carried.

To that end, Porter and I were having a barbeque in the backyard of the house he and some of the pack had built for us while I was pregnant. We were still on pack territory, so we had coordinated with Carrie about keeping anything suspicious away for a few hours. It wasn’t that hard. Jason simply told the pack not to wolf out near our place, and they listened like the wolves they were.

Lisa and Daria sat with me in lawn chairs, while my girls coloured at a little plastic table and my mate cooked and drank beer with my friends’ significant others. Daria had met a guy named Neville and they were happily married and expecting their first child in a few months. Lisa had a new-ish boyfriend named Kevin who she thought might be the one. Neither of their guys were as hot as Porter, but that was probably an unfair standard to hold them to.

“Mmmhmm, and I’m going with blue and earth tones for his room, and maybe an underwater theme,” Daria said, readjusting herself in the chair as Vier leapt up into her lap, begging for attention. The black furred cat meowed for Daria to begin petting her. The guys laughed about something in the background. Who knew what boring stuff they were talking about?

“I can picture it,” Lisa agreed, taking a long sip of her drink.

Clarity finished what she was doing and came over to me and crawled up into my lap. She was our quiet analytical one, and a total mommy’s girl.

On the other hand, Alina was rambunctious and artistic all at once, pure creative destruction. She was too busy and independent to be anyone’s girl—except maybe her sister’s. She was furiously colouring her paper, and then she stopped, and looked over at her father with a strange, distant expression on her cherubic features. “Daddy?”

Porter’s attention instantly snapped to her. He was as obsessively protective of Clarity and Alina as he was of me. But it was cute when he did it to them.

He stepped forward, but he was too late. His concern and realization washed over me through our connection, and I figured out what was happening right after he did. Alina’s body bent in an unnatural way, reshaping itself into her new canine form and she whined loudly. She strained and reformed, clothes ripping. My poor baby, Porter had told me that first shifts were the most painful.

“What’s wrong with Alina!?” Daria asked, eyes wide and hand over her mouth. Her eyes flew to me as if I could provide some sort of reasonable explanation for what was happening. Fier meowed in protest that Daria’s hand had stopped moving, completely used to and unconcerned about shifting. She’d seen it all before.

Lisa was already on her feet, trying to help and saying words that no one was hearing, but Porter was faster, picking up Alina and trying to cover her shift from my formerly happily ignorant human friends.

And then Alina was an adorable little wolf. And my other precious little one, who had been watching her sister curiously from the safety of my lap, started the same process, even faster than her sister. There was no time to even try to hide what had happened. I just ran my hand along where my baby’s hair had been replaced with fur and tried to think of some good lie to cover it.

Daria was gaping at Clarity, Lisa was babbling incoherently, and both their men—who had followed Porter over from the barbeque pit to see the source of the commotion—looked like they were in shock.

“Uh, Carrie? We’ve got a problem.”

“What is it?”

“Alina and Clarity shifted. At our barbeque. In front of our guests.”

“Oh. Okay. We can handle this. I’ll talk to Jas—oh never mind, he’s here, Porter must have already told him. Okay, we’ll work it out. Just keep them there and relatively calm. If you have to explain the truth, that’s fine.”

I took a deep breath and looked over towards my mate, who was trying to stop Alina from squirming from his hold and told him firmly. “We are not locking my friends up in a trailer.”

“Why would we?”

“Uh, remember—”

“Extenuating circumstances. And it was one time. And—”

“That’s not what Carrie says...”

“Is this really the time for this?” he asked, and then he smirked like he didn’t even hear his own words. “They shifted really early for half wolves.” He radiated so much pride it would probably give me cancer.

“Seems like it. Yay.” We’d have to train them to hide it now. That would be fun. Clarity wouldn’t be a problem, but Alina would probably want to join a pack of wild wolves.

But there was a more urgent problem. I turned to my friends.

Lisa was still talking nonstop. “I’m obviously dreaming. I must be dreaming. Your children turned into dogs, Amanda. Dogs!”

“Wolves, actually,” Porter corrected, as if that was what mattered right now.

I cleared my throat to gain everyone’s attention. “Yeah. Now I know this seems a bit weird, but let me tell you a few things you’re not allowed to tell anyone...”