CHAPTER 9
November 2015
Brandon, age 29
What a shitshow. I slammed the door of the empty house shut, it wasn’t like anyone was gonna complain. Hailey'd taken the kids to her folks', again. She's been doing that a lot lately. Ever since she'd found out about mates. A delegation from a neighboring pack was visiting this summer, so we had a pack barbecue to welcome them. They came in, and one of our she-wolves immediately jumped up and threw herself into their Beta's arms - legs wrapped around his waist, tongue down his throat, the whole production. Meanwhile, I was in the restroom helping Ben, so naturally my curious wife asked the she-wolves oohing and awwing whether these two were a long-distance couple, so the females told her no, they were mates who had found each other . Hailey wasn't clear on what they meant by that, so they “helpfully” told her about how every wolf has a soulmate who’s the other half of their soul, how when you meet them it’s instant, overwhelming love – you know, everything that I hadn’t wanted her to know. She was unusually quiet for the rest of the barbecue and I was none the wiser.
That night, once the kids were in bed, she glared at me and said:
“Brandon, tell me about mates. The truth this time.”
In that moment, I knew what it must be like to be part of an inevitable car accident, to see the semi going straight at you and to have nowhere to run or hide. So I bit the bullet for once. I asked her:
“What do you know so far?”
“I know every wolf has one, they're the other half of your soul, and you’re made for each other.”
“That's the gist of it. Do you have any specific questions?” I wasn't going to volunteer more rope to hang myself with. She didn't need to know about the scent or about the sparks. Or the incredible sleep that you'd never experience again unless close to your mate.
“Will you leave me once you find your mate, Brandon?” she asked in a small voice, one that I'd never heard from her in all the years we've been together.
“Listen to me, Hailey. We'll talk about this now and then we'll let it be, okay?” she nodded. “I've already met my mate,” she gasped at my revelation but I held a hand up before she could comment. “Just listen. I was 18 and she was 14, I knew she was my mate but she was a kid, right? So I left for college. By the time I saw her again, I was already with you, and you were pregnant with Ben.”
She briefly seemed lost in thought and then her eyes snapped up.
“When you went back home to sign that ridiculous contract, right before I gave birth to Ben?”
“That's right,” I confirmed.
“So why did you come back to me? What happened with... her? Your mate. What's her name?” Hailey, the lawyer, couldn’t stop collecting information.
“Well, I loved you, and you were having my pup. So I came back to you,” I tried to answer without answering.
“And her ?” she wouldn’t relent.
“Samantha,” I managed to say her name without letting it slowly dissolve on my tongue like a lump of sugar. “Well, she noticed I wasn't behaving how a mate should so she followed me to Chicago, and -,”
“Wait! How were you behaving and how were you supposed to be behaving?”
I was starting to see why Hailey got paid the big bucks. I scratched below my nose and looked away.
“You remember the couple from the barbecue today, the ones with the PDA?” she nodded. “Well, they're probably on their third round of sex by now, and that's just warm-up. They'll probably mark each other right away, too.”
“So you haven't slept with her?”
“I haven't,“ a half-truth.
“What is marking?”
“A mated couple will bite each other right here,” I traced a well loved part of her neck with my finger, right where it met her shoulder. “And that mark will never disappear as long as both of them live, it almost looks like faint scarring. It lets others know that a wolf is taken. Like a wedding ring tattoo.”
“Would you be able to mark me?” she asked, trying in vain to hide the hope in her eyes.
“No, Hailey. I can bite you, but it will just heal. The mark doesn't even stick for wolves who are not fated mates unless they are widowed, let alone humans. I don’t even know if anyone’s ever tried, to be honest,” I shrugged and she looked away before I could read her face.
“So why didn't you?” she asked somewhat bitterly and I stared at her blankly so she clarified, “mark her, sleep with her? Samantha ,” she spat the name.
I shrugged.
“I simply didn't want to. I loved you and only you.”
“What happens if someone doesn’t want their mate?”
“Nothing happens. I don’t think it’s a common enough occurrence to warrant something special happening.”
“Okay, thank you for once again emphasizing how uncommon this situation is,” she said sarcastically. “I meant, can you stop being mates with someone if you don’t want them?”
“Oh. No,” I shook my head vigorously. “There is nothing that can break the bond. Only death can do that.”
Her shoulders slumped a bit.
“The first time she saw you, did she jump you like the girl from today?”
“Yes.” There was nothing to add.
“Did you guys kiss?”
“We did. My wolf took over.”
“Does your wolf love her?”
“If she were here, he would want to be with her. That's as far as I understand him. It's not like he talks to me, I can feel his feelings a lot of the time, but that's it.”
“Do you love her?”
“For heaven's sake Hailey, I've spoken to the female once in my life. I've spent a total of 14 hours in her company. I feel nothing for her.”
“So where is she? How and why and when did she leave?” my wife left no stone unturned.
“Well, as I was saying earlier, she was suspicious and she followed me to Chicago. There she saw me living with you, and by the time I got back to the pack, she had left already, but not before telling my parents and the Alpha that I had gotten you pregnant and that we should be living in the pack because of our pup's future.”
“So she left you, ” Hailey narrowed her eyes. “Wait a minute, what were you planning on doing once you got back to the pack after Ben's birth, if she had still been there?”
And here is where I hesitated. Hailey and I had made plans for our life after the delivery, back when she hadn’t known what I was. I’d start work at the pack, we’d live somewhere close by while she was on maternity leave. Then I’d try to get the pack leadership to allow me to work remotely, at least half of the week. Right now, I didn’t even have a good lie ready for her. I couldn't even think of a good real solution, let alone a fake one so I went with the truth.
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“What?!?” she screamed.
“Do you want to wake the kids?” I hissed and that seemed to calm her a bit. “I have no idea what I would have done Hailey, it's God's honest truth. All I knew is that I wanted to be with you and Ben, but I had no idea how to go about it. In the end it all sorted itself out.”
She looked unhappy with this answer.
“Do you feel like your life is complete?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“A good one, Brandon. Answer me. I am wondering if you are regretting not being with your mate.”
“I love you Hailey, I love our family. I am happy. I don't need some mate bond when I have my one true love,” I gently kissed her temple.
“Have you seen her since then?”
“Never. She comes to visit her parents in the summer while we are in Chicago.”
“Who are her parents?”
“Her father is the pack enforcer, Fred Thompson. Her mom, Myra, works in the Alpha's office.”
“Our pediatrician's in-laws?!”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck, Brandon. Why haven't you told me any of this before? You should have told me. If I had known I would have... I don't know, I would have stepped aside, I would have let you be happy,” she blurted out.
“Now that is a lie, Hailey, and you know it.”
“No it is not! How would you even know!”
I sighed.
“Hailey, I can smell lies. I can smell fear, anxiety, arousal, anger even. It’s a shifter thing.”
She looked mortified.
“So you've known every time that I've lied to you?”
“Yeah,” I said tiredly.
“Even with the -”
“Even with the antibiotics, yes, Hailey. And I was over the moon. I was the happiest man alive. I wanted it all with you. And that hasn't changed.”
She looked away guiltily.
“Still, why haven't you told me before?”
“Well, before Ben's birth you had no idea I was a werewolf. And after you found out, it was just this huge information dump about the supernatural world and I didn't want to add onto it. And then one night you asked me about mates, do you remember?” she scoffed, of course she did. I’d lied to her that night.
“Well, I didn't want you to doubt our love. I didn't want this hanging between us. It may be cowardly, but our lives had already been disrupted so much because of me. Back when we lived in Chicago, I bet you’d imagined our future differently. Since you couldn’t have that, I wanted you to at least have peace of mind.”
“Well I don't, not now. This is huge, Brandon. You have an actual fucking soulmate out there! How can I compete against that? I'm not even a werewolf like you guys! How can I ever stop worrying about you one day regretting this?” now she had tears streaming down her face and the sight was heartbreaking.
“Hailey, baby, please stop crying” I was begging, desperate. “I have no intention of leaving you, ever, my mate means nothing to me. I've met her and I chose you. I will always choose you. You are my life. I can never regret my family, I can never regret you and the life that we've built over the last decade. I've known and loved you for 10 years, Hailey, that's more than a third of my life. How can you compare that to 14 hours spent with someone I never even wanted in the first place,” I could see the gears in her head turning as she was looking at this from every possible angle.
“Oh God what are we gonna tell our kids!!!!” she screamed and started pacing the room, still crying. “They'll learn about mates here, right?” she was chewing on her index nail now, meaning she was really anxious. The worst thing was, so was I.
Our pups... That was a touchy subject. When our daughter Hannah Bronwyn was born in January of this year, we’d organized a big party to introduce her to the pack and celebrate her birth. Fred came up to me and, in a low voice, said:
“I remember when both of my girls were born, there is nothing more disarming than your little female. They love their fathers, you know, they can often be closer to their dad than their mom. I hope little Hannah has a wonderful childhood, filled with love and happiness. And I hope that when the day comes when she meets her mate,” here I was gripped with indescribable horror and was almost too scared to continue listening but I had no choice.
Hailey was standing nearby, laughing with Luna Melanie, radiant with her new mother glow, smelling of sweet breast milk, as Fred menacingly continued: “I hope that bastard does to her what you did to my pup, and I hope her every tear and cry eats away at your soul like acid, knowing full well it's payback for what you did to someone else.” He then spat at my feet and left the party. The following weeks were some of the most agonizing of my entire life. I spent the nights awake, sitting in the nursery, rocking Hannah in my hands, crying and just whispering, “I'm sorry, please forgive daddy” over and over again, inhaling her beautiful cinnamon smell and trying my hardest not to imagine all the potential horrors and heartbreaks that my little female might have to face in her life.
“Yes, our kids will learn about mates, and if they ask we'll tell them the truth. That daddy loved mommy and that their love was stronger than any bond in the world,” I pulled Hailey into my body and felt her relaxing. When we made love that night, both of us were frantic, eager, frenzied and desperate in our coupling, trying to convince ourselves and each other that something between us hadn't broken beyond repair.