Tara
“This proves the compulsory wolf mating program does not work for our girls, and it should have been stopped a long time ago,” my mother declared, speaking in the St. Ailbe pack’s highly bastardized version of High German as she, my twenty-three-year-old sister, Naomi, and I, put together supper at the wood cook stove.
“If anything, the problem has become worse since you left. I can no longer recall the last time one of our young she-wolves went into heat.”
“I cannot even recall how a she-wolf in heat smells, so it must have been a very long time ago,” Naomi commented while stirring the company cabbage.
“In my opinion, no she-wolf could desire these entitled few St. Ailbe boys who are treated as so precious by the adults only for the reason that they are boys.”
Naomi sniffed the pot, using her wolf senses rather than her taste buds to see if the sautéed cabbage, carrots, and green onion dish was done.
“I cannot imagine ever going into heat,” she said, taking the pot off the stove.
“About that, we will see,” both Else and I said at the same time and in the same knowing tone.
I laughed, hardly able to believe the thirteen-year-old sister I’d left behind was now a twenty-three-year-old young woman.
Nearly an old maid so far as unmated wolves in our pack town were concerned, but still more na?ve than most she-wolves my age.
According to our mother, Naomi had been punished by the old alpha for what I had done to Jacob—which had not only been a bad look for our pacifist pack, but also ended St. Ailbe’s alliance with Jacob’s Prince Edward Island pack.
No wonder Leora had never answered any of the letters I sent after what happened with her mate’s brother. Leora had sent quarterly check-ins to our mother to let Else know she and the granddaughter her side of the family had never met were fine.
However, there had to be some bitterness where I was concerned. I had given up on writing to my older sister years ago. But now wondered if I shouldn’t take a leaf from Valentina’s book and keep trying, even if I didn’t get a response.
And as for Naomi …
“You did put your name on the exchange list,” I reminded her.
“That matters not,” my sister said as she emptied the saucepan into a plain serving bowl. “I will go to Scotland only to see you wed. I care not for this exchange otherwise.”
Yeah, I had noted my sister was one of the few who’d abstained from the vote. Maybe Naomi really didn’t want to be mated. Or maybe after being so aggressively not matched by the pack alpha and then his son-in-law for so long, she’d fully accepted her role as St. Ailbe’s youngest spinster.
Either way, Naomi seemed much less excited at the prospect of going to Scotland than nearly every other young woman between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six in St. Ailbe.
“Are those peas done?” she asked, obviously wanting to change the subject.
“Yes, the super hard job you gave me is finished,” I answered with a sigh.
Just as when I’d been a teenager, the females of my family had easily fallen into conversation, stating our opinions to each other in ways we never would in the company of males.
And just like when I was a teenager, I had been given the overly simple task of shelling peas—an action I must have committed to muscle memory.
I’d been able to shell enough for everyone in under fifteen minutes.
“What are you making? A pea salad? I can do that,” I offered.
“Oh no, we would not want you to burn down the house,” Naomi answered, taking the bowl of fresh peas away from me. “Again.”
“I almost burned down the house one time,” I grumbled. “And pea salad doesn’t require a stove.”
“But the counter is close to the stove,” Naomi pointed out, her voice mean with sweetness. “I would not feel safe giving you this assignment.”
“Naomi …” my mother warned. But I could tell she was working hard to suppress a laugh even as she told her prodigal daughter that it mattered not.
This was the very last item to be prepared and Naomi could make the salad much easier and faster since she already knew where everything was stored.
“Tara, could you please for me wake Valentina from her nap? She will probably wish to wash up before supper.”
In the end, I decided not to protest since truth be told, my cooking skills hadn’t advanced much past the days when I’d been forbidden to go near the wood stove again after … wait for it … trying to heat up a simple pot of soup for a sick Else.
Also, I could see Magnus, Lachlan, and my father returning from the pack leader’s house after having spent the entire afternoon discussing how to get my plan off the ground.
“I will get her,” I offered.
And though waking Valentina was something that needed doing, my heart pounded with relief because it meant I could put off talking to Magnus for a little while longer.
After convincing the older woman not to reapply her makeup since it wasn’t the St. Ailbe pack’s way, I lingered with Valentina, standing in the doorway of the small upstairs bathroom as the older woman washed her hands.
“I suppose I should be grateful for the running water. I read some of the humans who live a lifestyle similar to your pack don’t even have that.”
Valentina seemed much less baffled by the St. Ailbe pack than she had previously.
She told me while waiting for Magnus and her ex-husband at the airport, she’d looked up and read a bunch of articles about the Amish and Mennonites, the two human groups our pack were descended from—or, some would say, culled from.
Packs like St. Ailbe’s were what happened back in the day when Amish and Mennonite communities needed a place to put newly made shifters.
Their gender imbalance used to lean in the opposite direction since accidentally getting bitten by a shifter tended to happen disproportionately to males.
However, after the introduction of cage changing for most Ontario werewolves, more girls were born within the St. Ailbe pack, and fewer males returned from rumspringa.
The problem of male attrition became especially pronounced after the introduction of smartphones and social media.
Which was why I found Faoiltiarn so hard to believe when I’d first visited last summer with Milly. It was incredible to me that there was a village very similar to my own, but with an overabundance of males, located thousands of miles away in the Scottish Highlands.
But despite a trip down the research rabbit hole, Valentina still had quite a few questions which I was more than happy to answer … and continue answering all the way downstairs.
We ended up being the last ones to the handcrafted oak dining table, made by my father after my mother’s second heat pregnancy increased the size of our family from four to five.
It had ten leaves and was extended out to accommodate tonight’s larger number of guests, with two chairs left empty between Magnus and Lachlan.
The outsiders’ side, I thought to myself as I dutifully sat next to my husband and bowed my head for a prayer led by my father.
Magnus’s mother carefully ignored Lachlan while we passed around plates of homemade bread, meatloaf, pickled beets, company cabbage, and of course, the pea salad.
“If I am understanding what has been told to me, you grew up as a non-wolf human in Africa, but somehow ended up here?” she asked my father.
“Yes, I am Ghanaian,” Danso answered. “My family sent me to Ontario for university.”
“That is a very long way to send a young man for schooling. Was your family well off, then?” Valentina asked in her blunt fashion.
Naomi’s eyes cut to our father, obviously curious to hear his reply. As was I.
Growing up, our father rarely talked about the time before he was baptized into the St. Ailbe pack, and much less about his previous life in Ghana.
In fact, I hadn’t realized Danso must be in Canada on a long-expired student visa until I went to apply for my own birth certificate with the human’s Office of the Registrar General.
“Yes, they were well off. Perhaps they still are. But that has nothing to do with my life now,” Danso answered with a humble smile. “In many ways, it feels as if my life did not truly begin until the night I became a wolf.”
“And how did that happen?” Valentina asked, leaning forward.
“I was on a camping trip with the Toronto University’s Christian Students group.
I woke in the middle of the night with the urge to use the toilet.
I can still remember admiring the beautiful full moon as I wandered a distance from the tents to do my business in private.
However, on the way back to the camp, I must have taken a wrong turn because I came upon a wolf tied to a tree.
I thought a cruel human had done this to the magnificent creature and I quickly attempted to release him but … ”
Danso shrugged his shoulders and let the listeners put two and two together.
“But it was a werewolf, wasn’t it?” Magnus said. “He was using the old First Nation’s trick to tie himself down in order to keep from wandering amongst the humans.”
“Yes, exactly,” Danso said, with a nod toward Magnus.
“I found this out the hard way during the next full moon. I thank God I was inside my own apartment attending to my bible study when my first change came upon me. I destroyed much of the furniture, but I did not hurt another soul. Because I knew nothing of what I had become, I had no knowledge of the existence of the Ontario pack, and I attempted to remain in the human world by hiding what I had become. Ironically, I used the same trick as that of the wolf who bit me and tied myself to a tree during each change. I thought myself all alone and worse, an abomination against God. But then I stumbled across Else at an Amish crafts fair. She was the first shifter I ever scented, and though I had no knowledge of mates, I immediately knew she was meant to be mine.”