Just a Wolf

Amelia

When I finally get control of myself, I lean back from Darlene, wiping my eyes and nose, thoroughly embarrassed. I just cried all over the Luna of Dominic’s pack. Ay-ay-ay.

“I’m really sorry,” I say, “I don’t know why I….”

She waves her hand as though to dismiss my concerns. “Don’t worry about it. If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, I totally understand why you’d be very emotional.” She smiles then, and shrugs. “Besides, it’s good practice for me. Getting cried on that is. I haven’t told very many people yet, but we’re expecting a baby. Most people in the pack don’t even know.”

“Congratulations,” I whisper, “I’m very happy for you. And I won’t tell anyone else,” I assure her. I am overwhelmed that she has shared this intimate secret with me. It makes me feel, more than ever, that I can trust her. She trusted me with her important personal news. I think I can trust her with mine.

She has been watching me, waiting for me to be calm enough to talk about it, and I know that I am now. But I don’t even know where to start. She helps me there, too.

“So,” she says, then waits a few seconds, and continues, “am I right? Are you actually mated?”

I nod, looking down at my hands. “Yes,” I whisper. “To Dominic.” I realize this is the first time that I have talked about him to anyone else, and it feels incredibly significant to me. I am feeling emotional again.

“When did it happen?” she asks, a tone of total puzzlement in her voice.

“At the Ball,” I tell her.

She stares at me uncomprehendingly. “You mean, two days ago?”

I nod.

“But you haven’t completed the process yet?” she asks, and I glance up to see that she is looking carefully at my throat, where Dominic’s sensitive spot is, but there is no visible mark there.

“No,” I say softly, looking down again.

“Well, why?” she asks, sounding like this is the most baffling thing she has ever heard.

“Oh, it’s just that Alpha Kanen found his mate at the same time, and I didn’t want to interfere with their moment,” I try to explain. It makes perfect sense to me. My mating isn’t important to anyone but me and Dominic. Kanen and Janine’s mating is incredibly significant to both of our packs.

She takes a minute to process this, as though it is very difficult to understand. I don’t know why, it seems very simple to me. Me and Dominic can’t get in the way of the leaders’ mating. We’re just wolves, just normal people. After a couple of minutes, she shakes her head. “I don’t understand, Amelia. How can you possibly be waiting? Don’t you feel the bond? When it happened to me and Ross, it was so overwhelming, nothing in the world could have kept us apart.”

“Well,” I point out sensibly, “he’s an Alpha. You’re a Luna. There’d be no reason for you to wait or try to stay apart. It’s different for us. I suppose we wouldn’t have waited if it wasn’t for Alpha Kanen finding his mate at the same time. They are important. We’re not.”

“Ahhhh,” she breathes out, as though finally getting what I’m saying. “You think… it’s because you don’t think your mating is important?” She looks aghast. “And instead of completing your bond, you’re planning the mating ceremony for someone else?”

I just look at her. “Well, yeah.” I don’t know what else she could possibly expect.

She sits back in her chair with a whoof. “You’re either the most selfless person I’ve ever met, or possibly the craziest,” she says, and it makes me laugh, and she joins me.

“I guess I’m crazy, then,” I say with a grin.

“But,” she says, growing serious again, “how can you stand being apart from him? The bond is an incredibly strong impulse, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a mated pair being able to resist staying together until they had completed the process. How are you not in pain right now?”

“You mean, here?” I ask, holding my hand to my chest. “Is that… normal?”

Her eyes seem to melt with sympathy. “You don’t even understand what’s going on, do you?” she asks.

I shake my head, and realize with relief that here is someone who might be able to explain some things to me, so that I won’t feel so confused and lost. We’ve been blundering through all right so far, but it would be a relief to have a little insight about what to expect.

“Listen,” she says, “why don’t you just tell me everything. I’ll try to explain anything that you don’t understand. I hate to think of you doing something so difficult, something so impossible, and not even knowing what exactly is happening.”

I want to tell her, I do, but I’ve gotten Dominic to agree to keep our secret, and I don’t want to cheat on that agreement. I hesitate.

“I promise you,” Darlene says, looking into my eyes earnestly, “I really won’t tell anybody else. I won’t even tell Ross. I just want to help you through this.”

I sigh, shakily, and feel my barriers tumbling down. I trust her, and if I learn something that can help Dominic and I get through this, I want to do it.

I nod, looking down again. “Okay.” She waits, and I try to think of where to even start. “It was at the Ball. I was smelling something so amazing, I was completely distracted by it. It was making me dizzy.”

She nods, knowingly. I can tell that she already knows exactly where this is going.

Or, maybe not, I think with amusement, remembering what happened next. “So I was in the ballroom, trying to figure out what that scent was, and then Alpha Kanen started storming right towards me, and I thought for just a second that he was coming for me.”

Her eyes are huge.

I laugh a little. “But it was just that I was standing right in front of Janine.” She chuckles, appreciating how amusing my mistake was. I continue, “He got to her, and they had found each other, and I wanted to be happy for them, but the smell was making me so dizzy that I started falling over and….”

I stop, remembering that moment so clearly. I realize that my hand is on my throat again, and that she is watching that with a quizzical look on her face. “And Dominic caught me,” I finish.

“How did none of us notice?” she whispers, as though she is talking only to herself, not to me.

But I answer. “Because everyone was watching Alpha and Luna,” I say, wondering how this isn’t totally obvious. “Who would be watching me? I’m just a wolf. We were able to sneak out, and I know that nobody saw us leaving.”

She nods, but she seems a little sad. “I’m sorry that you haven’t had any recognition.” Then a new look of understanding comes into her eyes. “Wait, it was your birthday too? You said that your birthday was the day we arrived?”

“Yes,” I say, “but that didn’t matter.”

“It does,” she says, a look of almost awe on her face. “You found your mate on your actual 18th birthday? That is possible, but think about how rare it is! To happen to be in the same place as your mate on the first day you are able to sense them. Especially being from different packs. It actually almost never happens. It is considered to be a special blessing of the gods, and an especially powerful mating.” She nods her head at me, like she wants to make sure I am understanding her.

“Um, okay,” I say. “I’m glad that we found each other.” She can’t be right about it being an especially powerful mating, though. I mean, we’re just ordinary people. My love for him is intense, and feels powerful to me, but the significance stops with us.

She seems to realize that she hasn’t convinced me there is anything special about me. Because there’s not, and I’m glad she drops it. “Where did you go?” she asks, getting back to my story.

“To my room,” I tell her.

“I guess I see why you wanted to keep it a secret, thinking the Alpha and his new Luna should take precedence,” she says. “But I really don’t understand how you managed not to mark each other. The instinct is so strong, I actually do not get how you resisted it.”

I smile and look down. “We almost didn’t.”

“But you found the strength anyway,” she whispers in a tone of awe.

Well, there’s more to it than that. It’s embarrassing, but I don’t want her to mistakenly believe that I have some kind of superhuman self control. “Um,” I say, hesitating, “it’s also because I’m not ready to… um… I’ve never… and he is being really patient, and we decided that we should wait to mark each other until we are also, um, having, er….” I trail off, too humiliated to keep talking.

Her forehead is wrinkled as she tries to figure out what I’m saying, but by the time I stop talking I think she gets it. “Ohhh,” she says, “you’ve never done that either, have you? Been, um, intimate?” Neither one of us apparently wants to actually use the word sex.

I shake my head. “That’s also very unusual,” she says. A feel a blush rise up my throat and burn in my cheeks, hitting Dominic’s spot with a tingle on the way. “No, please don’t think I’m criticizing you for waiting, Amelia,” she rushes to say. “I only mean that there is so much about your situation that is really unique.”

I shrug.

She continues, “You seem to think that you are waiting because you are so ordinary, but you really should understand that everything about this is extraordinary. You are actually very special. And I think your mating will be very special too.”

I look at her, somewhat dismayed. “But, I still don’t want anybody to know. Please. I really want to wait until after Alpha and Luna have finished their mating and their ceremony, then we’ll complete ours. Dominic agrees with me about this. He’s willing to wait too. We can do it.”

“But how?” she bursts out. “It must be constant agony to be apart, and it is only going to get worse the longer you wait.”

Oh. I hope not. “Well,” I say, “I think we’ve figured out how to control the pain.” My hand touches my heart, and then the spot on my throat, and her eyes track the motion. Then she looks up into my eyes questioningly.

“Um, we, sort of, almost marked each other, just enough to leave a little trace, just so that we can kind of feel each other. My wolf told me it helped the bonding process move a little further along.”

She gazes at me with amazement. “I’ve never even heard of that,” she says. “You figured that out for yourself?”

“Yeah,” I say, “and it seems to work. I haven’t been in pain since he did it. And I almost feel, I don’t know, better, or stronger, than I did before I met him. When he left this morning he said he was feeling good too.”

“Amelia,” she says, after just sitting and watching me for a minute or two in silence. “I have to apologize.”

I raise my eyebrows, surprised. “What on earth for?”

“For underestimating you. For being so condescending. For acting like you need my help understanding anything at all. When it turns out that you are in the middle of an incredible endeavor, doing something almost unheard of, and that you are figuring it out all on your own far more effectively than I ever possibly could have. It is amazing, and I am so impressed with you.”

I smile and look down, and don’t know what to say. But I really just want to giggle. She seems to think that what is happening is incredible, when it is really just Dominic and I getting through this together as best we can. I’m not special or amazing.

I’m just a wolf.