She shakes her head. “It’s not about that. I just...you know you shouldn’t get close to her. Especially not so close to the full moon. Your brothers understand this, I don’t know why you have such a hard time with the notion.”
I think my mother just implied I’m a slut, but that’s somehow not what I have a bone to pick with.
I try not to roll my eyes. “What are you afraid of? That I’ll run away with another human? Ruin Logan’s wedding with my drama?”
“Coyotes,” she answers coolly, holding me in her gaze. “People getting hurt, you included. Hard as that may be for you to believe.”
She doesn’t want to see me go feral. I know that means she’s concerned for my safety, my sanity, my well-being. But it’s hard to feel the warmth in that sentiment. I know how easily it becomes a tool of control.
I meet her eye as I shut the laptop. “Except, I’ve been out in the world, far from my pack. I’ve lived years without one. I haven’t gone feral.”
“Would you even know? There weren’t any animal attacks here until you showed up again,” she says, her voice terribly quiet and full of emotion.
Her words strike a little fear in me, and I try to conceal it.
“You do have a number of other coyotes running around, you know. While it’s a lot of fun being the disappointment child, I think maybe you could let someone else have the honors for a bit,” I reply, fighting against the urge to snarl and snap.
“Your brothers, Laura, they have all stayed here. They use the brewery’s basement during the full moon instead of leaving it to chance. The pack bonds keep them safe.”
Her stare is hard. She’s so convinced this is the only way to look out for her children.
I sigh, and step back. This is the same conversation we had ten years ago, when she begged me not to move away, and then a couple years later, when she wouldn’t hear of me bringing home the girl I’d met and wanted to introduce to everyone. The conversation we had a million more times when I married Elise.
I wish I was surprised that time hasn’t altered even a little of her position on this.
I chew on my lip. I’m sure she would be overjoyed to learn that I’ve found my mate somewhere in this town. But I’m not exactly ready to provide how I know that either, until I’ve figured out exactly who it is.
Telling her would be giving in. I’ve held this stubborn position that I know what’s best for me for years, and I’ve paid the price of exile for it. Giving her the satisfaction of being right isn’t something I’m ready to do.
The thing is, I couldn’t care less about going out and finding my true mate right now. Not when Elise is in the house.
Turning away, her words are aimed at my back. “Having a wolf mate would keep you safe—”
“Mom. Stop it. We’re just going in circles on this.”
She steps back and lets me leave, but says quietly, “I’ll put in a word with St. Michael for you.”
My teeth gnash together, but I don’t say anything. That was how all our old arguments used to end, before I stopped talking to my family almost completely for a while. She was always lighting candles in my name at her parish and letting me know. Maybe it was her way of saying she still cared, but it felt just as much like a barb.
I don’t believe in the church anymore, the teachings, any of it. It was hard to separate the ways it tangled with my wolf, the net I was ensnared in.
I’ve sat through many masses, but there wasn’t ever any specific sermon about what a mate was. Sure, the church made a specific point to emphasize the sacrament of marriage, the importance of having children within that marriage, and raising them in the teachings of the church. I don’t know how it took me twenty-five years to realize how culty that sounds.
At home, the conversation connected our wolfish halves with its messages, impressing on us the need for a strong pack.
But I’d been working through the frayed edges of its web for years now. I knew reciting Hail Mary’s didn’t relieve the excess anxiousness the full moon brought on, but running did. Perhaps what a mate was didn’t exist only in the context of God and religion. Maybe it could exist separately.
Like I’m going to just find the meaning of what a mate is to me out in the woods, I scoff to myself.
My feet carry me automatically back toward my old room, a muscle memory about as old as I am. The hallway is darkupstairs; it feels musty and uninhabited as I make my way through it and nearly jump out of my skin when I realize Elise is there, standing in the shadows.
Is no room in this house safe from her? I’m not going to survive this.
“Holy shit,” she squeaks, jolting back a step, clutching an armful of plates to her chest. They rattle together, but louder still somehow is her heart rate, picking up dangerously fast.
It makes my pulse quicken as well. It’s not that I haven’t been able to hear hers before, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as keenly tuned into it. It’s always just been in the background.
My every sense feels more precise around her. In the same way I can hear enthusiasm in my brothers’ footsteps when they stomp down the stairs, or annoyance in the quiet, steady gait my mother walks with, I know what sort of mood Elise is in just by breathing. She has an intoxicating sort of heat to her, the sort of warmth you feel in the back of your throat after a sip of whisky.
