“Funny,” she said, though the wicked glint didn’t diminish in her eyes. “They met someone there. A powerful werewolf clan.” She paused, the little demon, to let the ramifications of that sink into my skull.
Bronze sucked in an inhale and let out a strangled cough/laugh. “Bro, you’re so screwed.”
Moira turned her laser beam eyes onto him. “You aren’t safe either, little bro.”
Bronze sat up at that and narrowed his eyes at her. “The hell I’m not.”
She shrugged. “Tell that to Mom and Dad. You are all grown now and need to take a mate.” She pointed at me. “Especially you, Sterling. You’re the oldest.”
“I’m only 25,” I growled.
“Old enough for matrimony and procreation,” Moira said, a sweet smile on her evil face. “If you don’t have a wife within the next six months, Mom and Dad plan to enter into a betrothal agreement with an Italian clan.”
My fork clattered to my plate. “We are not living in the 1800’s!” I shouted.
“I don’t think it matters, brother. Betrothals are still done in clans today. They want you married and they want it soon.” Moira’s lips twisted in sympathy. “Therearea lot of nice girls here,” she said.
I shook my head and stood. “Yeah, well why don’t you marry one of them?”
Moira reared back as if I had slapped her. Perhaps I had. I was the only one who knew of Moira’s proclivities. Our parents, traditionalists at heart, would be appalled to know that Moira had no intention of bearing any werewolf children. The women within the family clans weren’t pressured as much to marry, simply because it was extraordinarily difficult to both sire a child and carry one to term. Research finally told us it was the male wolf who determined pregnancy and whether or not a child could be carried to term. The women were unfortunately just vessels. On one hand, this took a lot of the pressure off of the women. On the other, itwasa bit of a sexist way to exist.
I had yet to have any testing done on my “virility” as my parents preferred to call it. I wasn’t even sure I would submit to it when asked. The whole thing smacked of privacy invasion.
Bronze looked at me, then at Moira, a thoughtful crinkle forming on his brow.
We had no way to salvage this, so I left the table. Moira could live her life any way she wanted to, though I hated that she was smug about me being forced to marry. You would think someone with a secret like hers would be less inclined to gloat. I suspected she was secure in the fact I wouldn’t betray her. But tonight I’d came very close to it.
I rubbed the back of my neck as I made my way down the long hall and into my former childhood bedroom. I lived in an apartment downtown, but we all tended to stay here when our dinners were scheduled because, nine times out of ten, we stayed up way too late.
The room still bore the scratch marks on the wall from my first shift and I knew that behind the poster of Green Day was a hole in the wall, put there after my break-up with Patty Marshall, my first serious girlfriend. Serious as in she was the first one who ever let me put my tongue in her mouth. And the first one I’d ever gotten to second base with. She broke up with me over Tommy Harris, a foul-mouthed kid with fists the size of ham hocks. Apparently Tommy Harris had gotten a lot farther with Patty than just second base.
I snickered to myself as I picked my small duffel up from the floor and rummaged through it for a pair of flannel pajamas pants. The nights were cool here and my parents didn’t believe in splurging on heat. We were werewolves, they’d always say, we couldn’t feel the cold. That wasn’t quite true, though it did affect us a lot less than humans.
I slipped off my shoes and pulled off my sweater, leaving the white t-shirt on underneath. Sliding off my jeans, I put on the pajama pants and sat down on the edge of the bed. Moira hadn’t gotten too far in her gloating, but she didn’t have to. I couldn’t believe Mom and Dad were planning a marriage for me with a foreign clan I’d never even been exposed to. This had the potential to be a disaster.
But it was even worse for me to try to find someone willing to put up with me. I was 25 years old now. I guess everyone could change, but the problem was - I didn’t really want to. If I wanted to believe the Earth was flat or that aliens existed in Roswell and were being held in an underground lair by the government, I should be allowed to think that and not be judged. But every single woman I’d dated had been completely weirded out by some of my beliefs. So much so one of them brought me to the Midnight Cove Sanitorium and tried to have me committed against my will.
I didn’t even know we had a sanitorium here.
I flopped back against my pillows and laughed out loud as soon as I saw the glow in the dark stars still on my ceiling after a weird space phase I’d gone through during my teens. I clapped my hands twice to shut off the lights and let out a soft sigh as the soft neon glow illuminated the solar system above me.
All these years later. Still cool.
And I didn’t care who judged me about it.
