I’m speechless for a moment, then manage to collect myself enough to continue. I can’t get any more embarrassed than I already am, so I figure I might as well lay all the cards out on the table. “I also heard,” I continue, hesitantly, “that sometimes you mate when...your men are in wolf form...and your women are in...human form.”
They both stare at me blankly, their mouths agape.
Finally, Jarod turns to Diana, an incredulous look on his face. “Would that even be physically possible?”
Diana continues to stare at me. “That’s ridiculous,” she spits out, her tone clipped.
“Some interesting conversations you’ve been having with the morally upstanding girls of Gardneria,” muses Rafe, grinning widely at me. I shoot him an annoyed look.
“Let me guess,” he speculates. “Did that one come from Echo Flood?”
“Fallon Bane,” I admit.
“Figures,” he says, chuckling to himself.
“What other rumors have you heard about us?” asks Diana. “That last one was very creative.”
“I really don’t want to offend you,” I say.
Diana waves her hand in the air dismissively. “Your people’s ignorance reflects badly on them, not on us.”
“I was told you mate in front of your entire pack.”
Again the blank stares.
“That’s just simply untrue,” said Diana, sounding truly offended for the first time.
“Mating is a private thing,” Jarod adds, looking at us like we’re foolish to need this explained.
“Where would they get such ideas about us?” Diana asks, perplexed.
“I think nudity gets our people’s minds going off in all sorts of strange directions,” offers Rafe.
“Well,” says Diana with a sigh, “I’ve heard lots of fantastic rumors about your people, as well.”
“Like what?” I ask, curious if hers are as colorful as ours.
She leans forward, her voice low. “I heard that you force girls as young as thirteen to choose a mate.”
“That’s actually true,” I say, thinking of Paige Snowden. “It’s called wandfasting. It’s a magical way of binding people together as future mates. It creates the marks that you see on the hands of most of the Gardnerian women here. Sometimes the girls are quite young.”
Jarod and Diana stare at me gravely.
“But you can’t possibly be old enough at thirteen to choose your life mate,” counters Diana, shaking her head.
“They’re chosen for you, usually,” I clarify, thinking of Aislinn.
Jarod and Diana glance at each other, disapproval written all over their faces.
“But what if you don’t love the person? What if you don’t care for their scent?” Diana seems greatly upset by the prospect of such a thing. “Do you still have to mate with them?”
“Well, yes,” I say, realizing how awful this must sound to her. It is awful.
“That is truly terrible,” murmurs Diana. She glances at my hands then Rafe’s. “Yet neither of you are fasted.”
I share a quick glance with my brother. “My uncle wants us to wait,” I tell Diana. “He thinks we should be older.”
“You absolutely should,” Diana states with an emphatic nod.
“I heard that your men mate with seals...even if they have life mates,” Jarod blurts out.
Diana turns to her brother, a mortified expression on her face. “Jarod!”
“That’s what I heard,” he says, shrugging his shoulders defensively at her.
Rafe sighs. “Some of our men do this. The seals are called Selkies, and they can take human form.”
“What?” I choke out, really shocked. “Aunt Vyvian told me people kept them as pets.”
Rafe cocks an eyebrow and shoots me an uncomfortable look. “They’re not pets, Ren.”
Disgust washes over me as the obscene truth of things falls into place.
“This is very sordid,” mutters Diana, embarrassed for us. “Perhaps these shocking things would not come about if you mated at a reasonable age with people you care deeply for, like we do. This is very unnatural, the way you mate.”
“There are happy Gardnerian couples,” I counter defensively. “My parents loved each other very much.”
“Which is why you and your brother have good morals, unlike the others of your kind,” Diana states emphatically.
“What happened to your parents?” Jarod asks softly, catching my past tense where Diana did not.
“They died when we were very young,” I reply, staring down at my tea. When I glance up, Diana’s face is filled with sadness.
“I am so sorry to hear this,” she says.
I just shrug, momentarily at a loss for words and suddenly aware of how late it is and how tired I feel. I think about my quilt and how much I wish it was still here so that I could wrap myself up in it. Diana’s hand gently touches my arm.
“You must come home with us the next time we visit our pack,” she says, her voice kind. “They would like you very much. I think you would find many friends there.”
I’m startled to find my eyes filling with tears. Blinking them back, I struggle to maintain my composure. “Thank you,” I say, my voice cracking as I keep my eyes focused on my mug. “That’s very kind of you to offer.”
Diana gives my arm a warm squeeze before releasing it. I look up at her, her face an open book like her brother’s, devoid of guile. Aside from the uncomfortably blunt questions about mating, I have a sudden feeling that I would actually like Diana’s people.
*
“It seems as if we may have been mistaken about them,” Aislinn tells me a few evenings later as we sit on a bench outside, staring up at the waning moon and discussing the Lupines. We pull our cloaks tight around us as a cold breeze rustles the dry autumn leaves clinging to the tree above us, our heavy book bags on the ground next to us.
“I know,” I agree.
“But really, Elloren,” she says, “some of their behavior. It’s still...really shocking.”
“But not evil, really.”
Aislinn is silent for a moment, considering this before speaking again. “But I just don’t understand. I overheard my father telling my mother about the Lupines once. The Mage Council sent him on a diplomatic mission to the Northern packs. While he was there, a male Lupine suddenly announced to the entire pack that he was going to mate with one of the females, and then he just...well, he dragged her out into the woods. Why would my father say something so shocking if it wasn’t true?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, my face tensing at the puzzle.
“Maybe the Northern packs are different,” Aislinn says hopefully. “Maybe Jarod and Diana’s pack is more moral.”
“Perhaps.”
“I just can’t imagine Jarod doing something so shocking.”
I look back up at the moon, small gray clouds drifting lazily around it.
“You know,” Aislinn furtively admits, “Jarod gave me a poem today. About the moon.”
I’m not surprised by this. What began as a small trickle of stealth correspondence in Chemistrie lab has quickly become a steady stream, so much so that Diana flat-out refused to be a courier. Instead, she and I rearranged ourselves so that Jarod and Aislinn could have the aisle seats.
Aislinn opens one of her stealth books, fishes a neatly folded piece of paper out of it and hands it to me. I open it and read Jarod’s flowing script by the thin lamplight.
It’s a poem about loneliness and yearning, the moon a bright witness to it.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell her as I refold it, feeling as if I’m intruding on something private.
“I know,” she acknowledges, her voice dreamy, far away.
“Aislinn,” I venture with some hesitation, “I saw you and Jarod together. In the archives last night.”
They were sitting, a book open before them as they huddled together, their heads and hands almost touching. They seemed oblivious to the rest of the world, enthralled with each other, both of their faces lit up as they talked in animated, hushed tones. Unable to hold back their shy smiles.
Aislinn blushes and looks down at her lap. She shrugs. “I guess we’re becoming...friends of sorts. Strange, isn’t it? Me. Friends with a Lupine.” She looks up at me. “It’s all perfectly innocent, you know. Jarod’s family is bringing him to visit the Northern packs this summer so he can look for a mate, and he knows I’m about to be fasted to Randall. We’re just...friends.”