The Reluctant Mate

Epilogue Amanda

After experiencing a bizarre blood ritual by the light of a full moon, I adjusted well to my weird life as pack member mated to the beta of my not-so-misogynistic werewolf cult. I eventually did start working for the pack as the beta female, although I kept working part time off pack land, and my official title was administrative assistant for the pack construction company, because I couldn't very well put on my resume or tell my grandma that I was Glenshadow's beta female. She adored Porter upon finally meeting him and suggested that he'd make an excellent stripper if the construction business ever dried up. Grandma always did have good taste.

To my relief, Porter never did get in any trouble for killing Steven. I probably should have felt bad about the death, but I was just too glad he couldn't be a problem anymore.

And time went on, Glenshadow continued to grow, and at a certain point, werewolves and having a stubborn mate seemed normal. Whenever we weren't butting heads about stupid things, Porter and I were happy together.

Except, Porter wanted a baby. He never pushed me about it, he never brought it up, but he'd get this sappy longing look on his face when other werewolves or even humans touched on the subject, or when other people had kids around, or when there were babies in movies. He was bad at hiding it even though he tried to.

So one night I made—also called 'ordered in' by certain nitpicky people—a nice romantic meal, and I announced to him that I was going to be a terrible mother, after all, my mother was a terrible mother so it was probably inevitable, but if he was willing to compensate by not being a terrible father I was willing to produce one, singular, uno, lone, only child, because that way I wouldn't have too many people I could possibly screw up.

He was so happy he got a bit teary eyed, which he never ever did before that.

It took him something like ten seconds to get me pregnant once I was off the pill.

And then eighteen weeks later Samantha presented us with ultrasound pictures of two babies—which was twice as many as I had ordered. Since they didn't come with a receipt there wasn't much I could do about returning the extra, so I dealt with it. "It will be fine," the bastard who was my mate assured me while I panicked, grinning like he won the lottery.

Pregnancy sucked. I puked and was constantly exhausted. Porter sucked since he was extra clingy and overprotective about everything until I wanted to scream and throw things at him. Maybe I did throw one or two pillows or whatever at him. Who could say? My c-section also sucked, and recovering from it sucked the most of all.

But finally at the end of the most miserable nine months of my life, I got two baby girls and they only sucked as far as feeding was concerned. Alina and Clarity had strawberry blond hair and were adorably identical, which was a shame because they instantly got dubbed the 'beta twins' as if they were a set, rather than two distinct individuals. No matter how many times I explained my issue, the werewolves just didn't get it. Why wouldn't my 'pups' be perfectly fine with a group identity? They were twins of the beta pair, so why not call them that? Three and a half years later, and the werewolves still didn't get my issue with their collective mentality.

And that was the nice thing about my human friends. They understood where I was coming from and always called my children by their names like I wanted, as soon as I made my opinion known on the topic. Of course, they had no idea about my kids' status as offspring of a beta, but I had ensured that they weren't shoved out of my life by the secrets I now carried.

To that end, one beautiful summer night, Porter and I were having a barbeque in the backyard of the house he and some of the pack had built for us while I was pregnant. We were still on pack territory, so we had coordinated with Carrie about keeping anything suspicious away for a few hours. It wasn't that hard. Jason simply told the pack not to wolf out near our place, and they listened like the wolves they were.