The Reluctant Mate

Epilogue Porter

My mate began explaining the whole deal about werewolves to her friends. Lisa had finally stopped talking and all four humans stared between my mate and my little wolf children with utter fascination while she talked.

"Sorry, Daddy. I couldn't not," Alina said.

"I know, sweetie. We'll handle it."

"Lemme down. Things smell so good, I wanna run."

"Not yet, Alina. We need to deal with the humans first."

"What's gonna happen to Lise and Darr and Carl and that other boy?"

"Nothing bad, I promise. You know we don't hurt innocent humans."

Alina's bright blue eyes bore into mine. Both our girls were too smart for their own good. They might not know what was going on, but they sensed that something was off. And they knew humans weren't supposed to know.

"I promise I'll protect them," I told her seriously.

She inspected my face carefully, and then nodded as if satisfied I was telling her the truth. "You will."

"I'm going to put you down now, but you can't run anywhere but the yard. I'll take you and your sister for a run as wolves later if you're good."

Her eyes lit up. "Okay! I promise!"

Amanda was still explaining away and her excitement washed over me through our bond. I wasn't surprised. All the secrets she had learned in her time amongst the supernatural had been piling up for years, like volcanic pressure. Mount Amanda was finally erupting.

"So anyway, all these other kinds of people are worried that humans'll annihilate them if we find out about about the supernatural world. I think it's because they all rely on their abilities too much, but humans don't have them so we use our brains to make a bunch of dangerous things instead, and if everyone knew someone would start making specialized weapons. Plus there's billions of us so we've got them outnumbered." She shrugged.

"I still can't..." Lisa said. She rubbed her hand across her forehead wearily.

"I know what you mean. Remember that time my grandma was sick and I stayed with her? Total lie. Actually I'd stumbled onto their wolfy secret and I was bullied into making excuses until they were sure I wasn't going to tell anyone."

"I see," Daria said in a tone that said the opposite.

"You did seem off," Lisa agreed. "But..."

Carrie and Jason came around the corner.

"Wait, are they werewolves, too?" Carl asked. He had moved over to stand by Daria with a protective stance I could respect considering his mate was pregnant. I liked him, he was a good guy.

"Basically everyone here is," Amanda said. "Except me."

"They didn't turn you?" Lisa asked.

"Nope, that's a vampire thing, not werewolf."

"Vampires...? Should you even be telling us all this?" Daria asked, her voice higher and more breathy than normal.

Amanda shrugged. "Carrie said I could. And you probably won't remember anyway."

Carl frowned. "We won't remember?"

Carrie interrupted. "Well, that's not necessarily true."

Amanda perked up. Our human friends looked varying degrees of shocked and worried.

"Humans can be allowed to maintain their memories if they are no longer classified as mundane." She fixed the four humans who were clumped together with a serious look. "You've got three choices. You can learn enough witchcraft to join their ranks, join a  pack, ours obviously, or have your memories of this night erased by our resident witch. If you choose to remember, you'll be brought into the accords and if you ever intentionally exposed the supernatural world you'd have to stand for the crime before the hunters."

Jason smoothly cut in. "But you don't have to decide this second. I'm sure you have lots of questions and need to think about your options for a while."

A number of bemused looks passed between the humans.

The scent of overcooked meat caught my attention. "Oh, shit," I said, hurrying back to the barbeque. It wasn't burned too badly, so I flipped it. Jason followed me. "Can they be trusted?"

"I think it'll be fine. I don't know Kevin as well as Neville, but he's a stickler for rules so he'll follow them if he agrees."

Jason nodded.

"Do you and Carrie want to join us for supper since you're here anyway?"

"Sounds good, thanks. Carrie was just saying she was craving barbecue, you know how they get when they're pregnant. We left the kids with Theodora though, I'll have to go grab them."

"Alina and Clarity will like that."

Jason briefly spoke to Carrie, who had been explaining some fine point of the accords to Kevin, then he headed off in the direction they had come. Amanda was very happily telling her friends stories she hadn't been able to tell them before.

"Yeah, so Porter's my mate, which means we're connected through some werewolf thing, and that's why I failed so hard at getting rid of him after that first night. Worked out really well though. I've got this mark thing," she moved her shirt to show her neck as she spoke "and it gave us this sort of almost psychic connection. Pack's the same idea. Oh! If you join, we'd be able to do that, too. Wild!"

"Think I need a drink," Lisa said with a groan.

"Sure, but stay away from the fairy juice."

"Fairy juice...?" Daria repeated, her voice a bit shaky.

Meanwhile, my twins were running around the backyard in their new wolf forms.

This barbecue was a disaster, but I couldn't even care. I had my mate, and my girls. And I was so proud, they could shift. Not that I wasn't proud of them before, but we'd never been sure if either of them had wolves since they were only half werewolf. Half-wolves didn't always inherit the ability. But my girls had, and so young. My smile kept slipping out no matter how hard I tried to keep it hidden.

"You seem happy," my mate commented as she came up to me. "Everything's in chaos and here you are standing around smiling like you've gotten everything you've ever wanted."

I could have argued that she looked just as happy that she'd gotten to explain everything to our human friends tonight, but I decided to just let her have it.

"Well, I have gotten everything I ever wanted. You're here, and our girls clearly have wolves. And they even shifted younger than a lot of regular wolves. You know I would love them no matter what, but..."

Amanda wrapped her arms around me and watched our daughters rolling around. Even in wolf form it was clear Clarity was the calmer one. "You do know, this makes them your problem now. I'm just a mere human, I can't possibly manage two little werewolves."

"You manage werewolves just fine, Amanda. I think you were destined for it."

She rolled her eyes and sighed, but only held me tighter.

She was right. I did end up with everything I ever wanted, and it just took a ton of patience to get there.