The Woodland Packs

“Yeah, well don’t think you’ll be the last, because I’m dying to taste her.”

Taylor grunted. “Me, too. So, what are we going to tell Bill and the other elders?”

I shrugged and kept walking, nodding to people as I went.

“I don’t know. I suppose we have to be honest about imprinting on a human. After all, it may be the way to save the entire pack.”

Jay nodded. “Yeah, I think it is. New blood. New wolves. A way for the pack to grow.”

We found our way to Bill’s house and regaled our tale of Claire and her fainting spells.

The old man’s eyes lit up like the fourth of July. I’d thought he might be disappointed that humans were the answer to our problem, but he wasn’t.

He shook our hands and thanked us.

In finding Claire, we may have saved our whole pack.

Chapter 6.

Claire.

“Mary,

I just don’t know what to think about all this. I’m sorry. I know you’ve grown up with it… but wolves! Honestly… I feel like I’m stuck in some vampire movie on the T.V.”

Mary Monaghan, Dexter’s mother, laughed good naturedly.

“Well, sweetie, unfortunately I have to tell you that I think you’re the strange one. Why wouldn’t you turn into a powerful wolf if you could?”

She grinned at me and I rolled my eyes.

She was right, of course. Everyone’s version of normal was exactly that. Their version of what they saw every day.

“How do you feel about mating with all three of them?” Mary suddenly asked me and I almost spat out my cup of tea.

I swallowed hard and then gasped for air. “How did you know? Oh, they told you.”

Seriously, they were worse than gossiping women.

Mary laughed. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. They’re proud to have you. But I do have to tell you that it’s new and different, even for us. Usually our mates and families are one-to-one. But then again, we’ve never had to make the boys group up into triads before. So maybe that’s how it happened.”

I cocked my head and concentrated on what she was saying. This could be important. “What do you mean?”

“Well, in the past, say when I was younger, most of us had mated by twenty-one. There were enough women for all the men. People rarely left the pack and we were a big enough lot to avoid too much cousin cross-breeding, or anything like that.”

I couldn’t stop the shudder that ran through my body. “Was that beginning to happen, though? Too much of the same bloodlines?”

Mary’s face twisted up a little as though she was thinking hard. “I… suppose. You know, I’ve never really thought about it, but you’re probably right. The actual true mate’s legend was becoming less frequent and some people were pairing up with cousins when there was no one left to mate.”

That often happened with small, isolated communities like this.

It was unfortunate, but nature always found a way around it.

“And the next generation bore only males?” I asked, confirming what had been said by Jay.

“Yes. Not a single female has been born in almost fifty years. I bore my husband four sons, and the rest of the pack contributed almost thirty-five boys.”

“And that’s why you made them group up into threes?” I re-iterated. I wanted to get this right.