Werewolf Wedding (17 page)

“You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s Dane, he’s... well, I hesitate to say monster, so I’ll go with ‘headstrong to a fault.’”

I took a big gulp of the extremely strong black tea she’d handed me, which got another little smile. “You can handle your caffeine,” she remarked. “Jake gets jittery after a cup and a half.”

“Oh I’m jittering. I just have a deathgrip on the tablecloth so you can’t tell.”

“To the point,” Greta said, “because we’re going to have a gaggle of hungry wolves starting to get cranky in a few minutes unless I get this food out to them.”

When she mentioned it, I
had
noticed the growing din from the other room. Ever since Dane and his idiot brigade left, it seemed to calm down for a time, but they were starting to get cranked up.

“The fact is you didn’t mark him back. Right?”

I tilted my head slightly to the side. “Like bite him?”

She laughed louder than I expected, which surprised me enough to snort a little tea up into my nose.

“That certainly is one way,” she said, dabbing at the corner of her left eye with her napkin and taking away a tear. “A very base, brutish, obnoxious way of doing it. Which is probably exactly the sort of thing Dane loves. But no, marking is just our way of marriage. It’s a very solemn oath that is usually followed by an absolutely astonishing amount of alcohol.”

I giggled at that too, partially because I could really use that astonishing amount of alcohol right about then. “Well, then no, I didn’t do any biting or any swearing of oaths. He just made me agree.”

She took my hand, massaging my palm with her papery, but surprisingly powerful fingers. “Well, his forcing you is a very good thing. I mean, not that it’s good, but since he chose not to follow the traditions, which
of course
he didn’t, because he never has, Dane won’t have a leg to stand on if this ever goes to a pack council.” Suddenly, she looked away, though held tight on my hand. “I’m so sorry this happened. It’s my fault, after all. I’m the one who pushed his father to take Jacob over Dane as heir.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t do any of this – Dane’s the lunatic. You just did what you thought – what
was
– right. How could you feel sorry for that?”

She took a deep breath. She took another. With long, measured breaths that rattled a bit in her lungs when she exhaled, Greta calmed her nerves, and took another sip of tea. “Thank you,” she finally said. “But the guilt I feel is in my heart. In my soul. Until he either realizes what he’s doing, or...”

“He will,” I cut in. “I know it sounds either stupid or crazy, or maybe both – but in between his bouts of megalomania and wild ambition, he’s not really like this all the time. When he’s alone, he’s more calm and reserved. He worries, he questions himself.”

She laughed. “If only he’d indulge in self-doubt over trying to reignite a fire that’s been burned out for as long as,” her eyes and her thoughts wandered. “Well, a long time, at any rate.”

“What
did
happen?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I have heard both of them talk about wars, or clans... packs, whatever. I’ve heard them talk about stuff that honestly sounds like it came out of a fairytale.”

With a gentle patting of my hand, Greta drew her thin lips into a crooked smile. “That you think of them as fairytales should tell you how well we’ve been hidden.”

“I never thought about it like that,” I admitted. “Of course, with how weird my head has been this last few days, I haven’t thought about very much except trying to keep the thin, broth soup Dane feeds me in my mouth instead of on my shirt.”

She shook her head again. “He is a savage in the truest sense of the word. Our people – the lycans, werewolves, whatever you want to call us – have had a past much longer than yours. There’s not much known about where we came from, or why we have the wolves inside us, and the reason we do
not
know is because of the wars Dane wishes to restart.”

“But why?” I asked. “I mean, if there have been all these things lost, and all these problems because of... okay I’m gonna need like the super-remedial version of all this. Give me some context – how long ago are we talking?”

With a blank look on her face, Greta shook her head. “We simply don’t know. There are some elder storytellers who talk about wolves being old when the pyramids were young, but as far as specifics go, we have nothing. All we know is that our people are older than yours, and we’ve never exactly gotten along.”

“Big bad wolf, three little pigs, all that?”

She nodded. “The beast of Bordeaux, unexplained kidnappings, assassinations and deaths the world over. We might not be very good at wrangling our own children, but if there’s one thing wolves
are
true wonders at, it’s manipulating human politics. Your president is—”

I put my hand up to stop her. “Nope! Nope, not that. I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough, but for now let me be the kid in sixth grade who still believes in Santa because I want to, not because I’m dumb.”

“Very good,” she said with a jollier laugh than before. “Although all I was going to say is that some of them have known about us, but this one doesn’t. But the point is, we’ve always been here, always been in and around human affairs. But – and this is what Dane doesn’t understand – we were hunted almost to extinction.”

My jaws just about hit the table. “Big bad wolf?”

She smiled again, very sadly this time. “Those damned fairytales. Those Grimm boys, they really had it out for us. The story goes that one of them lost a girlfriend to one of us, or maybe it was a wife – and by ‘lost’ I mean ‘the woman picked the wolf’ and nothing involving killing or eating.

“Okay, stop right there. Wait just a second. You’re telling me that The Brothers Grimm, all the stuff they wrote about werewolves weren’t
actually
folk tales? They just made it up to get back at werewolves for stealing their girlfriend?”

“Oh, to be sure,” Greta said, “a great many of those were actually popular fables. But as you said – the ones about the wolves? Quite invented.”

I sat back in my chair and slid down until my head rested on the top of the wide-backed rest. “I’m not sure why I even care this much. I mean those stories never had any effect on my life, I wasn’t some kind of Grimm super-fan or anything, but... Jeez, that sorta makes me question the rest of history.”

“As you should. But before that, long before that, we’d gone into hiding. We had our packs and our own politics to worry about. Human affairs became too messy.”

“This is all starting to make sense.”

“Why’s that?”

“Dane,” I said, “with all his anger and ridiculousness about not wanting to be in the shadows anymore. He says it so dramatically... how wolves should be kings, and not peasants, that kind of business.”

She sighed. “That does sound like Dane. There have been other attempts to overthrow pack rule and do what he wants. They invariably fail though, because so many of us are so comfortable.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming on.”

Greta nodded. “Anymore, that comfort isn’t the case. After all, even though we prefer to pretend humans don’t affect us, it isn’t true. Just as how it isn’t true that the Grimm stories don’t affect you. If not for that...”

“Oh God you’re right.” My stomach twisted into a knot. “I guess everything is connected if you think about it hard enough.”

“When you get to be my age, you sure don’t see many coincidences, if I’m certain about anything, it’s that.”

In the living room, someone was shouting “say ‘pecker’ damn it!” at the television, which was far more excited than I’ve ever heard anyone be about Family Feud outside of my visits to my auntie Belgia at the rest home. I guess the person in question said something at least as funny as ‘pecker’ because the entire gang in the living room exploded with laughter.

“But,” Greta said, dragging my attention back from the hell of mid-day gameshows, “if there are no coincidences, then you’re not one, either.”

“What part could I possibly have to play? I’m just a college dropout who barely makes a living crafting gaudy yard art and carving dolphins out of chunks of ice,” I said, sounding more dejected than I’d intended.

“Wait, you know how to do that?” Greta’s eyes absolutely flared to life. Their normal stony gray started sparkling, dancing in the pleasant light from the overhead lamp. “With the dolphins? I just can’t get enough of watching those contests on late night sports channels. The rest of my family embarrasses me with all their reality programs, but I could watch people carve ice sculptures all day long.”

To say I was taken aback was a comical understatement. “Well,” I said, “yeah.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “I pretend I’m a very artistic sort of person, and I guess I am, but the ice sculptures are how I make most of my money.”

“Could you do a wolf?”

I choked slightly on my tea. “Well, sure, if I had a picture to go by. Dolphins are easier though because they’re flat. No fur to texture.”

Greta nodded slowly. “Very good. So you’ll do one for the marking? Or, wedding, whatever it is you want to call it?”

She must have noticed my eyes widening, because she caught herself. “Oh no, no, I mean the
real
one. When Dane is no longer an obstacle, you’ll have to follow the traditions of the pack with Jacob.”

“Do those traditions include gaudy statues?”

“Oh honey,” Greta said with a chortle, “you’ve seen those shirts with the wolves howling at the moon? We invented those.”

As we both laughed, I vaguely realized that the living room crowd had gone silent. The only sounds I could hear from out there was Steve Harvey’s pleasant droning, though I could only make out a few words, I knew it was him. Greta noticed the same thing. She stiffened, and held my hand tight.

“Something’s not ri—”

A tremendous crash of glass, an explosion of noise, cut her off. Immediately I remembered my dear mate’s grand entrance to Jake and I’s date, and with my heart about four sizes too big, and lodged in my throat, I stood, trembling.

“You stay,” Greta said, insistently. “He’s dangerous, I won’t have you being hurt.”

I shook my head, and gently – but firmly – pulled my hand away from hers. “He might be dangerous, but I know how to keep him from erupting.”

“Where’s my damn
mate
?” Dane roared from the other room. “Which one of you sons a’ bitches took her? Bring her to me
now
!”

I can safely say that was the first and last time that all I wanted in the world was to hear another one of Steve Harvey’s family-friendly-with-a-twist-of-naughty jokes. That’s probably unfair to Steve. I’m sure he’s a very nice man and he seems warm and friendly. At that second I would have choked a grandma to have him yelling in the living room instead of the horror made flesh who was actually there.

“All right!” he barked. “Keep her from me and we’ll see what happens.”

The first casualty was a vase that I recognized as having come from a flower delivery service, but the next was an entire bookcase. Then a curio cabinet fell, and instead of getting righteously pissed like I would have, Greta just pursed her lips and shook her head. “Why does it always have to be the cabinet?”

She didn’t even flinch at the next thrown vase that claimed a mirror’s life. She tried once again to catch my wrist and stop me as I made my way across the wonderfully quaint, country-style kitchen and presented myself in the doorway to the living room. When Greta realized she wasn’t going to stop me, she hissed, “Be careful!” and I nodded that I would. “His influence will make you think you’re out of control – you aren’t!”

Sure enough, as soon as I saw those blazing eyes, and those towering shoulders, my stomach got that familiar squiggle and my will waivered. Every shred of my being wanted to run to him and let Dane – my hero – take me away from all these crazy people conspiring against him. But then the part of me that still had sense, heard Greta’s words reverberate through my mind. He had
no
control over me. All he could do was make me think he did.

As I walked toward him, unsure what else to do if I wanted to avoid a big scene, it occurred to me that someone like Dane was probably just enough of an arrogant prick to think he really could control other people through sheer force of will.

I faked like my steps were shambling and unsure. I played like I couldn’t look away from Dane and his admittedly beautiful eyes, and like my mind wasn’t my own. “Dane,” I whispered, putting on my best helpless victim voice. “I’m... I’m yours. No one was hiding me.”

He gave me a once over, then held me at arms’ length for another examination. “She didn’t do anything to you?” He was speaking softly, as though he was afraid of Greta overhearing him. “No, uh... funny ideas?”

I forced myself to look as vacant as possible – just how he likes his women, apparently. “No, sir,” I said, averting my eyes to look bashfully at the ground. “Nothing like that. She just showed me pictures.”

It was the most innocuous thing I could think to say when he put me on the spot, but apparently, it wasn’t as innocuous as I thought. Dane grabbed my wrist, painfully tight, and twisted a little. Everyone in the living room who had previously been hooting for someone to say ‘pecker’ on national television all stared at him. More than a few mouths were agape, and almost all the eyes were wide open.

Dane’s eyes flashed and he curled one corner of his mouth into a grimace. “What pictures?” He twisted again for emphasis.

“Ow!” I squealed. “I don’t know, just some family photos of all of you guys together doing family things. She didn’t tell me anything, we just talked about enchiladas and how I make ice sculptures!”

Which was partially true, I suppose, if you left out all of the other things we talked about. The whole time it was in the back of my mind that
he
had no idea that I wasn’t completely under his control. So, naturally, he just assumed everything that came out of my mouth was the truth.

He grunted softly, and went back to physically examining me. Neck, hairline, inside my cheeks, while everyone around looked on with increasing discomfort. One or two of them – it was hard to tell how many exactly from the way he had me locked down – were starting to move toward us. I wondered if we were going to become a big scene right there in the middle of family dinner.