“Sounds lovely,” I said, giving her a peck on the lips, which she eagerly returned. She quickly whipped us up a meal of steak and eggs (heavy on the steak). While normally I was a relatively slow eater, who talked a lot during dinner, the moment I smelled the food in front of me, I was acutely aware of how hungry I was, and wolfed it down. (Pun somewhat intended.)
Toward the end of dinner, Cathy's cellphone rang, and she excused herself. While I didn't try to eavesdrop, my sharper hearing picked up at least her end of the conversation.
“Julia? Hey sorry about not leaving so abrupt-” (Oh joy, it was my mother. This would not end well.)
“..yeah. I..swear that it was an accident..” (I knew what this was about.)
“ He's safe, Jules he's here, I-” (Uh oh.)
“REVENGE? How could you even think that I'd do-” (Wait, what?)
“GODDAMN IT!” I heard the phone go flying, slamming into the wall with a loud thump. Cathy came storming out of her bedroom, eyes red and welling with tears. She didn't even look at me as she collapsed onto the couch and buried her face in her hands, crying.
I immediately joined her, softly rubbing her back and trying to calm her down. There was no sign of the wolf present, at least not visibly. Eventually, her choking breaths and soft cries stopped, and she gathered herself a bit.
“I'm sorry you had to see that, James,” she said as she wiped her tears away. “But as you might imagine, your mom isn't handling this new development quite as well as you had hoped.”
I nodded. “You guys are best friends. I'm sure it'll work out. It's just a speed bump.”
She chuckled sadly. “You're sweet to say that, but this time..I don't think it will. She's quite sure that I did this on purpose.”
“Yeah, I..umm..kinda heard parts of the conversation,” I told her. “What does she think you're getting revenge for?”
Cathy rubbed her neck nervously. “This is gonna go far beyond TMI, James..but..I think you have a right to know, especially now.” (“Oh boy,” I thought to myself. “I might regret this.”)
“Your mom and I were lovers in our senior year of high school, and all through our college years. Not really officially...but in college, it wasn't something we were trying to hide. We were openly bisexual, but secretly preferred each other. We even shared boyfriends regularly. Not because we wanted to give them a three way for THEIR happiness, but so we could openly fuck around in front of them.” I nodded, not really sure what to say. I mean, what COULD I really say in this situation?
“When I got bitten, your mom watched me go through the incubation, back at our little house on campus, and my first of many changes happened in front of her. She never ran, never flinched. And when she and I figured out how to put Fang back in, she was an eager helper.” Cathy snickered. “I guess that's where YOU get it from, huh?”
I blushed hard. “No comment,” I said, trying to get thoughts of my mother fucking Cathy as she changed out of my mind. I remembered Nan's words again, about how in some realms, my mother and I were intimate and both werewolves, and I could only presume that this realm was one where she hadn't been turned by an eager Cathy.
“That happened when we were freshmen. For the rest of college, neither one of us dated anyone. Me, because I was terrified of someone finding out, and her..because she and I had gotten serious. I'm honestly not sure which part of me she loved more, but both myself and Fang were in love with your mom. It felt like the question was when I was going to turn her, not if.”
“So what happened?”
“You,” she responded softly. “We went to a party. It was the new moon, so I wasn't worried about Fang surprising anyone. It was a great party,” she laughed. “We got soooo high. But one thing led to another, and we ended up in a three way with a dude...a month later, your mom found out she was pregnant. That killed our college experience. She moved back home with your grandparents, who thankfully didn't shame her too much, and I moved back to town because..well, I couldn't bear the thought of being away from her. We talked a bit, and we agreed that we needed to cool off slightly, since we didn't know what would happen to you if she got turned while pregnant.”
“So she was good with the idea of being turned?”
Cathy nodded. “Yeah. Initially we took precautions. She only did oral on me when I was human; Fang was careful about her claws...but gradually, we didn't exactly care. When we talked a few weeks prior to her getting pregnant, we agreed that if something happened, it happened, but I wasn't going to TRY to turn her. Still, she was human when she got pregnant.”
“After you were born, we never really heated back up. Once she got a decent enough job to move out of your grandparents' house, I kind of thought it was a matter of time, but for whatever reason, it felt like the moment passed. You were her world.” Cathy immediately put her hands up in a reflexively defensive position. “And that's great. I understand that, and I PROMISE you that I never had ANY issue with that. We fooled around a few times, but..that passion wasn't there. Eventually, I outright asked her to let me turn her. She shot me down, because she was worried about how it would affect you. Not the werewolf thing, but the lesbian thing. Today's world, that's nowhere near as big of a deal as it would have been like sixteen years ago. But back then, we had reason to think that your life would have been pretty rough, particularly in school.”
“I would have been fine,” I told her, trying to make her feel better.
“I tried to tell her that, but she insisted that she couldn't risk it. I think it was more that she got scared at the idea of living as an out lesbian or bisexual with heavy lesbian leanings,” Cathy said, and there was a resentful tone in her words. It was obvious that it still hurt.
“I'm sorry,” I said, unable to think of anything better to say.
“Not your fault,” Cathy replied. “Fang was DEVASTATED though. I mean, logically, * I * could understand her position, but Fang couldn't. Fang had imprinted on her. Fang thought of your mom as her mate. Imprinting is the worst thing a werewolf can ever do,” Cathy looked at me with an icy glare, “James, if you take one bit of advice from me make it this: DON'T EVER IMPRINT ON SOMEONE. DON'T LET IT HAPPEN.” For a moment, I could see a hint of the wolf in her eyes, contained but stirring. This advice was coming from Fang, possibly more than Cathy.
“I'm assuming that imprinting is basically werewolf love?”
“A gross oversimplification, but yes,” she said, getting herself under control. “Imprinting isn't just falling in love. It's falling in total, devoted love. You literally would give your life for the other, and you're aware of it. The problem is...it's not always returned, or at least not to the same level, and that tangibly, PHYSICALLY hurts. And it fucks you up. It's not just a broken heart that you can get over. It basically prevents you from EVER really being able to give yourself to someone else, at least not fully.”
“Because wolves mate for life,” I said, thinking I was being profound by uttering one of the most commonly repeated nature factoids.
“Yes and no,” Cathy said. “Wolves do, yes. Werewolves, however...it's a little trickier. Generally, yes, werewolves mate for life. But mating...that just means 'we make babies, or try to make babies'. The only time that comes into play is when we're in heat, because the baby factory is closed any other time. Otherwise, werewolves would have overrun the earth by now. Mating means that the male won't fuck any other female that's in heat, and the female won't let any other males fuck her when she's in heat. Otherwise, and quite often, both have lovers, and openly. Mating happens all the time, in the greater werewolf world, often without emotion being brought into things. Political alliances or genetic strength can lead to family members being mated to each other or people who hate each other being mates, where the only time they're intimate is the biannual heat cycle. And sometimes in those cases, if their first mate dies, they'll take another.
Imprinting though..that's the emotional component. On rare occasion, one of us will imprint on multiple people around the same time, but usually, it's just one. And if it goes wrong..it breaks you. You can't make that connection with ANYBODY any more. DON'T LET YOURSELF IMPRINT, JAMES.”
“So that's why you left for a couple of years,” I said, remembering how she alluded to a two year killing spree, the day I made my first wishes.
Cathy nodded. “Yeah. I went to South America. I could run free in the jungles and party my ass off in Rio or Caracas. And the best part was that NOBODY noticed, or if they did, they didn't care. I embraced every bit of our nature, the good and the bad...but mostly the bad, because the bad..it felt amazing. Fang wasn't always a separate part of me, at least not to the degree she is now. That was just the name I gave to my instincts, when I didn't want to face what I'd done after I changed..and it just kind of stuck. I suppose I almost gave myself multiple personality disorder. That's what imprinting gone wrong does to you, James. IT FRACTURES YOU.”
Again, I could see glimmers of the wolf in her body language and eyes, and I again was reminded that I'd done all of this to her with a single wish. Rewriting her history and her world, and giving her a lifetime of pain.
“When I came back,” she continued, “I had to really wall her off, because the moment I saw your mom, every bit of that imprint reasserted itself, and the hurt started all over again, fresh. Your mom was oblivious. I think she felt guilty, maybe? She acted like nothing had ever been wrong between us, and..I loved her so much that I played along, because I didn't want to hurt her. The facade slipped, from time to time over the years. When I couldn't control it, I'd say snarky shit, and she took it, acted like it didn't affect her. “
The hurt returned to her voice, bare and open. “And now she thinks I did this to get some twisted revenge. She hates me, James. DON'T EVER IMPRINT. IT NEVER ENDS WELL.”