Nate felt a little bit better as he and Alex came out from the Twists house, and they could see that night was starting to fall on Moon Lake. It was a time that Nate had really come to like about the town, though given that he'd always had a fascination with werewolves and things like that, Moon Lake would always have that personal attraction to him, it was in part why he'd had the best reaction to the revelation that Moon Lake was a hidden were sanctuary out of his family and why becoming a werewolf was something of a dream. The coming of night would allow for weres to be out and about in their were forms, fursonas, rather than just keeping them in the privacy of their own homes. And in a more "normal" situation, that would be something that Nate would feel more confident in moving toward, partially because of all the changes that had gone on in his family since arriving in Moon Lake.
They had started after some trouble that had started in Minnesota, where the Anderson family's father, William, had been too easily led by his libido and had been cheating on his wife, Martha. Thinking back on that, Nate figured that his father's libido had to be near a were's level, even while still as a normal human. That issue then got worse when it turned out that one of those one-night stands turned out to be a student at the University of Minnesota who had gotten pregnant and then filed charges against William. In most cases that would have led to at least divorce between William and Martha, and while William was able to prove no rape had occurred, the college still fired him for inappropriate behavior with a student and was held financially responsible for the child born to that student. Between William and Martha, it seemed like Martha was willing to give William another shot, though Nate and his brother had no understanding why.
All of it had been a surprise to Nate, as he remembered his father as a good father, who went above and beyond to be a good parent. This had included berating much of the school staff at the Middle School that Eric went to and gotten bullied at, which was all something he couldn't fully understand why his father had cheated on his mother. At times it also worried Nate a bit when it came to revealing that he was gay. At first it was more on the wording, but after finding out about William's infidelities, Nate began to worry about being rejected. It was only after coming to Moon Lake and some of the surprise there began to reveal the answers to Nate. William had been attacked by a crazy werefox vixen at his new college post at Moon Lake, which seemed to overlook the issue at Minnesota, and became a werefox and from there came the bigger surprise that his mother, Martha, had been repressing being bisexual for years and often made her inattentive to William. That was a surprise that Nate had never noticed before with his mother, and he figured his father never noticed it, either, and that then in turn led to his sexual wanderings.
But Nate watched, as William seemed to respond well to Martha's revelation and after Martha became a werecat, it was like the fire and passion returned to their marriage. Nate and Eric both privately agreed that Moon Lake had effectively saved their parents' marriage and possibly Martha's own self-worth. That made it easier for Nate to come out and be happy to see Eric find love and become a weremer. They'd all adapted well into the town and Nate had even found a good boyfriend in Alex Ramsey and Eric had fallen for the mayor's daughter. It was a sort of rebirth for the family that the Andersons could all love and Nate liked that a lot. And as the month of November started, Nate was looking forward the Thanksgiving Football Game that he, Alex, and Ben had joined to play in a specialized matchup between Moon Lake High's "Predator" weres and "Prey" weres. It was all fun in ways that Nate had never expected.
"With those two werewolves interrupting things," Alex commented, "I think it might be best to cut through the woods and inform my folks on what they're up to. Let things move forward... it may well end up leading to an official pack meeting being called just to get all the rules and other things put in order..."
"Yeah," Nate nodded as he turned to his boyfriend and paused his thoughts for a moment, "hopefully there isn't a fight within the pack over things."
Alex nodded and waived to Nate before jobbing between the Twist and Anderson homes while Nate moved across the lawn and to the front door to the Anderson home. Nate opened the door and found his nose catching the scent of dinner that smelled fresh. As he shut the door, he then turned to see his father come from the door to the dining room on his way toward the stairs. Presently transformed, William looked like a toned anthropomorphic Red Fox in the suit pants and shirt that he wore to work at Moon Lake College, the only thing he wasn't wearing was his shoes and socks, though Nate also smelled a bit of his mother's werecat scent on him. This led Nate to guess that the two had had a nice hug and cuddle after his father returned home and was all part of how the Andersons' lives had got better since coming to Moon Lake.
"Ah, Nate, you're home," William smiled with his ears perked, "practice go well?"
"Pretty well," Nate managed thinking back to the football practice. A lot of it was all part of something that he hadn't been into before Moon Lake, in fact, Eric was more of an athlete than Nate had been before Moon Lake, but it was fun. He was still learning a lot of the plays and formations, but it was fun and having Alex and Ben there helped out a lot. The one thing that was always pondering was that at times, he thought he'd seen another kid watching from the edge of the field or from a spot where it looked like the field men the parking lot that was there as part of the school's property. At times he'd wanted to as Alex or Ben about it, but then that student would be gone. Though, for the moment the run in with those two Luna Brotherhood characters was bigger. "Though... Alex and I ran into something a little odd on the way back from practice... though it might also be something best saved for everyone."
"Okay," William blinked slowly, wondering what this was, "dinner isn't too far away. Why don't you go set your bags and stuff down and let Eric know that dinner is ready. He should be working on his homework."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Upstairs, Eric Anderson was working on making sure his homework and making sure that everything would be done before his nightly Skype conversation with his own "one true love," the weremermaid, Julie Stovall. They'd met in school and had been one of the few local weres that really went out of her way to talk with Eric, though at that time Eric was a bit more isolated thanks to some incidents in being bullied in Minnesota. The last of which had had him beaten up and limited to only communicating on science and science fiction forums online, where he felt safer. But Julie had opened things up for ways that Eric had never expected and now wouldn't give up. He'd been with her and let her make him her weremerman, and could soon see the glow around her that told him that Julie Stovall was "the one."
Of course, in finding love, he'd also found things that he'd never expected before. This had come up when meeting another weremerman that had had a crush on Julie, even if Julie didn't "glow" to him, and when Julie responded in a friendly way, Eric had found himself growing jealous that someone else would be interested in her. That in turn led to some moments of frustration that had ultimately led to his parents catching onto something and an appointment with Frances Twist, a member of his mother's werecat pride, and helped establish plans for moving to open up things further. And eventually, Eric also learned that the other weremerman was only just a friend and that Julie only saw him as that. The plans for expanding all horizons had come in two ways, one was for them to help another new arrival in Moon Lake, a hybrid were named Spencer Lawson adjust to the town and make friends. Some of that had even had them helping her "socialize" a Morgan Barr with other kids his age. It was something that Eric partially thought as amusing when he thought on it, given that a lot of times he was battling his own past and shyness.
The other part was to set up a book club and a chess club for the school. It'd be an after-school activity, that had had some origins from his mother, but it wasn't something that Eric or Julie were truly opposed to. Some of it was even figured to be a way for Julie to learn things, which made Eric feel better in that meeting new people would open up ways to teach new things to those he already loved. That sort of thing felt good to Eric, though, all the exact details on their part hadn't been laid out and some of it had already been delayed or pushed back because of other issues that came out of the disagreements over the whole "reveal" plan that the city council was working on. And to a degree, Eric also worried over what might happen in the future given fights that had happened and the fact that the Stovalls could end up a target given who Julie's father was.
Eric was just finishing his homework when he heard a knock on his door, and that made him turn to see that Nate was home and was tossing his backpack into his own bedroom. Eric heard something sounded like something bouncing off of springs that sounded like Nate had managed to hit his bed.
"Nate," Eric stated.
"Hey bro," Nate smiled, "dad says that dinner is ready... and I got something I need to tell everyone."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Downstairs, Martha and William set about setting the table for dinner. Both looked to each other with some thoughts and worry over what Nate had hinted at when he came home. Both had the sense that it related to the whole reveal plan and the potential problems that came with it. There had already been fights, and William had been there to see the first fight break out at the college campus and seen a member of the staff at the college get hit in the head by a rock. She hadn't been one of the teachers, but that didn't make it any better, and honestly, learning that the woman had been a werecat made William think and worry more over things that might happen to his own family with the reveal, and with Martha in particular.
A part of him thought it might be a good idea to be in his werefox form all the time, and for Martha to be in her werecat form all the time. Martha's fur was soft, and it felt insanely nice to feel Martha's brown fur against his own fur. The black fur on the socks and gloves of his hands and feet. The reddish orange fur on his back, tail, upper lip of his muzzle, and sides. The white fur on his chest and the tip of his tail. It all felt nice rubbing against Martha's. Seeing her smile as a werecat, with him or with some other female lover, be it members of the Skulk that Martha had befriended at the teacher's work day at the elementary, or from the meeting the Skulk had had before Halloween. He'd never known his wife had been repressing being bisexual, as Martha had always put on a strong face, even if she was struggling with it. Looking back at it, he realized he should have sensed it sooner. He might have been able to tell Martha that he didn't mind if she was bi... that he wouldn't mind if she wanted an open marriage in order to feel whole.
He had the sense now that some of it might have come from Martha's own parents and sister. They'd never been cruel or "anti-gay" in that they opposed gay marriage or anything like that. But when he courted Martha and when they first started raising Nate, there had always been these signs that Martha's parents were the sort of people that were fine with gay marriage so long as the gay couple did it entirely in private. Seeing that the Twists had helped Martha come out and be open with herself about herself, had struck William's bond to her hard, and he was still trying to think of something to thank the Twists for that. He had some ideas on what he could instruct Martha to do to give the Twists intense pleasure, playing to his own knowledge as a werefox on how pleasure his partner or anyone... but some of that still seemed a little crude.
"We can be glad that he's fine," Martha said softly to William, though her tail twitched nervously behind her.
The reveal had her nervous to, and she wouldn't mind being in her fursona all the time, but she also knew that there were responsibilities that went beyond personal wants. Moon Lake had a fair number of normals that were either born in the town or had other members of their family become the "family were" when they moved in. Not every family had something happen where the whole family became weres as they did. This meant that teachers at the Elementary and Middle School levels would be dealing with normal children that wouldn't grow up to become weres, and some of the material she'd been studying to reactivate her own teaching certification touched on that, at least with regard to teaching within Moon Lake. She could control where she put her hands or whether not her claws were extended, a benefit of being a werecat, while Nate and William as a werewolf and werefox, respectively, had non-retractable claws. But there was always the chance of an accident, and she didn't feel it'd be wise for a teacher that was a were to be transformed while teaching, and the guide-papers that William had collected for her even suggested that. At first, Martha had thought that was only for those that then left Moon Lake and taught somewhere else, but as Martha thought on the necessary sexual needs that she and William had needed to complete their own transformations, that would then apply in Moon Lake as well.
"Yes," William said slowly, "but Nate has always been rather... carefree with things. And when he said he and Alex ran into something on the way home... he sounded nervous."
Martha looked to her husband's presently crimson eyes, and they were looking down his vulpine muzzle and he was twiddling his thumbs as he did so. All of that was some sign of nervousness that she could pick up, and she had the sense that the whole tension over the potential for the existence of weres being made was part of it. There were good and bad sides to it, and to some degree, Martha liked both. On the plus side, becoming weres had saved hers and William's marriage, or at least made saving it a lot easier. And Martha looked forward to the future where she and William could try again for a daughter, but at the same time, there was also all sorts of worries over how others might react.
For there was always the potential for a negative response. Some of it struck Martha that some could respond the way that the young Jenny Jenkins had been treated by her own family had been possible. She accepted the idea William had had to offer her an adopted place in the Anderson family if she needed anything, though it also seemed like Jenny Jenkins had earned a lot of support from the Skulk and the Jenkins family she'd married into. But that didn’t remove that Jenny’s father had been profoundly negative toward his own child, and that was even without learning of weres. There could be others that would be just as negative at the existence of weres, and that brought back worries on how her surviving family might respond.
Martha knew that her parents had only just tolerated William, though, Martha had long figured that was more an overprotective streak that they'd had that had also hampered her older sister's romances. Things got a bit better once Eric was born, but things always remained tense and made visits tough and where William often had to be on his "best" behavior. Her older sister never really took to William on the case that with Martha wanting to teach, marrying a college professor would not mean that there would be a lot of wealth coming in from either of them, and added with comments that she thought William was too "frisky" for Martha. When everything came out over the accused rape in Minnesota, some of that had made all those family touches worse and wasn't helped when Martha's parents both died of heart attacks shortly after it happened. Her sister blamed William's infidelity for the death of her parents.
But Martha knew William wasn't the cause of that, and to a degree, his infidelity wasn't entirely on him. She'd been repressing her own sexuality for so long that there were times where she was wrestling with things and pretty much turned William away. And all of that had come from how her parents and older sister "tolerated" same sex relationships. Now, that she'd become more confident in her sexuality as a werecat, a part of her really wanted to show them how she felt, but that was not something that could be done in real life. Particularly with all the other things going on regarding the reveal and what was bringing the worries out of her and William.
"I think everyone's nervous," Martha answered, "we've personally changed a lot since coming here... and that had its own issues. This reveal represents what would represent a bigger change for them."
"With others... sure... but that's not Nate," William answered.
"I know... but the times are such that anyone could run into something that would make them nervous," Martha answered, "let's just wait until Nate is able to share what he's run into."
William slowly nodded as he turned one ear to hear Nate and Eric coming down the steps.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Nate came down first with Eric following behind to find that dinner was ready and even served with roasts and potatoes sitting on each plate. It all smelled good and in the portions that all of them had been eating at after becoming weres. There were also glasses of water and the four places and with William and Martha standing together by the doorway from the dining room to the kitchen. Like William, Martha was also in her werecat form, though she seemed to be only wearing an apron. Given that werecats were among the "small weres" and Martha could in theory wear clothes, even while transformed, Nate figured that after a point where any errands outside the house were done, she settled into something more "comfortable." Nate felt the same way about his own were form, though his werewolf form was large enough that he'd destroy his clothes if he transformed while wearing them.
"Everything smells good, mom," Eric commented as he moved to his seat and paying little attention to Martha's dress, though some of this was part what they had all learned and accepted as things had gotten better for them.
"And it's all warm," Martha smiled, "so everyone should be free to eat."
"And Nate could provide his update and warning on something," William said slowly, "likely all this stuff around the reveal, I suspect."
"Yeah... it is," Nate said slowly as he took his seat and saw William take his seat, "and I think goes beyond what's happened so far."
"Beyond... as in worse than some of these fights?" Eric asked.
"The fights that have been there have been more the result of arguments and things escalating from there," Nate answered, "something that would be understandable given how big this reveal will be when it arrives."
There were plenty of nods of agreement at that. Though Eric still thought on what Nate had said that what might be coming went beyond what had happened to that point regarding these protests and fights. The fights in and of themselves were bad enough, but if what was coming went beyond that, that couldn't be good. After swallowing the potatoes he'd been chewing on, Eric drew attention to that.
"But you said that what you ran into goes beyond that," Eric said, "what is that?"
"It would seem like a pair of werewolves playing oh-oh-seven," Nate answered, "Alex and I ran into them when practice ended and were walking back."
"Oh-oh-seven... like secret agents?" Martha asked, "they were agents of the government?"
"I don't think so," Nate answered, "they cut the air of secret agents, but more like they were working for some private enterprise that voiced interest in opposing the reveal plan..."
"Did they say on who they worked for?" William asked.
"No, they gave us their names, Quintus Fives and Gustavus Amehr," Nate answered, "but nothing beyond that in terms of employment. But it was pretty clear that they wanted open opposition to the reveal and that they wanted us to be there when they have their next meeting on the reveal."
Nate watched as William's red eyes and Martha's green eyes widened and their vertical slit pupils narrowed in surprise.
"They weren't wanting to provoke a fight, did they?" Martha asked.
"You didn't say you'd join them?" William asked.
"I can't say if what they want is violent or just protesting," Nate answered, "and I said that Alex and I would consider it if it wasn't a school night, but a lot of that was purely just to get the two of them to leave. As I don't think they were interested in the whole debate going on with the reveal. They just wanted opposition to it. I have no intention of showing up there."
William frowned a bit at this. The trick in and of itself wasn't too bad, but some of this supposed scheme sounded borderline militant and would be coming from folks that might go a bit beyond accepting a trick. These two men might be the sort to then take vengeance if they don't get what they want. The fact that these two men were pulling something like this, after a different werefox, named Tom Herald, had managed to convince Moon Lake's city council to begin looking into a plan that would reveal that weres were real.
“They could come back to get you if they find out you tricked them,” Martha warned, "they’d be a threat worse than anything we’ve seen before.”
A lot of it reminded Martha of what they'd had to deal with regarding Yvette Smith's actions when they first moved into Moon Lake. The werevixen jumping William in the parking lot at the college, leading to his becoming a werefox and setting up the whole dynamic that stressed them after that point. While becoming a werecat helped Martha come to grips with her sexuality and seeing the werefox's bond to her in William helped heal their marriage to a level it hadn't been at since they'd first started dating, that didn't change the troubles the rogue werevixen had caused. Those didn't end until after the rogue had tried to get at William by breaking into the house and starting a fight there. What Nate described from these two werewolves that he and Alex had run into come off like that in a way, but one that also came off as more "official" or organized rather than the uncontrolled lust/obsession that Yvette Smith had had.
"They could... but that's also why I stopped by the Twists first," Nate spoke, "Since Samantha is the Town Chancellor and all. I figured she might have more contacts with the police and those who will be at the meeting to keep an eye on things. And it's not like I told the two of them that Alex and I would definitely be there. Only if it wasn't on a school night."
William and Martha could accept that to a degree, though neither of them seriously knew when the "reveal meetings" were to be planned for. The initial meeting had been on a Friday and had been public. The rest of the meetings had seemed to be rather private and didn't have people attending the meetings. William remembered hearing something on the radio there had been massed protests the previous Wednesday after that after the initial vote on the reveal was had. Some of that had indicated that protests were both for and against the reveal, which created some idea that the reveal meetings now were on Wednesdays, which in a sense could give Nate's reasoning of "only if it wasn't on a school night" could work, though, there was still something that William these other two werewolves would honor. He chewed on his potatoes for a few moments before he answered.
"Well... that is good," William said slowly, "though, you'll still need to be careful. Everything about this seems more than just two guys that are against the reveal. I wouldn't want you or Alex hurt..."
"You wouldn't... make me give up the football team?" Nate wondered.
"No... you've been having fun, and it's good to see you interested in things outside the house," William answered, and glanced to Martha, who nodded, "we just want you to be safe and smart with regard to where you go and what you do outside of that. Particularly while everything is so tense."
"And the same thing would go for you, Eric," Martha added, "should you and Julie have any dates when the weekend gets here... let us know where you're going and things like that. Or if you two are helping that Lawson girl... let us know first."
"Right, mom," Eric answered.
"And if someone wants to encourage either of you, or your friends to get involved in anything that makes you uneasy, let them know on that," William answered, "and that is what these men... Quintus Fives and Gustavus Amehr... likely want, if your report is accurate, Nate. They strike me as someone looking to essentially provoke a fight... or the conditions for it, which won't solve the problems that has the reveal idea being debated in the first place."
"And we will," Nate assured them, "I thought you should know... in case something ends up happening on the college campus or if mom gets a call to sub for someone and there is a lot of that sort of stuff going on."
"And we thank you for that," Martha sighed and looked over to William, "and it just seems that a lot of this stuff still seems to hang over everything..."