Chapter 3: A Safe Place

            Ara’s house suited him. Or the little that Jane knew about him, it seemed to fit the bill. It was isolated, on the edge of the city, in the part that felt more like a small town, or a suburb. It was on the edge of a wooded area, up on a hill, so the truck became more sensible. Clearly, it was an older house, it was mismatched from the housing development that they drove past on the way. From the white porch, she could see the other houses, but they were way out of walking or shouting range. Other than trails and a small creek, his house was the only sign of humanoids.

            The house was painfully simple. Shingle style, with an elevated porch and triangular rooftop. It was old but in good condition, painted white, with black trimming around the windows. On the porch there was one bench, clearly made by hand, and a pair of enormous boots sat by the door. A cheerful boof greeted them as Ara led them up the stairs and into the house. Jane followed, slipping off her shoes by the door as Ara gave a hearty greeting to his dog. Rubbing him vigorously till his skin flapped back and forth. The dog was intimidatingly big, with thick blonde fur on its body, but a black muzzle and eyes. He immediately plodded along behind them happily bringing its head up under Jane’s hand with the hopes of more attention. Jane was amused by the thought that he matched the house, light with black trim. He had the body of a shepherd, but with shorter hair. 

            “This is Anatol, but I call him Toll so he might have forgotten his full name. He is big, but basically, that's the only scary thing about him. He is a total baby and sticks to anyone willing to give him attention” Ara said deprecatingly. Toll immediately sat after hearing his name, his eyes glittering, clearly hoping for some kind of treat.

            “Sit, I will make some drinks for us and give the beastie his dinner” Ara gestured towards the simple wood table and chairs that sat inside the 1940s kitchen. Jane sat, finding that the chairs were a lot bigger than they seemed, her legs dangled. Anatol flopped over putting his head on her lap heavily and pleading eyes fixated on her face. She giggled and absentmindedly fiddled with his ears.

            “So, this is your mystery roommate I presume?” she said facing Toll more than Ara and speaking in a baby voice.  

            “Don’t you have a mate?” she asked a bit nervously because she was not sure about the protocol with questions like these. Although given how the house was the personification of Ara, or how much she knew of him, it did not seem like anyone else lived there. He did say he was not in a pack, maybe that was something she was supposed to wait for him to talk about first.

            “No, not yet. Maybe not ever. I told you I was not raised in a pack yeah? Well, I think I live more like a human than a shifter if I am honest. Although I have never lived with a human either, I can’t say for sure. I was raised by my grandfather. My mother's father. Just the two of us, till I was about 12 then he died.”

            “You have been on your own since you were 12? Wow. Is that normal?” she could not hold in her shocked words. He smiled at her good-naturedly to indicate that it was fine.

            “I don’t think I have the right idea of normal, but I was alright. We lived up north, closer to the pole. Outside of Fairbanks Alaska. Wicked cold, but there are a few packs that trade and work in the town and base there. I had some contacts, and I was used to it by then. I moved down here to Oregon when I was 15 or 16? There was more work, and I was tired of the dark” Jane just stared at him, transfixed she loved listening to him speak. He was calm, factual and unbothered by his own narrative. There was no way she would have been that calm and collected talking about the past.

            “What kind of work did-do you do?”

            “Construction mostly. It’s easy for us to do physical labor jobs, so long as we aren’t caught. I guess it was always easier for me because I never had pack ties or anything like that that I was running from so blending in has always been my normal.”

            “That explains why you were out on your own when we first met,” she said, combining the timelines. She knew that packs often traveled or changed together and that a single shifter was rare and in the case of humans, dangerous. They could be a volatile rogue. 

            “Technically I am a rogue. Packs treat me about as friendly as humans would if they knew I was a shifter. I tend to stay away, they usually see me as dangerous, in the beginning anyways.”

            “Aren’t rogues what happens when like shifters go mad? I thought this happens to exiled shifters or shifters who lose their mates.” She did not know much but this was one of the norms that humans worried about and used as a reason to refuse shifters from living in towns and cities. There was always a fear that a lone wolf would go rogue. Once they did, they acted impulsively and irrationally and often killed many humans. Jane rather liked the idea of having a mate, it simplified choices. You would never feel insecure that you chose wrongly.

            “Don’t worry, that won’t happen to me"- he said misinterpreting her quiet for worry.

              -"Not anytime soon anyways. I am 26 this year, and still going strong. I knew some wolves to make it to 30, but they say you can feel it and most of us just accept a decently matched someone just to stave off the illness. Usually, there are a handful of unmated others that are in a similar pickle” he shrugged in a ‘no big deal’ way. Oh, she had been wrong. There were choices, and that was scary because rather than humans, your choices were limited. What if you chose someone, then found a better match later on?

            “When you say it like that it sounds like a green wedding. Like when people from different countries marry for papers, and they are like friends or like business partners at worst. Seems better to me, less chaotic than a high chemistry match” she was at the end of the day, a practical woman.

            “Yeah, that's a good comparison, actually. I think in wolf communities there is more pressure, and there are all kinds of matchmaking services. Some shifters go from pack to pack testing their compatibility and at the end of it, they match with the highest compatibility percentages. I always thought those were odd pairings though, not super romantic to go about measuring blood and status as a reason to mate. My grandfather said that a mate is sacred and is a religious practice and some believe that you should not force or change what the goddess wants. Some say it’s because of science that our race is suffering, punishment from the goddess” He scoffed to show that he clearly did not belong in that camp.

            “There is actually a way to measure something like that?” This was a new premise, Jane knew that there was some rift in the shifter communities, she thought it had been a modernity or religious thing but maybe it was because of the introduction of technology made by humans. This was one of the sticking points, that humans interrupted the cultural practices, and divided the shifter communities.

            “Oh yeah, it’s this whole thing.” He was busying himself with making them dinner while they talked. Often looking over at Toll drooling and gazing lovingly up at Jane. Clearly, she gave in to his desperation for affection.

            “In packs, there is a strict hierarchy. The alpha, as I am sure you know, are the leaders. They have some traits that are inherited that classify them as alpha or not. So, like if a wolf is born with these traits then they have the ability to form a pack and usually, they are the genetic kin of the alpha. Next is beta, there are the most betas they are like 80% of our population. Some who have alpha traits choose to stay as a beta because it's less of a hassle. I kind of admire those guys, the fact that they pass up on inherited power is like the perfect trait for a leader.”

            “Yeah, that and you don't have to kill your brother or uncle or dad. Isn’t the second in command also called the Beta? Hah that would be confusing,” Jane added to his point, and he gave a generous chuckle to her bad joke.

             “Omegas are also super important. The omegas have the most capable reproductive systems, and typically alphas are male or do not have the ability to give birth. Omegas though, there are different degrees of reproductive capacity and it’s not limited to males or females, it's more like a sex thing than a gender thing. Sometimes that just means that the compatibility score needs to be high. If the immune systems are the opposite it adds to the score, so even if it's a male alpha and male omega they could still be paired and give birth. Much less phobic than humans. But some shifters are obsessed with finding a mate with reproductive traits and also a high pedigree.” Jane let that idea marinate, it was way more complicated than she thought. The lessons described shifters as having one mate that was chosen by their goddess, but by the way, Ara explained nothing was as black and white as she had been taught.

            “Pedigree, as in like your pure-ness?” She had only ever thought about that word in the context of animal breeds, but it did make sense that it was a consideration in the shifter community.

            “yeah, that is another whole thing. One of the measures is something like a genetic match to ancestors, like the initial Lycan race that doesn’t exist anymore. It's super weird if you ask me, because like the king and alphas are said to have a higher concentration of these Lycan traits, and that is what gives them these abilities to rule. But honestly, I would imagine that you would want to find a high-compatibility mate because this would diversify the genetics. Royals and the court shifters are obsessed with only pairing with other similar lineages. So often those pairs have low compatibility. It’s all a bit backward to me, like no wonder our species is on the decline. It's because no one is going for healthy and diverse partners, but rather they choose mates from arranged marriages and shit to keep the line pure” he air quoted the word pure.

            “It’s funny, humans have that too. In history, we learn about some of the diseases that the upper class would have due to marrying their cousins or whatever. Kings and queens and the like were dying off but still did not want to marry outside the blue blood. We fought several wars over this idea of genetic superiority or whatever. It's wild to imagine such barbaric thinking persists in your community too. It’s not exclusively a human flaw.” She wondered how he knew all of this if he had not been raised in a pack. Maybe it's just common? Or maybe he was looking for his own match.

            “You can wash up before we eat if you want,” he said subtly, not trying to look too hard at her, but the blood smell was intensifying and starting to bother him.

            “Oh shit, yeah,” she said looking at her hands and clothes. She did not want to stop talking, rather she did not want him to stop talking. His voice could have been reading from an encyclopedia for all she cared, it made her feel calm and totally forget that several people's blood had dried to her clothes hands and face in a tight itchy way. She stood and hovered awkwardly, before following Ara up the staircase.

            The bathroom, like nearly everything else in this house, is black and white. The bathroom was spacious with a tall ceiling and skylight. There was a simple clawed tub and plastic curtain. The sink was comically high on her. It came right up to her chest, she could only see her head in the mirror even when she backed up all the way to the tub. Ara gave her some comfortable noncolored clothes and a great big towel that smelled comforting and familiar. She scrubbed her body till it was red with heat and irritation. Supposing that Ara would not mind if she took extra time, she blocked the tub and let it fill with hot water. She was not thinking anything, just sitting and feeling the water on her body, and before long she was crying. Not in a hysterical way, but in an exhausted way. She kept seeing the shock on the man’s face that she had sliced when she closed her eyes. It was more unsettling than it was sad or regretful. She felt like she had examined his face with the depth of a lover. She did not even know his name.

            She only lasted in the tub till the water became lukewarm, and she dragged herself out. Her hair lay in wet dark strips, leaving streaks of wetness on the way too big heather T-shirt she was borrowing. It was so large that she had to keep pulling it up off her shoulder, she could probably fit her entire body into the hole for the head if she tried. The pants were no better, she cuffed them from the bottom and after tying the strings tightly and rolling the fabric she managed to keep them up. She quickly found the emptier of the two rooms, it overlooked the valley side of the landscape. Before she knew it, she had crawled under the covers and fallen asleep.