46

We panted hoarsely into each other’s faces, lying naked side by side, kissing each other every chance we got.

After our lovemaking was over, I spooned Alice and we lay looking down the hill at the river, the lake, and the town.

“Don’t you think we should apply for colleges by now?” Alice said after a long bout of silence.

“Promise we’re going to apply to the same place?” I said, laughing.

“I’m not kidding, baby. If we’re going to spend the rest of our life together, we gotta stay together in college, too.”

“What do you think about Indiana State? They’ve got an excellent journalism program. I hear their pre-med is one of the top in the country,” I said. Even though this was the first time she was mentioning this, I had already given it a fair amount of thought.

“Who’s going to take care of the town and the pack?” Alice asked.

“Well, I was kinda hoping now that the legendary Briar Wolf is back, maybe he’s going to take charge? I’m still a kid, you know. I’ll still fulfill my role as honorary leader and whatnot every weekend when I come back. But I think that every wolf worth his salt knows of your father and would much rather he lead them than someone who’s off to college,” I said.

“I’m not worried,” Alice said, planting a series of kisses on my cheeks. “As long as I’m with you, everything is going to be fine.”

“Do you still reckon they’re going to tell our tale years from now?” I asked, caressing her cheeks, sliding her stray hairs behind her ear.

“Oh, for sure,” she said. “Now more than ever. They’re going to tell the tale of the fate weaver and the wolf and how they made all the packs come together,” Alice said.

“Speaking of coming together, you wanna do it again?” I asked naughtily, feeling myself stirring alive underneath the sheets.

“We’ve got all night ahead of us, and after that all our lives,” Alice grinned. “I don’t see why not.”

She reached for my face and pressed her soft and sweet lips against mine. All I could feel in her embrace, in her kiss, was her warm presence, and the comfort of knowing that I had found my mate.

Epilogue

Six Months Later

Terre Haute was nowhere near as bustling a metropolis as Chicago, but then again, it wasn’t as quaint as Rapid Falls, either. Brandon and I never got a chance to explore other places for our college education. We didn’t want to.

Terre Haute made sense. It was just two hours away from Rapid Falls. Half an hour if you traveled in wolf form, but that greatly limited your time of travel to after midnight. In this new city, as college freshmen, we had new identities. No one could know that we weren’t just two ordinary kids from some Indiana backwater town.

Brandon got a full-ride scholarship courtesy of football. It turned out they desperately needed a quarterback for Indiana State University’s football team and Brandon fit the bill.

I ended up acing my ACTs and SATs, making it a breeze to get into the university’s biotech program. Brandon and I deliberated on the matter quite a lot and he helped me realize that my dream was to discover the secrets of the werewolf genome. I’d never publish my findings, but at the very least, I’d get a scientific look at what made werewolves.

Brandon had two majors. He had taken a full load of courses that allowed him to pursue both mass communication and psychology. He said he really wanted to cover his academic basis, whatever that meant.

We didn’t get university dorms like everybody. We booked an apartment facing the university’s campus at a very cheap rate thanks to Mom’s connections in the city.

We went home every weekend to keep up with what was happening in town. Ever since Brandon and I had left, my dad had taken up the position as the leader of the packs, a role that suited him well.

“Alice?” Brandon had recently realized that waving his big hand in front of my face when I zoned out was an excellent strategy for getting my derailed thoughts back on track.

“Yes, honey, what is it?”

“If we stay here any longer, we’re going to miss Elma’s initiation ritual,” he said. “It’s half-past four. Don’t forget we have to come back tonight. I have like five lectures tomorrow morning.”

“But I don’t want to leave just yet, babe!” I squealed in protest. I had just come home from taking three hour-long lectures. I smelled like a laboratory. My hair reeked of ethyl sulfate. “I’m, as the kids say these days, dead.”

“We’re the kids who say it. We’re Gen-Z,” Brandon said, packing his suitcase. I was so proud of him. He had taken to the city like fish to water. He got up at the break of dawn and did an hour-long jog around the campus with his new friends. Every night, he’d spend another hour at the university’s rec center, working out in the gym.

My hobbies were a little bit more introverted in comparison. I had discovered this bakery where they allowed you to sit in the back nooks for as long as you wanted. No one would disturb you there and the waiter brought coffee every couple of hours with a side of bagels, donuts, or whatever you fancied. I called that place my second home, going through my immense backlog of novels in that cozy little nook. Oh, and I had started cooking real food, not just store-bought ramen. Thank you, YouTube recipes.

“Babe, you’re zoning out again,” Brandon said, staring at me as I lay sprawled in our bed.

“Come lie with me for a bit. It’s just her initiation ceremony. She’s going to turn into a wolf finally, big whoop. We can afford to be a little late,” I said. Every bone in my body ached from sitting in the lab’s steel chairs.

“Counter-offer, we get in the shower. Yes. We. And then we get ready for real. We can spare a few minutes for some…”

“Shut up!” I said, jumping out of my bed. “You had me at ‘we get in the shower.’”

All that work in the gym had really paid off. His muscles were toned, his pecs ripped. As the hot water from the shower fell on our naked bodies, I held his stiff cock in my hands, gently stroking it.