The Pairing

It is almost time for me to go away for The Pairing. I'm a little scared to go off on my own for the first time into human territory. We've been taken on recon missions to see first hand how humans live, so I do know my way around the closest city, about an hour run if I shift.

Their technology, as they call it, I am very unfamiliar with. Don't get me wrong, we are in no way ignorant or uncivilized. We just don't use phones, cars, or computers. We still have electric and running water from a well.

Our people just don't interact with the human world much; besides for the Pairing, buying clothes, and selling goods to them that we make so that we have the money to buy clothes. We grow our own produce, hunt, and raise livestock (including chickens).

We also take care of our own medical needs, which are few and far between because our Goddess blessed us with magic, along with our wolves. Shifters heal quickly, have superior strength and speed to humans, we can obviously shift into wolves, and we have our pack bond.

The pack bond is like how humans have walkie talkies, but it's much more than that. It's how we communicate in wolf form and in human form from a distance, like what humans would use cell phones for. The pack bond is what connects us to the Alpha, and in extension, to each other. But the pack bond won't stretch as far as the city.

Kya, my older sister, says it's okay because I will only be gone for a week, while my wolf is in heat. I must travel to the city for the Pairing to find a human male to mate with. It is the only way for me to have daughters and help grow the pack.

This is my first heat because I just turned twenty one. If I don't become pregnant during this cycle I will have to travel to the city every three or four months as my heat comes, until I am with child. We only have to have one child to grow the pack, but many pack members decided to leave again to have more children. I don't know if I will or not.

I've never mated before, none of us do until we go into the city for the Pairing. Our pack only had women and we are forbidden to pair off with each other, if we choose to, until we have our first child. this is what keeps the pack's population high enough to survive. We are also forbidden from revealing ourselves to humans, whether that be our wolf or our pack ways. Which also means we cannot bring our human mating partner home with us.

In school they taught us that shifters are only female and only have daughters when we mate with humans because it's said there were once male shifters who lived among us, who were taken away by the Goddess for disgracing themselves. They denied their true mate bonds that she blessed us with or they took a second mate alongside their true mate. Although that was three centuries ago, so I wouldn't know first hand. I do like to think it wasn't all the males who did that to their mates. Maybe the ones who didn't do that are with the Goddess and their souls will be recycled into humans or regular wolves, at least that way they have a chance to live again.

"Amora!" Kya yells up the stairs. "It's almost time for you to go!"

Snapping out of my thoughts, I yelled back ,"Coming!"

I finished throwing the last few shirts I thought I might need, for the city, into my backpack.

I take one more deep breath, trying to psych myself up, before I head down the stairs and out the door to see what the human world holds for me.