Forever Mates

Chapter 1

Fate.

What a simple word to sum up a million footpaths that trail into someone's destiny.

As children, we look at life along the lines of our beloved Disney classics. The heroes prevail having defeated the villain beneath their sword and shield and the princess always ALWAYS gets her happily ever after. But cartoons have a funny way of categorizing right and wrong into neat black and white boxes, causing each one of us to be blind to reality's gray areas. 

But the blindness lifts as we see more of the world. Parents may get divorced, families split up, loved ones move away, and we start embracing more of the real world dark into our definition of "normal." Everything begins to unravel in high school. A yarn ball so complicated can only stay tightly coiled for so long.  We see the beginnings of anxiety and depression trickle into our daily life. It's a time for first loves and first heartbreaks; first loss and the self-medication associated with it. 

It's four years of carrying around heavy secrets like pocket change when we're way too young and inexperienced to shoulder them. Our perspective of "normal" stretches farther than we anticipated, along with our capacity to swallow down trauma. I've always wondered whose brilliant idea it was to put a bunch of awkward, confused teenagers under one roof. 

My point is that growing up requires us to see the world for what it really is versus what we want it to be. Being the seventeen-year-old girl that I am meant I'd only just begun learning how the world rewards you. And I'd guess my fate was having an impassioned love affair with failure. 

My life reminded me of an ongoing downward spiral. Almost as if fate had a sense of humor and decided to chance my luck on a coin toss. Sometimes I'd be rewarded with things taking me in the right direction and other times (which was most of the time) I'd endure fate spitting in my face. As a notoriously bad poker player, I had no idea how to turn so many of the bad cards I was dealt into a lucky hand. 

I was never lucky. Not even close. The l in my luck was replaced with an f. Which meant that fate did the most reasonable thing and threw a whirlwind of problems in my direction. To this day, I wonder, would I still have been introduced to a crazy, wild adventure if things didn't happen the way they did? Maybe I would've but the outcome could've been completely different.

Of course, with every adventure, there's someone who always starts it. My story starter was Jane Elizabeth Snow...my mother.

My life changed when my mother decided to do something spontaneous. Something I didn't think she'd ever consider again. She got herself married to the alpha. And not just any run-of-the-mill alpha. Alpha John Walker was the leader of the Midnight Pack, the strongest pack in the country. I might be some evidence of the fact that the alpha and my mother were not true mates. They found each other the way that humans do and decided to tie the knot. 

Darron Blake Snow was my father and my mother's true mate. Unfortunately, my dad died due to some very horrific family problems.

Perhaps I should start further into the beginning. There was once a very strong and well-developed pack in Rosewood, California. Both of my parents grew up there but on separate sides of their pack.

In 1985, my mom applied for a beauty pageant as Miss Rose Queen and won the title. Dad was in the crowd because his sister Lisa was one of the contestants in the pageant. The moment mom won, Aunt Lisa was furious. She and dad planned to steal the title from her. It was probably a plan that involved a lot of humiliation because mom gets chills whenever she thinks about it.

After a few bottles of vegetable oil and some canned tuna later, Dad was ready with the plan. He pointed a rubber hose right at mom as she finished up her speech. Of course, this is the part where a little angel in the sky shouted "Queue the fairytale moment." and their eyes met. I guess it was about as fairy tale as it could get for a situation involving an oily, tuna fish concoction and my grandmother's best garden gloves. According to my mom, they realized they were mates the moment they saw each other.