Topping the Beta (Werewolf Story)

Chapter 13: You Are Not Alone

I am totally shocked.

It is said that possibly the greatest mystery in the life of a werewolf is to not know why they were paired with any particular individual. What is the criteria the Moon Goddess uses to match one subject to another? That we will never know for as long as we live.

Goddesses do not waste their time explaining themselves to mortals. You can either take what she has offered to you or not. While you don't find your mate, you are more than welcome to make your life with whoever you see fit.

Just keep in mind that if you hook up with a human - unlike Regency Falls, where I come from werewolves are vastly outnumbered by humans - you cannot disclose to them the fact that you are a werewolf, unless of course they are mated to you.

You can also sleep with any werewolf, preferably unmated. I would not be caught dead with a mated man, no matter how hot he is. I wouldn't object to a human, but never a mated werewolf. I was raised better than that.

In this day and age, no one expects to find their mate pure and virginal. Not even when they are still 17 and definitely not at my age of 29. However, Omegas like me have the added pressure of risking an unmated pregnancy.

You could explain an 'accident' to a fellow werewolf, but how am I to explain to a human that I fell pregnant with his baby? I am not a transgender man, which would make it possible for a pregnancy, according to human science.

No, I am a novelty. A blessing from the Goddess to the werewolf population. A hidden secret from society that was kept under lock and key from humans, sometimes at a high cost. Oh yeah, blood was shed to keep our existence a secret.

To this very day, there are two crimes a werewolf can commit that could get them killed.

The first one is to mess with someone's mate. Depending on the offense you can simply be expelled from the pack - say you got into a fight with a coworker and slapped them, for instance, the Alpha is not going to have you killed for a simple slap. But he is not going to allow you to remain in the pack either.

The second crime against pack law is to disclose our secret to a human who is not your mate. Because of the sanctity of mating, allowances had to be made in regards to the pairing. It is not always possible for the Goddess to match you with another werewolf.

Sometimes, she doesn't have any other choice but to pair you with a human. We all grew up with that knowledge in my hometown, of the possibility that you could be mated to a human. Naturally, there are some couples known in our hidden society that are interspecies.

A mate, human or werewolf, is protected under the law and cannot be expected to remain in the dark about their partner's true identity. Basically, they have an invested interest in keeping our secrets from other humans. We trust that the mate bond they feel for us will keep the werewolf kind safe.

And it has worked for thousands of years.

When I was 18, I had a baby to raise. This fact alone made me focus my attention on him and disregard any interest I could have in other boys. With time, most of the people I knew around my age got mated.

It took years for me to risk having a night out for some adult fun. I mean, it is one thing to have a beer with your colleagues, but to find a possible partner for me was tricky. Werewolves were unavailable and humans I feared at first.

Eventually, with the lack of mate in sight and the raging hormones of a man in his early twenties, I started venturing myself in the occasional hookup with humans. It is not fair for me to be expected to have zero connections with anybody. Goddess knows how bad I wanted my mate to find me but he never did.