Arranged Mates

Chapter 1

Being mates was once viewed as a holy thing. An almighty force of affection and attraction that hit you like a bullet train at a moment's notice, like a lightning strike. Entirely out of your control, just a game of chance and luck which could land lifelong bliss within your grasp.

But of course, like so many other of life's natural joys; sugar, boners, milk, us people had to go in and make our own little version, and now we all have to suffer through artificial sweeteners, viagra and some shitty almondmilk that has a weird aftertaste, and everyone looks at you like you're the insane one when you go to a café and asks for milk that comes from the tit of a cow, as if making milk from nuts isn't weird as fuck.

It's no ones surprise really, that even after thousands upon thousands of years of the natural, impulsive matingbond which occurred by chance also wasn't deemed good enough for the highly advanced wolf of today, and we had to go and fuck that up as well. So the fancy scientists went ahead and made up their serums and chemicals and artificial hormones and bing-bang-boom – mating bond on a bottle.

Then, the genius scientists were oh so smart enough to get patent upon patent and drive the price up so high that only the richest of the rich could possibly afford it.

The richest of the rich like my father.

His eyes were narrow and pointed to the driver of our limo as we cruised down the road. We'd crossed pack borders about an hour ago and were steadily approaching the ancestral family home of the Alphas of the Moon Superior pack.

I nervously eyed the little case on the seat, the one on top of which my father's hands rested. A sealed shut case with a syringe in it, with the little hormonal cocktail that the doctor who would be on the premises would shoot into my buttcheek.

When we'd been told this fact by the doctor who sold us the dosage in the first place, my father had made a dry remark about how it was only fitting, considering that I had always been a pain in his ass, so sending me off would end with a pain in mine.

Har-de-har-har

A hand came over to touch mine gently. I looked over at my mother. She had a soft smile on her face. Polite. Her doin' business smile, like she used with clients. This wasn't a mother's love; this was a hand carefully smoothing over the crinkly edges of a business contract before it was to be signed.

"It'll be perfectly alright, Theodora. The Alpha couple's son is a perfectly good match for you, and I'm certain that should he find you agreeable, then the two of you could have a fine relationship with one another."

I rolled my eyes. "If he finds me agreeable. What if I don't find him as such?"

"Theodora." My father's voice rang out coldly in the car. "It's been hard enough to find you a decent match considering your... impediment. Don't jeopardize it."

I grit my teeth and looked down. Muttered something not very nice under my breath - something I knew that both of my parents with their wolf hearing could hear, but they chose not to dignify my childish insults with a response.

My father had always resented me for what I was, rather than being pissed at my mother who was technically the one at fault. Typical, to blame the product and not the manufacturer.

I was, much to my parent's regret and disappointment, what with an old expression was called an eclipse wolf. A name given to the few 'wolves' born, for whom the moon didn't have any effect. I was for all intents and purposes human, which had made it incredibly difficult for my family to play hot potato with me and send me off to the next sucker. Impossible, actually.

I glanced out the window, away from it all. I most of all wanted to go back home. To my own place. To nearly all wolves, a couple of Alphas letting their not-mated daughter live away from home until she had married was... strange. Or 'unheard of' were probably better words. My parents, however, were more than happy to pay the ridiculously high rent for a tiny 1 bedroom closer to town and my job.