The Unintentional Alpha

The Deep Emerald Mermaid Style Dress

My mother ceremoniously made her way into my room and immediately reprimanded me for the position I was sitting in. 

"You're going to destroy your hair!" she squealed in that high-pitched tone that I was sure was a thousand times more potent since I had shifted. I sat up so quickly I nearly knocked myself off the bed. I muttered an apology but she was already off on her next tirade. "Can I trust you to put this dress on yourself?" she asked me sarcastically, as she waved around the black garment bag in her delicate, manicured hand. Ever since I had shifted, my mother had never looked better. She had become an influencer in her own right. The mother of one of the last wolves in the pack, she took her job of maintaining her appearance more seriously than she had ever taken actually mothering me.

Without waiting for an answer, she placed the hanger over the door of my closet and sashayed back out of the room. Actually shopping for the dress had been definitely one of the top three most stressful and unpleasant days of my life. Everything I had picked had been quickly tut-tutted by Briana; it was all "too plain," "too boring," "too dark," "too black," and, my personal favorite, "the single most unflattering garment I have ever seen anyone wear ever." All, of course, told to me in secret each time she escorted me back to the dressing room; appearances needed to be maintained, you know.

Eventually, I stopped giving any input and just allowed her to choose. She had settled on a form-fitting green number ("deep emerald mermaid style," according to the lady from the mall that had sold it to me) that complimented my dark brown hair and eyes (according to my mother). The dress was an off-the-shoulder style, and it gave me at least the illusion of some cleavage. The bust of the dress ruched in right around my navel, but off to the right, where the dress flared into the mermaid skirt and fell in soft ruffles to the floor. Tiny rhinestones created intricate swirls up the skirt of the dress, meeting the ruching, which had a cluster of rhinestones encased by a satin rose. I mean, the dress was beautiful. It was just so, so much more than I could possibly ever feel comfortable in.

After a couple of fittings, the dress clung to me in a way that I had hoped was seductive rather than appalling, but I was dreading putting it on nevertheless. There was something terrifying about making your formal presentation into society already, but doing it in a dress that you were only maybe 65% sure wasn't going to rip the second you sat down made it substantially more terrifying. I found myself wishing deeply that my mother had a change of heart and had given me the black, cap-sleeved t-shirt dress that I had initially picked at the store, and I felt Bridget echoing the sentiment. Bridget then suggested her own idea, which was ditching the dress, stripping down naked, and running through the woods as a wolf, and I agreed that this was the superior option. Unfortunately, we were both bound by honor? Guilt? The feeling that we, like my mother had told me in so many words over the course of the past few months, owed her this for ruining her life by being born? So I slid into the dress. And I felt like a deep emerald sausage; wrapped in a sparkly casing, but a sausage nonetheless.

I didn't have a full-length mirror in my room, so I stood as far away from my wall mirror as I could to try and see the whole dress. Without the sparkly rhinestone heels that I had to match, the dress was just a bit too long, so I had to stand on my toes to make sure I didn't step on the bottom, rip the entire mermaid tail off of the dress, ruin the party, ruin the evening, ruin everyone's lives...

I could hear Bridget's exasperated growl in my head and I could feel myself tether back into reality, gripping the carpet of my room with my overextended toes. You're going to be fine, she almost chanted at me, and I really wanted to believe it. With my hair done and my face beat to the Moon Goddess, wearing this dress that probably cost more than I was anticipating my entry-level salary to be once I got out of college, I could have been anyone. I could have been someone that deserved the dress and the party and the attention.

When my mother came back into the room to assess my dressing capabilities, she was radiant. Her dress, a plum-colored silk sheath dress that exposed glitter-dusted tights and a pair of red-bottom heels, was anything but understated. She outshone me in nearly every way, except for height. It didn't surprise me in the slightest. It was an unspoken truth, that this party was for her, but it was a truth still.

"You look absolutely gorgeous," she gushed. Behind her were several attendants that I assumed were there to assist us to the party. "Oh, look at me! I'm about to start crying! Isn't she just beautiful?" I smiled in what I hoped was a demure way while I glimpsed Briana's decidedly not watering eyes. 

Without a word, one of the attendants placed my shoes on the floor while my mother held my hands so I could step into them. At 5'10", I towered over her 5'3" dancer's frame already, but these heels had easily taken me past six feet tall. "It's good genes," my mother had been telling me in regards to my unexpected three-inch growth spurt, in anticipation of my hopeful marking. "If he's going to mark you, he's going to be taller than you. If he has the wolf gene, he's just going to be taller. It's just science." I wasn't really sure if it was, but either way, I guess it didn't make a difference. Part of me hoped he would be 5' even just to prove her wrong. Bridget chuckled at that one, too.