For Starting Over

Time & Space

I had robotically moved through the next few days, Mom moving around in the background… mug of tea offered, sandwiches plated, laundry folded, and new toiletries neatly arranged daily.

I honestly have no idea what happened at Alexander’s memorial service. I was there. Mom got me there… showered, clothed, and armed with tissues in every pocket.

No one knew about our fight.

No one knew we had essentially broken up.

No one knew I wasn’t the broken girlfriend.

No one except me.

After the service, I tried a few times to search for my wolf in my mind. Black, silent, emptiness.

- What if I can’t find her ever again?

I asked Dr Wilson at our follow up appointment a few days later. He stopped his poking around and looked at me seriously,

- He wasn’t your mate, your mom said, correct?

- Right. We both turned 18 about 5 months ago…but we didn’t pair. We had been together since… since… well, forever.

-Well, it’s true our wolves can develop connections and feelings that are deep and meaningful, even without the mate bond, and for some wolves that’s what they decide to go with. They attach so deeply that the mate bond gets overwritten. Now, do you understand why we are paired with our Mate?

- I mean, only what we learn in school. To mate and make better, stronger, healthier wolves… the weaker ones don’t mate sometimes.

-Good memory! So, if your wolf and his wolf were so attached to each other and found each other compatible for making another generation of wolves, then they would not feel the drive to find their mate. Now, if you hadn’t marked each other, claimed each other physically, then the mate bond still exists for you with someone else. If he claimed you, then the bond is probably overwritten and you might not be mated.

-Oh…

This was more complicated than Mr Driver had mentioned in Wolf Ed in sixth grade. I chewed my lip as I thought about everything Dr Wilson had explained.

-So… ahem… did he claim you?

Dr Wilson paused his exam and looked with a gentle, fatherly, smile. I liked his little white mustache that wiggled a bit when he smiled.

-No, no… we … um… kissed a lot… but we never… we thought… ummm… we didn’t know about the whole over writing … we understood that only mates…

-I see. I told the school that this omission could lead to misunderstanding, but they didn’t want kids going wild claiming each other in the name of Free Mating. It’s the whole protection of the mate, so that kind of … hormonal craziness… doesn’t result in attractive but i***t litters.

Dr Wilson muttered, more to the nurse standing behind him with the gauze than to me.

I smiled a bit for the first time in days… i***t litters.