A true Luna princess

Waiting for her fiance

*Isolde*

The following evening, I am positioned on the sofa in the Yellow Drawing Room some two hours before the Alpha of Howlstone and his son Rupert are due to arrive. My mother keeps rushing through, squeaking this or that order to the servants. My father is more given to agitated pacing than to rushing. He fiddles with his cravat until it has utterly wilted, and he has to go off to change.

The truth is that my parents have prepared the whole of their married life for this moment, and even so they don’t really believe their good fortune. I can see the incredulity in their eyes.

Will the Alpha truly go through with this marriage, based on a schoolboy promise years ago? Inside, they are not convinced.

“‘Dignity, virtue, affability, and bearing,’” my mother whispers to me, for the third time that evening.

My father is more direct. “For goodness’ sake, keep your mouth shut, and smile.”

I nod. Again.

“Aren’t you the least bit nervous?” my mother hisses, sitting down beside me.

“No,” I state.

“That’s… that’s unnatural! One would almost think you didn’t want to be a luna.” The very notion is clearly inconceivable to my mother.

“Insofar as I am about to formally betroth myself to a man whose brain would make a grain of sand loom large, I must wish to be a luna,” I point out.

“The future Alpha’s brain is irrelevant,” My mother says, frowning, and then instantly soothing her brow with her fingertips, in case a wrinkle has sprung up. “You will someday be a luna. I never thought about brains when I married your father. The very consideration is unladylike.”

“I feel quite certain that Father evinced a normal intelligence,” I say. I am sitting very still so that my ludicrously unnatural ringlets won’t tangle.

“Your father paid me a call. We danced. I never considered the question of his wits. You think too much, Isolde!”

“Which may not be a drawback, given that any she-wolf who marries Rupert will have to do the thinking for two.”

“My heart is palpitating,” My mother says, with a little gasp. “Even my toes are qualmish. What if the Alpha changes his mind? You… you are not all that you could be. If only you could stop trying to be witty, Isolde. I assure you that your jests are not funny.”

“I don’t try, Mama,” I say, starting to feel a little angry, even though I’ve promised myself that I won’t wrangle. “I simply don’t always agree with you. I see things differently.”

“You indulge in coarse wit, no matter how you wish to phrase it.”

“Then Rupert and I will make quite a pair,” I say, just stopping myself from snapping. “Dim-witted and coarse-witted.”

“That’s just the sort of thing I’m talking about!” my mother accuses. “It’s unnatural to jest at a moment like this, when a future Alpha is about to plight his troth to you.”

I am calm. I know perfectly well that Rupert’s father will arrive, at the appointed hour, and bearing whatever papers are necessary to effect the betrothal. The bridegroom’s presence hardly seems relevant.

The Alpha of Howlstone is a hardheaded man who has no interest in finding his son a compatible spouse; instead, he is looking for a nursemaid. A fertile nursemaid. He doesn’t need money, and the dowry my parents have scraped together… which is more than respectable for a she-wolf of my rank… is of no importance.

It is my hips and my brains that have prompted the Alpha to go through with his promise, as he told me coolly on the day I turned fifteen. My parents had thrown a garden party for their daughters, and to everyone’s enormous surprise, the Alpha had joined us. Rupert had not accompanied him because he’d been only eleven years old at the time, and barely out of short pants.

“My son is a buffle-headed i***t,” the Alpha had said to me, staring at me so hard that his eyes bulged a bit.

Since my opinion accorded with the Alpha’s, I had deemed it best to say nothing.

“And you know it,” he had said, with distinct satisfaction. “You’re the one, my girl. You’ve got the brains, and you’ve got the hips.”

I must have twitched, because he’d said, “Hips mean children. My Luna was rail-thin, and look what happened to me. There are two things I want in my daughter-in-law, and one is hips and the other is brains. I don’t mind telling you that if you didn’t have those two assets, I’d toss over my promise to your father and look about until I found the right she-wolf. But you’re the one.”

I had nodded, and since then I have never doubted that I will marry Rupert someday. The Alpha of Howlstone is not a man who permits mere technicalities… such as Rupert’s or my feelings… to stand in the way of a decision.

As the years pass and the Alpha doesn’t bring his son to the altar, even as my parents grow more and more nervous, I still don’t worry. Rupert is a buffle-headed fool and he isn’t going to change.

My hips aren’t going to change, either.