A Wolf After My Own Heart by MaryJanice Davidson (good books for high schoolers .TXT) 📕

“That’s it,” Macropi said. “That’s exactly it.” She straightened; one moment she’d looked small and defeated, the next brisk and no-nonsense. “Thank you for listening, m’dear. I do feel better. I don’t want to talk to the cubs about it, their lives have been chaotic enough. And my Honey Bear would just worry about me.”

“Oh my God. Please tell me you just let slip Garsea’s embarrassing childhood nickname.”

“I deny everything. Now don’t you go teasing—”

“Ha! I have not yet begun to tease!” Lila was almost giddy; it was Christmas and her birthday rolled into one. “And I don’t care if you beat me to death with every wooden spoon in the house, I will make use of this incredible tidbit you’ve dropped. Is it too late to order her a vanity plate? H0NEYB5AR? D’you think that’s taken?”

“Oh, no-no-no-no-no. Don’t ask me. In fact, leave me out altogether,” she insisted. But she looked loads happier than she had five minutes ago. So that was all right.

“Tell you what, I’ve got a deal for you. You answer some questions for me and I’ll only use Honey Bear as a greeting for the next five years, and I’ll only buy five hundred ‘HONK 4 HONEY BEAR’ bumper stickers.”

“Oh dear God.”

“Yeah, I drive a hard bargain.”

“I heard you asking Oz if Shifters are religious.”

Lila blinked. “That came out of nowhere, but okay.”

“We’re like Stables in that regard. Some of us are, some aren’t. Some of us try to nurture our spiritual side and some don’t even think they have a spiritual side.”

“Okay.”

“There’s an ancient story among our kind,” Macropi went on, because now she wanted to talk about Shifter religion for some reason. “Like the Adam and Eve story. Here’s how it was told to me.”

* * *

Once there was a man born to loneliness. This man called himself Kama, and he had no memory of his family, of his village, of anything but his travels. His world was the road in front of him, and always he walked alone. If he met a man or woman or child on the world his road, they could not see him, though he dogged their footsteps and shouted and cried. And so he continued, always a solitary creature.

Soon he stopped eating, for what good was it to know the world if he was only ever alone? But even now he could not stop seeking, so he walked and his hunger grew, as did his thirst, because when he decided to stop eating, he stopped filling his waterskin. And his only comfort was the knowledge that he would soon lie down and be dead, and perhaps he could escape his loneliness in death. Death would see him and know him, surely.

And not long after, he came upon the widest river he had ever seen, so broad that he had to squint to see to the far bank. And on that far bank stood a woman, who beheld him and raised a hand in greeting. Her name was Rupa, though he did not yet know that.

The man was shocked. In all his long life, no other creature had acknowledged his existence. He waved back and, though terribly weak from hunger, began to wade into the river, only to see the woman wave back. As her motions became more frantic, his determination to cross increased. Even if she no longer wished to see him, he had to speak with her, if only to thank her for her courtesy, the first ever shown him in his long, long life. And it was only when the water reached his chest that he understood her warning, because the greedy current snatched him away. He stretched his hands out to her, and she ran. In despair, he prepared to give himself to the river. But then he saw she wasn’t running away, but running alongside the river bank, keeping pace with him even as the current played with him like a lion with a brace of hares.

And when the river finally tired of him, he was so exhausted he would have sunk beneath the water save for the woman who had kept pace with him all the day, and now swam out to him and took him in her arms and tugged him back to shore.

After his ordeal, the man fell into an exhausted sleep, and when he awoke, he feared the woman had been a fever dream. But she was still there and smiled at him. And he looked at her and knew her, as she knew him, and they were together for all of their lives and raised many fine strong cubs together, for he was a good hunter, having hunted for himself all his life, and she was a fierce mother and gave him fearless cubs.

And when death finally came for them, it came as a swift, sweet river, but these waters were gentle and bore them away together, and wherever the river brought them, they are still there, together.

* * *

“Well! That was…” Lila trailed off. “I’m not sure what you want from me right now.”

“I just think it’s interesting that every culture has legends about soul mates. And that’s our version.”

“Okay.”

“But there’s another version where the man is a Shifter, and the woman he sees across the river is a Stable. And he swims to her and they become the Adam and Eve of Shifters, with all the fine qualities of both. If they hadn’t mingled the bloodlines, both their species would have died out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which is silly. Obviously we’re simply a different branch of evolution.”

“Like Homo erectus and Neanderthals,” she suggested.

“Right. It’s just a story. But sometimes you meet someone and you instantly connect with them, don’t you know? And it’s overwhelming and strange and wonderful all at once.”

“I’m desperately afraid to ask where you’re going with this.”

Macropi spread her hands. “I’m just saying that it happens, whether you call it a crush or a soul mate or