Menagerie

Chapter 1 - Charlotte

My mom grew up as a coyote girl, and at heart she still is one even though she's been married to a werewolf for over twenty years. Me? I was never entirely clear on what I am. I'm something in between, straddling the two worlds and trying to find my place in both. Imagine the horror of such an adolescence. It's already a time when people struggle to define themselves.

Truth told, that particular aspect of adolescence never really left me, though I'm twenty-two now.

It's different for my brother. He has no trouble fitting in wherever he goes. He's just like my mom in that way. She insists she was terrified when it came time for her to meet Dad's family, but it's impossible for me to picture. Me, I'm not particularly comfortable in either of my skins, the human one or the coyote-wolf I could shift into (go ahead and try calling me a coywolf, I dare you).

I have two truly close friends: Serena and Penny. Penny's a werecoyote who lives near my mom's house in Montana. Serena's a werewolf who lives near my grandparents. Though I didn't see her half as much as Penny, I had an almost ideal relationship with Serena. Culturally, werewolves are simply wilder than werecoyotes, and the distance between us gave me the space I needed from that. And when I was in town, she was at every one of the (literally) wild parties my cousins insisted on bringing me to, there to help me navigate a world I didn't truly fit into.

See? Ideal.

Penny and I went to school together, though we'd known each other far longer: she was also my cousin.

It's easy to pinpoint the most pivotal moment in my life, the moment things changed forever. Penny and I were lounging in the den of her house- which was a fifteen-minute run from my parents' house if I was shifted. We were laying on the floor with our legs up on the couches. It was oddly comfortable, and Penny and I had spent many afternoons just like this, staring at the ceiling while we talked. Our brothers would be playing videogames on the other side of the room while her younger sister, Justine, pestered them endlessly until she was allowed to play too. Our corner here was just removed enough from all of that action.

I think we were debating on whether it was worth the ticket price and the hassle to see our favorite band when they came to Missoula in February. I was against it. I had just gotten out of college, and while my parents had helped me avoid having any debt, neither did I have a lot of money. I had already been out of school for over half a year without finding a job. My parents weren't rushing me, thank goodness. I did freelance editing work for money, but it didn't pay as much as I probably should have been making. The simple fact was that I didn't know where I wanted to end up geographically, and it seemed silly to anchor myself to a job before figuring that out.

"Pleeeeeeease, Char? Pretty please?"

"And what about mating season?" I demanded. "Do you really think it'll be easy to handle a crowd that big? No way will we be the only weres there. How are you going to enjoy the concert when there's a decent chance you'll come across some yummy-smelling man and lose your head?"

"I don't think you mean head," Penny whispered, giggling. "I think you mean heart."

I rolled my eyes. "You know that's not how it works." Look at my own parents. They had mated the very night they met, and because they were strangers, it had been a bumpy start. They hadn't loved each other, not in the beginning. How can you love someone you don't know? No, they'd been bound together permanently, understanding that they would fall in love and bumbling around like idiots while they waited for it to happen.

That wasn't how Mom told the story, of course. But that's what she meant.

Rose sighed, exasperated. "Come on, Char, you can't really believe that."