Page 2 of The Forbidden Wolf

I knew and accepted that I could never truly be free, not like Jayla, Evan, and Charlie, but whatever future my father accepted for me after my sister Kiana’s upcoming mateship ceremony, I would always have that one faint glimmer of dawn on the Harlem River.

“Do you want the rest of the popcorn?” Charlie asked at full-volume, as if the movie were already over just because Fezzik had shown up with the four white horses. She shoved the bag under my nose as if I’d already said yes.

Jayla snatched it away, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it over the four empty rows in front of us. It landed with a crunch somewhere in the darkness beneath Inigo, Buttercup, and Westley. Evan howled with laughter from the other side of Charlie and loudly slapped her on the knee.

“Silence!” an angry voice hissed from what sounded like the back row.

We all startled and ducked as if someone had fired a shot.

The sudden rush of adrenaline almost spurred my wolf into action, but these past four years of playing Just a Normal Human with my friends had left me with an above average level of shift control. Common sense kicked in, or at least I thought it had, but when I started twisting around to glare at whoever had dared to hush us, both Jayla and Charlie grasped my wrists and told me no.

Confused, but trusting their human judgment, I settled back down for the last few moments of the film. Sometimes it felt like my human friends could communicate with each other telepathically the same way I could with my own kind, but I knew that wasn’t true. They were all just so much more in tune with each other than any of them were with me because of all the time they got to spend together doing normal human things during normal human hours. They did their best to ease my FOMO, and I did my best to pretend their efforts actually helped, but at the end of every Friday and Saturday night, I had to walk home knowing I’d always be the spare in their pack too.

They are not a pack.

The four of us had all met for the first time on the same night—my sixteenth birthday. That was the first night I ever ran away. Kiana and I had a huge fight, and I just really needed some air, so… next thing I knew I was catching my breath on the corner of Lexington and 123rd Street.

Two dozen movies later, I would be able to compare that moment to the one where Rose Dewitt-Bukater met Jack Dawson on the stern of the Titanic, only instead of a floppy-haired artist who made smoking look like it smelled positively divine, it was this seedy, hole-in-the-wall, ex-XXX theater that saved me in every way a person can be saved.

We’re not a person.

Oh, bite me. Us. Whatever.

Anyway. Only three people had purposefully shown up for the midnight showing of Jaws the Revenge. Jayla, who had practically grown up in the Last Century Cinema; Evan, who had recently moved to New York to become one of those beautiful people on the screen; and Charlie, who had come all the way from Iowa several years prior to be with a city she’d never met in person because she fell in love with it while watching You’ve Got Mail. But it was me, the weirdo who’d never even seen a movie, who brought us all together.

Because… well… because I bawled.

Like a tiny little pup. Over something generally considered to be one of the top ten worst movies ever made.

Now that was awkward.

True, but in my defense…

I’d never seen a mother on a screen before, much less one screaming in agony and spraying blood everywhere as a monster bit her in half, and I just… Yeah. I started bawling. Loud and wet and ugly. Shook the whole damn row. I wound up doubled over with my forehead on the seat in front of me, tears and snot spattering the sticky floor as I desperately sucked air through my teeth. But then I felt a soft hand rubbing circles on my back, and a loud voice assured me everything would be okay, it was just a movie.

As the credits began rolling on The Princess Bride, I glanced sideways at the same sweet face I’d found looking down at me four years earlier. Now I knew that she knew there was no such thing as just a movie, but it had been the right thing for her to say at the time. I wasn’t an idiot; I understood the concept of fiction. I knew that woman wasn’t really getting eaten by that fake-ass mechanical shark. But knowing that didn’t matter, not with the film score blaring through the tinny speakers and the foamy waves splashing onto the camera lens. In that moment, nothing in my life had ever felt more real.

So please understand that I wasn’t entirely in my right mind when I looked up at the total stranger who had come to comfort me during my temporary psychotic break and blubbered, “Do movies always kill your mother?” Confusion had washed over Charlie’s features, but she quickly smiled and said, “Oh, no, sweetie, of course not” at the exact same time that Evan and Jayla, who were sitting on opposites sides of the theater, answered in perfect snickering unison, “Always.”

Charlie, who was already in her early twenties then and possessed a certain gravitas I’d since learned to call being the mom friend, chewed those college freshmen up one side and down the other like a wolf on a ham bone until they both skulked over to my row to apologize. But Jayla couldn’t tell a lie, so she compulsively clarified that movie moms do have historically low odds of survival, but only because the writers have to get rid of them since a good mom would do her best to keep her kid from ever having to become a protagonist in the first place since it’s such a shitty gig.

And then Evan announced that he’d had the chance to become a protagonist once, but to keep his mom safe, he’d settled for being a sassy gay friend instead, and so frankly, his mom should have been a tiny bit more appreciative when he broke the news because in nine out of ten movie genres, he would already be dead. That made Jayla and Charlie cackle like they were both in on some very old joke with this guy they’d just met, and that was how I learned that movies were never just movies. They were a language all their own, and anyone who learned to speak it never had to be alone.

So, I lifted my quivering chin and bragged, “My mom died giving birth to me and my twin” which made all three of my new acquaintances gasp. Evan and Jayla looked to Charlie as if she were some sort of alpha, and I found myself twisting my neck around to do the same. I would never forget the way the tattered old screen’s soft blue light flickered across her gentle features as she folded her lips solemnly inward. She nodded once, placed both her hands on my shoulders, and said, “We are in the presence of a Chosen One.”

To which I instinctively replied, “Me? Oh, no. That’s Kiana, my sister.”

Everyone bust out laughing, and just like that, I was in the club. Charlie and Jayla sat down on either side of me while Evan flung himself down in the aisle seat, long legs draped over the seat in front of him. We’d been sitting just like that in those same four seats pretty much every Friday and Saturday night since. Luckily, my friends had yet to realize that I had actually made an incredibly dangerous faux pas that first night instead of a harmless joke about movie tropes.

Jayla, Evan, and Charlie knew the real me more than anyone back home, but they still had no idea I was the second-born daughter of the Bronx Alpha, destined to spend the rest of my life in service to my own twin. They had no idea that one day soon I wouldn’t be showing up for midnight movies anymore. They had no idea that one day when they were all old and married to people they loved, they would get together for brunch and wonder whatever happened to that weirdo girl who cried during Jaws the Revenge.

Because my wolf was right. Ever since Father’s surprising announcement about Kiana’s betrothal to Manhattan’s Alpha Heir, all of the eligible Bronx males had been eyeing me like a juicy strip of bacon. I probably wouldn’t even make it through my twin’s reception without being claimed. If Father approved, there would be no courtship, only another mateship ceremony, because gods forbid I get anything Kiana didn’t get too. So, barring a miracle, I would be sharing a bed by the end of the month.

And that meant no more movies.

No more Buttercup and Westley.

No more Jayla, Evan, and Charlie.

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