As spring of 1820 began, Kristofer found himself face to face with the new life that had been decided on for him at last. It had now been nearly year and a half since his older brother Kaleb had come back to Kristofer’s home right outside Sean’s territory, boasting about the massacre that Kristofer believed had ended the lives of Claire and her friends. That night Kaleb had promptly begun dragging Kristofer back eastward to the Caern where their tribe, the Children of Gaia, had made a home hundreds of miles from the port town that Sean and Claire called their home.

Deliberation went on for months about what was to be done with Kristofer to punish him for his ignorance of the true nature of the vampire who he had called friend. But then the tribe as a whole got distracted and caught up in the conflicts between the white men and the natives, and all decisions about Kristofer were put on hold for a time. However, as the Garou were even more prevalent among the Native American tribes, the war got very bloody indeed, even for creatures as powerful as Kaleb and the rest of their tribe.

Kristofer’s brother Kaleb, as well as nearly all the other Garou in their Caern were believed to have been murdered by the others like them among the native Garou tribes such as Wendigo and Uktena. As the number of their tribe were very nearly decimated, the kinfolk remaining were to be taken in by another tribe of Children of Gaia slightly southeast of the now abandoned Caern where Kristofer and Kaleb had been born.

As their numbers desperately needed rebuilt after that leg of the war, Kristofer was one of the first kinfolk to be assigned a mate by the remaining elders of his Caern, as well as those of the new Caern that was now to be his home. At this point, Kristofer was nearly twenty-eight years old and they had no intention of letting him see thirty without doing his duty to the tribe, which was even more crucial to them now that they had lost so many.

The girl who he was assigned to be the mate of was a blue-eyed, flame-haired woman named Rose. She was twenty-seven as well, and stood at just two inches shorter than Kristofer’s own modest height of 5’8”. He met her less than an hour before they were promptly hand-fasted, which was the tribe’s version of marriage. Kristofer was startlingly silent and almost frozen in place for the duration of his meeting Rose and their consequent marriage ceremony.

The problem was not that he didn’t find her physically appealing. As a matter of fact she was quite attractive on a purely physical level. And she was nearly as pale as Claire, being a natural redhead. Though Kristofer quickly tried to push away memories of the woman, nay the vampire, who he had found so attractive as well. The real problem he had was two-pronged; first of all, there was the very idea of being forced into this marriage with a mate he barely even knew. And the only reason the choice was forced on him at all was that a group of Garou who also barely even knew a thing about him personally deemed it his duty to have as many children as possible to hopefully add to their numbers.

There was also the other contributing factor to Kristofer feeling nearly physically ill by the time he and Rose returned to the small cabin that was to be their home; and that was the fact that this new mate of his, attractive enough as she was, she was Garou.

Kristofer had spent years being treated harshly by his brother and his brother’s equals, and feeling as though he had no value to them at all, aside from his ability to pass on their genes; and now finding himself wed to one of them was something that did not appeal to Kristofer in any way at all. He had been taught all his life how evil the servants of the Wyrm, specifically the vampires, were; yet never once did the one vampire he had met ever made him feel as little like an actual thinking, feeling human being as his own relatives did on a daily basis.

And now he was married to one of their kind. He was expected to make love to her and give her children; despite the treatment he had suffered at the hands of those like her. And the worst part was that he had no way at all to hope to keep her at a distance. She could easily snap him in two if he ever stirred that boiling rage that all Garou fell victim to as an innate part of their very existence. The life that now lay before him was a very miserable one indeed, at least in his mind.

Once they entered their new home, Kristofer’s steps faltered just inside the door she closed behind them; his dark thoughts of his future were nearly overwhelming him at that point. Rose looked at him curiously as she took a step closer, which only caused his breath to catch.

“Something wrong?” she asked him skeptically.

“Nervous I guess” he managed hoarsely, not able to look directly back at those blue eyes, pretty as they were.

“About?” she asked with a somewhat amused smirk.

“Well, we do hardly know each other, and now…” he simply swallowed a lump in his throat.

“I know a few things about you” she smiled back at him, which did do well to cause his breath to catch once again.

“I can only imagine that they probably aren’t good things. My people haven’t exactly been very happy with me recently” he admitted quietly.

“Good thing you have new people now” she smirked as she began removing the long jacket she wore over her rather plain dress as the temperature was a bit milder there in that heavily forested area at the eastern border of Las Californias.

Kristofer watched her for a moment as he tried to find any other words to keep her engaged in conversation. After all, if the conversation stopped, that could very well mean she would be expecting other things to start. Finally, he spoke again, “so what things have you heard?”

Rose allowed a soft chuckle as she hung her coat on a hook inside the door, “that your brother was Garou. He has two children that may or may not go through the First Change in a few years. That his wife died having the second one. That neither of your parents were Garou, but you had a grandparent on each side who was” she offered as she moved to take a seat upon the couch that they had been standing near.

“So they basically just told you about my family tree to assure you that I could possibly…” he shook his head again as he sighed and nervously cast his eyes around the room if for no other reason than to buy time.

“Is there something else I need to know?” Rose asked as she watched him carefully, almost as though her eyes were seeing more than she was letting on; which was quite possible, considering she wasn’t exactly human.

“You sound like you’ve already heard other things as well; judging by your tone” Kristofer returned as he warily watched her seated on the couch as though she were a lot less nervous than he was about this entire new life situation they now found themselves in.

“I also heard that the reason you’re still single and childless at my age is that you…” she paused a moment as though to rethink her first word choice, “spent five years back east learning to be an honest-to-goodness doctor.”

Kristofer scoffed slightly as he looked away again, “not that I ever even got the chance to…” he sighed again instead of finishing that sad sentence.

“To what?” she surprisingly asked him to finish, almost as though she cared about what he felt or had to say; not that Kristofer would believe that about any Garou, considering the ones he had already known before meeting this new wife of his.

“It was only a week after I returned here that Kaleb dragged me back to our Caern” he stated while trying to keep the sadness out of his voice though it was apparent nonetheless, “so I wasted all that time and money and never even got to practice medicine at all.”

“Dragged, huh?” Rose stated, having an easier time keeping any emotion out of her own tone. She then added, “and how exactly did you pay for medical school if your family obviously wanted you to stay here; since you were already a healer anyway” she tacked on that last bit, proving that she had at least already received that piece of information about him as well.

“The way I can heal is different than being a real doctor” Kristofer argued weakly.

“No kidding. You can heal things that doctors could never heal” she stated plainly.

Kristofer scoffed as he looked down again, “but practicing medicine the way a real doctor would is a little less deadly for me” he reminded quietly in reference to the fact that his innate healing ability did come at a very high cost to his own health. And because of that, the healers among the kinfolk usually only used it in extreme cases, and usually paid with their lives.

“Isn’t it your duty though, to give your life for us so we can continue to fight?” Rose called him on the belief that most Garou held about the kinfolk healers.

“Haven’t I already?” Kristofer choked out the whispered response, not allowing himself to look back at her to see the disapproval he was sure had crossed her pretty face at his words.

Rose then let out a wry laugh that almost caused him to look her way, though he forced his eyes to remain fixed on the wall next to the door instead. She then replied, “not happy with your new mate are you?”

Kristofer tensed and closed his eyes in some combination of fear of her anger being stoked as well as regret for possibly hurting her with his words. It was true that most Garou had treated him terribly all of his life; though Rose had not officially done so herself, yet anyway.

He took a deep breath as she was still waiting for his response, “it’s not you, Rose” he attempted, “I’ve just always wanted more from my life than just marriage and children. That’s why I went and got my degree after all” he added quietly.

“So is it just that you’d rather be a doctor than a husband and father?” Rose asked him, her voice not yet showing as much anger as curiosity.

“In order to become a real doctor, I’d have to leave the Caern. Which would make it a little difficult for me to be here putting children in you every year or so” he attempted to further explain, only allowing a sideways glance toward her.

“So, is your problem actually staying in the Caern, or just the idea of having children with me at all?” Rose continued her questioning of his true desires.

Kristofer scoffed again as he finally looked back at her. He was trying in vain to determine what the real reason behind her line of questioning was if it wasn’t just to punish him for his own opinions; that was the usual response a Garou had when hearing that he had a desire different than what they thought he should have.

“What do you want me to say here, Rose? Honestly” he added more quietly.

“I guess I just want to know if you’d have such a problem with fathering our children, if it didn’t actually mean giving up those other plans you were trying to make” she stated simply as she watched him carefully.

“But that’s what it does mean” Kristofer denied with a bit of confusion at the very question itself.

“So, doctors don’t have children?” she asked wryly.

“Not usually ones that may become werewolves” he retorted with what little volume he could then.

“But that wouldn’t be ‘til they hit puberty” Rose stated plainly.

Kristofer narrowed his eyes back at her as he took a breath before responding, “what exactly are you saying?” he had to ask.

“I’m saying that we do have a bit of a window between having human babies, and having Garou children. Thirteen years or so” she added.

“But…” he just shook his head, not wanting to let himself hope that she could possibly be offering some sort of compromise to the hell that he had been trying to consign himself to enduring for the rest of his life.

That was when Rose stood and took a step closer to him. She then took a deep breath of her own before speaking, “you’re very easy to look at, and I’m already twenty-seven too. If we don’t make this work, I don’t know what sort of mate I’ll get stuck with instead” she began with a slight smile.

“I’m still not sure what…” Kristofer began hesitantly as she placed a hand on his chest where he could feel that her body temperature was a great deal warmer than his, just to remind him again that they were not the same.

“I’m saying that if I were to give up life in the Caern for a decade or so, and move back to civilization and let you be the doctor you want to be so badly…” Rose took another breath as his eyes widened, “then would you be more willing to give me children, after all?”

Kristofer swallowed hard, trying to convince himself that he hadn’t imagined those words passing her lips. He then tried to force himself not to give into hope just yet, and had to ask, “and if our children did become Garou?”

“When and if that happened, I’ll bring them back here. And we’ll both have fulfilled our duty then” she told him plainly.

“And what would happen to me then? Would I just be expected to quit practicing medicine and come back here too?” Kristofer had to ask worriedly.

“Like I said, if you actually do father any Garou with me, they can’t claim that you didn’t do what you were meant to do; and they’ll have more of us to add to their ranks as well. That should hopefully be enough to convince them to let you stay among the mortals and continue doing what you want. Though they may still expect us to continue our conjugal visits at least as long as we’re still young enough to have babies” she chuckled, “but if we were to make a child this very night, we’d both be over forty by the time he or she had their First Change, so I doubt they’d expect much from us at that point” she assured him with another soft chuckle.

Kristofer was stunned into silence for a long moment before finding anymore words just to assure himself that he truly hadn’t dreamed this entire conversation. It was true that he was still quite wary of making love with a creature such as Rose; considering he had made it a point to never even become that intimate with any woman for fear of the consequences of spilling his seed into some unaware mortal and cursing her with a child who became Garou someday. And he was even more terrified of even the idea of bringing a child into the world that would become what Rose was. But even more than that he wanted to be free, and some version of that freedom was what she was offering; and he doubted he would ever get another such offer again.

“You would really leave the Caern for over a decade just to allow me to follow my dream?”

“And mine. I want children. I want them to be like me. That want is stronger than my need to live here. I can give that up for a few years if it means possibly having that dream come true for me” Rose told him as she moved to place a soft kiss over his lips to seal her words.