"Willow!"

"My name is Will, I told you that!"

"Oh, Willow!" I call louder for my grizzly bear of a brother. "Put some pants on, your girlfriend is here."

A stampede sounds from across the house, but it's just Willow, barreling down the stairs.

"Why bother, she's just going to take them off as soon as we get upstairs."

He winks at me with a salacious grin as he rounds the corner. He can't resist ruffling my hair as he walks behind me, sitting peacefully on the couch. A petite, and entirely too beautiful for my brother, girl enters the doorway and places a chaste kiss to his lips before greeting me with a kind smile and a wave.

"Hey Riley," I greet her with a mouth full of popcorn.

"Gross. Didn't mom teach you any manners?" Willow cries in exasperation.

I shrug my shoulders.

"She tried her best, but sadly all her efforts were wasted on the four idiots that came before me."

"And look where that got me," another female voice calls from the kitchen. "Heathens, all of you!"

Our mother comes through the kitchen door with a scowl on her face, but it doesn't last long when she sees us. The sour look quickly turns to one of love and adoration.

"Riley, love, how are you? Did these ill-mannered children of mine offer you a drink?" She says warmly.

"Oh no Mrs. McHale, I'm fine. Thank you though," Riley politely declines.

Unfortunately for her, a string of adorably dainty sneezes betray her and our mom ushers her through the kitchen into the greenhouse, no doubt to fix her up with some sort of remedy. With nothing better to do and nothing good on Netflix, I leave my popcorn bowl to its own fate and follow behind them.

My mom seats Riley gently at the table in one of the wrought iron chairs while she flutters around the greenhouse collecting fresh herbs for a cup of tea. Willow stands behind Riley, wrapping his arms affectionately around her shoulders.

The sight of his bulky 6'3" frame wrapped tenderly around her delicate 5'4" figure would be comical, if it didn't remind me of my own love life.

I turned twenty a few months ago and the blood moon is this week. To most young girls, this wouldn't mean much of anything besides a simple birthday celebration, but in the land of witches and werewolves, a girl's twentieth birthday is the most important birthday of her life and the blood moon is the "celebration."

The blood moon marks the start of another Lupercalia, an ancient ritual that my kind has depended on to survive. At the stroke of midnight, any girl in the band of covens on our side of the country that has turned twenty since the last ritual will be ushered to the edge of a forest where our mates will hunt us for the sake of ceremony.

I'm sure the details are written in the many texts I was supposed to read in preparation for the event, but details just made me nauseous. I wanted to be as in the dark about this barbaric event as possible.

Looking at Willow and Riley, though, I can't help but be jealous. Male witches are allowed to court their wolf mates the traditional way. Dates. Movies. Falling in love slowly over time like normal people do.

They didn't have to participate in outdated rituals for "the greater good of the coven." Willow met Riley when they were fifteen. Her family came to our town to visit our elders and Willow tracked her scent. Each mate has a scent entirely unique to them and it's too intoxicating for their partner to resist.

On the day Riley came, Willow couldn't get the smell of strawberries out of his head and he searched the entire community until he found her. She was apparently searching for him too, unable to rid herself of the smell of fresh cut daisies. They've been inseparable ever since.

I envied their love, but I was weary of finding my own. How could a ritual decide who I'm with for the rest of eternity? Surely there can't be someone out there so perfectly designed for me.

"Earth. To. Poppy," Willow yells from across the greenhouse.

He picks up an empty plastic pot and chucks it at my head. Our mom places her hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles as she places the mug of hot tea in front of Riley.

"I'm going to shove this pot so far up your-"

"Children, enough!" Our dad admonishes from behind me.

I squeal excitedly and turn to face him, giving him my best bear hug. My arms barely wrap around his waist, my head reaching just below his chest. My brothers definitely got their intimidating size from him, but I was not so blessed.

"I missed you! What did you bring me?" I smile up at him.

He laughs a deep, hearty laugh and pulls a stack of books from his bag. I groan at the sight.

"Ugh, more Lupercalia books? I know everything I need to know."

Elm, Ash, and Basil, my other brothers, push their way past dad and I, shoving me gently as they go. I swat at each of them with as much force as I can muster, but I'm sure they don't feel a thing. They each place a kiss on our mom's cheeks before squeezing into the remaining chairs around the table.

"You can never be too prepared for what will happen," my dad responds.

"Not that you've read any of the other books we've given you," my mom stage whispers.

My dad laughs as he breaks off our embrace to go envelope my mom in a deep hug. They stare intensely into each other's eyes, like they can read each other's thoughts.

Still just as in love as the day they met.

"Yeah, even Elm here read his books, and he didn't even have to ask for the ones with the big pictures," Ash remarks.

This instantly prompted a wrestling match between the two, until our mom shouted at them to stop horsing around in the greenhouse.

"Does this mean we're going to see our baby sister half naked, getting it on with some dude in the woods?" Elm chimes in loudly.

The boys all dramatically gag at the thought. Our parents roll their eyes in sync with each other.

"No, and you better not try to sabotage her mate finding her. Besides, it'll be dark out, and you'll be too overcome by your mate's scent to focus on anything else," our dad explains.

Elm and Ash received our dad's werewolf gene and would be participating in Lupercalia themselves to find their mates. Willow, Basil, and I however received the witch gene from our mom and for the boys, that meant going out and searching for their mate on their own.

"I don't want to participate!" I blurt out.