Chapter 100

#Ansel’s Epilogue: A New Tomorrow

Ansel and Karin waited together on the wings of the stage, listening to the cheers and booming voice over the microphone.

Edwin had been removed from the election ballot. The next in-line for the throne, a cousin, replaced him. Ansel won in a landslide.

Ansel looked at Karin. She was leaning against her crutches. Her raven hair fell down over her shoulders. Her brown eyes were warm and flecked with gold.

“Did I ever tell you,” he said, “How proud I am of you?”

A blush came over her cheeks. She raised her eyebrow. “What for?”

“You llean into your confidence more and more everyday,” he said. “I always knew you were feisty as shit, but until the day of the attack, when I really saw you in action, I didn’t fully recognize just how courageous and strong you are.”

Karin looked down at her feet, hiding a smile. “I was always scared of Ada’s power,” she said. She looked back up at Ansel. “I held her back constantly, but I think I’ve finally learned to lean into her. And now, when I can touch that synchronicity with her, it’s like we become a whole other being.”

“It’s you,” Ansel said. “Ada, or you and Ada together - however you want to spin it, all of it is you. You are brave. You, Karin, are strong.”

Karin shifted on her crutches. Ansel put his arm around her, to help support her weight.

“You know,” she said, “I blamed Ada for all the feelings I couldn’t control. My feelings for you. But after we were severed, I realized that I loved you, even without her.”

Ansel felt a lump in his throat. “I thought you finally just surrendered to fate,” he said. “Or maybe I had won you over with my charms,” he added with a wink.

Karin laughed and rolled her eyes.

“I love you, Little Wolf,” he said, kissing her forehead. “And I’ve wanted to tell you something for so long - I should have told you ages ago.”

Ansel ran his fingers through her hair. “Karin, you were never a surrogate to me. Never.”

Karin’s dark eyelashes fluttered rapidly to blink back tears.

“They’re ready for you,” someone hissed.

Ansel ignored them, staying focused only on her. Karin seemed unable to form words. Ecstatic cheers went up outside. Ansel was shoved out center onto the stage, but he looked back at her. Her face brimmed with emotion.

King Mair introduced him and someone shoved a microphone in his face.

Ansel blinked in the glaring light. He looked out at the sea of Weres in front of him.

He cleared his throat. “Tonight,” he said. “Was a momentous occasion in the Werewolf world.”

He held up his hand to quiet the thunderous applause.

“Momentous, not because of my victory, but because of yours. We just held the first election in our history.”

The crowd clapped and yipped joyously.

“This was a victory of peace,” Ansel said. “A victory against the violence that’s ravaged our community as we’ve endured years of civil war. Tonight, we work to end it. No more coups. No more birthrights. No more victors born in blood.”

Cheers went up again and Ansel leaned into the microphone.

“You’ve elected me in a free and fair process - and we will ensure that process continues. Together, we will work to establish a republic, not an empire. We will set term limits, and when my term is over, I will walk away. I will leave the power you have granted me in the hands of the next leader. The leader we choose.”

Stunned reaction rippled through the audience, culminating in a euphoric roar of applause and shouts.

In the palace, Ansel was later told, the old king watched the live broadcast. As Ansel recited the final lines of his speech, drawing from the goodness King David had always taken for granted, a smile formed upon his face. Then he took his last breath.

#Karin’s Epilogue: The Wedding

“Just be careful, okay?”

Ansel’s voice comes through mindlink. He sits at the piano, in his tux, his fingers poised to begin hitting the notes of the song he composed for me.

I beam at him. “Don’t worry so much.”

He takes a deep breath in. His face barely conceals the anxiety.

We exchanged our vows earlier today, in what Ansel crankily describes in the days leading up, as a bloated, televised nightmare.

He’s spent the year in constant meetings, interviews, and briefings - working to build a new kind of Werewolf society. Despite that, the Weres aren’t quite ready to let go of the old royal glamor. The wedding becomes a lavish, romantic, public celebration.

“I knew it would probably turn into a state dinner of sorts,” Ansel says, “But I didn’t know there’d be popstars and fireworks.” He’s laying in bed next to me, staring up at the ceiling, with an expression on his face I can only describe as “brooding.”

We’re both still adjusting to the heaps of attention and the enormity of the work.

“If I had known it would be like this,” Ansel says, just a month into it, “I would have suggested a constitutional monarchy.” He sighs, “I could have been a figurehead.”

He gets restless sometimes, and I go out with him into the forest on those nights to let our wolves roam free. The biggest transformation I’ve seen in him is his reconnection with his musician soul. Often, I find him at his piano, lost in song, or bent over composition sheets of music.

The light of the full moon shines brightly through our bedroom window. The duvet is a messy lump at the end of the bed. I’m feeling warm and calm in the afterglow of sex. I’m laying on my side, facing him. Ansel twists a piece of his blond hair around his finger.

He looks over at me and presses his palm against mine. We interlock our fingers. He turns his head back up to watch the ceiling fan spin.

My heart starts to beat a little quicker. “I got some news today.”

“Hmm?”

“I know maybe the timing isn’t perfect,” I say.

And it isn’t, exactly. I worked for months to rehab my ankle. Between that and the Werewolf edge at healing, I made a good recovery, and began rehearsing and training again. I’ve only just restarted my ballet career, with my first upcoming performance scheduled soon. Much to my father’s delight, I’m the principal dancer in Swan Lake. After all that he’s been through, I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he can watch me as a ballerina again. I hope he’s not disappointed when I tell him my premier will also be the finale - for a little while - but I think the reason may make up for it.

“What is it,” Ansel asks.

“I’m pregnant,” I whisper.

His eyes widen. “Really?”

I nod. He smiles and scoops me up. His heart’s beating fast in his chest.

To my amazement, Ansel tells me that he also dreamed of our daughter, Jemma.

When Doc does our ultrasound a week later, Ansel’s standing next to me, holding my hand. I’m nervous. The first weeks can be precarious, and I hope the baby’s alright.

“Oh, well you look at that,” Doc says with a laugh.

I squint my eyes.

“What,” Ansel asks, gripping my hand so hard I think it’s going to go numb.

“Two cubs,” Doc says, pointing. “There and there.”

Now, I see it! Two distinct little jellybeans.

Ansel looks faint. “Twins? But… I -” He looks at me and then shifts his eyes upward, shaking his head. “Nice one, Selene,” he grumbles.

“What about Ezra?”

“No ‘E’ names. It reminds me of ‘Edwin’ and ‘Ethan.’”

I stop, panting. I shift out of my wolf form.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I have to exclude an entire letter in the alphabet?”

“Just one out of twenty-six!”

“Alright,” I say. “I get it.”

The night air is filled with a chorus of cicadas.

Ansel shifts out of his wolf. “Why’d you stop?” His breathing is heavy. He puts his hand up to rest against the trunk of a pine tree. “We were closing in on that deer.”

“Because the more time I spend as Ada, the more ‘animal’ I become whenever I take her form.” My neck is sweaty. I pull my hair off the back of it, twisting it over my shoulder instead.

“We didn’t quite gel before,” I say. “Now, when I’m a wolf, it’s mostly all smell, and instinct, and in-the-moment.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, that’s how it’s supposed to work. That’s what makes it so great.”

“I just need access to more of the thinking part of me,” I say. “I can’t keep up with the banter.”

“Banter away,” Ansel says. He cranes his head up to follow the length of the tall tree.

I take a few steps, crunching through leaves and pines, to investigate the source of a rustling nearby. I sniff the air. Field mouse.

“Why are you focused on only boy names,” Ansel says. He’s leaning back against the tree.

“Ada knows it’s a boy,” I say.

“You didn’t tell me that,” he says softly. His face is overcome with tender emotion. “One of each.”

The wedding is something of an over-baked nightmare, but the after-after party that follows is much more intimate, filled with friends and family, rather than celebrities and political allies.

I throw my arms around my father’s neck. He wipes his glasses that have fogged up from tears and makes Ansel promise to take care of me.

“I promise, Matthew,” he says, before my father pulls him into a bear hug.

Joy gives me such explicit wedding-night advice, Doc’s ears go red.

“Consult her later on sex-tips for pregnancy,” Ansel whispers to me.

Aaron is drunk on champagne. We dance and shriek the words together to “I’m Coming Out,” in shrill, jubilant, disco-fever. Remembering Charles’ exuberant dancing, it hits me in the chest that he’s not here, but I’d like to think he’d approve.

I hold Maggie while she cries bittersweet tears. It’s been a long year for her, but Ansel held up his promise to take care of her, and I’ve tried to, too. I spin her around the dance floor until she’s laughing.

“You sure it’s safe?” Ansel catches me before I run off. I’ve just begged him to make use of the piano in the room, so I can break into ballerina-mode to our song.

“I mean, all those twirls and that big jump?”

“Grand jete.”

“Yes,” he says. “That.”

“Doc says the big stuff is all okay till the second trimester.”

The band takes a break and the room is silent, except for quiet chatter. Ansel adjusts his tux lapels nervously at the piano. He swallows and begins to strike the keys of the beautiful song he wrote for me, so long ago.

I take a deep breath and begin to dance. I let my body lead me. I both glide and bolt across the floor, my feet working in intricate movements, in time to the rhythm of the song.

I catch sight of Dad. His glasses have fogged up again.

“You were amazing,” Ansel tells me later. “Although I missed the last. The ‘grand jete.’” He says it in an exaggerated French accent.

I laugh. “I know. I saw you close your eyes.”

Ansel stays at the piano bench after my dance. With a grin, his fingers begin to fly across the piano. The band jumps in, and the entire room is belting out “Crocodile Rock” at the top of their lungs.

It’s a dizzying night of Elton John tunes, warm hugs, and some wolf howls.

“Wolfgang!”

I crack up laughing at the gleeful expression on his face.

We’re holding hands as we amble through the darkness, forest all around.

“It’s a little on the nose, yeah?”

“Genius musician, plus ‘wolf?’ I’d say it’s perfect.” He grins and kicks through a pile of pinecones.

“Less so, if you pronounce it the right way. VAOLF-gang,” I say, giggling.

“Bullshit! We can do the English pronunciation.”

“Our baby’s name is not going to be a stupid pun, Ansel!”

“Oh, she’s getting a little bossy,” he says in a silly, strained voice.

I throw his hand down, morphing into Ada with a Cheshire grin, as I spring into the air.

“Wait up,” he says, charging after me.

Soon, he closes the distance between us.

I slow and he nuzzles his head against mine. We cross back to the edge of the woods, breathing in the smell of the pines, past the owl that hoots and the frogs that croak in the moonlight. We head home underneath a blanket of stars.