Older men are continually surprised by the mate bond--they had long given up on ever falling in love, or previous wives had ben buried for a decade, and in comes barreling something close to perfection. It's hard to mess these relationships up, and shoud be cherished in spite of their brevity.

"I was raised in a bomb shelter. I was born in 1955, in a small town to the north of Birmingham, Alabama. I am a black human in a pack of werewolves. Everything about me is unique and likely to die with me, child." I shook my head while cutting up potatoes to boil.

"But Great-Uncle, they're looking for oddities to interview, you're exactly what they are looking for!" Trina was my generation's baby sister's grandbaby, and like most weres in the states, she found her mate at a tender age--both shes, really. This was the one I was closest to, even moving packs to keep up with my babygirl.

Poor girl was heavily pregnant--with a rare singleton, but he was huge, as is expected of Alpha bloodlines. She's mated to the heir of one of the largest packs in the New England area. I worry about her getting this excited, especially with her man not there to calm her down. If he did come through here to see what got her so upset, I could be accidentally splattered across the wall. An unfortunate risk with shifters. "Alright, babygirl, send in a short survey because I ain't fillin' it out."

And honestly, that is all I thought would come of it.

~~~

"It is Tuesday, August 20th, 2013. This is Lyon Pierce, interviewing Bobby Godding of the Buffalo Holdings pack, which ironically has a whole skyscraper in the center of New York City as their pack house. Tell me, Mr. Godding, what makes you unique?"

"Well, probably the first thing that places me up there is that I didn't have anything to do with filling out the form that dragged you out here, Mrs. Pierce, so please tell me what my great-neice wrote?"

"She wrote that you were the only black human in a mostly white pack during the Birmingham Riot."

**laughter** "And that's what dragged y'all here?...Madame, I was all of 8 years old living in a bomb shelter on pack land because almost nobody of color lived in Mountain Brook, Alabama, and it's that way to this day."

"A bomb shelter?"

"Both my parents were weres. Mama was born at the turn of the past century and Daddy about 10 years later. Mama can trace her ancestral pack back to the Congolian Rainforests of the 1700s, and Daddy's around half-German with no real clue about his African ancestors. They were a part of Mountain Brook because Daddy was cousins to the then Alpha. Literally no one else had dark skin in the pack but my family. So we stuck out, badly. That bomb shelter was for our safety."

"So how was it accessed?"

"The first way was in an old shack on pack farmland. Mama and Daddy were just some old sharecroppers to the rest of the town. Really, Daddy was in charge of all the crops grown for the pack--had all the modern farm equipment, officially owned by our Alpha, so as to keep people off Daddy's back. None of us but our parents slept in the shack because they wanted us safe if things went wrong. Not that there was chronic violence, but there was always a chance someone would make a false accusation and out would come the torches."

"Did you live in fear of them?"

"No, not at first. I didn't even know that there was a problem until that church was bombed. Then I started noticing that no one else in the pack lived like we did. "

"Where did the 2nd entrance come out at?"

"In the pack basement. Our home was the pack's 'panic room', and stocked like it was just that. It wasn't until I was near grown that I saw a white pack member go in there. That was a few years before my parents came out as the farm managers and got a nice fancy house to go with the title. By the 1980s, the idea that some regular white person could publicly get away with even a beating without being hit back was dying out--not wholly dead, though. That case where Michael Donald's mom took his killers to court was in '81, and by '82 Mama and Daddy were in their new home."

"Where were you at, in '82?"

"I was living in the Omega's quarters, by then. I was 27, and any hope that I had a mate out there was long gone, and I couldn't bring some human into that...they wouldn't understand."

"They wouldn't understand what an Omega was?"

"We didn't really have a slave caste--Daddy's position was close to an Overseer's position, and most the young of the pack worked the whole farm--just not our plot, for appearance's sake. The head cook before me was the last official Omega. She didn't know what to do with herself when my childhood Alpha banned the practice. From what I was told and saw, it all came to a head in about 1963."

"What happened that year?"

"What, besides a riot over bombings? Weres were laying low on either side of that, we knew we could expose our people by getting involved--pack is always pack first, and it was a big struggle to stay united as a mixed-race pack in the days of segregation. For example, cops were thought to be working with the bombers, and weres have always been on the police force. It is possible that a were was involved because if he declined, he would get too much scrutiny. It's not like today where they have to worry about being accused of brutality and racial profiling if they go along with it.

"But I was 8 years old, just starting to show signs of not growing like a were should. Some retaliation was going round and we were ordered to stay on packlands, not to go near Daddy's plot. They mostly turned people away before they got on pack lands, but the pack house was done up like an old plantation home, and humans that thought they had reason to visit the Alpha would come bother everyone, back then.

"I and a brother were playing in the yard, and this white man started beating on us for not knowing our place. We had no idea what he was talking about, or who he was, even. My brother Jonny was a year older, an early shifter, and could mindlink because it wasn't long before the Alpha came outside. And I'll never forget what he said.

" 'Will you quit beating my House N------? I have them playing out here so I can keep an eye on them, to prevent some no-account slack-jawed imbecile from beating them.' "

"I'll have to redact that word, Mr. Bobby."

"That's fine. I'd like to have that whole word redacted from history, but I'm not gonna get my way. But he did say it, as he was trying to protect the appearance of the pack while protecting us, and still putting the human in his place.

"Afterwards he took the man upstairs for a private chewing-out about property rights, then our father was called in. Not even 20 minutes in, and both us boys were called upstairs. Our Alpha apologized for that conversation and talked about how trust needed to be there between an Alpha and his pack, and he didn't want that strain between us.

"Didn't find out until he retired that it was my Daddy's trust he harmed, and it eventually lead to ending the worst of the caste system."

"Ah. So. What lead to you leaving the south? Did it have to do with being in a white-dominant society?"

"What? I was were focused, not society focused. My niece wanted me to cook for her, so I came up north to cook. That's the only thing that drove me to leave the south.

But if you want my impressions? I lived in fear of whites as a child, and I live in fear of blacks as an adult. And it's not skin color: I fear inner city violence, and much of the inner city violence is minorities--otherwise there would never be this scientific thingy called White Flight. They can't be around to hurt you if they leave you behind. And I get abuse from all kinds, when I go out in the wrong areas because they see an old lost man. But the only part anyone wants to hear--just like you asked--is how I feel about whites.

Honestly, even with that shift, the fear is unrealistic whether I fear any group or not. The incidents are rare, and after the first few, I'm not allowed to travel without a guard because me being alone and harmed upsets their future Luna.

The truth of the matter is I've been sheltered all my life. I work hard, life wasn't easy by any means, but for weres and humans who live among them, there is a predictability. I can talk about fears of losing a home while safe in my shelters, but the truth is that I've only had a taste of what others face."

"What would it take to make you leave the packs?"

"Family, obviously, since I've already done that. And an abusive pack would. Both mine have treated me better than other humans have, and I doubt that I'll come across another chance to move to one that would push me more into the human world."

"Well, this should cover the basics Mr. Bobby. Is there anything that you would like to talk about before I finish this interview?"

"Why focus on a man born too young at the end of an era to have many real experiences with it's issues? I mean, yes, evil things can and will be done in the name of skin color until the day I die, but we all hope to never see segregation come back. I can't even lay out what things could lead us back into that world."

"If you think you don't have a unique perspective, then you need to read the transcript, Sir. Anything else?"

"Yes, have you interviewed an Alpha that lived during slavery?"

"There is an African Alpha in North Mississippi that was old enough. We sent a request for an interview. He responded with--and I quote--'Fuck off'."

**laugher**
"Then I'm too kind for my own good. Good for him. Anyway, that's all I have."

"It is Tuesday, August 20th, 2013. This is Lyon Pierce, concluding an interview with Bobby Godding of the Buffalo Holdings pack."

~~~

"Mr Bobby, we need to address something private..." She placed her hand on my arm, and like that old French Omega of my youth, I caught the Frissons.

"What Ms. Lyon?" I responded softly, knowing where this would go. I am 58 in 2 days. I suspect this woman is younger than me, and even if we were the same age, she'd have at least 100 years of life to my maybe 20.

"Are you going to address the fact that we're mates?"

"I wasn't going to be the first to bring it up, no..."I had answered all the questions before this one with confidence, but I suspect that my quietude would be misinterpreted as timidity. Spent most my life being soft because weres often cannot, being the one who yielded. It wasn't a natural thing for me, not even after this long a life. "I'm hardly the kind of man a mate looks for."

A tear slipped down her cheek. "I spent 23 years looking for you...and you're far more than I expected. Not less. Never less."

23 years, given that most start looking for their mates at 16, she would be no younger than 39. "I was about 19 when you were born, yes?"

She nodded, laughing a little. "Is nearly 20 years too much for you?"

"Not now, no. I don't like that I will leave you so early, though."

"I can always take a chosen if you demand it of me--after you pass, but I think you've missed out on some recent studies. Human descendants of weres, especially 1st generations like you, often live to well over 100. I'm counting on a good 50 years."

I startled into laughter. "So, how do you want to handle this? Traditional were style and I take you to my bed and don't let us leave for a few days, or would you like to meet with my neice and her mate, negotiate whether we stay or we leave?"

That brought another smile out of her--something I think I'll enjoy the rest of my life. "Well, lets go see your neice, settle out how we'll handle this, so that no one interrupts us later."

~~~

Lyon Pierce is a reporter for a competing were publication that focuses more on society than scientific analysis. She is a guest editor for the example stories, as this is beyond the normal scope of our publication. She and Bobby Godding live in the Buffalo Holdings pack, under Alpha Jayce Perez.