Teddy sat in the common room of the rectory with a book in his hands next to the crackling blaze of an orange fire that roared with warmth. The rectory had an old boiler system that often went out for the count and Teddy had memories as long as he could remember of sitting by the fireplace for warmth. Once Teddy had asked Fr. Charles why he didn't replace the boiler, and Fr. Charles said there were other houses in town without heat, other people without food, or struggling, and it was their task in life to go without, providing as much as possible with their wealth for others. When Teddy was particularly cold he was always sure to offer up his suffering as atonement for privileges he had that others weren't afforded. 

Sr. Matilda lay in an armchair dozing slightly next to Teddy. In her hands she clutched a simple wooden rosary, forgotten in her slumber. Teddy set down his book and leaned back in the rocking chair. It hadn't been a particularly long day but he still felt tired. 

The walls of the room had a garish yellow and cream floral wallpaper picturing Lilium candidums, Madonna lilies, in columns across the walls. The floor of the room was a dark simple wood with a dirty green carpet shredded at one end covering a part of it. 

The rectory had an entry hallway that was narrow and had a steep old staircase leading to the second floor. Past the stairway to the back was a small dining room with a wooden table. Once it might have had many chairs, but only four remained. To the left of that room was a closed off dated kitchen that appeared to be right out of the seventies. It had ugly linoleum tiles and orangish wood cabinets topped with blue countertops and cream appliances. On the right side of the house was the sitting room which contained a couch, two rocking chairs, a fireplace, and no television. Fr. Charles said television was not an essential, and Teddy had grown not to miss it. 

Teddy rocked slightly in the chair. The room was dark in the late hour and no light came through the sheer curtains from the outside world. Inside the rectory it was always like being frozen, detached from the outside world, especially at night. The whole place had kind of a strange feeling to it, remote though central. 

The boy found himself staring at the fire, utterly enthralled as if he couldn't look away. It flashed warmly on his face and he could feel the slight discomfort at it growing. Teddy turned away feeling the blood rush to his face. The fire was dimming, so he rose and got another log from the stack, kneeling down to place it carefully. 

"Ohh.. let it go out, we're going up soon" A voice called from behind him. Teddy jumped slightly, and turned to see Sr. Matilda awake and alert. 

"Sorry Sister, you startled me" Teddy smiled sheepishly, taking the log he'd yet to add to the fire and placing it back where it'd come from. 

"I know" Her smile was as infectious and mischievous as Teddy knew her energy to always be. Sr. Matilda must've been a trickster in a former life, he decided. "Seems like the only jump my old heart gets these days."

Teddy frowned and paused looking down at his hands. He felt like a child crying to his mother, but he had to know. Sr. Matilda had lived in Belford Bay longer than anyone, if someone knew anything about wolves in the area she would. Teddy sighed deeply, gathering his courage; he had to know.

"Can I ask you something, Sister?" 

"Of course..." She smiled weakly, shifting to sit up in her chair. It appeared to be difficult for her so late at night. "But I can't promise I have any answers."

"Have you ever heard about.. wolves... like, in the forest surrounding us?"

Sr. Matilda's eyes widened slightly and her face paled, but she shook her head slowly. 

"No... not as far as I can remember, but my memory isn't what it used to be-- and I never had a strong one to begin with. No.. no I don't think I've any heard of any wild wolves."

Teddy frowned; she was keeping something from him. 

"You're certain? I know a little bit about their migrations patterns and how they were hunted out of... well I just figured there must have been wolves here at some point." 

"Not in my lifetime" Sr. Matilda shook her head more firmly. "You're right though, I'm sure I heard there used to be too... I just can't recall ever hearing about them being close. Why do you ask?"

"I was off in the forest, and..."

"Alone?" Sr. Matilda asked. Her hand drifted towards her chest. "You know that's dangerous Teddy--- Did Fr. Charles know you were out there?"

"I'm sorry... I just needed to be away for a little bit... and he... well I suppose he figured it out.  I'm alright though. It's just.... I thought I saw a wolf--- I mean I could swear I did, but I didn't think that made sense... You don't think they're back? The wolves, I mean."

"I- I haven't the faintest idea. Teddy, you know... it's awfully late, I would really rather talk about this later." She began trying to get herself out of the chair futilely.

"All I thought.. I just figured we should be aware, just in case--"

"What did it look like?" Sr. Matilda frowned to herself. 

"It was large... really large-- and dark brown with white across it's..."

"Sometimes large coyotes are hard to distinguish from wolves... you should talk to Mr. Murphy about it.. he's got a farm out there, I'm sure he'd have better information than me about wild animals in the woods. You- you'll just have to ask him, I'm sorry Teddy... I don't.. I can't.."

"You don't believe me?"

"Of course I do Teddy" She smiled. "I believe you saw something. A coyote-- to be sure-- it must have been a coyote or maybe a fox. I don't want you worrying about it, Teddy. Wild things... any wild thing belongs out there, we belong in here. As long as you stay in town, you'll be safe. We'll-- Fr. Charles and I will keep you safe. I promised your mother."

"I'm sorry, Sr. Matilda. I didn't mean to upset you" Teddy frowned with concern.

"It's alright Teddy, really.. It's just... wolves make me kind of nervous. I wish... I wish I could be what you needed me to be. I'm not like your mother, she loved wild things." Sr. Matilda smiled weakly at the memory. "If you'd told her about the wolf she would have run out into the woods with you right away to try to see it with you again.. that was just her way. God rest her soul, that woman was always running off somewhere or other."

"She was?"

"She had so much spirit, Teddy. Just like you... She loved the forest too... animals of all kinds. She was a very grounded person, one with nature. Wolves were her favorites though... I think she sympathized with them, they were just as wild as she was. Sometimes I wondered if they were the only things that could keep up with her." 

"She saw wolves?" 

"She did." A dark cloud passed over Sr. Matilda's face. "Not here though. Never here. She and I, we were very different.. she was a traveller, she saw the world, wanted to at least. She didn't understand me, and I didn't understand her... but we were always closer with each other than with..."

"With..?" Teddy asked.

"Your aunt Cassandra."

"I have an aunt Cassandra?"

Sr. Matilda nodded. "She doesn't visit often... she sort of raised some hell the last time she came. You were just a baby then... very very young, I haven't heard from her since.... I suppose it's better that way. I really... I won't speak ill of her anymore."  

"Where is she?"

"Cassandra lives in Louisiana... she was the youngest of the three of us. You know Teddy, it might be better to talk about this in the morning. You deserve to know about your family... I'll answer your questions in the morning.... and maybe one day, because I really do believe in mercy, I'll bring you down to meet Cassandra."

Sr. Matilda managed to hoist herself off the chair stretched her back with a look of exhaustion on her face.

"I wasn't trying to make trouble for you Sister."

"I know Teddy..." Sr. Matilda affectionately patted his cheek. "Don't you worry your pretty little head about making trouble. If there's any trouble, it wasn't you who made it. Cassandra and I are adults and our trouble is our responsibility." 

"Thank you, Sister."

Sr. Matilda paused for a very long silence. Her eyes were pained and wrought with a lifetime of sorrows and tribulations. "Goodnight Teddy... Say a little prayer to St. Francis... if you did see a wolf, Heaven help us all."  

Sr. Matilda hobbled off up the stairs to the bedrooms of the rectory. Teddy stared after her, almost unable to get himself to move. Sr. Matilda had awakened more questions than answers in him and he could do nothing but stare after her. 

The fire had nearly gone out and the room was so dark Teddy could hardly see. With one last deep breath, Teddy himself went up the stairs after one last look around the room. 

The boy brushed his teeth in the dim light of the moon which came through the bathroom then made his way to his cluttered room. 

The walls were white like the rest of the simple bedrooms at the rectory, but Teddy had a blue bedspread and pale yellow curtains bringing in color. The walls were covered in every available space with frames and frames of pressed flowers he'd taken back from the forest. By his desk there was a bulletin board which offered even more samples of flora from the woods and had neatly pinned descriptions in Teddy's handwriting. 

Above his bed was a thin wooden crucifix with the metal casted body of Jesus on it. Behind it was tucked a palm frond. It was the only space on the walls that wasn't dedicated to Teddy's studies of nature. On his dresser was a small ivory statue of St. Francis clutching a sheep with a wooden base and around it was wrapped a little green rosary. 

Teddy knelt at the foot of his bed to honor Sr. Matilda's plea and say a prayer to St. Francis. Following his prayer he remembered the flower in his sweatshirt pocket and tucked it between the pages of a particularly thick Bible. The bookshelf was packed with novels Teddy'd completed and each book had newspaper sticking out of the edge letting Teddy know that there was a pressed flower in them. He was nearly out of space. 

The small boy sighed and flopped onto his bed. His mind was moving in many different directions, and sleep was not one of them. It quickly drifted back to the wolf and Sr. Matilda's words. He knew he ought to be excited that he had another aunt he'd never met, and yet his mind was only focused on one thing. The wolf.  

Coyote or wolf, Teddy wasn't sure. Something in him screamed that it had been no coyote, but another part of him knew that was the more likely answer. 

There was an eerie kind of silence in the room, accented by the occasional chirp of a cricket and Teddy scrunched his eyes closed. No more thinking, he decided. He could think later, he had work in the morning and he needed to sleep.  Sleeping needed to come first. 

Teddy reached over and flipped the key in his old white glass lamp  leaving him alone in the dark silence. Sleep would come, he reasoned, if only he could stop trying so hard to beckon it. 

When he finally did drift off he dreamt of glowing amber eyes.

.....

The Alpha stood at beneath the light of a dim streetlight. Moths fluttered lazily through the glow which created a small orb of light on the dark street. Wolves had better sight than humans, so the darkness offered no hinderance to the large man who stood underneath it.

A passerby might have just seen an extraordinarily tall somewhat imposing figure of a man waiting on the street-- perhaps to meet someone or conduct illicit business. In truth it was the human form of a werewolf staring up at the second floor of a rectory next to a church and trying to guess which room his mate was in. 

His mate. The alpha repeated to himself. He had never imagine himself having a mate before, and yet there he was. Suddenly he wasn't handling pack disputes like a mafia don, instead he was standing on the streets of Belford Bay drooling after a pastor's kid. 

The Alpha didn't dare climb the stairs for fear of being caught on the church grounds in the morning when Teddy's father woke up. Instead he was on the sidewalk across the street and a little to the left. 

At first he'd been watching from closer, but he'd been forced to scatter away as Fr. Charles and the farmer left their meeting. Fr. Charles hadn't noticed anything wrong and the alpha was glad of it. The man simply disappeared inside the house to where Teddy was. 

Teddy. The name 'Teddy' bounced around his mind like sprinkles it was all he could do to keep from crying it out and begging for his mate to come down. He felt like a new puppy adopted by a family crying for them whenever they left the room. 

The man and woman he'd traveled with were each in different posts along the street. The alpha could watch the house directly, the man could watch one side of the street for suspicious character and the woman the other. Not that the trio wasn't a group of suspicious characters in themselves. 

The alpha crossed his arms and leaned back on the pole. Teddy was calm, he could feel it, and that was good--- except it made it difficult for the alpha to sense where exactly in the house the boy was. If the boy would just look out the window or bump into something, the alpha could get a better sense of things. For the moment he was in the dark.

The alpha turned to see his beta already watching him from afar. There wasn't any immediate danger on his face, but the alpha could tell the beta was listening. 

With one last final look up to the house, the alpha walked over to his beta with a serious look on his face. 

"What?"

"Can't you hear it?" The man answered. The alpha frowned and titled his ears up. It was easier to hear far away as a wolf, but even in human form wolves had much better hearing than humans. As the alpha listened he could hear the very distant sound of far off rustling-- a lot of rustling. He must have missed it earlier because he was listening so intently for sounds from within the house. 

"Wolves?" The alpha asked. His beta nodded grimly. 

"They're not far from the western edge of the town, but they're still in the woods. I think it's probably just a training session for the Tibik-kizis wolves--- not dangerous... yet."

The alpha nodded firmly. Wolves tended to run late at night to avoid being seen and the position of the moon told him it was half past one in the morning-- perfect running hours for anyone who wasn't chasing after their mate. 

"Can they hear us?"

"Not if we're quiet." The beta shrugged. "There's about ten of them so the sound in more pronounced. I can't hear if there are any humans with them, so I would imagine they can't hear us either."  

"You don't think they'll enter the village, do you?"

"Can't imagine they'd risk it."

"Good." The alpha stood firmly. For a moment his attentions had been divided to a more imposing threat. 

"You're watching very intently" The beta commented after a moment. His face was clear of emotion, but his tone suggested that he was amused.

"I've got a bad feeling...." The alpha admitted slowly. "Maybe it's just the bond making me crazy."

"Maybe... Alpha, are you sure you're alright?

Suddenly the alpha felt a jolt in his chest and sensed fear from his mate. His head shot back towards the yellow building, eyes trained to the windows, begging to see beyond the curtains. 

"Alpha, what-"

"Shh!" 

The curtains on the leftmost window moved rapidly parting to reveal the figure of a boy silhouetted by the yellow light coming from behind him. The alpha could just barely make out the contours of his face in the shadows and yet he immediately knew it to be his mate and felt weak in the knees. 

The sound of the window sliding up penetrated the perfect silence. 

Teddy, the alpha's mate, looked off down the street one way-- towards the woman. Then across at the water. Then finally towards the alpha, the beta, and the woods. In the reflection of the moon the alpha's could see the boy's eyes were wide as saucers. 

Something told the alpha to look away but he refused. He held his eyes directly on the boy. Perhaps before he could have been seen, but he was no longer under a streetlight and too far into the distant to be seen. 

The boy's eyes searched above their heads, and then... he turned down and looked directly at the alpha. The alpha's mind screamed there was no possible way that the boy could see him and yet they met eye contact, and---

Teddy's face filled with great fear and he slammed the window shut, disappearing behind the blue curtains. 

"That was...?" The beta asked after a moment.

"Yes."

"And did he-- I mean he looked like he... saw you. But..?" 

"I think he did." The alpha stated firmly. 

In his heart he knew the boy had, and yet he was shattered that again even in his human form it had been a look of fear.