Authors: Charlotte Rose
Serafine continued. “You ain’t never seen the mating ritual before, have you? I bet you don’t even know what it entails.”
Xavier lowered his eyes. “No, ma’am, I don’t.”
“We don’t hide the basic facts, but we prefer to keep some things a mystery until the time is right. Shifters are only tuned into their mates durin’ matin’ season. And when they meet ’em, they lose control of the shift and start exhibiting all those crazy territorial behaviors.”
Although Adele had been following along with Serafine’s explanation with an open mind, the answers suddenly seemed preposterous. “Wait, wait, wait,” Adele said. “I’m fated to be their mate?”
“That’s ’bout right,” Serafine said. “Your body is the ideal mate for theirs, physically and emotionally. The connection between you three won’t be like anything you experienced before. You’ll know love like you never thought possible. And y’all will have the healthiest possible offspring.”
Adele shook her head. “I hate to let you down, but I can’t have kids. I developed severe endometriosis as a teenager, and I’ve been infertile since before I even went to college. So something must be off, because I can’t have any babies with anyone, much less super gator babies with these guys.”
Serafine laughed. “And what makes you think you’d have the same limitations as a gator that you would as a human?”
“What makes you think I view my infertility as a limitation?”
“Maybe she’s right,” Xavier said, frustration mounting in his voice. “Maybe Serafine’s wrong. Coulda been a mistake or somethin’. Adele seems pretty resistant to being our mate.”
Serafine shook her head. “What, you think that just because your bodies want each other, that it’s gonna be easy? Your mate don’t just fall into your arms. Y’all don’t just live happily ever after the second y’all look into each other’s eyes. That ain’t how it works. You’re gonna have to fight for each other, and you’re gonna have to prove yourselves. It ain’t a decision she should make lightly, understand? If Adele asked you to mate her right now, I’d be worryin’. You gotta struggle to earn your mate.”
Xavier’s jaw dropped. “You’re tellin’ me that Oscar and I have found our mate, but we still have to work for her?”
“Sorry to let you down,” Adele said, not making any attempt to conceal her sarcasm.
“You haven’t let nobody down, honey,” Serafine said. “Life is supposed to work this way. Now, I’m willin’ to bet you’ve had enough shock. Wanna head home?”
I’ve been ready for hours
. Rather than offend her hosts, though, Adele merely nodded her head.
“Why don’t these two guide you back?” Serafine suggested. “It’ll give you a chance to get to know ’em better.”
Adele’s mind raced as she tried to come up with an excuse. She wasn’t sure she was ready to spend time alone with these two men. But she also knew she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to New Orleans unassisted.
“Why don’t I go, actually?” Georgina asked. “Adele and I have a few things to discuss, anyway. She and I could use the private time.”
“Fair enough,” Serafine said. She turned to Xavier and Oscar. “Guess you two are gonna have to wait a bit before gettin’ your mate.”
Adele turned to her so-called mates. “It was wonderful to make your acquaintances,” she said. She offered her hand to shake. As Oscar’s palm touched hers, she felt a pulse shoot through her arm. Her whole body began to tingle, her pussy in particular. When she took Xavier’s hand in hers, the experience was just as intense. Although she had no interest in mating, although she was not about to give up her life to live as a half-gator, she wanted to find a private place, rip her clothes off, and fuck them until they were all too exhausted to move.
Maybe there’s something to this.
She started her boat, waiting for Georgina to pull up beside her.
* * * *
The noisy boats didn’t allow much space for conversation on the ride home, and Adele’s mind raced with questions about this gator congregation and the men who were supposedly her mates. As the lights of New Orleans came into view, though, Georgina cut her engine. Adele followed suit, and they drifted side by side along the river for a few minutes before Georgina spoke.
“I’m sorry I blow off important work meetings so often,” she said. “When the group decides they need me at home for one reason or another, it’s almost impossible to get out of my obligations. The congregation is pretty insular. The kids get sent to the local high school, and some of us go to college, but our options are limited. The nature of our power means we can’t be away from the congregation for too long, so we have to be commuter students. No living in dorms, no living in the city. If you get a college degree, the congregation expects for that to be the end of your education. You focus on contributing to the fishing business full-time. I’m the only one in recent memory, if ever, who has enrolled in a graduate program.”
“Why all the restrictions? Because you’re afraid of shifting at a moment’s notice?”
“Sort of, but as Serafine said, that hasn’t been a problem with the recent generations. We’ve learned to control our bodies pretty well. The mating season shift is an issue, of course, but only for a limited time during the year. Part of it is the curse. We would wither and die away from the congregation for an entire semester. But it wasn’t always so restrictive. The congregation lived together, but people were free to leave for weekend trips. When Rosaline and Armand Vitrac-Celestin were captured, everyone started getting really paranoid.”
“Captured?”
Georgina nodded. “Rosaline mated with Manuel Vitrac and another gator named Andre Celestin. She refused to give up her human life completely, though, so the second after she was turned, she was very dedicated in learning how to control her shifts. Once she got good at it, she went back to all of her activist work. She wasn’t expected to contribute to the fishing business because she insisted before she mated that she be allowed to continue with the life she had before, to the extent possible. Well, about two years ago, some researchers from the Aquarium of the Americas happened upon a cache of albino gators.”
“Yes, I heard about that. I was shocked, considering that they have low survival rates. I’ve been a biologist since college, and that was the first time I’d ever encountered albino gators thriving in the wild, either in the literature or in person.”
Georgina smiled. “Just because they’re not supposed to be able to doesn’t mean they can’t. Nature finds a way. And sometimes, a little voodoo helps, too.”
“What do you mean?”
Georgina ignored the question. “Anyway, like Manuel and Andre, Rosaline happened to have an albino gator form. When they changed her, she inherited that characteristic. To top it off, she’s always been a radical environmentalist, the kind that would throw paint at rich women wearing fur coats. Totally opposed to zoos and aquariums, no matter how good their intentions. Her son, Armand, picked up that trait from her as well.”
“Wow. How did she handle mating two men who worked as part of a family-owned fishing business?”
Georgina shrugged. “She never liked it, which is why she agreed to mate under the condition that she wouldn’t have to be involved with it.”
“But why mate with people whose careers violated your ethical beliefs?”
“I never asked. The whole thing happened before I was even born. I can only imagine how much she must love Manuel and Andre, though, if she was willing to mate with them in spite of that. I hope that I can be so lucky someday.”
“And Armand? How did he deal with it?”
“Oh, Armand was never as fanatical as Rosaline. He was opposed to zoos and aquariums and animal testing, but he also decided he could be involved in the fishing business. The congregation respects the swamps. We don’t overfish. We don’t use harmful techniques. He was fine with that.”
“So what happened to them?”
“The researchers at the Aquarium of the Americas decided to take these albino gators out of the swamp in the interest of their own protection, and Rosaline and Armand took it personally.”
“They did something ill-advised, I take it.”
“The place where the albino gators lived was in a protected area. You had to have a permit to get in, and the state wasn’t passing them out to PETA members, that’s for sure. They were protesting the day the researchers came to take the gators, and when the police got involved, Armand and Rosaline panicked, I guess. Even though they are both masters of their powers, they turned into gators. Sometimes, under duress, even the most skilled shifter can change unexpectedly. In gator form, Armand and Rosaline got picked up by the researchers.”
“How do you know?”
“The news reports said a cache of six albino gators had been discovered, but eight were brought in to the Aquarium. As soon as the albinos were put on display, Manuel and Andre went to see them and could pick them out of the congregation right away.”
“But—but how are they still alive?”
A tear slid down Georgina’s face. “We had to take drastic measures.”
“Drastic measures?”
“There’s a loophole of sorts in the curse. See, the congregation is the most important thing to us. But sometimes—sometimes, people do the unforgiveable. It hasn’t happened often in our history, but there’ve been a few times when someone hurts the rest of us so much that the only choice is to make that person leave.”
“So you let them die?”
“Hardly. There’s a ritual, only to be used in extreme circumstances like that. It’s a banishment ceremony. The spiritual and emotional ties to the congregation are broken. The banished gator can leave the congregation and will still survive physically, but that person is left with a gaping emotional hole.”
“But at least they’re not dead.”
“Well, I’ve never experienced it, but it’s rumored that the emotional hole in your life is worse than death.”
“So you banished Rosaline and Armand?”
Georgina nodded, the tears falling faster now. “We had no other choice. It was awful, but we had to do it. Manuel and Andre haven’t been the same since. Their connection to their mate was severed. They can still go see her, but you can tell they’ve never stopped hurting. And Rosaline and Armand—I’m sure they know we haven’t abandoned them, but they still have that sense of disconnection. It’s part of the spell.”
Adele put her hand on Georgina’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry. How awful for all of you.”
“I just hope they understand why we did it. And that they haven’t given up hope that we’re going to free them.”
“Why haven’t they gotten them out yet?”
“What on earth could they do? They tried to see if they could buy them, but apparently, that’s illegal. Security is tight, and we’ve yet to figure out how to get them past the alarm system and the guards. Manuel and Andre visit them in the Aquarium. But it’s not the same, of course. They can’t even communicate right now.”
“But there’s a rescue plan in the works, right?”
Georgina sighed. “Yeah, and it absolutely has to work. Because while our congregation wasn’t allowed to buy Rosaline, apparently some people have more clout. A certain businessman named Ferdinand Villemont is a multibillionaire, and apparently he’s building himself a private zoo full of exotic animals. He’s offering the Aquarium sixteen million dollars for all eight albino gators.”
“And they’re going to let him do that?”
“It’s still technically illegal, but he’s petitioning the state to grant him an exception.”
“It won’t work.”
Georgina gave a harsh laugh. “A man with that much money will get his way every time. So we have to find a way to rescue them. Not just Rosaline and Armand, either. We have to protect all those gators because there’s no way that Villemont has their best interests in mind. The congregation kept me home today so that I could help them work on our new strategy.”
Adele sighed. “You know, I think I can start overlooking some of your absences. And let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you save Georgina and Armand. My head is reeling right now, but these people are your family, and I want to help them.”
Georgina nodded. “Thanks. We really appreciate it.”
“Anyway, I should get back to the lab. It’s getting late.”
“Xavier and Oscar are good guys, by the way. I agree with Serafine. You shouldn’t make this decision lightly, but I think you’d make a great addition to our little congregation, if you ever wanted to join us.”
Adele smiled. She couldn’t even begin to process the possibility, but she didn’t want to offend Georgina. “Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll see you on Monday.”
There’s no way on earth I’m becoming a gator bride
.