Chapter 4 Cooling Down

• "Buy me dinner! Oh, buy me dinner!" Imelda cackled, sounding like an old cartoony witch. "Oh, yes, that's how we'll solve a werewolf civil war. Let's all take pretty little Eliza on a date!"
• "Shut up, grandmother," Eliza said. She took a deep breath, then raised the large wooden bowl in her hands to her lips. The liquid inside smelled, tasted, and felt foul on her tongue. It smelled exactly like a thousand old socks boiled in rank swamp water, tasted as such, and even felt like having wet dryer lint ooze down her tongue and throat. Eliza only drank it to calm her body down after the intense experience of being near two Fated Mates. "Good Goddess of the Grove! What is in that?"
• "Better you not know, sweetpea," Imelda chuckled, taking a seat on Eliza's desk chair while her granddaughter drank. They were both back inside the mansion, safe from prying eyes or ears. Both wolf packs had been sent away after the Grand Matriarch had extracted a vow of no violence from their respective alphas, and seeing Eliza's condition - face red, heart pounding, hands shaking - Imelda had brewed a concoction that would help her body stop its instinctive longing for the alphas and taken it up to Eliza's room.
• The bedroom was a good size for a single girl, but didn't look like it belonged to a Moon Priestess. It looked like it belonged to a regular human girl from the city. Posters of handsome K-Pop stars lined the walls, stacks of manga volumes sat in various piles on the floor, and a laptop and smartphone sat on the desk, silently charging. The only clue as to Eliza's identity as a Moon Priestess was holy scripture, worn with use, that sat next to the laptop on the desk.
• "Will this really make me stop wanting them?" Eliza had asked when presented with the foul smelling broth.
• "It'll stop your body from wanting to run into their arms," Imelda chuckled, "But your heart, ah, your heart! No, only being bitten will cure that one."
• "GAH!" Eliza cried out after taking another swig. "Holy Goddess. That was insane. I never thought...I never thought it was real. I thought Fated Mates weren't a thing anymore."
• Imelda grunted. "Oh, yes, just ignore all the things I've been teaching you. What would an old matriarch know? No, let's just dismiss the old bag's ramblings out of hand and read comics, browse social media, play damned video games!"
• Eliza guiltily shoved her Nintendo Switch under her bed with her foot. She sighed and stared up at a poster on the wall. "Oh, Jungkook, my beloved. Why can't I be his Fated Mate? I would fly to Korea right this second, grandmother."
• Imelda smiled wickedly, poking Eliza's belly with her cane. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather fly down to the Redclaw Compound? Be with Viktor, or Lucas, or both of them at the same time? Eh? Eh?"
• "Stop," Eliza threw her head back and wailed. "Stop! Just thinking about them is making my hands shake." She took another swig, fighting down nausea. "You know, when you told me I was fated to mate with the next Alpha, I never thought it would feel like this."
• Imelda snorted derisively. "You never believed it. Not truly, you didn't."
• Eliza frowned, feeling guilty over how she had behaved that night in the Oracular Pools. It had been a month ago, but it felt like a lifetime since then. The pools were deep inside the mansion, underground beneath the foundations of the building. Filled with crystalline water lit only by moonlight from the moon windows above, they were the place where the Divine Daughters of the Ordo Luna would seek to divine the future and receive prophecies from the Goddess. These oracles, the priestesses who had spent their lives studying the reflection of the moon in the water and the variations when ripples crossed the surface, had pored intently over one in particular at her grandmother's bidding. At long last, Imelda had sighed, turned to her, and proclaimed her fated to mate with the next Alpha.
• Eliza had thrown a tantrum. "It can't be true!" she shouted at the Divine Daughters, who stared at her with blank eyes. "The whole fated mates thing is just stupid! It's bullshit, superstitious bullshit!"
• "Language," Imelda scolded her, but Eliza was having none of it.
• "You're all lying to me! You're making this all up!" She stormed to her room then, and even now Eliza wondered if her anger had come because deep down, she believed it to be true. Again, it was her grandmother who came to her rescue as she always has before, with words of comfort, faith, and two scoops of Neapolitan ice cream covered in chocolate fudge.
• "I remember when I threw a book at the oracles' heads," Imelda laughed as she sat on the bed next to Eliza, sadly wolfing down spoons of ice cream. "They said I was a Fated Mate. What a load of crap!"
• Eliza had turned to her grandmother, eyes wide. "You were fated with Grandfather?"
• "Oh, yes," Imelda nodded. "Lousy old coot. Or so I thought about him at first, before I met him. But ah, once I did, I felt the howl of the fated mates deep in my heart. I knew I would love him forever, and that he would love me."
• Eliza had gone silent then, staring into her melting ice cream.
• "I still do," Imelda continued. "Even though he's gone, I still feel it. He's still with me, in here." She pointed to her heart. "That's the beauty of a Fated Mate, my dear. You can try to fight it, deny it, lie to yourself and the world about it. But it's there. And it's a guiding signpost for your heart, that you might always find the one you love."
• "Guiding signpost my butt!" Eliza said now, choking down Imelda's cooling concoction and gagging at the awful taste. "That's what you said. Guiding signpost. I took comfort in that! You lied to me!"
• Imelda sighed. Kids these days.
• "It was more like...like..." Eliza waved her hand in the air, as if trying to pull an answer from the sky. "Like a beacon. Like a lighthouse on fire inside my brain. Like...like..." Eliza gave up and choked down more of the potion. "Fah! Have I told you that tastes like socks?"
• "Maybe once or twice," Imelda snarked. "I feel this may be connected to the werewolf civil war. It's a sign from the Goddess that we live in interesting times. Maybe that's why you have two fated mates."
• Eliza shrugged. "It would be nice to think that my... problem with the alphas was connected to something larger than myself. But I'm just a girl, and I'm just a Moon Priestess. Just one among many others."
• "That is where you are wrong." Imelda rose from her chair and approached Eliza's bedside. "You are my granddaughter, Eliza, and your mother's daughter. There is something in our bloodlines that even my mother may have neglected to mention, but three generations of Fated Mates is not insignificant. We twist and pull at fate merely by existing, sweetpea."
• Eliza stared into the grey concoction, suddenly morose at the mention of her mother. "Grandmother...don't you think it's strange that no matter how many times we try, we can't find where Mama and Papa are?" She turned to look at the Grand Matriarch. "Do you think it's related to my problem?"
• Imelda sighed and shook her head sadly. "I don't know, Eliza. I truly don't. But rest assured, no matter how many times I have to try, I will. Even if all I find are bleached bones at the bottom of the ocean, I will find my daughter. This I swear by the light of the moon."
• Eliza frowned, uncertain. It had been ten years since her parents had disappeared, taking a trip somewhere and leaving her with her grandmother for the week. That week turned into two, then three, and then a month passed without any contact. As the weeks dragged on, Eliza and Imelda began to suspect that something was wrong. No one in the Ordo Luna, or anyone they knew in their various dealings with the supernatural community, had seen Thomas and Janice. They had reported their disappearance to the police, even, but all leads turned up empty. But Grand Matriarch Imelda had not stopped. She continued to search long past any reason, determined to find her daughter no matter the cost. So far, nothing.
• "I wish Mama were here. She would know what to do."
• Imelda held out an arm and held her granddaughter tight. "I know, sweetpea. I miss her too."
• They held each other close as the moon floated past Eliza's window, as if the Goddess herself felt pity on her and was extending her light to comfort her favourite daughter. The night went on, and still they held each other, taking solace that no matter what happened, at least they had each other.