I turned around from my spot perched on the bonnet of my car as I heard the sound of a car coming down the road. I sighed as I realized it was far too expensive to be the one I was waiting for, a sleek black car that rolled down the road as smoothly as water.

I had admittedly arrived ten minutes early but that was only cause I had been having trouble sleeping. Butterflies were dancing around in my stomach and even I couldn't completely discern whether they were from nerves or excitement.

I felt a smile appear on my face as I turned at the sound of another engine and saw Ethan's car driving down the road towards me. It wasn't the first time I was seeing him since he had proposed, but the thought of him being my fiancé and getting to spend the rest of my life with him still made me smile.

He pulled his little old Honda right up next to my Toyota. I had to press my lips together to suppress a laugh as he threw his door open and the car began beeping loudly in protest. He swore under his breath as he slipped back in and took out his keys, muttering reassurances to the car as he got out.

"Did you say goodbye?" I asked as he finally rounded the car to where I was sitting on the hood of mine after seemingly having a full muttered one-sided conversation with his car.

"Haha very funny." He responded, but the smile on his face gave it away that he wasn't really irritated.

I let out a little gasp in surprise as he grabbed me by the knees and tugged me closer to the edge of my car. I wrapped my arms around his neck, leaning in to press a soft kiss to his lips.

"Sorry about the coffee breath." He said sheepishly and I laughed breathily against his mouth.

"I'm pass caring."

When you spend nearly 6 years together things like coffee breath stop mattering. Coffee wasn't strong enough to keep me from kissing my fiancé, although I would never say that to him. It would only encourage him to say all the sappy, cheesy things he already does.

"You do know my parents are going to feed you breakfast right, and that includes coffee?"

"Yeah but you've seen me before coffee, I don't want your dad seeing that freak show and changing his mind about giving us his blessing." Ethan said.

"My dad loves you, he's just quiet so he doesn't express it as much. And how come you're not worried about my mom?" I asked.

"Please, I have bagged your mom, she loves me."

"Gross, say you've bagged my mom again and I will call off this wedding. The expression is in the bag, not bagged." I corrected, wrinkling my nose. He pressed a quick kiss to my wrinkled nose. For whatever strange reason I could never understand, he found the way I wrinkled my nose adorable, although personally I thought my nose was too big for anything regarding it to ever be called adorable.

"You're being meaner than usual, are you nervous about the Alpha meeting?" Ethan asked.

Every human who was part of an Alpha's territory had to submit a formal request to get married. That meant all humans since the law had been changed years ago saying it was mandatory for humans to be part of a pack,The request was then processed, a very basic background check was done for whatever creepy wolfy reason and then you were given an appointment to meet with your Alpha in person.

Well really it wasn't just your Alpha, it was your Alpha and the Alphas of any surrounding pack territory. They would all under the pretense of accepting the request and giving you their best, also sniff you to determine whether either of the humans was a mate to one of their pack members. For Ethan and I that meant along with our Alpha, two other Alphas would be present to sniff us and make sure we didn't belong to any of their wolves.

There was a 20% chance statistically that a werewolf would have a human mate, so I wasn't too concerned but even a 20% chance was a bit scarily large considering the heinous consequences. Since werewolves could basically throw us humans about as far as we could see with our naked eye - or at least the Alphas could - they had the upper hand, meaning they laid down the law and us humans followed it. Besides the mate business, everything else was pretty fair so there were few rebellions.

The mating laws were the most unfair and barbaric things I had ever heard of. They made me long for the time when the wolf population was low enough for them to feel threatened by us and stay hidden, keeping their creepy rituals to themselves too.

If a human was the mate of a werewolf, then the wolf could do anything they wanted to that human. Essentially they belonged to them, or each other as the wolves put it. They could take them from their homes, or their territory to come live with them regardless of what the human wanted. The only time a werewolf could not do so was if the human was under the age of 18, in which case they were allowed supervised visits until the human turned 18.

Humans had no say in the matter, you could not refuse a mating claim. If you ran away, the wolf was allowed to hunt you down, or find you as they put it, and use predetermined measures to better secure you to their side. The measures became more insane the more times you ran away. The most recorded times a human mate had run away was 7, and her mate had chained her to the bed, and handcuffed her to himself indefinitely.

The only way a human could get away was if a wolf was abusive, but they had to have proof, either recorded or another impartial individual had to have witnessed the abuse. Otherwise you were stuck with the wolf till death. Cases of abuse were very rare though considering the mate bond was apparently very strong, and made the wolf want to care for their mate as much as they wanted to keep them chained to themselves.

Werewolves were stronger and faster with heightened senses and much better immune systems than us. They were also generally better looking than humans, that sort of HD no pores type of attractive so next to them most humans looked frumpy. Which meant human mates were usually the very attractive humans.

I thought I would be fine considering my best feature was probably my hair that was long and thick, a chocolate brown in color and fell down my back in gentle waves. Other than that once nice thing, I was fairly plain. I had green eyes, a nose a bit too big for my heart shaped face, and lips that were not small but also not big. I had skin my mother called pale, but I preferred to say was a very faint tan and the icing on top was that I had psoriasis, a genetic skin condition that caused for the skin to become dry and irritated for very mundane unavoidable reasons. Surely no werewolf mate would have psoriasis.

Ethan on the other hand though was well above average. He was tall with thick jet black hair, my mom always said our kids would have the most amazing hair and I had to agree with her there. Perfect tan skin that was never dry and irritated and had only in the six years I had known him, had one pimple. It had been red and on his upper lip and irritatingly it kind of looked good, like a red beauty spot. He had dark mono lidded eyes with a small thin nose and big puffy lips.

His attractiveness worried me a little, what if he was the mate to a werewolf? There would be nothing I could do besides stand and watch as some werewolf took him away from me. Locking him up in their house until he gave in and agreed to have many wolf babies with them.

"Athena are you okay?" Ethan asked, knocking me out of my reverie.

"Yeah, sorry. I just haven't had any coffee to wake me up. Unlike someone here I didn't want to force coffee breath on my poor unsuspecting fiancé." I teased, not wanting to bring up my worries and make him nervous.

Ethan was too humble to ever agree he was more attractive than average but the attractiveness thing was just an observation of mine. There was no science behind it, so I could still scare him by reminding him the meeting was truly to determine whether we were werewolf mates.

"I just wanted to be properly awake for breakfast with your family and the Alpha meeting. Alphas still kind of scare me." Ethan said, and I looked around out of habit just to make sure no one was close enough to have heard that.

Hate speech against wolves wasn't tolerated, and you could be fined or arrested depending on what you had said. What Ethan had said probably wasn't considered hate speech but if some particularly annoying wolf heard him, they could report him as suspected to be part of a rebellion.

"Alpha Russel seems nice enough." I shrugged, I had only spoken to the man once. He had been at my university graduation and he had a brief conversation with me about what I planned to do with my marketing degree. Other than that I only saw him around town or when he called a mandatory pack meeting which meant even humans had to attend.

"Yeah but still he's an Alpha, they're all big and super strong like what if he just jokingly wants to see how far he can throw me?" Ethan asked and I patted his cheek reassuringly, suppressing a sigh.

"He probably won't considering it's usually thought of as impolite to toss people around like a damn basketball."

He chuckled at that leaning forward to peck my lips.

"Seriously dude you need a mint." I said pretending to be serious even though I was only joking, he pouted, looking far cuter than a 25 year old man should and I sighed dramatically before kissing his pout away. Feeling his lips widen into a smile against my mouth.

"Let's go, they're probably waiting." I said as I pulled away and he nodded, pressing one last peck to my lips before pulling away and going to his own car as I got into mine.

The little parking lot where we had been parked was only a ten minute drive from my house, and considering it was early on a Saturday, no one was out yet so we were home in no time.

I parked outside of my house and waited for Ethan to catch up to me before walking up the steps of my house and unlocking the door. I announced our presence loudly and my mother came hurrying out of the kitchen, a whisk dripping with pancake batter clutched in one hand.

I looked nearly exactly like my mother except she had tanner skin, black hair and hazel eyes, the chocolate brown hair and green eyes I had gotten from my father. She came forward to hug Ethan and I allowed her to gush over him as I wandered into the kitchen. Popping some blueberries into my mouth as I listened to my mom compliment my fiancé more in one go than she had me my entire life.

My little sister Nora came into the kitchen and widened her eyes at me as we heard our mother giggle girlishly at something Ethan had said.

"How do you deal with the ego boost mom gives your boyfriend?" Nora asked, pulling herself up on to the counter next to me.

"Fiancé actually, and by being extra mean to him. Don't want him realizing he's too hot for me and leaving." I said making her scrunch up her face in disgust. Having known Ethan since she was just 10, Nora thought of him as a brother and was very disgusted by any reminder of his appeal to me.

"Dora." Ethan called out with way too much enthusiasm as he followed my mom in to the kitchen. With her black hair that she had worn with front bangs when he had first met her, and her big hazel eyes, Nora had quite resembled the cartoon character Dora so Ethan had taken to calling her that. I had a sneaking suspicion Nora had gotten rid of her bangs just to try to stop it.

He threw his arms out wide even though he should really know better than to expect a hug by now. Even my parents and I had to force affection out of Nora. Unless she was sick, then she was all over you looking for cuddles and getting you sick by using her big hazel eyes and chubby cheeks to extract affection.

"It's Nora, Ethan. Seriously Theenie I hope your children get your brain." Nora said and I snorted as Ethan let out a loud gasp, hauling Nora in by the scruff of her neck and rubbing his knuckles against her hair as she fought to push him away. By the end of it her pristine black hair had a frizzy lump the size of the egg my mom was cracking into a pan on top of her head, and Nora looked ready to murder my fiancé. Luckily my dad walked in then stopping any blood from being spilt. 

"Morning everyone." He said, patting Ethan on the shoulder in greeting before taking over the eggs my mom had frying on the stove.

"Go sit kids, we're almost done." My mom said and we headed to the table. Nora and Ethan sitting on either side of me.

"You don't have any homework we're keeping you from, do you?" I asked Nora, narrowing my eyes at her. Nora much like me was a procrastinator, she left all homework to the very last minute, and happily abandoned it if given the option to do just about anything else.

"I have a test Tuesday, but that's ages away." She answered.

"Tuesday is not ages away." Ethan said. Unlike Nora and I, Ethan was not a procrastinator. In school he would pretty much do his assignments as he got them and started studying long enough before to never have to cram.

We had actually met in my first year of university, I had been taking a second year level course and was paired in a project with him. He had done his part first, and I had left mine till the very last day, even though he had been hounding all of us to get our share finished. Ethan had seen me in the library close to tears and offered to help, not even once said I told you so.

His patient, kind nature combined with the fact that he was very easy on the eyes was the reason that when he had asked if we were on a date a month later when we had been studying together at a coffee shop, I had said a definitive yes.

"It kind of is." I said, I wasn't going to be a hypocrite even if I did want my sister to learn from my mistakes.

"I'll start studying tomorrow, if I start today that'll just be lame." Nora said.

"Can't argue with that logic." Ethan answered frowning in a way that told me this topic would very well come up again before we left for the meeting with the Alphas today.

Breakfast was an easy affair, unlike me the rest of my family seemed to have no concerns for the Alpha meeting. All choosing instead to talk about their week or bring up ideas for the wedding as my mom kept doing. It helped take my mind off of the meeting and lessen my nerves until it was time for us to leave.

We hugged my family goodbye, surprised as Nora gave in and hugged us too. It was a reminder of the significance of the meeting. My mother made us stand together or as she took a couple pictures of us, we left before she could start crying the way she had after Ethan had proposed.

This was the last milestone, as soon as this was done with, Ethan and I would be able to start planning for our new life together.