A Romeo and Juliet Retelling for Halloween
For October, I combined one of my favorite love stories with my favorite holiday to make a sweet paranormal Romeo and Juliet novella! I'm sending out the whole thing, chapter by chapter to my fans. Join here if you want in on it. Or you can buy the book here.
Sneak Peek:
Chapter 1
Swear Not By the Moon, The Inconstant Moon
2020 October 31, Saturday
Blue Moon (Second Full Moon of the Month)
Halloween/Samhain
As her mother pulled her hair into the last braid and pin of an elaborate, medieval style hairdo, Julia Grayhide studied herself in the full-length mirror. Instead of the t-shirt, jeans, and messy ponytail she normally wore to school, she wore an elaborate Renaissance Princess gown in deep maroon and royal blue that complemented her pale skin, blue eyes, and tawny-brown hair. She looked more like an elegant Elf Lady than a Lycan.
The Renaissance costume, historically accurate, and lovingly sewn with real velvet, silk, and pearl beads, had probably cost hundreds of dollars. The entire Grayhide Pack had chipped in to help Julia’s parents afford it, though her mother, Anna Grayhide, had sewn it all on her own. Since money was always tight, there could not be two such costumes, so it been drafted for several duties already: a Renaissance Faire costume (hence the historical time period), a Juliet costume for the local town theater performance during the summer, and now, in October, it would be her Halloween costume.
Mindy Grayhide, only eight, darted into the room. “You should paint your face like a skull!” the child advised. “So you could be a Corpse Bride! Glue gummy worms to your cheek, like they’re crawling out of your eye sockets! That would be so much edgier. Here... have some of my gummy worms!”
Mindy held up a fistful of gummy worms that she had plundered from the Worm Cupcake recipe being prepared downstairs. Julia grabbed one and popped it in her mouth. “Thanks!”
“You’re supposed to glue it to your face!”
“Have candy stuck on my face all night?” scoffed Julia. “No way. Don’t you have to join the other kids for the Howling before Moonrise?”
Mindy stuck out her tongue at Julia before the child scurried away. Mindy, like the other Grayhide children, would spend the night in the woods in case the Full Moon forced her to shift into a Wolf for the first time. Most children started shifting between six and ten years old, and didn’t learn to control their animal form until five or ten years later.
“Should I look more frightful?” Julia asked her mother, Anna.
“You look beautiful as you are,” her mother smiled happily. “Beautiful and fierce. The Beauty and the Beast rolled into one.”
Julia rolled her eyes. “You say that every time, mom. It’s so cringe. Yes, we get it. The Wolf Shifter is dressed as a dainty princess. It’s soooo ironic.”
“Everything seems cringing and ironic when you’re sixteen,” her mother said, more amused than offended. “But as your mother, I’m glad that you have the ability to defend yourself from all the boys who are going to swarm around you like flies on honey.”
Julia covered her face with her hands. Light help me, my mother is so embarrassing.
“I have a feeling you’re going to meet a very special boy tonight at the Halloween party,” her mother added smugly.
Suddenly suspicious, Julia met her mother’s eyes in the mirror. Julia crossed her arms. “Spill it. What do you know?”
Her mother never wanted her to “meet boys.” Her mother was very clear that she had “plans” for Julia’s future, plans that involved the son of an Alpha of another pack. Privately, Julia wasn’t too worried, only because she didn’t think the son of an Alpha would be interested in her. Neither of her parents were Alphas of their pack. That role belonged to Cousin Rowena’s father, Ronald Grayhide. Back in the real Middle Ages, when the dress she was wearing was every day fashion, perhaps Julia might have married Rowan, Rowena’s older brother and the heir to the pack. But he was her second cousin, so for a modern Pack, that match was out of the question. And thank goodness. Like all of the large extended family that made up most of the Grayhide pack, she had grown up with her cousins like they were her brothers and sisters. She loved Rowan, but only as a brother.
“Shawn Strongclaw is coming to the Masquerade Halloween party tonight.”
“I thought no one was supposed to be traveling this year because of the zombie outbreak,” Julia said. “Isn’t that why we’re not allowed to go trick-or-treating?”
“This is more important than zombies,” her mother said dismissively.
“What could be more important than not getting bitten by a rampaging zombie and turned into the living undead?” Julia challenged.
“Finding your Fated Mate!” her mother chirped. “What good is life without love?”
Julia winced. “You’re so cringe, lol.”
“’Lol’ is not a word. Just meet him, honey. I have a feeling that fate will take care of the rest.”
Her mom was so confident. A part of Julia hoped that she was right. After all, although she didn’t like to admit it out loud, she was as much of a hopeless romantic as her mother. Her parents had known the instant they laid eyes on each other that they were meant to be mates for life. At a time when the humans around her seemed doomed to broken and shattered relationships, Julia was always glad she had been born Lycan, a Wolf Shifter, secure in the knowledge that one day she would lock eyes with a male Lycan and they would just know they were meant to be together forever.
But now doubt crept in. Even with Lycans, who had inherited magic from ancestors who had long ago come to the Mundane Sphere from another sphere of existence where magic was natural, fate wasn’t infallible. What if you had a Fated Mate, but you never met him? What if your Fated Mate met you, but rejected you? What if your Fated Mate, your one true love died, or disappeared, as had the wife of the Grayhide Alpha? What if this “Shawn Strongclaw” was not the one for her, but her mother and father insisted she marry him anyway?
So many things could go wrong.
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to marry him right away,” her mother continued.
“What?” Julia asked, coming out of her own fog of concerns.
“Shawn,” her mother said, impatient that Julia had lost the thread of conversation so quickly. “Even if you meet him, and you know that you were meant to be together, I’m afraid that your father and I must insist you wait until you are 18 and graduate from high school before you get married. Actually, your father wanted to allow you to get married right away, but the Alpha insisted we wait until the legal human age.”
“Well duh.”
Her mother frowned. “’Duh’ isn’t a word. The age of sixteen is traditional age of adulthood for our people.”
“Yeah, mom. That’s the traditional age from hundreds of years ago in a magical world that none of us has ever been to. According to Grandma, it’s also traditional for Goblins to pierce the Veil Between the Worlds on Halloween to slay, burn, and pillage. Should we bring back that quaint tradition too? Aren’t zombies bad enough?”
Her mother flashed her a mysterious and closed-lipped Mona Lisa smile. “Just wait until you discover your fated mate, Julia,” she warned. “You’ll discover how hard it is to wait.”
***
Roman and his cousins tramped through the woods until they reached the old, spooky mansion where the Grayhide Pack denned. The ramshackle, gabled three-story building resembled a haunted house to begin with, and hardly needed the skeletons clawing their way out of the driveway, or the giant black spiders with glowing red LED eyes on the roof. To be honest, the overwhelming scent of Wolf Shifter was far more terrifying to the three Ram Shifters than the kooky Halloween decorations.
They timed their arrival to fall in behind a huge van full of arriving guests. Obviously, the Grayhides were ignoring the warnings about the zombie infestation. Several other packs had traveled to join the costume party. In addition to the wolves, there were a few other kinds of shifters as well, and even one or two people that Roman was certain must be witches, because they didn’t have the scent of shifters. The only witch Roman identified positively was the town drunk, Ollie. He was known to be friendly with the Grayhides.
That was fantastic news, because the more people there were at the party, and the more diverse the crowd, the lower the chances that their own disguises would be unveiled.
Everyone was in human form, of course, and also in costume. The Grayhides and the other Wolves mostly wore slapdash homemade costumes, but the guests included those in fancier costumes, more like the Bellwether’s glamoured costumes. They wouldn’t stand out too much.
The three Bellwether Boys Fell into step behind the big horde of wolf shifters walking up the gravel driveway lined on either side with leering jack-o’-lanterns. Music blared from the house. Roman recognized the song as Werewolves of London.
“Do you think we will actually make it inside the house?” Mason leaned over to ask breathlessly. “I’ve never been inside the den before!”
“Shut up!” hissed Brock. “Act natural.”
“We’re just wolves on our way to a Wolf party,” Roman said in a low singsong.
“You shut up too!” snapped Brock. “You two idiots are going to get us caught. Remember, what we agreed.”
What they had agreed was that they wouldn’t stay long. If they were caught, the Wolves would immediately assume they had come for blood. The wolves would assume it was an all-out attack by their clan against the pack. Roman didn’t even blame them. If he or his cousins spotted three Wolves, males of their age, sneaking into the Bellwether’s own house, he would have assumed the worst as well. He would attack first, ask questions later. Not to do so would risk having his whole extended family massacred while he tried to be polite.
Shifter wars came with being a shifter.
The Bellwether boys only wanted to have a little fun, look around enemy territory, then trot back home and boast about what they did at their own family’s Halloween party to their envious younger cousins and admiring friends. Therefore, the boys agreed they would talk to no one. They would take care not to damage, or steal anything, and above all, not start a fight.
They walked up the steps to the porch of the mansion. Roman’s heart beat faster. He plastered on a smile. Would the Wolves ask for invitations? Would the Wolves reject the three as strangers even if they didn’t know who they were Bellwethers? Or worse yet, would the Wolves see immediately through their disguise, notwithstanding the Glamour that hid their identities?
If anything went wrong, this would be the last night of his life.
He broke into a big grin. Totally worth it.
The hostess was a sexy witch that he recognized as Rowena Grayhide, the oldest daughter of the Pack’s Alpha. She smiled at the three Ram Shifters with no sign of recognition or hostility.
“Dinner is buffet style, inside. Games out back, dancing in the solarium. Candy is up front, beer is in the cooler on the back porch,” Rowena said. She wagged a finger at them. “If any of you are old enough to drink legally.”
She winked at Roman. It was well known the Wolves didn’t care much about human regulations.
And then they were inside. Just like that.
They had made it undetected. Roman had to restrain himself to keep from howling with triumph, although perhaps the Wolves wouldn’t have thought random howling was too strange. He could tell that Mason was struggling to repress his glee as well. Brock, always the serious one, just looked constipated.
“Hey, we should…” began Mason.
“No beer,” Brock said.
Mason’s face fell, but he grumbled his acquiescence.
“We walk around, mingle without speaking to anyone, and then make our way out the back door,” Brock commanded gruffly. “Don’t get this far just to blow it.”
Brock hit each of them with a hard look, and they nodded. Brock was the oldest and toughest of them; he had dropped out of school early, used his big size and false papers to enter the military at sixteen, served two years, and come back with a Purple Heart and the ability to belt out commands like a sergeant.
By prior agreement they separated, so they wouldn’t form a noticeably strange clump but rather would become three more faces lost in the crowd.
Now that the spike of adrenaline receded, Roman was a little disappointed at how normal the Grayhide Pack House looked. It didn’t look very different from his own family home. In fact, the two houses had probably been built in the same era, in approximately the same style. After an atrium, there was a parlor on one side and a large dining room on the other. Both rooms sported comfortable furnishing for everyday use, currently gussied up with Halloween decor. You would think that Wolves might at least have real blood and bones with which to decorate, but nope. They used the same plastic and cardstock cutouts as Roman’s grandmother, Beverly Bellwether.
Somewhere, music played over cheap speakers, Flying Purple People Eater. Through a doorway, Roman could see couples dancing in another room.
The party wasn’t nearly as wild or exotic as he expected. Roman had always secretly imagined that somehow the Wolf Shifters were more authentic and closer to their barbarian side than his own people. But there was no evidence of that in the hokey decorated living room.
He concluded that Brock was right. They needed to make their way home as soon as possible. On the way back home, he would figure out how to make the whole expedition sound more daring than dull, focusing on the risk they took even coming here, rather than the rather tame party itself.
A delicious smell changed his mind. He followed his nose to the buffet table, laden with platters of food, including an entire rack of barbecued ribs. Contrary to some popular misconceptions, his people were not vegetarian, unless by choice, if they were so inclined. Roman wasn’t in the least inclined. He had the appetite of a shifter on top of that of an ordinary 17-year-old boy. He headed over to the ribs and decided he would delay just long enough to enjoy the mouthwatering buffet before he headed home. Besides, he had lost sight of both Mason and Brock. Maybe they had decided to linger just a little bit longer too, since none of the Wolves seemed suspicious. The song changed to I Put a Spell On You.
Roman was piling up his plate, when he heard someone snicker, someone who sounded sweet, yet somehow also sophisticated... with an appealing voice....
He looked up and saw a girl his own age across the table from him. As soon as he met her blue eyes, a jolt of amazement surged through his body. His soul recognized her, yet he was certain that he had never seen her before. Was she one of the hosts or one of the guests? She looked too delicate to be a fearsome Wolf Shifter. She smelled delectable, but he couldn’t identify her totem animal in the heady mix of scents in the close air of the dining room. All he could tell was that she was delightfully feminine. Something about her clutched his heart.
Who is she?
And as clear as a bell, he could hear the answer from his inner Ram. She’s the one!
He set his plate down, his food forgotten. He lost his appetite, or any desire to do anything but stare at her.
Let her be anyone but one of the Grayhides.
Surely she could not be one of them. Not only was she far too ethereal, but her costume stood out amidst the cheap, shoddy costumes of the other Grayhides. She dressed like a princess. In fact, if someone had told him at that moment that she was a real princess, he would have expressed no surprise at all. It would have been bad news for him, since obviously a princess would be far above his station. And yet even that would be better than if she were one of the Grayhides.
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