2. Forty- six

"She also told me where werewolves originally came from." I laughed and Ethan laughed with me.

It has been three days since Ethan and I kissed and it's been bliss since then. Even though we haven't made out since, the fact that Ethan is my supernatural bodyguard has brought us closer. We talked about a lot of things, our families, our friends, our mates, our pasts, and our expectations for the future.

It was refreshing to have such a connection with someone so far from home. It made me feel at peace and I could see that it made Ethan happy too. 

Ethan had wanted to take me somewhere so; I was sitting in the passenger seat while he was driving his car. We had been driving for twenty minutes when he confessed that he was intrigued by my interactions with the moon goddess. He wanted to know everything the goddess had ever told me. I had already told him most of the information she had given me and its aftermath but there was still a lot more to tell.

"Oh, come on! It's not every day a supernatural goddess comes into someone's dreams." Ethan rolled her eyes.

"Really? So, she hasn't tormented anyone in the last centuries or so?" I scoffed and watched the roadside outside the car window.

"Tormenting? What are you talking about? I have never heard about the moon goddess visiting anyone, I swear. You are the first. So, it naturally makes me suspicious. I mean, look at you, you are the mate to a white wolf, the moon goddess visits you in your dreams, and you have a Batair, when the concept of supernatural protectors has been extinct for a few hundred years."

"Is this your way of telling me that I'm a special girl?" I asked and made a show of fluttering my eyelashes.

Ethan's cheeks tinged pink immediately. "Well, you don't need any of the above to be special, you know." 

"Points to you for trying, Ethan." I laughed at his measly attempt at flirting.

"Okay, you got me." He laughed. "So, are you going to tell me?"

"Okay, I will. So, the moon goddess, or Selene, as she was called then was the daughter of a wrathful god, Hyperion. She was beautiful and had many suitors from a young age, which pleased his father to no end. His father was proud of her but her pride and arrogance always got in the way of her being great and being good to others."

"One time, a human was called into heaven for a special favor when he saw Selene, playing with her two brothers. He was enraptured by the beauty and wanted to win her over. Without thinking of the consequences, he proposed to her the next time he stood before her, in the family's dining room. Turns out, Hyperion wanted the human to take care of some of the water bodies that were losing their salt content. Hyperion told the man if Selene agreed to marry him, he would grant them his blessings, even if he did not want her daughter to be married to a human."

"When the human proposed to Selene on the balcony, she sneered and laughed at his face. She couldn't believe that a mere mortal from Earth dared to proclaim his love to her and ask her hand for marriage. Instead of letting the mortal go, Selene beheaded the human then and there."

"Hyperion was furious because, without the man, he knew he wouldn't be able to solve the problem of the large water bodies. So, the water bodies dried up, within seven days, and with it, all the animals who depended on the water bodies died too. Hyperion was devastated and angry. He transferred his wrath on his daughter, whose pride and arrogance had caused the lives of thousands of living organisms."

"So, he cursed her and exiled her to the planet Earth, till the time she learned the value of all life, be it human or animal. Selene landed on Earth, without any of her magical powers which made survival very hard for her. She was living on scraps and didn't know where to go."

"She didn't find any people and was left to fend for herself. One time, when she was dying of hunger, she stumbled upon a man, who was out hunting for his tribe. The man took pity on her barely conscious form and brought her back to health."

"He was the head of a hunter tribe, who survived by killing animals and trading for other necessities. As she became healthy, she found herself settling well into the tribal life and becoming a member of the tribe. She also fell in love with a man who had rescued her and they married shortly after."

"The night they married; Hyperion came to visit her in her dreams. He told her that he was proud of her that she had learnt to value all life and that he wanted her to come back. She told her father that she didn't want to go back to heaven but he didn't want to listen. He threatened to kill the man she loved and bring her back by force."

"When her husband found her crying the next morning, Selene told him everything, her true identity and the threats of her father. She cried in the arms of her husband as dawn broke."

"Theia, Selene's mother, knew that the union between the man and her daughter on their wedding night had resulted in a child. Afraid that Hyperion wouldn't care about his grandchild in his rage, she magically bound the souls of Selene and the mortal together. If one dies, so would the other. Theia knew that Hyperion wouldn't kill his daughter, because he loved her more than anything else."

"When Hyperion came to know what Theia had done, he was furious but powerless. He vowed to never see Selene's face for all her human life on Earth."

"Now, Selene was the moon goddess, which meant she was the goddess of all the things the moon controlled and she married a man, so their union was somewhat a mixture of both."

"Their child was a mix of both man and wolf, as the wolf pays his respects to the moon, he bows to it and howls at its full appearance. The fur of the wolf was white, symbolizing that he was the direct descendant of the moon goddess, the first ever werewolf."

"The magic with which Theia had bound Selene and the man had been blessed to their child too, which brought forth the concept of mates. The werewolf found his mate in the tribe itself and went on to have six children, who were all white wolves. They were the grandchildren of the moon goddess."

"By this time, the human life of Selene and her husband had finished. They both ascended to heaven, where they stayed together forever, overlooking and caring for their werewolf children."

"Hyperion, jealous and still feeling vengeful of his daughter's creation, cursed the six werewolves to limit their power. He crafted the spell so that only the first-born wolf of the white wolf and their mates would be born as the white wolf. Any other mating wouldn't result in a white wolf."

"This curse, as you know, still exists today because the second child of the white wolf and their mate isn't a white wolf, but a normal wolf. There are possibilities that the child may not be a wolf at all, but a normal human being."

"Slowly, the number of wolves grew and the six wolves dispersed to the different continents so that they could control and govern the wolves on that particular continent. And you know the rest of the story."

"Woah!" Ethan exclaimed and I laughed. It was a lot to take at first. It took me a lot of days to come to terms with all the information the moon goddess had chosen to give me.

Her story of fighting for her loved and chosen man sounded poetic to me. She had fought her father and the will of the gods to be with the man she loved. She had moved heaven and earth to stay with her soul mate and gave birth to a child that changed the lives of so many people.

"So, that's it." I laughed. "I think I need some water."

Ethan handed me a water bottle and I thanked him. I had been speaking for quite some time and my throat was feeling parched. I chugged down mouthfuls of the cool water and then looked out the window, only to be greeted by thick trees.

What the hell? Where were we? I had no idea there were woods around my sister's apartment but then again, we had been driving for over an hour, so I had no idea where we were.

"Where are we?" I wondered, interested in Ethan's choice of outing.

"I thought the woods would be a good place. We are here." With that, he parked at the start of the tree line. I looked out my window, I was sure there was no human settlement or any human for a few miles from here.

"Come on out. I want to show you, my wolf." Ethan smiled at me, his eyes shining bright and I felt excitement bubble up in me.