Let’s Talk One True Mate (One True Mate Companion, Vol. 1)

4—Series Premise

In One True Mate, the town of Serenity is beset by a secret war invisible to humans. The mythology of the wolf shifters says that before the dawn of civilization the demon Khain and the goddess Rhen waged an ongoing supernatural battle on Earth, which they called Ula. Khain was a murderer who hated, enslaved, and killed humans. Rhen was a protector who was sent by the Light to stop Khain. Khain and Rhen were equally matched, but during one calamitous battle, Rhen found herself weakened and unable to continue fighting. Three groups of animals came to her rescue: wolves, bears, and cougars.

In gratitude, Rhen placed a piece of herself in the back of the shoulder of each animal, giving them a human half, allowing them to shift between human and animal, and bestowing to them her sense of caring and protection for humans. This was her last act as a physical being, and she was so weakened by it, she left her body in the care of the shiften she had created, while her spirit retreated to the meadow, a divine dreamscape.

The newly-created species of wolven, bearen, and felen integrated into human villages and lived human lives, keeping their animal halves secret. Over time, the wolven became the police officers of the world, while the bearen became the fire fighters. The felen were a more varied and mercenary group, with a fair amount of them being drawn to politics and medicine.

Although the wolven mythology references only three shiften species, there is one more: the foxen . Foxen sometimes have renqua and sometimes don’t, sometimes can shift and sometimes can’t. They live as humans, often not knowing what they are, and intermarrying with humans. Foxen are rumored to be sneaky and underhanded. Wolven don’t know much about them, but they do know the foxen belong to Khain somehow.

Long ago, these foxen were the deliverers of the Vahiy, an ancient telling of a distant day of reckoning that would be the death of Rhen. The wolven know little more than rumors about the Vahiy, and still it strikes fear into their otherwise fearless hearts.

In modern times, Rhen’s body is protected by ruthless felen in the tunnels under the Serenity Police Department. The piece of herself that Rhen placed in the shoulder of each animal is seen in our contemporary shiften as a renqua, a variable mark that wolven, bearen , and felen are born with. It looks like a tattoo on human skin, and a fur color change in animal form, reminding each shiften of their life’s purpose and their connection to Rhen.

Three stone statues border Serenity—the bear statue to the east, the catamount statue to the west, and the wolf statue to the north. No one knows who carved them, when, or why.

Shiften are guided by prophecy, relayed by Citlali—the shiften’s spiritual leaders who can converse telepathically with Rhen. Any shiften born with a star renqua is recognized as Citlali and given leadership positions as they mature. They possess powers that give them limited mind-control over humans, and also let them ‘bind’ ordinary shiften , immobilizing them for the purpose of discipline or correction.

30 years before our story starts, the demon delivered a deathblow to our shiften , by way of a mass poisoning of the world’s water supply with an undetectable concoction that proved swiftly fatal to virtually all female shiften . The males who were left fell apart when they lost their mates, their mothers, their daughters, their sisters, their aunts, and their nieces all at once—and the youngest generation suffered silently.

Rhen grieved, stirring an angel’s [rather invasive] compassion. The angel, known as Azerbaizan, went to the Ula and coupled with multiple human females, leaving behind a pendant as an object of power with each, intending to create a new race of half-angel, half-human females powerful enough to join the shiften in their fight against the demon. The angel meant to communicate with his celestial daughters as they grew and matured, to help them develop their unique powers and to inform them of their role in the battle against Khain, but the angel was captured by the demon and kept in a special-metal cage in the Pravus, the demon’s hellish home. This left our heroines clueless as to their purpose, their powers, and the biological pull each of them feels when they turn 25.

These are the One True Mates, and their prophecy matures in One True Mate 1; Shifter’s Sacrifice.