Every May, I set aside the usual werewolf mayhem to tell a story about motherhood. It started as one of the strange little customs around here, and somewhere along the way it became one of my favorites.
Pour yourself something good and pull up a chair. We’re talking about Lupa.
The thing that fascinates me about Lupa, every time, is the contradiction. Sharp teeth and a soft heart shouldn’t fit together, yet here she is. Rome’s unofficial patron. A pagan she-wolf at the foundation of the city that would one day become the seat of Christendom. Every cardinal, every basilica, every cobblestone of the Vatican rests on a story about a wolf who chose to feed two abandoned babies instead of eating them. The Church doesn’t put her in the calendar of saints, but she got there first, and Rome knows it.
She didn’t transform under starlight. She didn’t howl at the moon. But when a vestal virgin named Rhea Silvia broke her vows and bore twin sons, and was then forced to set those infants adrift on the Tiber to save them from a king who wanted them dead, it was Lupa who pulled the basket from the water.
She could have eaten them. By every law of nature she should have. Instead, she nursed them. She sheltered them. And those twins, Romulus and Remus, grew up to found the city of Rome.
I think about that story a lot. Not just on Mother’s Day. The notion that the most ferocious thing in the forest looked at two helpless human babies and chose protection over instinct. That’s not biology. That’s something else.
That, in the end, is what a werewolf is. The wild and the human, fighting it out in the same body, and choosing right.
Luna White has Lupa in her, whether she knows it or not. So does Sister Destinie, who comes by the title honestly. Habit, vows, the works. If Lupa carried a sword instead of milk, she’d look a lot like Destinie. More on her when Captive Faith claws its way out of my draft folder.
Luna gets called a saint herself sometimes, mostly by Mike. Her response to that designation has become something of a household ritual:
“I’m no saint. Don’t saints have to be virgins? And dead? I’m neither, and I don’t plan on changing anytime soon.”
Mike maintains that this is exactly the kind of thing a saint would say.
Saint or no saint, that quality runs through every fierce female who chooses her pack. The women who raised us. The women who chose us. The women who quietly took in the kids who weren’t theirs by blood and made them their own anyway.
If you’re in the mood for some maternal mayhem, Lycan Legacy – Progeny is right where you left it. Luna’s own pregnancy, packed with danger, devotion, and a few supernatural surprises she absolutely did not see coming.
So raise a toast or a claw to all the Lunas, the Lupas, the Destinies, and the fierce women who protect their packs by blood or by choice. Sainthood optional. Teeth and heart required.
May the moon light your path,
Veronica
P.S. Reach out to your mom, or whoever filled that role for you. If she’s the one who taught you to love stories, send her a link to one of mine. It’s a conversation starter, if nothing else.
P.P.S. New here? The story of how Luna became Luna in the first place is waiting for you. Grab the Lycan Legacy prequel free at veronicasinger.com/prequel-offer.
