Are you ready to hear a story? Good, 'cause it all started with a bet.

There's this guy. Maybe you heard of him, name's Chases-Parked-Cars. Well, Chase walks onto the caern one day, boombox in one hand an' Truckstop in the other. My first impression o' Chase was big an' strong. He was about the handsomest BoneGnawer I ever saw. My second impression o' Chase was that he was a good kisser, which is always a plus. My third impression o' Chase was that he knew a bit about what was goin' on, which I can respect.

Chase an' me had a bet. We went out fer one solid week, me, him, and a little SilverFang named Loreanne. We hit a different party every night that week, an' the bet was as follows. If Chase was able to show me a good time, I owed him a favor o' his choosin'; if I was bored the whole week, an' didn't have no fun at all, Chase had to keep his big mouth shut fer a whole evenin'.

To make a long story short, I had a fantastic time, an' Chase won the bet. So I owed Chase this favor, an' it went unresolved fer more than a week. Well, who don' get itchy about owin' someone a favor? So when I was taggin' along with Chase to Seattle, we discussed business over a cup of coffee at Denny's. Conversation came to the subject o' the bet, an' not by accident, either. I wanted this resolved. So I asked Chase what favor he wanted, an' he said he didn't know. He danced around the question for like, five minutes or some shit. Finally, he came right out an' chose his favor. He wanted me to stay the night with him.

Well, there just wasn't any question. Maybe the litany blinked in my head once, but nothing more than that. At the time, I was just in it for a good time. I mean, Chase is an attractive guy, an' I was new in town, an' I wanted to get laid. I thought we was jus' gonna be, y'know, friends. I woulda jumped into bed with him about ten minutes after meeting him. He didn't have to win no damn bet to get me in bed. He really shoulda used that favor for something useful.

Well, it didn't work out that way. After just a little while, I started to develop some pretty intense feelins for Chase. I've been around long enough to know the difference between the euphoria of a recently sated libido and love. Heh, I didn't think love existed before I met Chase. I never thought I'd hear myself use the word.

Well, Chase, he don' stick to jus' the one girl. He was sleepin' with two others that I knew of, but I sure wouldn't be surprised if there was more. This normally wouldn't have bothered me much at all. After all, we're BoneGnawers, right? It don' mean nothin', right? Well, It jus' hurt me too much to be with Chase, knowin' he had these other girls, 'cause I knew it meant that Chase was a lot more important to me than I was to him. So I was gonna sit down with him alone, and tell him why it had to end. I was gonna throw away the most meaningful an' important thing in my life so ol' Chase could continue his lifestyle o' choice.

Y'see, I got issues. I was without parents or a home since I was, what, twelve? The streets o' Seattle ain't no place fer a twelve year old girl, so I had to find guys to feed me, gimmie a place to stay, and protect me. Well, everythin' in life comes with a price, and good ol' loveless sex is not only a hot commodity, but it's a type o' currency that I got alot of. But the difference is, none o' those guys meant nothin' to me. Chase does. An' what he was doin', it made me feel like the whore I was all those years ago.

So Chase an' I was downtown, on a mission from our sept alpha, an I decides to set him straight. "Chase," I says," I gotta be more to you than a fast free fuck on Friday nights, or I gotta be nothin' at all." Chase, he's real quiet, an' I looks at him, an' he looks at me, an' he don' say nothin'. So I turns to leave.

"Wait, wait," says Chase, an' his voice is all quiet. Here comes the hard part. I was just gonna break it off all nice an' clean like, right? No messy sharin' our feelin's an' stuff like that, minimize the emotional investment, damage control, if you will. But ol' Chase, he just gotsta spill his guts to me.

He tells me how much he cares, tells me that I wasn't just a free fuck on Friday nights. He tells me that if he was gonna settle down to jus' one girl I would be it, an' he tells me that it's not me, it's him. He tells me everythin' I don' wanna hear at this point. He's makin' it tough on me. So I says, "No, Chase. We just gotta say, "it's done"." But he keeps talkin'. It's tearin' me apart, so I interrupts him.

"Chase, I don't wanna hear a big long list of things I can't have. Just make it clean, just say two words. Just say "it's done"." An' he did. But it wasn't.

He's hangin' out with Kain Dawson, alpha o' the Street Knights, who's at the caern for the Everett assault. I'm doin' my best to stay away from him. So he an' Kain is jus sittin' around the caern, an' I'm sulkin' around the pace, an' sometimes, I get this feelin' like Chase is lookin' at me, but I can't tell fer sure. I figures I jus' gotta stay away from him 'till the hurt fades.

But despite my best efforts, I run face to face with the two of 'em. I offers 'em both a drink o' my Mountain Dew. To do otherwise jus' wouldn't have been proper. It was like a kinda caffine communion, cause somethin' was communicated through that drink. Chase is lookin' and actin' kinda sad-like, an he sighs, an' says he's gotta talk to me an' Kain, in private.

So we wanders off to a secluded part of the caern, an' he sits me down an' starts to talk. He says that Kain's been talkin' to him, teachin' him about "this relationship stuff", an' that he's got some obligations to attend to, some promises to keep, but that if I'm willin' to wait, in three weeks, If I still want him, I got him. After he says this, I'm feelin' like I'm gonna float outa my skin, I'm so happy. But I got misgivin's.

What I wanna know is what Kain Dawson's got to do with this. What exactly did Kain say to Chase? It musta been pretty spectacular, seein' as how earlier that evenin' Chase was tellin' me he jus' wasn't ready for an exclusive realtionship. Why did Chase change his mind so quick? Is he gonna be able to keep with one girl without growin' to resent me?

Don' get me wrong, I ain't complainin'. Chase is the best thing that ever happened to me, an' his commitment...if I could tell you how much it meant to me, I would. What I feel for Chases-Parked-Cars is the closest damn thing to love I ever knew. If this ain't the real thing, then I hope I don' never fall in love. But it all just seems too good to be true. I was expectin' to be alone, but I'm gettin' what I wanted, an' then some. So of course I'm lookin' fer strings. Wouldn't you?

The moral o' the story is that love is complicated, an' love is messy, an' the rewards available to be reaped from love are limited. I don't know. I'll just have to see what happens. What I do know is that sex is easy, sex is fun, an' love is difficult an' painful. Draw yer own conclusions.

But Chase, he was willin' to make me somethin' that almost sounded like a commitment. He said to me that he was gonna try hard to stick with me. He's real sweet to me, an' I don' doubt that he cares, and so far as I know, he's been true to his word. We had a proper BoneGnawer wedding to make things official and public and officially public. I was wondrin' why the sept leaders didn't crack down on us big time fer it, but Chase said that he had already won the challenge to be able to do it, so I guess everything's cool. Kain did the ceremony, Kinfolk Vree was the flower girl, an' ol' Max, he bought us two first class plane tickets to New Orleans fer a six day honeymoon. I'm lookin' forward to it; New Orleans sounds like a party town...sounds like a town where me an' Chase could get into alot of trouble together. It's just as well, I been in the Pacific Northwest all my life, an' it's about time I got out to see at least a little bit o' the world.

Kain, fer a wedding present, gave me his baseball bat klaive. It was a great gift, but when he gave it to me, he said that it was so Chase didn't have to look after me on the battlefield. Now, I know I ain't much of an ahroun, but Chase's been tellin' me that I'm allright. So it all boils down to this: Either Kain and the ShadowLords up in Vancouver are right, an' I ain't much of an ahroun, which would mean that Chase is lyin', or Chase is right, an' Kain and the ShadowLords up in Vancouver is just a bunch o' bullies. Well, I guess I'll do what I always done...lie low and keep an eye on things, see how it all develops.