*****

"He's only dangerous on the full moon," Virginia continued to plead, "I'm not breaking up my marriage."

"But look what he does to you. Look what happens to him once a month. What happens the next time he escapes?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't know. What can I say it's a risk I take. We all take risks everyday. You spend your life fighting, demons. You've even lost a sister to it. I've fallen in love with a half wolf."

As she was speaking Cole then returned, with Wolf, Virginia continued,

"Now I have a family, this is the risk I take for them. If I were to just up and abandon him what would I do? Look, find some other guy, realize some flaw in him, and then move onto the next one? I'll end up like my grandmother old and alone. She has given up on love more times than she can remember. She can't even name all the men she has been married to. I don't want to end up like that."

Cole hoped that Phoebe was paying attention to what Virginia was saying. One couldn't just give up on love, on family, and hop from spouse to spouse.

"I wish things could be different. I wish I didn't have to chain my husband up once a month and worry about what he becomes. I wish I didn't have to worry about what my son will become. But that's my life, they're my family. I can't just "abandon," them because of what they are. Despite what you have seen, we're happy. I wish things could be perfect, but they aren't. Life can never be perfect."

Wolf felt proud as he listened to his wife standing up for him, for their family. He knew that she could never truly give up on him. He had known that since the day she decided to stay in Little Lamb Village, to defend him in court when he was charged with the murder of Sally Peep. While she could have simply gone back to New York City and forgotten him, she decided to stay, despite the fact all the evidence pointed to him being the murderer. Despite the fact that her father told her to go back assuming he was guilty.

In fact, she almost did, she almost left him behind. He remembered when she went to visit him at the jail, to tell him that she was going back. However, after seeing him cry through the bars, begging her to stay, she couldn't leave him.

After the trial was over, he knew Virginia was the one. The one who stuck by him when he was charged with a murder he could easily have committed. The one who loved him, seeing past what he was. The one who he should spend the rest of his life with, his true mate for life.

" It will never happen again, I promise," he said his voice determined, as he scratched his temple in the famed honor sign of wolves.

Virginia wondered how he was going to do it. To the best of her knowledge, there was no way to cure lycanthropy and prevent his cycles from happening.

"Next full moon, he stays with me," Cole nonchalantly chimed in, he didn't feel like mentioning the rest of the bargain he had made with her husband.

He was actually surprised by the way Virginia took her husband back with open arms. The half wolf was lucky to have an understanding wife, well aware of what her husband became, willing to love him unconditionally, forgiving him when he did wrong. Could Phoebe ever be that strong and understanding? Could Phoebe ever love him unconditionally?

He remembered that day in the demonic wasteland after he had been vanquished. She refused to help, refused to get Leo to retrieve the grimoire, the demonic book with the spell that could bring him back. She didn't listen when he re-assured her that the source was gone, his essence digested by the beast in the wasteland. She couldn't separate him, from the source. Did she believe that he was evil? That after all he had been through in order to change, he would go and willingly become the ruler of the underworld?

She simply left him there, in that horrible place, telling him to "move on." Maybe she was right? Maybe it was time for him to move on?

He looked at Wolf, "See you next month," he said then vanished. He didn't feel like offering Phoebe a shimmer back. Leo could orb her to San Francisco, to the house where she lived. Tonight he felt like being alone.

After Cole left Phoebe told Virginia "Please come back with us, you could bring Randell with you if you like. Don't worry about him messing things up, we're used to having things broken around our house."

Virginia rejected the offer, "His cycles are over now," she said as she looked at her husband. "Everything will be okay. Don't worry about me."

"I'm completely cured. I'm back to myself now." Wolf chimed in, reassuringly. He really didn't know what to tell Phoebe and Leo. They had seen him at his worst, during the height of his cycles "I'm sorry you had to see me like that. Whatever I did to you, whatever I did to Virginia, it wasn't me, I wasn't myself."

An unsympathetic, disdainful look came across the face of Phoebe. Leo looked at Virginia then said,

"I'll be by to check in on things tomorrow, if you need me, just call," he and Phoebe then orbed out. They both hoped everything would be okay.

Phoebe wondered when Virginia would come around, and realize that it wasn't safe being married to a werewolf, half wolf or whatever he was. Would she, her sisters and Leo be able to talk her out of the marriage and into a life of her own, a life in which she didn't have to worry about the perils of being married to an animal?

The End