Alec  Friday afternoon finally arrives and I am standing on the front porch of my grandparents house with Dad, Grandpa and Andras while the women are inside getting all dolled up for our pending nuptials. I am beyond ready for the wedding to finally start but time is moving so slowly that it is driving me insane. I pace the length of the porch, then turn and cross it again. “You nervous, boy?” Grandpa asks me and I shake my head. “Impatient.&r

Morana   I watch as Alec draws up, his body in pain. His bones crack and shift, forcing him to grunt in pain. I know that the pain is agonizing, yet he refuses to show weakness in front of me. I lean over him, kissing his forehead and pushing his sweaty hair back from his face, which contorts in a grimace of pain. I know that the first time you shift can take hours. I try to soothe him for the first hour, but by then he is in so much pain that he can't stand to be touched at all. His smooth skin is covered with fur and his body is unrecognizable by the time we crest the third hour. H

Now I can't stop staring at her. She looks so perfect. As the wedding march belts out she draws nearer me and I feel time freeze all around me. It is moving so agonizingly slow that I can hardly stand it. Bron must feel the same urgency because she is speed walking towards me and Jeremy and Alec grin as they keep up with her. Everyone chuckles except for me. I watch every step she takes counting in my head the seconds it takes for her to reach my side. When she reaches me, I immediately grab her hands in mine. The officiate says 'who gives this woman to this man?' and Jeremy responds with the typical 'her family and I'. Both he and Alec kiss her cheek before moving away. Jeremy's eyes are glistening and Bron wipes at his cheek, tears on her own. Alec squeezes my arm as he moves to stand beside me as my best man. He is my brother now as much as he is hers. We are a family. Bron faces me with a watery smile and I can't stop myself from kissing her lips lightly.

Bronwen Grandma Katie hands me the two babies in my arms and I looked down into the beautiful faces of my children. One boy and one girl, just as their daddy predicted. Both babies have their eyes open, as if getting familiar with their new surroundings. That is when I notice it. Their eyes..I don't realize that I have spoken aloud until Andras is beside me in an instant, looking down at them. Ravana comes over from across the room and smiles at them. I look at her, giving her a wide smile in return. “They are just like yours.”Ravana beams. “Not quite.”She points to my daughter and I look closely at her eyes. “She has heterochromia iridum, which means that the same iris has two different colors in it. He has heterochromia iridis, like me, in which each iris is a different color.”My daughter's eyes are bright blue like Andras's except for around the large iris, which are tinged i

Alec  “Why isn't she waking up?” Andras has asked this for the thirty-seventh time in the last thirty-six hours. He is pacing the room, with his babies in his arms. He won't let anyone touch them, handing them over to no one. Not me, not Dad, not his parents. He just holds them both, hovering over where Bronwen lays in the bed. Where she has laid for the last forty-nine hours. Two days ago we all met up and had lunch together. It was a joyous meal,