Honeymoon

The Honeymoon is Adrienne and Drayton’s short stay on Kauaʻi after their wedding, a secluded interval of marital ease that cannot hold back the family crisis waiting at the ranch. For Adrienne it offers temporary escape from nursing and worry; for Drayton it becomes bound up with his hope that she will conceive his pups before his brothers’ turn to claim her.

Departure and Setting

Wilder tells Adrienne that Drayton must be far from the ranch while he resolves the problems involving Mena and her father, who are to remain under protection. He says the couple will spend their honeymoon at a cabin near Lake Tahoe, but the wedding departure takes them instead to a small Hawaiian island: Wilder’s private jet carries Adrienne and Drayton to Kauaʻi.

As guests throw rice at the Mercedes, Adrienne settles beside Drayton. At a distance, she hears a wolf cry and sees Lycell standing on a mountaintop; Wilder has said Lycell accepts the arrangement and does not want to say goodbye, but his pain is visible in the scene. The departure therefore joins the newlyweds’ beginning to the cost of their separation from the family they leave behind.

Kauaʻi is remote and small. Its residence has ten inhabitants, four of them adults, with the rest children; the residents live on what they catch from the ocean and supplies the Samsa family sends twice a month. The family has built a landing strip on the island, and a driver takes the couple by jeep to a home overlooking a cliff. The isolated setting places them at a remove from the ranch, though it remains supported by the family’s resources.

A Private Interval

The plane’s departure lifts the pressure of the wedding and the worries Wilder had been carrying from Adrienne. On the island, she hopes to relax and put aside the demands of the ranch, while Drayton quietly holds her hand. Their honeymoon is framed as time for the two of them, in contrast to the crowded shared life and caretaking obligations from which Adrienne has temporarily stepped away.

Less than two weeks into the stay, Drayton regards the period as the most magnificent time of his life. Adrienne is sleeping peacefully after a long swim, and he imagines how much fuller his life will be if she becomes pregnant with his pups. Her rest also marks a pause from nursing and caring for Lycell’s six demanding pups. Although nurses are available, Lycell wants Adrienne to attend to them; Wilder has taken over raising the two sons Adrienne had by him, leaving her able to offer those boys her love rather than do more.

Hope and Pressure

The retreat does not resolve Drayton’s concern about fatherhood. He has been trying night and day to impregnate Adrienne, but he is sure she is not pregnant: werewolves can sense and smell when they have impregnated a female. He considers that perhaps it may happen next time, yet the thought is shadowed by a deadline within the brothers’ shared arrangement. Wilder and Lycell have been waiting patiently for their turns to claim Adrienne, and if she does not conceive Drayton’s pups, the next litter may be fathered by someone else.

The honeymoon’s ease is thus unequal between the spouses. Adrienne is able, for a while, to rest and inhabit the fantasy of life with Drayton away from the ranch; Drayton experiences the same interval as both happiness and a narrowing opportunity to become a father. The island is not simply an escape from family obligations: the expectation of another litter follows them there.

Return Toward the Crisis

When Adrienne, Wilder, and Drayton arrive at the private airfield to board the Samsa family’s jet, Adrienne is unhappy and the two men are pensive. Wilder and Drayton discuss the immediate danger Bane poses to their family while Adrienne walks unnoticed to the sleeping compartment and settles into a lounge chair. For a moment, their absorption in the threat means they do not miss her.

Adrienne removes her sandals and turns on the television to catch up on the news. She has gone more than a week without reading a newspaper or watching television, treating such things as distractions from the real world. She has wanted to remain in the fantasy of Drayton’s arms and of Hawaii, setting everything aside until she returns to the ranch. The journey away from the island consequently closes the honeymoon’s temporary shelter: the danger she had suspended from view is again part of the family’s immediate reality.