Page 232 of His Hungry Wolf
Sitting at the table eating lunch with Nero and my mother, I again thought about how lucky I was. The man who raised me wasn’t a father. He didn’t treat me like family. This was what having a family was supposed to feel like.
After a tense conversation with Dr. Tom, he told me what he thinks happened. He was working at the hospital where I was born. It was one that serviced a lot of shifters. And when they came in with problems that other doctors couldn’t figure out, he would take their case ensuring that their magical origins wouldn’t get out.
The hospital has since closed but while it was open it serviced all types. At the time of my birth there was a dragon shifter there. The night after I went missing, so did the dragon shifter.
The humans there couldn’t explain my disappearance, nor could they pin it on the man Dr. Tom knew was a dragon shifter. A part of the reason was because they didn’t know how he could have gotten away with the baby. The maternity ward was on the second floor and there was a camera pointed at the stairwell and elevator.
Since the hospital was already struggling to stay open, the people running it decided to cover up my disappearance. Calling it “The greater good”, they told my mother I had died.
My mother said she never believed it. She said she kept asking to see my body and they said that she couldn’t. Eventually, they told her that it had been accidentally cremated and tried to give her money to go away.
She didn’t take the money, but in the end, it didn’t matter. My mother was a nobody from the middle of nowhere. No one was going to believe her over a bunch of people with ‘Dr.’ in front of their name.
I get the sense that that was what broke her. Nero told me that she acted crazy for most of his childhood. Her behavior was that of a tortured woman.
According to Nero, eventually, she stopped her erratic behavior. Nero said he was relieved when it happened, but that was also when her decline began. Each day she became further disconnected from reality until she stopped going to work at all and they were about to be kicked out of their home.
That was when Nero stepped up and took care of both of them. At 13, Nero got his first job. It was a crap job that didn’t pay much, but it was enough to keep a roof over their head. And, ever since, he has done whatever he has had to to make ends meet.
I didn’t have a job in town yet, but I was asking around for one. Nero needed help and I was going to give it to him. Right now I was doing it by watching over our mother while he did what he had to do during the day. But, things were going to change as soon as there was a job opening anywhere.
I cleared the table when everyone was done eating. Washing off the dishes and setting them to dry, I could feel Nero staring at me.
“What is it?” I asked knowing that he often had to be prompted to say what was on his mind.
“You think we could go for a run?”
“Of course,” I told him feeling uneasy.
I had only been living here for a few weeks so everything between us was still new. But this was the first time he had suggested we let our wolves run during the daylight. It made me think of the last time I had spoken to Quin.
It took everything I had to not think about Quin. Most times I failed. The only thing that prevented me from calling him was that I deleted his phone number. I had to. I wasn’t strong enough to simply not call him. I needed to put a mountain of obstacles between us to stop me from running back to him. Deleting his number was just the first.
Finishing up what I was doing, Nero and I went outside and got undressed.
“There’s a place I used to go when everything would get too much for me as a kid. Want to see it?”
“Yeah,” I told him feeling a wave of guilt that I wasn’t here to take care of my little brother until now.
I was getting pretty good a shifting on command. Quin had done a great job of teaching me. And, when my brother and I were both wolves, we disappeared into the woods.
We ran for what felt like 45 minutes. When we stopped, we were at the edge of a valley. I followed Nero’s lead and shifted back.
“This is it,” Nero said looking out at the waterfall below. After a long winter, it was thawing. I tried to imagine how beautiful it looked when it was warm and flowers covered the valley. This town really was breathtaking.
“It’s nice. It’s quiet,” I told him appreciatively.
“Listen, I wanted to talk to you about you staying here…”
“You have a problem with me staying here?”
“No! Absolutely not. You being here has been the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
“Thanks! Me too,” I said feeling rewarded for the tough decisions I had made.
“It’s just that you’re here all the time.”
“You want me to find somewhere else to live.”