by Amira Rain
It was just two days into our unemployment when Amy and I heard on the news about the National Shifter Mating Program, or NSMP. It sounded insane, frankly. We actually laughed about it at first, both agreeing that the whole idea sounded like the premise of some wacky romance novel.
“I mean…just think about it,” Amy had said. “Can you imagine marrying a shifter, probably sight unseen, just for the purpose of having kids? And can you imagine letting the government do the matchmaking?”
I couldn’t.
However, the following day, over lunch at a fast food place, Amy asked me if I remembered how much money the news anchor had said that women could earn for joining the NSMP. I said I didn’t remember exactly and asked her why.
Holding a French fry aloft, she shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just that I was thinking about our nonexistent love lives a little bit last night…and I was also thinking about our debt. And we’ve both always wanted to have kids, right? And, also…well, there’s that new USSA community in Greenwood, right? I’m just guessing that’s where we might be ‘stationed’ or ‘assigned’ or whatever, just because it’s the closest shifter community to Moxon. I’m also guessing that maybe they need a gymnastics, dance, and fitness center there in Greenwood…maybe, anyway, right?”
I could definitely see where Amy was going with all this, and I couldn’t deny that she made some good points. Our love lives were nonexistent. I hadn’t even been on a date in nearly a year. Amy was also correct that we’d both always wanted to have kids. In fact, at age twenty-seven, I was starting to think about kids more and more, wondering if I was ever going to meet a man I’d want to have them with. Amy was also obviously right about the two of us being buried in debt as well.
Before I could respond to what she’d already said, she continued. “Besides…maybe all that stuff the news anchor was saying last night about ‘patriotic duty’ is right. Maybe participating in the NSMP or whatever is an American woman’s ‘patriotic duty’ if she’s single, and in her reproductive years, and has the shifter gene. After all, like the news anchor said, the dragons of the USSA took some serious losses fighting the Bloodborn dragons just to keep all of us regular Americans safe. Their population is down now, and it’s going to have to greatly increase in the next couple of decades if we want the USSA dragons to be able to defend our country in the long term. And in order for that increase to happen, they need more women with the shifter gene to reproduce with because so many of the women who had it were killed by Bloodborn attacks all around the country during the war.”
With some sort of a glimmer of hope, or excitement, or something else I couldn’t even identify in her large green eyes, Amy paused briefly, setting down her French fry, before continuing. “So…what do you think? Should we both get tested for the gene?”
According to Amy’s family lore, her maternal grandfather, now deceased, had possibly been a dragon shifter. Supposedly, he’d shifted one night in a parking lot while highly intoxicated but had never done it again, telling everyone present, including Amy’s maternal grandma, that their eyes had just deceived them. Now, though, since everyone in the world knew that shifters were a real “thing,” Amy suspected that the family lore wasn’t just lore, but truth. And if it was truth, that meant that her mom probably had the shifter gene and had passed it down to her.
I had my own “family shifter lore.” I’d been adopted, and supposedly, my biological father had possibly been a dragon shifter. Either that or my biological mother had truly just simply had a drug hallucination, like had been thought at the time. This could be the case, I knew, but I also knew that it could just as easily be the case that I really did have the shifter gene.
In response to Amy’s question, I just looked at her for a moment, hardly able to believe she’d even asked it. She was normally pretty practical and cautious about most things. I never would have dreamed in a million years that she’d ever ask if I wanted to take the first step in essentially being blind-mated to a dragon shifter. Maybe losing the business has changed her, I thought. Maybe it’s made her more willing to take risks, now that we don’t have much left to lose.
Maybe losing the business had changed me because although I tended to learn toward being practical and cautious like Amy, I suddenly found myself nodding.
“Okay. Okay, yes. Let’s get tested for the shifter gene. I’m in. This could help us pay off our debts, have the kids we’ve always wanted, and maybe even find love in the process. It’s worth a shot, anyway. Right? We should probably at least see if we have the gene.”
With her eyes still glimmering, Amy nodded. “Yes…we definitely should.”
Now, about three weeks after this conversation, I stood by the mailboxes in the lobby of my apartment building, knowing the truth about my biological father. My biological father was a dragon shifter. He had to be because I had the shifter gene.
CHAPTER TWO
I’d always known that I’d been adopted, even though no one had ever told me. I’d just always known. I’d just always felt it.
My adoptive parents, Clark and Elise, both college mathematics professors, were the same age, forty-six, when they’d adopted me, and they’d been married for twenty years. They’d never been able to have kids and had never really wanted any anyway, I would later find out, or at least had never really wanted any until my mom was in her early forties. That was when she “caught religion,” as she would put it later in a letter to me, which I would read after her death, and she had a series of vivid dreams where she thought God was commanding her to adopt a child.
This intense religiosity didn’t last long in the grand scheme of her life, and in later years, I would think of her as completely secular, never going to church or even praying at mealtimes or anything like that. However, her “extremely religious phase” did last just long enough for her and my adoptive dad to get on a waiting list at a small, private adoption agency.
And about four years later, just near the tail end of my mom’s phase, they got a call that a newborn baby girl was available. My mom would tell me later, via her letter where she explained all this, that she had some “tiny little doubts” about going through with adopting me then but that she didn’t want to appear “wishy-washy” or “rude” by telling the “adoption lady” that she’d changed her mind. My mom at least had the decency to admit to me in her letter that these were “insane reasons” to go through with adopting a child.
She was “mildly affectionate” to me during my young years, I would think later. She didn’t often raise her voice, and she gave me little hugs and pats sometimes, and she patiently combed and braided my long, blond hair every morning before school. On my first day of kindergarten, she included homemade cookies in my lunch, along with a little slip of paper. On the paper, she’d drawn two hearts, with a smaller one kind of tucked into the side of a larger one. Eating my lunch, I’d traced the hearts with a fingertip, wondering if she’d meant the bigger heart to be “her,” and the smaller one “me,” and thinking that she probably had.
I never threw the note away, and years later, at my mom’s funeral, I would hold it in my hand the entire service. I didn’t even know why. It just felt right, or important, or something somehow.
During my teen years, my mom was maybe less “mildly affectionate” than she’d been during my younger years, but she still didn’t often raise her voice. We just kind of didn’t talk much. I got the feeling that she was “pulling away.” She dutifully attended all my dance recitals and gymnastics meets, and afterward, she always told me good work or good job or something like that before giving me a quick little smile. She was always very polite. She always dutifully made cupcakes or whatever for all gymnastics team bake sales.
My dad was gone by this time, having died of a sudden massive heart attack when I was seven. This should have been old enough for me to have at least a few specific memories of him, but I never did. Later on, I would remember him being around, and I would remember vaguely how he looked, but I
couldn’t remember him. I couldn’t remember him hugging me, or playing with me, or anything like that. I couldn’t specifically remember him ever even speaking to me.
My most vivid memory of “him” actually wasn’t about him. It happened at his funeral, when he was laid out cold and stiff in an open casket. A man he worked with came to the funeral home, along with his wife and two preteen daughters. During the visitation, the daughters and I had cookies and lemonade in a little, fake-flower-filled room that the funeral director’s wife called “the room for people to be sad alone, or for children to not be sad and play a little” or something like that.
At any rate, the room was far away enough from the funeral chapel part of the building that kids couldn’t be heard if they wanted to play, and eventually, my dad’s colleague joined me and his two preteen daughters in the room, and we did just that. One of the girls had brought a “go fish” card game, and we played a few games, and then the dad, whose name was Mr. Decker, did some magic tricks with the cards that made all of us get to laughing.
This laughter got me in the mood to show off a little, and I did an impromptu ballet performance, twirling among all the fake flowers in my black velvet dress. The girls clapped and cheered, and Mr. Decker said, “Bravo! Bravo! Beautiful!” Once I was all “danced out,” we all had more cookies and lemonade, then played a board game that the funeral home director’s wife brought in.
The game was a bit complicated for my age, but Mr. Decker let me win, which thrilled me. Then, his daughters gave me hugs and he gave me a hug, telling me that I was so “wonderful and special and smart,” words that I’d never forget. He then gave me two twenty-dollar bills to buy toys with, and his daughters gave me their “go fish” deck of cards to keep.
Later, during my dad’s funeral service, I wept bitterly because Mr. Decker and his family had left the funeral home, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see Mr. Decker again, which I never did. After the service, several of my dad’s colleagues and friends remarked that I was such a “sweet girl” to cry so hard over the loss of my dad.
During these growing-up years, I had a friend named Chrissy, who was also an only child and also adopted. Chrissy was of Native American descent, with dark, glossy hair and coppery skin, and her parents were both Caucasian, with very light skin and hair. Despite this, Chrissy and I were literally in seventh grade when it first dawned on us that she might be adopted. When she told me her newly-developed suspicions, and when I realized she was probably correct, I told her my secret—that I was adopted, too. She asked me when my mom had told me, and I said that she never had.
“I just know.”
This, despite the fact that I had blue eyes and light hair, just like both of my parents.
At every family meal I was present for in their home, Chrissy’s parents said the same prayer before we ate. “Father God, first, we just thank you for the gift of our precious daughter, Chrissy,” Chrissy’s dad would start. “Thank you for giving her life and for blessing us with her.”
“Yes, Father God,” Chrissy’s mom would quietly chime in, nodding with her eyes closed. “Thank you for answering our prayers.”
Chrissy finally went to her parents with her adoption suspicions near the end of our seventh-grade year, and they confirmed that she had indeed been adopted, or “not born from my body, but from my heart,” as Chrissy told me on the phone that her mom had said.
The following day at school, I asked Chrissy if she was still feeling all right about everything, and she said yeah, shrugging. “It really wasn’t that big of a deal. I’ve always known my parents are my ‘real’ parents, and I don’t feel any differently now. You know what I mean?”
My mom didn’t confirm my own adoption until I was much older than seventh grade. When she was dying in the hospital after the Bloodborn attack on Moxon during the war, falling in and out of consciousness with numerous broken bones, severe internal injuries, and a tube in her throat, she managed to scrawl a note to me on a large, yellow pad of lined paper. You were adopted.
Feeling like I should be more emotional than I was, I nodded. “I know.”
Looking like she should be more surprised by my response than she currently was, which was not at all, she scrawled another note. Info about your parents…big white file folder…bottom desk drawer in my office. Letter from me in drawer, too.
Her spacious home office had been the only part of her house not destroyed by the falling dead USSA dragon, which a Bloodborn dragon had apparently dropped directly above the house, almost as if intentionally wanting to inflict more damage by harming any inhabitants inside.
In response to my mom’s note about the file, I said okay, and she scrawled a few more lines. You don’t have to read info in file. It’s not good. Won’t make you happy. Think hard before reading, or just destroy.
I said okay, and my mom fell silent, lowering the pencil and pad of paper. Partially reclined in bed, she shifted her gaze from my face to the foot of the bed, and her eyes slowly closed. Several moments later, just when I’d thought that she might have fallen asleep or lost consciousness again, she opened her eyes, lifted the pencil and pad again, and began to write another note, which I knew had to be difficult for her, to say the least, even just for her to be able to remain alert enough to do the task. Her hands and arms seemed to be the only parts of her body not bruised or broken.
When she showed me the two words she’d just written, I developed a lump in my throat for the first time since entering the hospital.
I’m sorry.
After swallowing the lump down with difficulty, I managed to ask her what she was sorry for, and she wrote three more words.
I don’t know.
Not wanting to push her or make her become upset, I was willing to leave it at that, but she soon wrote one more word. Everything.
After trying to swallow down another lump in my throat without much success, I told her that it was okay. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
With her eyes already closing, she moved her head in a fraction of a nod.
For maybe a minute, while machines beeped rhythmically all around us, I just watched her rest, studying her softly-lined face, which was heart-shaped, just like my own. Having been up all night, I was just thinking about closing my eyes myself when she opened hers again, felt around for her pencil, and began writing another note. This one took her a little longer to write and was much sloppier than the others had been, evidence that she was losing strength quickly.
The day you started k-garten…I sent you off, then went back to teaching at the college full-time that day, and I missed you.
With my eyes filling with tears, I looked from the note to her, trying to smile. “I missed you, too, that day.”
With her own eyes filling with tears and becoming distinctly pink, she attempted to smile at me in return, probably causing her pain because one of her cheekbones was badly fractured.
I’d never seen her cry in my life, not even close, not even once. I’d never seen her eyes become even faintly shiny with emotion. If she’d cried when my dad had died, I hadn’t seen it. At the funeral, she had carried a little pack of tissues around with her, taking one out and dabbing her dry eyes with it periodically with a sober expression, as if maybe just thinking that the act, even if it was just a simulation of real crying, showed her late husband the proper amount of respect.
Maybe my pouring tears about Mr. Decker leaving had made her feel compelled to display some outward sign of emotion similarly.
The emotion displayed in her truly-watery eyes at the hospital didn’t last long. After attempting to give me a smile for a long moment or two, she flipped to a fresh page of the notepad and scribbled another message to me.
You’re prob hungry. Go down to cafeteria and grab breakfast while I rest.
I didn’t want to leave her alone, but I was starving and in need of a very strong cup of coffee. A surgeon was supposed to be coming to talk to us around seven, but it was only a few minutes past
six currently, so I figured I could be back up to the room in plenty of time. So, after giving my mom’s hand a squeeze, I told her I’d be back soon and then left the room.
Maybe twenty minutes later, I was dozing in the deserted cafeteria with my head on a table, waiting for my second cup of coffee to cool, when a nurse gave my shoulder a little squeeze and had a seat in the chair beside me.
She said that my mom had “crashed,” meaning that her heart had stopped because of all the internal organ damage that a team of trauma surgeons hadn’t been able to repair the night before. And, the nurse said, because my mom had insisted on a do-not-resuscitate order in the event of a “crash,” no attempt to restart her heart had been made. She was gone.
I nodded, my eyes filling, and the nurse asked if I wanted a minute alone. I nodded again; the nurse left; and I began silently crying, absentmindedly tracing shapes on the table with a fingertip while I did so. A few minutes passed before I realized that the shapes I’d been tracing were hearts.
*
After my mom’s death, a few weeks went by before I began going through her desk, one of the few things that had been salvaged from her dragon-flattened house. In the bottom drawer, I found the letter from her, which basically just briefly detailed her phase of “catching religion” and how my adoption had come about. There was also some info about money, saying that in the event of her death, she would be leaving me “a little,” and she wished it could be more.
I understood why it couldn’t be, though. When the shifter war had begun, the stock market had crashed, losing her hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then, not long after, she’d sold her large home and had downgraded to a much smaller rental home in order to financially help a distant cousin in Virginia who’d been left a single mom of three teenagers after her air force pilot husband had died as a result of being struck down in midair by a Bloodborn dragon during the early days of the war.
