by Renee Carr
I put my spoon down in my bowl and nodded my head. “I am. I just feel a little off tonight, that’s all. Mom, in the days before Daddy disappeared, did anything strange happen? Anything you’ve been afraid to tell me, or anything that seemed unreal?”
My mother stared at me, a kind and loving look on her face. She shook her head. “Nothing. I’ve never hidden anything from you. I don’t know anything more than you do. The night before, your father finished playing with you, having long conversations like you guys always had, and then he went to bed before either of us did. The only time I had with him before he left that morning was to kiss him on the cheek when I went to sleep. He didn’t even wake me when he left.”
I could never hide my disappointment, not when it came to finding answers about my father. My mother reached out and put her hand on my arm, shaking her head. “Sweetheart, for whatever reason, your father is gone. I’ve said it before and I hate to say it again, but we cannot sit and think that he’s coming back. We will spend the rest of our lives looking out that window and waiting for him to walk back up to the house. I’m not saying that you should forget your father, or all the beautiful things about him. I’m old, and I can afford to sit around and wait for his return, but you can’t. It’s been years now, and you need to begin to pick your life up again. You need to have a life.”
I didn’t respond, though I didn’t normally when she said things like that. It all made perfect sense, and I agreed with her, but it was still hard to hear. How do you let go of someone you loved so much without a single answer of what had happened to them? My mother wheeled back just slightly and looked at me. “There’s something else I want to talk to you about.”
I sniffled and turned toward her, giving her the best smile that I could. “What is it? Did I forget a date? I’m usually pretty good at this stuff, but recently have just been kind of tired.”
My mother chuckled. “You didn’t miss a date. You missed lots of dates. But none of them had anything to do with me. You have given your life up to make sure that I’m safe and taken care of. Look what you did tonight. Worked all day, and then you came home and made soup. I am more than capable of making soup.”
I chuckled, not paying much attention to what she was saying really. It was the same thing over and over again. “Yes, but there are other things that you can’t do. And I hate to be the person that tells you that.”
My mother rolled her eyes. “When have I ever been a dreamer? When have I ever not been grounded completely in reality? I am fully aware that this accident has taken things from me. My actions, by insanity over your father’s disappearance, made me do things that ultimately led to me being in this wheelchair. If you think about it, I stole my own future from myself. But I’m not upset about it, and I’m not one to dwell on it. And I’m not going to let my daughter waste away her life, taking care of her idiot mother. So, I’ve decided I’m going to bring a nurse into the home to help me. I want you to have a life.”
I shook my head. “That’s silly. It’s money you don’t need to spend. It’s not like I feel obligated to take care of you. I do it because I love you and I want to be around you.”
My mother gave me a kind but stern smile. “Libby, I would much rather you spend the time with me in a calm and relaxed situation than you coming over here making soup and doing laundry. When we visit, I want us to sit out in the gardens and talk about life. I want you to tell me about some man you’re dating, or the moment you fall in love. I don’t want that to be followed up with how many appointments I have next week, how you have to take me grocery shopping, or asking me about my medication. What’s done is done, and I’ve already contacted the organization to have a nurse come over. As far as money, we are fine. Your father’s savings and the life insurance policy that his company allowed us to have even though his death was far from normal, it’s still sitting in the bank account untouched. Your father and I have been very good with money over the years.”
Just looking at her, it made me want to cry. I wanted to fight her, but in the back of my mind, I knew it was what was best for me. She was right, I spent all of my time worrying about her, and being at that house every day left me walking around in my father’s shadow. It kept me chasing his shadow. I put my bowl down by the sink and walked back over, leaning down and kissing my mother on the cheek.
Shaking my head, I let out a sigh of relief. “If you’re okay with that then I’m okay with that. I won’t lie, I would love to come to your house and sit with you, drink tea, and talk about gossip. I just want to know that you’re taken care of.”
Patting my hand, she nodded. “Of course. And trust me, I’m fully aware that whoever comes in here, you’re going to give them the 3rd degree before you let them work here.”
I laughed. “Damn straight.”
My mother chuckled as she wheeled herself out of the kitchen and down the hallway. I felt slightly like something had been lifted off my shoulders, but as I turned back toward the window, watching for any sight of Christian, that boulder slammed right back down on me. I didn’t even know if he was going to come back.
15
Christian
My hands were out to each side, and my feet were shoulder-width apart. I wanted to believe that if the wolf struck me, my wolf would come out, but it seemed almost curled up in the pit of me. If I would’ve allowed it, whines would have started to echo from my chest. I was unsure of what to do at that point, not knowing if being defensive was even the right thing. The wolf did not seem like it was aggressive or angry; it just sat there like in my dreams.
After a few minutes of a standoff, the wolf finally stood up and walked around behind me. I turned with it as it went, watching the grace and confidence it displayed with each and every step of its large, muscular paws. As the wolf approached the rock that it had originally been sitting on when I found it the first time, its body seamlessly morphed into a human man. The change wasn’t like with me, a ragged and violent experience. With him, it was almost as if he had just stepped right out of his wolf.
The man standing in front of me was middle-aged, maybe a bit older, but strong and fierce, with large, rippling muscles and smooth skin. His eyes shimmered from yellow to blue and he rolled his shoulders back and forth as the last bit of fur disappeared from his skin. He turned and walked around the boulder, reaching down and pulling out a set of clothes. I looked down at my hands as he changed into them, unsure of what to say or do at that point.
When he was dressed, he took a seat on the large rock, putting his hands on his knees. “My name is Arthur. I know you’re wondering a lot of things right now. And to answer your initial question, yes, I am the one that bit you.”
My brow furrowed and I felt anger surge through me. “Why would you do that?”
Arthur shook his head, the streaks of silver in his hair glistening under the sunlight beaming down on him. “I didn’t mean to. I want to start off by apologizing to you. I know that doesn’t take back what I’ve done or make up for the fact that your life is forever changed, but it was never intentional. When you found me, I was bewildered and shaken. Earlier that day, I had been attacked by several other shifter wolves, dark ones.”
I shook my head, rubbing my face with my hand. “Stop. Stop for a second. I know all of this is normal and commonplace to you, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. What the hell is a shifter wolf?”
Arthur’s head dropped for a second and he nodded. “I apologize. Please have a seat. This might take a little bit. Centuries ago, before the colonization of man, there were all types of different beings on this planet. Through time, and human greed, many of them have been expelled from existence. Others went into hiding. The main group of people, or beings, that hid away from the world were the shifters. There are all types of shifters: wolves, hyenas, bears, and even amphibious creatures. Normally, a shifter becomes a shifter because it’s in their bloodline. For you, when I bit you, it was to scare you off. Never did I think that it would change you.
”
Wrinkling my forehead, I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Then why did I turn into a wolf the other day in my kitchen?”
Arthur smiled at me. “That’s what I was trying to figure out, but after talking to some of the other shifters, we realized that it means you had shifter blood in your family already. In your bloodline somewhere along the way, the DNA was passed down to you, and when I bit you it jumpstarted that. I was the same way, apparently holding wolf shifter DNA in my blood from centuries before. Until I bit you, none of it really made sense, but now I understand that when I was dragged off by some of the other shifters in the area several years ago, that was exactly what happened to me.”
“So, you led a normal human life before this?” I asked, sitting down on the ground in front of him. “And then you disappeared, turning into a wolf shifter.”
Arthur nodded his head. “Yes. When you found me the other day, I was in bad shape. I was out of my mind with irritation and anger, even a little bit of fear, and then the smell of your wolf DNA and your blood hit my nose. I thought for a second maybe you were one of the shifters that had attacked me, so I bit you and I ran off. I didn’t even think about it until later. I’m sorry about that.”
I wanted to be angry, but how could I? He made a mistake, and he did it out of fear. Far worse things were done out of fear on a daily basis. “I understand. But what I need to know now is what’s next? I turned into my wolf in the middle of a friend’s apartment yesterday. I could’ve killed her.”
Arthur let out a long sigh. “Then we need to begin your training as soon as possible. You can’t get rid of the wolf shifter inside of you once it’s awoken, but you can begin to control it. Part of me believes that this is all happening for a greater purpose.”
I was confused. “What do you mean?”
Arthur stood up and began to walk back and forth. “We need you. The shifters need you.”
I stood up, wiping my hands on my pants, watching him walk back and forth. “You need me for what? And I’m assuming that not all shifters are good? You were dragged off by some, and the other day you were pretty beaten up. Our own kind did that to you?”
Arthur put out his hands and gave me a comforting smile, his eyes seeming so familiar. “Our kind are very secretive. The information that I have is deep-rooted. I don’t want to bombard you with all of it until we can get you in a position where you can fight and protect yourself. I would have you stay here, but I assume there are people looking for you, waiting for you.”
I nodded my head, thinking of Libby. “There are and I’m pretty sure if I don’t return, they’ll send out the troops.”
Arthur smiled, his eyes flittering off to the side as if he were thinking about his old life, his own people. “Then you’ll need to be careful. But I need to see you every day. I need to train you.”
Normally I wouldn’t just jump into something like that, but I trusted Arthur, I could feel it in my blood. I could hear my wolf telling me to trust him. Walking forward, I put out my hand, taking his and shaking it hard. “I’ll come back every evening and train with you. Eventually, though, I’m going to need you to tell me the truth. I’m going to need you to tell me everything.”
Arthur grinned. “You remind me of someone that I once knew. Someone that had the tenacity and fearlessness to get whatever she wanted. I never got to watch her grow up, but I do get to see her almost every day. You remind me of her. Maybe…”
Tilting my head to the side, I waited for him to answer. “Maybe what?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I gave up trying to contact the people from my human life a long time ago. I watch out for them from the shadows, I wish good things on them, and I protect them when it’s needed, but this life brings too many dangers. It brings too many things that could harm them if the other shifters, the dark ones, knew anything about my family. All of us, the entire clan, have given up their human lives. It’s not required, it never has been, but once you’re in it, and you’re fighting, and you see the danger, it’s almost as if you can’t help but give up your family. You want to do everything you can to keep them safe, and when you become a shifter, you start to see the evils of the world without a veil covering.”
His words shook me, sending spirals of electricity through my veins. My thoughts went to my brothers and my father, to Libby, and everyone I had ever loved. My life was changing right there in front of me, and I wasn’t sure I was ever going to go back to the old life that I had. My comfortable little house, my perfect little business, and the people that I surrounded myself with on a daily basis. I had loved my life, and part of this made me angry. Part of me wanted to fight against giving it up, but in the end, I knew that whatever had to happen, it would happen for a good reason.
Arthur nodded toward the cave door. “You need to get back. It’s dark, and it’s not safe here in the woods for you. I’ll meet you at the edge of the forest each night, until I know you’re ready to protect yourself if need be. Until then, keep this secret to yourself.”
I had entered a world where something as simple as a family could be considered the difference between life and death.
16
Libby
I glanced up at the clock again for the nine hundredth time. Nerves had rattled around in me so much that I turned from worried to angry, back to worried again, and then back to angry again. With my father’s disappearance, I was kind of used to sitting and waiting, wondering if someone would show up, but with Christian it was different. Sure, there was an ache in my heart for my father, but this was a different type of ache. There was a connection between Christian and me, a shared secret so deep that it would shake the very foundation of what people thought about the world. We saw a different world, and we were the only ones that knew about it.
Looking back out the window, I perked up seeing him walking down the path toward the guest house. I stood up from my chair and hurried over to the refrigerator, unpacking the food and warming it up. It was past dinner time, but I had waited to eat with him. Actually, I wasn’t hungry at all, not until he had arrived. I had been too worried to eat. As I heated up the food, I laughed at myself but not because anything was funny. The entire time I was sitting at the table I had rehearsed a speech to him over and over in my head. I was certain what I would say to him, and that included my frowns and stern tone of voice.
Then he walked up. As soon as I laid eyes on him, all I wanted to do was run into his arms. It was ridiculous, and I had never felt that way about someone before, but I was incapable of changing that. I loaded our plates onto a tray and walked out of the main house, bringing dinner over. When I walked into the guest house, he was standing at the sink, drinking some water. I smiled at him nervously, holding back from asking him a million questions all at once. He smiled back at me and it warmed my heart. I couldn’t help but relax a little bit.
Without a word, he walked over and helped me set the table for dinner. He looked over to the door and back at me. “Is your mother coming?”
I shook my head as I sat down. “My mother already ate. I waited so that I could eat with you.”
He sat down after me and stared at me across the table with a smile on his face. “I appreciate that. It’s not very fun to eat alone and to be honest, I was excited to get back to you.”
I pushed the food around on my plate with my fork and smiled at him, clearing my throat. “You were gone for a long time. What did you find out?”
His eyes shifted away from me, something that he didn’t normally do. He was the kind of person that stared you in the eyes when he talked to you. He shrugged his shoulders as he pushed his fork into a piece of meat. “Not much. I retraced my steps from the camp to the cave, then back to the camp. I could see where I had fallen and dragged myself back to my brothers. The blood was all dried on the leaves and everything. I don’t remember any of that, though. The last thing I remember is everything going dark in the cave.”
I had to admit, I was a little bit disappointed
, but at the same time glad that he was okay. With that information, I felt like my other questions were pointless. If that was all he knew, he wouldn’t be able to answer anything else. He shifted slightly in his chair and swallowed his mouth full of steak and potatoes. “So, did you always want to be a nurse?”
At first, I was a bit thrown off by his change of subject, but I could see that he was uncomfortable with talking about his day. I took a deep breath and got my thoughts together. “Pretty much. I knew I wanted to be in medicine, and the nurse thing just kind of fell into place. I like the idea of being hands-on with the patients and really making a difference for someone that is sick or uncomfortable. I think doctors are great, but with the amount of responsibility they have and the number of patients they have to see, it’s hard for them to really be personal with people. So, when it came time to go to school, I chose nursing instead of medical school. Over the years, I’ve filled in with certifications and worked my way up.”
“That’s really great,” he grinned. “My brother just graduated from college and my other brother graduated a couple years ago. I never went to college, starting my business right out of high school. My father, he really wanted us to follow our dreams and never pushed college on any of us.”
“My father was really kind in that way too,” I replied, looking away as I thought about him. “He wanted what was best for me, and knew that I could decide that on my own. Even when I was a little girl, he pushed me to make my own choices.”
Christian put his fork down and wiped his mouth. “What happened to your father?”
I took a deep breath, knowing it was time to really tell the story. I launched into it, telling him about the entire day before and then that morning when he left. I told him about the place he normally went to fish, and how his things were still there when we went to look for him. How he had just disappeared, and no one had ever heard from him again. As I told the story, I could see the look on Christian’s face change a bit. I could tell he was trying to control his expressions, but there was definitely a quick glance of confusion and thought on his face.
