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Hudson could tell she was about to decline, so he slid into the backseat of Julius’s Prius before she could.
As Julius pulled out of the parking lot, there was dead silence. Then Quinn spoke up.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. Hudson could still smell the anxiety rolling off of her, a potent mixture of fear and uncertainty.
And... something else.
“I know that doesn’t mean much,” she said. “Given what I do and all, but I’m moving out. I’m done. I can’t stand them anymore. My brother in Denver is going to let me live with him while I figure stuff out.”
“You came forward at risk to your own personal safety,” Julius said. His voice sounded just a smidge too proper to Hudson, and he could tell that his mate was fighting with his desire for the girl.
“Given your parents, I’m just glad you don’t want us dead too,” Hudson said, leaning forward in the back seat. That put his face practically on Quinn’s shoulder, his knees already up against the seat in front of him.
Once more, he wished that Julius hadn’t insisted on buying a Prius. The car just wasn’t built for people their size.
There was shock on Quinn’s face, which transitioned quickly to embarrassment. Then she shook her head, looking down.
“I can’t believe they’d do this,” she said, quietly. “I mean, I can, but... they were pretty regular parents, you know?”
Tears began to gather in her eyes. Hudson had the urge to comfort her, wrap his arms around her, hold her tight and tell her that no one would ever be shitty to her again.
Instead he did nothing.
You can’t have her, he reminded himself.
“They went on about how awful shifters were a lot, but they also checked my homework and baked cookies and got excited at my college graduation,” she said.
A single tear made its way down her face, and Hudson bit the inside of his lip, forcing himself not to wipe it away.
“We don’t choose our parents,” he told her. “God knows I didn’t.”
He exchanged a look with Julius in the rear view mirror, wondering if he should go on. He didn’t like to talk about his past lives too much — not the one where he’d been a drug-running biker, and especially not the one where he had shitty parents.
Quinn half smiled.
“How are your parents fucked up?” she asked, softly. There was a hint of camaraderie in her voice, and before he knew it, Hudson was telling her the whole story.
“I was born in Oakland, before shifters came out,” he said. “Most shifters live in the woods, you know, but my parents lived in this one-bedroom apartment in the city because that was all they could afford, between my mom’s prescription drug problem and my dad’s drinking.”
Quinn’s eyes were wide, drinking in his story.
Then she frowned.
“Don’t most shifters have three parents?” she asked.
Hudson nodded. “That’s how it’s supposed to work,” he said. “Mine weren’t really even mates, though. They had a one night stand when they were both trashed at a dive bar one night, and I got made. And back then, you got married if you got knocked up.”
“Oh.” Quinn paused. “I’m sorry.”
Hudson shrugged. He knew it wasn’t a fairy tale.
“So they were both with the wrong person and pretending that they weren’t shifters. I think the strain of not shifting put a lot of stress on them both.”
She looked quizzical.
“It’s not healthy for shifters not to shift,” Julius explained. “It’s kind of like if you were trapped in a little room all day. Makes you crazy.”
Quinn nodded.
