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Topics that might otherwise engender impassioned debate instead give rise to flippant commentary. We laugh, we tease, we undercut the solemnity of our mission with mirth. These shifters, this unnamed pack, have forged ironclad bonds not easily broken.
So why do I feel uneasy? Beneath the camaraderie lurks a fear of the unspoken past. My past. The dark history that saw me imprisoned for a violent deed. Will it always follow me around? Is it no different than Simon, a dark force waiting to ruin my life at any moment?
What we do, so we become. What I’ve done has become part of me, whether I hate that part of me or not.
Max must spy the dark clouds hanging over me, because he looks me in the eye and asks, “What is it, Orson?”
It’s surprising. A man like Max, one who walks the line of honor and code like he’s walking the edge of a sword, should not be the same kind of man who can sense when someone in his company is struggling with their internal demons. I suspect that as much as Max has found a way to make peace with his parents’ deaths, that singular event shifted his personality, making him more sensitive than he wants people to know.
He’s staring, so I take charge of my thoughts. “I was just reflecting on my stint in prison.”
I don’t have a chance to elaborate before the server arrives. We furnish him with our orders and as he walks back towards the kitchen, the jovial air grows leaden with anticipation. You’ve opened the door, Orson, now you’d better walk through it.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” says Asha, reaching forth her hand to lay over mine, “but know that you can with us.” She gives a little smile. “We’ve had our own shit, after all.”
A deep ravine too often separates can from should, but in this instance I’m uncertain of its danger. No doubt, things will change between us, the information casting me in a new light. Then again, I reason, if I withhold, it provides the secret a chance to fester, and then its inevitable revelation will be made all the more upsetting. They may think me no longer fit for membership in their informal pack.
I decide I stand a better chance telling them now than waiting. Honesty. Somebody somewhere said it’s a virtue, right? “I care for you all a great deal and because of that, I don’t want there to be any secrets between us. Perhaps we should have covered this before sex, but, well, heat of the moment and all. So I’ll tell you now before we go any further.” I can see by their darkened faces I’ve set a sufficiently dour stage on which to relate my tragedy. Here goes nothing. “My father was a violent man, though he hid it well. He covered his true nature with a slick veneer. Suits and pomade. A politician’s uniform. He was a very powerful man, both in the political arena as well as at home. While the face he showed his constituents was all smiles, the one his family knew was a grotesque snarl.” I take a beat, collecting myself. I can feel the old emotions threatening to boil over. Just the facts. “Anyway, he would hit my mother often. Baseball sized welts, cuts that occasionally needed stitching. He would bring in a private physician for that, something he could secure through his connections and money. His network included a lot of dangerous people, but he managed to balance these illicit friendships with innumerable government allies. He was untouchable, an illusion. I knew I couldn’t go to anyone because he would quash my attempts to get him arrested.
“So, when I grew up and got strong enough, I challenged him. We fought. I won. As a result of the blows I delivered him, my father died. Looking back, I realize that was my intention. I wanted to neutralize the threat to my mother. Killing him, therefore, was the only surefire method. Of course.” I bite back the tears that well behind my eyes and take deep breaths. Just the facts. Only the facts. Facts are safe. “I failed to acknowledge the fragility of my mother’s mental state. At seventeen, I lacked the experience to predict the full impact of my actions on her delicate psychology. My father’s regular beatings bruised not only flesh, but her soul.” Get through it, Orson. My eyes fall to the table, unable to meet their stares. “She killed herself. So, really, while I sought to protect her, I failed. Apparently, as many resolutions as I calculated for that day, I didn’t calculate that one. In sparing my mother from my father, I somehow became the person who ended her life. Prison? That I had prepared for. But not her death. Somehow, I’d imagined my actions would set her free.”
My hands, curled into white-knuckled fists during the telling of my woeful tale, shake against the table. I untuck each finger until they splay against the laminate finish. I count them, one through ten, the instruments of my destruction. I could chop them off for their misdeeds.
“I would have done the same,” says Braxton.
I lift my gaze to find him nodding affirmatively at me, leaning back in his chair in a dominant pose that only my wolf truly understands. Is he saying that to ease the pain of my blackened soul? Or does he really mean it? He stares back at me, his wolf not backing down, challenging me to argue against his words.
“I knew the crime,” says Max casually from beside Braxton, and I glance at him. He doesn’t seem upset about my words. On the contrary, he seems almost pleased. “At least I knew the words on the page concerning your crime, but you helped contextualize it for me. It was a brutal thing, but entirely understandable. If we were in a world where only our wolves ruled, no one would question what you did. But in the human world, there are laws. Rights and wrongs beyond the moral. It’s a shame sometimes.”
Okay. I take a deep breath and look at the woman who has bespelled both my wolf and myself. What does she think of what I’d done? But the instant I look at her, it’s hard to think about anything but her. It feels like the rest of the world drops away, and there’s only me, her, and the uncomfortable information I’ve placed between us. My gaze runs over her long white-blonde hair as it falls loosely over her shoulders, and her pale brown eyes that enchant me as they fall onto my face. I can see it in her gaze. She has a thousand different thoughts running through her head. I can only hope that the one she finally rests on will be in my favor.
To my surprise, Asha drags her chair closer to mine and wraps her arms around me. More than the pleasant warmth of her embrace, I feel something wholly unexpected. I feel her unconditional acceptance. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she says.
Sorry? It doesn’t compute. The data entry returns an error. Don’t dissociate. Prison taught me to treat life like coding. A cold mathematical underpinning that governs all interaction. Push against your coping mechanism. This is an inflection moment. Move forward in light or in darkness. One or zero. I place my hand over Asha’s against my chest, preferring her digits to the binary. “You don’t think I’m some awful monster?” I ask.
I killed a man. My father. My own flesh and blood. And I don’t regret killing him. That has to make me something terrible and awful. And if not that, the fact that my actions led to the death of my own mother. She has to see that.
“Of course you’re not a monster,” says Asha. “If you’re a monster, what’s that make me?”
This is different. We’re not the same. Asha’s home was burned around her. She watched her pack die. Then she was forced by the Blood Mages to become something capable of violence and destruction. Her actions weren’t to blame. She’s an innocent.
“You don’t understand,” I tell her slowly, looking at the others to make sure they understand. To make sure my words haven’t misled them. “No one forced me to do it. I did it entirely of my own volition.”
There. Now, things are clearer. Their understanding will turn to anger, disgust, and outrage. The way it should.
Max simply shakes his head. “In that sort of environment, you were up against a wall, Orson. You didn’t have any good choices, so you made the decision you thought was best. Just because it didn’t end the way you planned doesn’t mean what you did was wrong.”
Are they not understanding? Are the words in my head coming out of my mouth? No, I’m speaking clearly, they’ve just come to a strange kind of decision.
“You don’t think I’m…” I don’t even know what word goes here. Tainted? Corrupt? Unforgivable?
“No,” he answers, intuiting the complex knot of emotions that fill the blank.
Braxton slaps a hand on my shoulder and gives it a firm, grounding squeeze. “We don’t see you any differently, bud. Relax. You’re one of us. A whole lot of fucked up, but not at all unredeemable.”
The server returns with our plates and the rest of my adoptive pack digs in. So I dig in, too, devouring a burger and fries with a ravenous appetite that I don’t remember ever having. It’s like whatever boulder I’ve been carrying around on my back is suddenly gone, and the world seems easier to manage.
I don’t know why. I don’t completely understand it. But when Asha smiles at me, the tattered pieces of my heart feel a little less frayed.
