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“I should probably tell you how Fluffy came to be, huh?”
She stiffened against him, hating the way all the happiness left his voice. Sifting her fingers through his, Cortana said, “I won’t force you to, Riaz. If you want to wait—or never tell me at all, that’s okay. I won’t make you revisit that period of your life.”
Knowing how much his family had hurt him and the solitude that followed, she wouldn’t press, especially if it wounded him to relive it.
“It’s okay—I want you to know where I came from,” his hand tightened around hers, “and what happens with a first shift. As alpha female of this pack, you’ll see it soon enough.”
She nodded, remaining silent.
“My mother was out gathering fruit when she was killed by the rogue wolf,” he began. “She’d been missing for hours, and I went out to look for her alone. It was night by the time I heard her distant shrieking, the cries for help that still ring in my nightmares. By the time I found her, she’d lost too much blood, and was already gone.”
The breadth of the despair that washed through their mating bond made Cortana’s heart twist. Nestling further into Riaz, she urged him to continue.
“The wolf came after me next, sinking its teeth into my arm when I blocked the bite that had been aimed at my throat. I can still remember the gleam in his eyes, the way he circled me. I took the blade from my belt, and I was ready for him the next time he lunged for me.
“By luck, I managed to plunge the blade into his eye. It must have been enough of a shock that, even in his feral state, it caused him to run.” His features pinched, and Cortana’s arms tightened around him. “Scaring him off achieved nothing; my mother was still dead, and I would turn werewolf at the next full moon. Thirteen days later, I did.”
“What happened?”
“Ever since my mother had passed, I’d suffered from hallucinations, migraines, and tremors. She was the only one who cared for me, and once she was gone, no one paid much attention. At one point, I heard my father’s heartbeat beside me, the thrum of blood in his veins. I was certain I was going crazy.”
Taking a breath, he said, “The night I turned, the moonlight was suddenly too bright, and I went inside to seek shelter. I thought my maker was hiding in every shadow, waiting, coming to finish what he’d started. Every sense was too harsh: the distant scent of food made my mouth water, and the film of dust gritting against my skin felt like sandpaper. There was this … anxiety that raced beneath my skin: something primal, something feral. And it wanted out.”
Riaz took a minute to gather his thoughts, and Cortana gently run her fingers down his forearm, tracing patterns into his skin as he thought about the night that changed his life.
“Once I was inside my father’s homestead, I collapsed next to the hearth. My father yelled at me to be less clumsy, but the sound was loud—too loud—for my ears. I can remember the agony that tore through me, the pressure that pushed at my skin until I thought I’d burst apart.
“When I finally gave in, let the change take me, the pain stopped,” he breathed. “I was paralyzed for a few moments during the transformation process, my brothers and father screaming at me from across the room. My bones snapped and reformed, my center of balance shifting towards my chest. It was the strangest thing, Cort: my body felt both foreign and completely natural.”
“It must’ve been strange,” she said. “As a vampire, I am something completely different than what I was born as, yet I still look exactly the same as the day I was turned. For you, everything changed that night.” She paused, then added. “It actually makes me wonder about something Renata said.”
It was his turn to be confused. “Renata?”
“When she came into your quarters that day, Renata said your family rejected you; that you were all alone. What did she mean by that?” A note of hesitation crept in her voice. “But Riaz, please know: I don’t want you to relive the darkness for me if you’re not ready.”
He’d known this was coming. Yet his soul still seemed to collapse in on itself, the bottom of his stomach dropping to his feet. For a moment, all he could do was look at her and keep the bile from suffocating him.
He’d own up to all of it. Though there was no pride to be had in his cowardice that day, he’d paid it off long ago with crushing solitude.
“The first thing I saw after I fully shifted for the first time was a shoe flying past my head, then another. My father’s face was contorted in a rage I’d never seen before, and he was desperately chucking things at me like I was a demon or an evil spirit. Anything within reach, he threw at me, trying to get me out of his house like he didn’t know it was me. Like I wasn’t his son anymore.”
Dragging a hand across his face, he continued. “One glance at my brothers made it even worse. They’d stopped screaming once my change was over, and they just sat there, petrified, making no move to stop him. Which was a rejection all the same: by being passive, they denied me at my most vulnerable. And then, one by one, they started to pick up things and throw them at me, too. My youngest brother chose a flaming stick from the hearth.”
“No one in your family took a stand for you, said anything to defend you?” Cortana asked, shocked.
He shook his head. “When my father picked up a hatchet, I knew I had to leave. Fire had caught on the things that had been thrown at me. It quickly spread over the hearth and out of the stone that’d been built to contain it, adding to my confusion. I was still in shock from the change—the cocktail of hormones that we release during it can be overwhelming to new wolves. But I only understood that much later. With the fire and my father’s hatchet both coming for me, the only solution was to flee.”
“Did you ever see them again?”
“I discovered later that the entire homestead had gone up in flames. My father and brothers had passed, and nearly everyone I’d known was among the dead.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I don’t even know why I returned. I hadn’t really expected that my family would somehow change their minds about me. Their lives weigh heavily on my conscience nonetheless.”
“It’s human nature, Riaz. And we were both human once.” She gently rubbed her thumb across his forearm, a soothing movement. “We seek approval, even in cases where we know it’s not good for us. I can’t even imagine how hard that was for you.”
His wolf brushed against his skin, and he felt her sorrow through their mating bond. Pressing a kiss to her cheek, he held her closer.
“It was a horrible time in my life. I had no hope, I was alone, and I’d been bitterly rejected by the people who were supposed to care most about me.” Sighing, he closed his eyes. “I felt like I was a monster beneath it all, like I was no longer worthy of love and affection.”
“You’re no monster, Riaz. You’re the hero. The knight in shining armor. And you know I believe that.”
