Now I had a wolf who might have been injured by others who hated him because of his gender. A hatred I might have been aware of had I paid more attention.
I couldn’t go back in time to prevent what had been done to Ren. All I could do was try to help him now. With a couple of deep breaths and a promise to myself that I would give myself time and space to fall apart later, I picked up my cell phone from the desk and called Wilbur.
Chapter Two
WhenI returned to the parlor, Ren was sitting up straighter. I couldn’t see most of his injuries, since the shirt and sweatpants covered them, but the puncture on his hand didn’t look quite as bad as before. He held a bottle of water, and there was a plate of sandwich meats and cheese on his lap. Xavier was seated on the floor nearby, but he quickly got to his feet when I entered the room. He also moved closer to Ren, I noted.
Ren didn’t look at me when I pulled a chair over to the sofa and sat down. “How are you feeling?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Less pain. I think eating helped.”
“I’m glad.” I nodded thanks to Xavier, who bowed his head in response. “My doctor will be here in half an hour or so. His name is Wilbur. As I said before, you don’t have to let him check you out if you don’t want to, but he’ll be here in case.”
“And you told him I’m trans?” He fiddled with the cap on the water bottle.
“Yes. He said he’s had trans patients before.” That was a bit of info Wilbur had passed along when I told him how worried Ren was. “He hasn’t worked for me for very long. Before he started with me, he worked in a practice in Boston. He had several transgender patients.”
“Okay, good.” He stopped playing with the waterbottle cap and opened it to take a drink.
I hesitated. I needed to know what had brought Ren here. Who had hurt him, and why he’d wound up on my property in the neutral zone between the territories of City Pack and Berkshires Pack. There weren’t a whole lot of packs within running distance, so that narrowed down where he might have come from, unless someone had dumped him nearby. Which was an unfortunate possibility, one I didn’t want to think about just now.
Wanting the full story didn’t erase the importance of treading carefully. The last thing I wanted was to upset Ren, or worse, trigger him, by asking the wrong question in the wrong words.
I finally settled for, “Tell me about yourself, Ren. Whatever you’re comfortable saying. Xavier can leave if you’d rather speak privately.”
He blinked a few times and frowned. “You aren’t going to interrogate me?”
“Should I?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” He scoffed and looked down at his plate. “I was starving when Xavier brought this to me, but I’m not sure I can eat any more of it. Um.” He looked up at Xavier. Way up; Xavier was close to six and a half feet tall. “I’d like you to stay.”
“If the Anax is okay with it, I am,” Xavier replied.
“I’m fine with it. As for the food, hold onto it for now.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, and tried to keep my gaze focused on the back of the sofa rather than his face so he wouldn’t feel pressured. “I’m not going to interrogate you, Ren, but if you’re willing to tell me where you’re from and how you got here, I’d like to know.” I gestured at his hand. “And who did this to you.”
He sighed and took another drink of water. “Um. What will you do?”
“That depends on what you tell me.” I considered the question and decided to answer the unspoken part. “You won’tbe in any trouble, Ren, unless I find out you’ve broken one of our laws. Which I don’t believe you have.”
“I came here without permission.” He tilted his head, forehead wrinkled. “Isn’t that against some law?”
“You came here for help, didn’t you?” I sat up again and studied him. He cringed, and I went back to looking at the sofa. “Permission is required when entering another pack’s territory, or when entering the territory of the Anax or an Arkhon, but if you’re running to get help, it’s a different story. Can you tell me what happened?”
“They found out.” He put the cap back on the water bottle and tucked it between his leg and the sofa cushion. “I was… I don’t know where to start.”
“Wherever is easiest.” I didn’t want to steer him too much in case it led him away from the truth in favor of saying what he assumed I wanted to hear. I looked at Xavier, who was tensely listening to everything, leaning slightly toward Ren as if to protect him. Xavier had no say here, but for some reason, I wanted to ensure that he had no issue with the way I spoke to Ren. He gave me a small nod.
“A week ago, I was walking in the woods.” Ren shivered. “I shouldn’t have been. It was night. I was alone. But I’d just gotten kicked out of the shelter I was staying at, and I didn’t have anywhere to go. I thought maybe walking would keep me awake for the night, and then in the morning I was going to try to find somewhere else to stay.”
“I’m sorry you were in that position.” It felt like a weak thing to say, but there was so much to unpack from that little bit of information.
He dipped his head. “I’m used to it. Shelters don’t know what to do with a trans person half the time. I’ve stayed in a few since I was eighteen. I’ve been trying to find work so I can get my own place, a room at least, but there’s…there’s a lot of hate out there. It’s hard to find work when you aren’t who your paperwork says you are, you know?”
“I don’t know, but I believe you.” My eyes watered, and Iclosed them for a second. Hatred. Far too much of it existed in the human world and the werewolf world.
Anger filled the room. Xavier hadn’t moved, but I felt his fury radiating from him. Not toward Ren, butforhim. I just hoped Xavier would stay quiet and let Ren finish what he had to say. I couldn’t disagree with the anger, but it wasn’t the right time for Xavier to express it.
“Okay.” Ren smoothed one of his eyebrows. “Anyway, so I was walking in the woods, and I heard growling. I started to run, and that’s the last thing I remember until a couple of days ago. I woke up in this…cage, I guess? Pen? It was fenced in with a roof. There were four or five people surrounding it. Mostly guys, one woman. I was a wolf. I didn’t know how the hell that happened, but I was a wolf, and one of the guys told me it was time to come back to human. I didn’t know what he meant, so he started talking me through the shift.”
