AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He was,” Rene confirmed. “I didn’t wanna question anything, so I just listened to him and went to Parker’s room. Then, a few minutes later, I heard footsteps. I went out to see if Jesse fixed the fuse box and I stumble onto a creature that seemed to come straight from my worst nightmares.”
“Oh my God…” Alice’s eyes widened in shock and anticipation of what was to come.
“This man comes straight at me, telling me he wants the boy, but Jesse appears in the nick of time, and he basically got beaten up trying to defend me.”
“Wow…”
“About that time, Hyde returns home, and shouts Parker’s name, and the guy just jumps straight out the window and disappears in the bushes.”
Rene wrapped up her story satisfactorily, waiting to hear her friend’s reply.
“That sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel.”
“I know, right?” Rene took a deep breath. “And the worst thing is we don’t know who that guy was.”
“But, you know who he was after,” Alice reminded her. “Why would anyone come after Parker? He’s just a little boy.”
“Well, Hyde and Jesse shared something with me, the story of their origin, and trust me, you wouldn’t believe it.”
Come to think of it, Rene herself was still having a hard time differentiating between reality and fantasy, even though
“Tell me,” Alice urged.
“I don’t know if I should,” Rene admitted loudly, even though it was aimed mostly at herself.
Alice looked as if this lack of trust in their friendship insulted her.
“If you don’t trust me enough, then you don’t have to…” Alice snapped.
Rene wasn’t upset. The two had been friends far too long to come apart so easily.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Rene explained, “it’s just that the story is so insane that you’ll think I’m crazy for even considering the possibility of it being true.”
Alice just gave her a stern look and Rene knew that since she’d started this conversation, she needed to end it properly.
“Hyde told me how they lived in a clan,” Rene swallowed heavily as she spoke, “a clan of bear shifters.”
She paused, just like Hyde did when he was telling her the same story. Only, the reaction she got from Alice was far different from what she had expected.
“And that’s it?” Alice asked, with a frown.
“What do you mean?” Rene snapped. “This isn’t crazy to you?”
“You don’t know this, but my maternal grandparents were born in a small village in the Carpathian Mountains. That’s in Romania. My mom moved here to study and then just decided to stay here, but she always told me stories from her old life, stories about witches and werewolves, vampires and goblins. I believed them all when I was a kid, and I haven’t stopped believing just because I’m a grown up now… kinda…” Alice chuckled to herself at her last comment and Rene did the same.
“So, you think he’s telling the truth?” Rene asked, even though deep inside, she was sure he was.
“Well, I don’t know what exactly he told you, and whether he really belongs to the clan he claims, but as to whether bear shifters really exist, I fully agree on that one. There are so many things our puny mortal mind isn’t capable of grasping.”
Rene suddenly remembered what her mother used to tell her a long time ago, when it was still possible for the two of them to have deep, philosophical debates and conversations.
What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
Rene wondered if she somehow invited Hyde into her life, by wishing for him, but not being aware of it. Or maybe, he wished her into his?
“And the guy who broke into Hyde’s place, is he a bear shifter, too?” Alice asked, bringing Rene back to reality and the present moment.
“Yes, he belongs to the enemy clan who want Hyde and Parker, and Jesse as well, dead.”
