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“I was frightened at first. Who wouldn’t be, right? You live your whole life knowing one thing and discover there’s something else, and so much more. But I loved my wife, and she let me into her world. It was amazing how I actually became comfortable with the shifters and their traditions. Soon, wolves were no different from humans to me, and their world became my world, too. My wife was a beautiful spitfire of a wolf. She was part of the Everwood Pack, like your father.”
He looked over his shoulder and gave me a sad smile. At the same time, my entire world crumbled at my feet.
Wait, what?What did he say?
“I’m sorry, but can you repeat that?” I stuttered.
A dry chuckle escaped Elliot, and he turned to face me. “You look just like him, you know. According to my late wife, Jaxon Hyde was the strongest alpha in the world.” His eyes dropped to the floor. “That is, until hunters took him. It’s going on twenty-three years now. The Everwood Pack, including my wife, was wiped out by hunters. By the fate of the moon goddess, I managed to escape with Zander.”
He stopped talking and returned to staring at his son. Despite the fact that he’d just pulled the rug out from my world, I caught the love, devotion, and fear in Elliot’s eyes.
“I was alone and unsure of how to raise a son, let alone a shifter. What did I know about wolves? I didn’t give up, though. I tried my best to raise a willful young alpha, but it was grueling, and I blame myself a lot for my son’s aimless ways. I didn’t know how to guide him properly, how to teach him to relieve his frustrations and urges the way wolves needed.”
This man was sharing his hardships, and I tried to listen, but I was reeling from this unexpected revelation about my past. Could it be true? In my heart, I knew it must be. Clearly, one of my parents had been a shifter. It wasn’t my mom, or my brother would have been a shifter, too. And if my resemblance to this Jaxon Hyde was so strong that this near-stranger had felt confident enough to comment on it… well, that seemed pretty significant. After all, I had the sense that the shifter world was smaller than the human world.
Now I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything. Had my father been killed, too? Was he the shifter who killed my mother? Were there any wolves left from the Everwood Pack? Who could I ask about this? Why didn’t I know about any of this? Why didn’t my mother tell me anything, or at least leave me a clue that would have led me to more answers?
My mind was reeling. The questions just kept coming, but I had no one to answer them.
Before I bombarded the worried and grieving father with all my questions, I decided I’d talk to Kyle. Perhaps he knew about this, or perhaps he’d kept me in the dark along with our mother and father… well, I guess I could call my “father” William now.
It made sense that William wasn’t my birth father. I may have looked like my brother in many ways, but I could never find any resemblance to my father in my features. The fact that I was a shifter wolf, which neither my parents nor brother were, should also have been a clue that William wasn’t my actual father.
It’d take time to unpack all that, but at the moment, an increasing chirping sound snapped me out of my thoughts. A glance at the heart monitor showed Zander’s heart rate was increasing. My eyes landed on Zander as he started shifting and moving around.
Zander’s eyes slowly opened, then he squinted against the light. He looked around the room, and when his gaze landed on his dad and me, there was nothing there except confusion. He cocked his head when his attention focused on his dad, who was crying in relief and rushing over to hug his son.
Frantically, I moved to the open door to shout at the nurses. “Come quick, Zander’s awake! He’s awake!”
Returning to the bedside, I watched father and son. Elliot wouldn’t let his son go, but something was off because Zander wasn’t responding to his dad. He didn’t push him away, but kept staring at him in confusion.
Two nurses rushed into the room, pulling Elliot away from his son so they could check Zander over. As I started to go back to the door, I couldn’t have been more surprised when the older man reached out and held onto my hand.
The nurses allowed us to stay in the room as they did a preliminary examination while waiting for the doctor to arrive. We stood and watched what was quickly becoming inevitable.
“How are you feeling?” a nurse asked Zander.
“Okay, I guess,” he answered.
“What day is today?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know who the president is?”
He shook his head.
“Do you know where you are?”
Zander looked around. “I’m assuming a hospital.”
“That’s right. Do you know why you’re here?”
He scrunched his nose and rubbed at his forehead as if he was trying to think really hard. “I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“That’s okay.”
“Do you know these two people here?” The nurse pointed at Elliot and me.
