by Lilly Wilder
These anguished thoughts ran through my mind and came out in mutterings.
“Why can’t there just be a simple solution to everything?” I eventually said.
“Because then it wouldn’t be life,” Buck replied. His voice was weak and hollow. My head snapped up and I smiled, but the smile quickly fell from my face as I saw how pale he was. I turned my head to call for Matt, but Buck placed a hand on mine and shook his head.
“I’m fine,” he said, and forced a smile. He groaned and stretched out his limbs, and then groaned in pain some more. The scars and claw marks were still evident upon his flesh, joining an array of other scars that formed a pattern across his broad chest. His eyes were sunken and like two pieces of coal set in his skull.
“Buck! I’m so glad you’re awake. I didn’t think you’d make it. How are you feeling?”
“About as well as you can imagine, but I’ll be okay. Matt came in at the nick of time.”
“Yeah, he did,” I smiled, although a pang of guilt erupted in my heart once again as I thought of how I had treated him and rejected the kiss he had offered with such an open heart. “Thank you Buck. Thank you for defending me. I…I don’t know what would have happened had you not been here.”
“They would have taken you away and prevented us from having you,” Buck said. “But you’re welcome. I was just doing my job.”
I scowled. It had only taken moments within him regaining consciousness for me to be reminded of why he frustrated me so. My brow furrowed and I glared at him. “Oh yes, because the pack is the only thing you care about,” I spat.
“Pretty much. Jack gave me orders and I followed them,” he said.
I let out a dry laugh and shook my head. I couldn’t believe that I had shed tears over this man, or waited by his bedside. “You really are one of a kind aren’t you Buck? Isn’t there anything that you care about other than the pack? Don’t you ever want anything more?”
“There is nothing more,” Buck replied. “And as for Matt don’t worry, he’ll get over it. He seems more sensitive than he actually is. As long as he gets his time among the flowers he’s happy. Just be careful and make sure that what your heart wants is good for you.”
“You’re a philosopher now? Or just a poet,” I asked, crossing my arms and sitting back, trying to put as much distance between me and him as possible. I crossed my legs as well and turned my gaze away from him. I couldn’t believe that a measure of affection had actually begun to enter my heart for him, that as he was unconscious, I actually believed he was handsome. It was rare for anyone to inspire such a deep cut of emotion within me, but Buck was one of the rare ones who could do such a thing. I was also feeling vulnerable as I hadn’t realized he had been listening.
“Anyway, you weren’t supposed to hear that,” I muttered.
Buck let out a soft laugh. “There’s nobody else in the room you were talking to.”
“I wasn’t talking to anyone. I was just…talking. Anyway you clearly don’t care about my problems so you don’t need to bother yourself with thinking about them. I’m glad that you’re awake. I shall take my leave of you now and go and tell Matt. Maybe he can come up with something that can put you asleep again…” I said under my breath.
“No, wait,” Buck thrust out a hand and grabbed my wrist, pulling me down as I began to rise. There was an urgency to his voice that hadn’t been apparent before. “I’m sorry Trish. Thank you. I’m just glad I was able to hold off the Hunters,” he said in a measure of magnanimity that was sorely welcome. I tilted my head to the side and arched my eyebrows, nodding sharply in a haughty manner.
“That’s all well and good, but surely you must know that you can’t go through life this way. If you really believe that nothing matters but the pack, what if the pack gets destroyed?”
“As long as one of us survives, so does the pack,” Buck said through gritted teeth. “It’s not something an outsider would understand.” He leaned his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. The way he addressed me as an outsider so casually stung me more than I thought it would.
“Have you forgotten? I’m not an outsider,” I said.
“You may have the blood of the wolf, but that doesn’t make you one. Jack has deluded himself because he sees what he wants to see when he looks at you, and he’s never going to get over the hero worship of Jake. Matt is too soft to doubt anything. But you and I both know that you’re not your father. You said it yourself. You don’t know why people keep treating you like you’re special. Maybe the cold hard truth is that you’re not.”
I hadn’t been prepared to hear the doubts in my mind vocalized so forcefully and so bluntly. My mouth hung open, agape, not quite sure what to say to that. Buck had a way of getting under my skin that was unrivalled by anyone aside from perhaps my Mom, and he certainly didn’t have her privilege in getting away with it.
“I don’t know why you think you have the freedom to talk to me like this, but you don’t. You might not agree with me being here, but the fact is I am here, and I’m going to be here for a while longer so you’ll have to get used to it. What happened to you Buck? What made you like this? For someone who values the pack over everything else you’re very quick to push people away, or is it that you don’t care about the pack at all; you only care about yourself.”
I could bite back as hard as he could. He snarled and his upper lip curled. I have no doubt that if he had been stronger he would have risen from the bed and paced angrily around the room, perhaps even smashing his fist into the door. As it was he stayed rooted to the bed, his body betraying him for a rare moment in his life.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, and turned his head away from me.
“Oh no? Then maybe that man does?” I pointed to the picture on the wall. Even though Buck didn’t turn to face me I knew he knew what I was pointing to. His face remained impassive and he breathed in slowly, trying to keep himself calm, but my blood was raging. I was tired of how he could get to me so easily and how he always seemed to say the wrong thing. “You can try and tell me otherwise Buck, but clearly you’re just a selfish person who only cares about his own self-preservation. I thought for a moment I had seen something different inside you, but now I see that was just a lie. Maybe you don’t know what it means to be a part of a pack at all.”
That certainly got to the heart of the matter. He twisted his entire body around and seemed to internalize the pain he must have been in as he didn’t cry out or even flinch, and I knew he must have been in a lot of pain as he moved far more quickly than he should have. His dark, bloodshot eyes stared at me with the pain of an anguished soul and a dark cloud swirled around his mind. When he spoke he hissed at me. There was no slanting smile to be seen. No cocky smirk. All the natural ease with which he conducted himself was absent and he was just a man in emotional turmoil.
“I am nothing like that man. The pack is the only thing that matters to me. It’s the only thing that has ever mattered to me. Don’t you dare insult me by speaking about matters that you don’t understand.”
The vehemence of his reaction was more than I expected and it actually made a sliver of fear creep through my body. I flinched and realized that I had pushed him too far without properly understanding why. After what happened with Matt it seemed as though I was on a run of insulting the wolves closest to me, and I wondered how long it would be before I did the same to Jack, although in that case the opposite had taken effect as I didn’t appreciate the way he had left me without saying anything. We needed to have words when he got back; that was playing on my mind too and everything else came out in this wave of awkward emotion.
But it wasn’t fair. As much as Buck was irascible and drove me crazy he had still put his life on the line for me and what I said about him being selfish was blatantly untrue. He had proven that to me twice and I wanted to take back my words.
“I didn’t mean it Buck. I know that’s not true, but I don’t
know why you’re so defensive towards me. Tell me what made you react like that,” I said.
Buck remained silent for a few moments and I wondered if he was going to speak to me again at all. The tension in the room was terse and I wasn’t sure how much more of it I could take, but I wanted to persevere. Despite everything that seemed to go against it, a connection had formed between us. As much as he drove me crazy I couldn’t help but think of the way he fought for me, the way he had bled for me, and the way he had almost died for me. That meant something deep and profound, and I wasn’t about to let it go easily.
Thankfully, neither was he, it seemed.
*
“You’re not the only one who had some issues with their father,” he said. “That man raised me, but I never paid attention to any lesson he tried to teach me.”
“Why not? What happened?”
“He tried to teach me all the wrong lessons. I know you probably had some idea of what my life was like from the very first moment we met, but I can guarantee you it’s wrong. I was like any other kid, growing up with a mom and a dad in a nice house in the suburbs. Mom was sweet and the house was always filled with the smell of something baking or cooking. Dad worked a nine to five job, always had time for me, always helped me with my homework and spent time with me over the weekend. We went to ball games, we watched movies together, it was basically a patchwork of every idyllic childhood that has ever existed.”
“Then what was so wrong with it?”
“It was all a lie,” Buck said bitterly. There was a haunted look to his eyes as his gaze drifted past me to the photo on the wall, and then he continued his story. “For a time I thought that nothing was different about me. I was a little bigger than the other boys, stronger and faster, but mom and dad just said that was because I ate my vegetables and didn’t stuff myself with candy. But I knew that something inside me was different, I just didn’t know what it was yet. As I grew up I became more confused. I seemed angry all the time and I could sense things that others couldn’t. The world seemed brighter to me, and when I tried explaining it to my friends they told me that I was making things up. And when it came to playing at school I was too good. Everything was too easy for me because of my natural advantages. I dominated everything, so much so that it was unfair to the other kids, so none of them wanted to play with me. I was an outcast and I didn’t understand why nobody else could see the world the same way that I knew it.
And then I became a teenager. I started getting angrier. My temper was out of control. I got into fights at school and, of course, I never lost them, but it felt like everything was falling apart around me. I was the only thing that had changed, so I knew that somehow it had to be my fault, but I didn’t understand what I could do to stop it. I was only doing what came naturally to me, and yet somehow that was wrong.” He paused for a moment. Knowing what I knew of Buck I doubted if he told these things to many people, and I remained quiet for fear that if I spoke I would interrupt him and never get the opportunity again, as though a rare bird had landed in front of me and I dared not move in case it grew frightened and flew away. I let Buck continue with his story. But I got a sense of his pain and I identified with the loneliness he must have felt. My heart began to warm to him as he opened up to me.
“One day Dad called me into the basement. He was rifling through a box and pulled out that old photo. He seemed different than usual and I thought I was in trouble. I guess I was, but not in the way that I thought.” Buck licked his dry lips. Matt had left some water in here so I lifted some to Buck’s lips and carefully tilted the glass up so as not to spill it all down his chin. Buck swallowed and then continued talking.
“He started telling me that he’d had another life before I came into the world, and that he’d tried to keep it separate from my life as much as possible, but there was no way to do so any longer. He told me all about the kind of magic in the world and how we had been blessed by Mother Moon, and that I was a werewolf, just like him. I didn’t believe it at first. I thought he was having me on and I was ready to leave him there, when he shifted in front of me. I couldn’t believe it, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it made sense and I was hungry for the knowledge. I asked him everything and we stayed up all night. It was the first time in a long time that Dad and I had shared something like that, and it really reminded me of what my childhood was like, but at the same time I started to resent him because he had kept this a secret from me and I didn’t understand why.
He told me that it was getting to the point when I would start shifting and that, especially in the turbulent teenage years, it was going to be difficult to control my instincts, but that as I grew up and matured it would get easier, and eventually I would be able to blend into society like he did and have a normal life. But I was already thinking to myself, why would I want a normal life when I could be a wolf? I asked him if there were more of us out there and a strange look came over him. I could tell that he didn’t really want to talk about it, but I was so insistent that he didn’t really have a choice. Once he’d opened the can of worms there was no way he could stop them from spilling out. He told me all about the motorcycle club and the pack, and how he had once belonged. I’ll always remember the way he spoke about it, with such a wistful tone in his voice. Anyway, I asked him what happened to them. I figured something must have happened otherwise we’d still be there. Dad went quiet. He told me about the Hunters, and that he didn’t think it was safe anymore. He told me that when he found out Mom was pregnant with me he made plans to leave and I just…I couldn’t understand it. If the pack was in danger then surely his place was with them, to protect them? But no, Dad thought of himself and his family first. He put my safety over that of the pack and he left them weaker. He gave up the nobility of being a wolf for a safe life in a safe city where the only thing he had to worry about was his son learning his secret.
And as soon as I found out what he’d done I hated him. I couldn’t believe that he would betray his own people like that. In the same breath as he told me that the pack was the most important thing to a wolf, he also told me that he had left them when they needed help the most. He tried to make me feel better by saying that mom and I were his new pack, but I knew it was just something he told himself to make himself feel better. I thought of all the people that I couldn’t help because I hadn’t known they existed, and I thought about everything that had been denied to me. I burned with anger when I realized what he’d done, how he’d betrayed my nobility as a wolf, even before I had been born. I had to get away, I had to get back to my roots and reclaim my heritage. I had to make up for what Dad had done, so I did some more digging and found out about this place. When I got here, I found out that Dad wasn’t the only one who had left. The wolves had let fear ruin them and had fled to pastures new, but I wasn’t about to let the same thing happen. I joined them, leaving my old life behind. The life that Dad had tried to forge for me, had tried to present to me as a gift. But I didn’t want it. It was cursed. As soon as I came here I swore that I would do anything I could to serve this pack, to serve Jack. And I keep that picture there to remind me that I’ll never turn into someone like him. I’ll never turn my back on the pack,” his words were harsh and heavy with emotion.
When he finally finished talking, Buck took a deep breath that made his chest rise high, and for a moment I thought he had exhausted himself completely. His story struck a chord with me as I had obviously had a fractured relationship with my own mother, and I could well imagine the betrayal he must have felt when he realized that his father had been lying to him for his entire life. But one thing struck me as incredibly sad.
“And you’ve never been back to see him since?”
“Never,” Buck said, without a hint of regret in his voice. I looked at the man with a new sense of pity. He was clearly in pain and not just from the attack. The pain ran deep, through his skin and bones, right down into his soul. His had been a lifetime of trying to correct a mistake, a mistake
that wasn’t his.
“Buck,” I said gently, not wanting to irritate him further. “I know it’s difficult, but we can’t define ourselves by our parents. I spent a lot of my life living in my mom’s shadow and I ended up turning away from what she wanted me to be because she tried so hard to make that into my destiny. You can’t spend your life trying to fix your father’s mistake. It’s not your job. And I know that it’s not easy to face a parent when you find out they’re not perfect, but he’s still your father and it’s important to remember that while he’s a wolf, he’s still only human. I’ve had problems with both of my parents and I wish that I had been able to speak to them more while they had been alive. I never got a chance to meet my Dad and in her later years my relationship with Mom had been so difficult that we never spoke as a mother and daughter should. I know the pack is important, but family is important too and there should always be a chance for people to make it right. Maybe in time you could see your father again. Sometimes it’s hard to understand why people do things but we have to look at things from other people’s perspective to try and understand them. That’s what I did with you wolves. If I hadn’t I’d never have been able to forgive you for taking me away from my life.”
“I have seen it from his perspective,” Buck said, tearing his gaze away from the photo. “And I hate it, because it makes me feel like a coward.”
“He’s still your father, and one day you’re going to want to talk to him, but you’re not going to be able to. Even though I knew that Mom was dying of cancer I never got a chance to tell her all the things I wanted to tell her. There’s always something more to say. Maybe if he sees what you’ve done with your life he might change the way he lives and be better for it.”