by Amira Rain
Coming across Claire and her toddler daughter Katie in the produce section of the store, Alex and I said hello to them, and Claire greeted us warmly. Katie, however, just stared at Alex, seeming to recall him from the day they’d played together in the café. I guessed that she was very confused as to why Alex was now so much bigger than she was.
Before we parted ways to resume our shopping, Claire invited us to Katie’s third birthday party, which was coming up in a few weeks.
Alex suddenly looked up at me, frowning. “How come I don’t ever have birthdays and birthday parties? And how many years old am I, Mom?”
My heart broke for him, knowing he was probably only going to become more and more confused until Ryan and I explained things to him, which I now felt like we should probably do, maybe just glossing over or greatly softening a few things, like about Frederick Bennett the murderous Graywolf shifter and the possibility of Alex’s death if Bennett wasn’t killed.
I obviously didn’t feel like the grocery store was the ideal place to begin such a discussion, though, so I told Alex we’d talk more later, and then I told Claire that we’d love to attend Katie’s party.
Later in our shopping trip, after running into a few other people we knew, we came across a woman named Chelsea, who was one of the few “original” wives in Briarwood, having already been married to her husband Eric when he’d become a shifter. She and Eric had three boys, ages nine, eight, and four, who were part of a group of maybe forty or fifty “original” kids in the village. The eight-year-old, Donovan, was shopping with Chelsea on this particular day, and he said hi to Alex.
“Do you like basketball?”
Shrugging, Alex looked slightly uncomfortable. “Maybe. I don’t really know what it is.”
Bless him—if Donovan was in any way surprised that a little boy who appeared to be seven years old didn’t know what basketball was, he didn’t show it. Instead, he just told Alex that they should play it sometime. “You can come over to my house. We have a basketball hoop in our driveway.”
Smiling, Alex nodded. “Okay.”
Donovan smiled in return, then asked Alex why he didn’t already know him from school, which was a tiny, three-room brick building behind the town hall. “Are you new in town?”
Wanting to spare Alex embarrassment, I told Donovan that Alex’s dad and I were teaching him at home for the time being, but that maybe someday he’d start going to the village school. Probably realizing that I wanted to avoid any further uncomfortable questions, Chelsea said we should exchange phone numbers so that we could set up a basketball play date for the boys sometime soon. After we’d exchanged numbers, she said that she and Donovan had to get going, and said bye with a smile and a wave.
When Alex and I got home, I began making a quick dinner of chicken and vegetable stir-fry to serve over rice, making enough for Ryan to have the two helpings he usually had and for Alex and I to have one helping, plus a little extra if either of us wanted more. Now that his growth had been halted by Willow’s powder, Alex was eating the amount of food that was typical for a normal seven-year-old boy.
Ryan came home just as Alex was helping me stir a little teriyaki sauce into the stir-fried chicken and vegetables, and the three of us soon sat down for dinner. About halfway through his plate of food, Alex announced to Ryan that I’d levitated the biggest boulder in the front yard that morning.
“You should have seen it, Dad. Mom is so strong.”
I glanced up at Ryan. “It was the boulder that probably weighs six hundred pounds. Wouldn’t that be like the weight of three Graywolves combined? So, a single one of them would really be no problem for me.”
“Then Mom let me levitate the boulder, too, but I had to be standing on the porch. It’s not safe to levitate boulders right above our heads. Now, I don’t levitate anything above my head. I’m safe, like Mom.”
I glanced up at Ryan again. “I am safe, and I’m observant, and I think I have pretty fast reflexes. I could be a real asset, and I think you know it.”
Alex asked what an “asset” was, and I briefly explained. Alex then agreed that I could be one, not even knowing that I’d meant it in terms of the planned attack, which he knew nothing about. Then he asked Ryan if he also thought I was an “asset.” Ryan looked like he’d rather jam his fork into his eye socket than answer the question. However, he was soon spared when his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen, then got up from the table, apologizing, but saying that it was Steb with news about the Shadow Fen surveillance operation. “I need to take this.”
Once Ryan had left the table, Alex asked me what a “surveillance operation” was.
Not really wanting to get into it, I changed the subject. “Hey. I’ve been a bad mom.”
“What?”
“I haven’t even taught you about basketball yet!”
Throwing his head back, Alex laughed. “I still don’t know what it is!”
I smiled, my heart having fully melted at the sound of his laughter. “Well, how about after dinner, you and I read a book about basketball and other different sports. There’s a good book in your room called Mr. Bear Makes the Team.”
“Okay. But can Jake read it with us?”
I smiled again. “Yes, Jake can read it with us.”
“And Dad?”
“And Dad.”
Unfortunately, it turned out that Ryan actually couldn’t because he had to meet with his council members to discuss what Steb’s surveillance team had discovered that day and how they might use that information to plan several different attack strategies. Before Ryan left, he gave Alex a bear hug, pressing his lips to his forehead with his eyes closed. Ryan gave me a quick peck, the tension between us evident on his face.
When he got home that evening around nine, I was sitting in a wooden rocker out on the porch with a mug of hot spiced cider spiked with rum, watching a stiff breeze pull leaves off all the trees in the yard in the near-darkness. It was October now, and it was really beginning to feel like fall, normally my favorite time of year. I couldn’t say I was enjoying it much at present, not knowing whether I’d need to buy my son a Halloween costume for a seven-year-old or a twenty-year-old. The only thing keeping me sane and strong was that Willow’s powder would hopefully continue to work until Bennett could be killed.
I asked Ryan if he’d like some cider with rum, too, and he said no thanks, sinking into a rocker next to me. “Alex in bed?”
I nodded. “He went to sleep a half-hour ago after reading me five different books, sounding out at least ninety-five percent of the words correctly. He says he wants to start going to school soon. I made the mistake of not only telling him that the kids get to read there, but that they also get to play basketball at recess. Now that he knows what it is, he thinks basketball looks incredibly fun. So I texted Chelsea Miller to set up a basketball playdate with Alex and her son Donovan tomorrow afternoon. I had to caution Alex that he can’t cheat by levitating the ball up to the hoop.”
I gave Ryan a small smile, and he gave me one in return, then sat back in his chair and stared out at the darkened trees with their rustling leaves. Neither of us spoke for a little while. I sipped my hot cider, just thinking. But finally, after a minute or so, I couldn’t hold back any longer.
“I took a chance to come here, Ryan. I took a risk. Now I’m asking you to take a chance on me and my new power. I can help save our son. I feel I have a moral obligation to. Just agree to let me do it.”
Still staring out at the trees, Ryan was silent for so long that I wondered if he was even going to respond. But finally, he did, though still not looking at me.
“I want you in the back. You can use your levitation power to help us in the fight, but I can’t let you be on the front line, completely unprotected. You’re going to have to find a way to use your power from a distance.”
Elated, I nodded. “That won’t be a problem. I’ve levitated boulders that are near the tree line out back, hundreds of yards away. A
s long as I can spot glowing red Graywolf eyes from afar and get a ‘clear shot’ to point to them with nothing in between us, I’ll be able to do my part to help just fine.”
Still staring out at the trees, Ryan didn’t respond, and I suddenly reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Thank you.”
He picked up my hand and kissed it, letting his lips linger. “We’re going to save our son’s life, and everything is going to be okay.”
I nodded, hoping with every fiber of my being that he was right.
Over the next couple of days, he and his council members debated various attack strategies. On Friday evening, he called me on his way home from a meeting, saying that he just wanted to tell me over the phone what had been decided because he didn’t want Alex overhearing at home.
“I made a decision tonight as to what attack strategy we’re going to use. We’re not going to encircle Shadow Fen like I was thinking might be best yesterday. I’ve now come to think that this might actually just put more of their women and children in danger because our designated rescuers may not be able to get through the fighting to take them to safety.”
The ‘designated rescuers’ were a specially chosen team of our wolves whose sole job during the fighting would be to pull the women and children of Shadow Fen to safety.
“Instead, we’re going to attack them only from the west, rolling through the village once the women and children have been evacuated.”
I said that sounded like a smart plan to me, then asked him when he’d decided to carry it out.
“In two days. Saturday morning at dawn. We’ve learned through surveillance that their shift change of village guards around this time is a bit sloppy, with a span of ten minutes or so where they’re not fully guarded, and I want us to take them by surprise when they’re disorganized. Attacking at dawn will give us just enough light to see by, too.”
Ryan said he was almost home, and we ended the call. I’d just put my phone back in my pocket when I heard Alex’s voice behind me.
“Mom? There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?”
With a chill dancing along my spine, I turned slowly and saw Alex standing several feet away. His jeans, which had fit him perfectly just a short while earlier, were now about two inches too short. His shirtsleeves were, too. In some indefinable way, his face had changed, and his voice had gotten slightly deeper. He looked and sounded like he was about nine years old. Willow’s powder had obviously stopped working.
When Ryan got home, we explained everything to him, except we left out the part about how if Bennett wasn’t killed, Alex would likely die of old age within a year. Instead, Ryan said that we had to “stop the bad man” so that Alex would “stop growing too fast.”
Sitting between Ryan and me on the couch, Alex shifted his gaze from his lap to Ryan’s face. “It sounds like we have to do more than ‘stop’ the Graywolves’ leader, Dad. It sounds like he probably has to be killed in order for the spell over me to be broken. It also sounds like if the spell isn’t broken, I’ll probably turn into an old man and die of old age before too long.”
Clearly, Ryan’s intellectual growth had kept pace with his physical growth. And honestly, he struck me as even a bit quicker on the uptake than the average nine-year-old.
Frowning, Ryan conceded to Alex that he was right. “Mom and I don’t want you to worry about a thing, though. Soon this will all be over, and you’ll be just fine. Mom and I, and every single one of my men, are going to fight the Graywolves’ leader and all of his men to make sure of that.”
Alex glanced at me before looking at Ryan again. “Even Mom’s going to fight?”
“Yes. Mom is very brave and strong, and she’s going to use her levitation power to help us. Now, why don’t you go let Jake out before dinner? I think I heard him whining at the front door a little bit ago, how he does when he needs to go out.”
I hadn’t heard Jake whining, but I could clearly read between the lines that Ryan wanted to have a word with me in private. Probably realizing the same but not protesting, Alex dutifully got up, crossed the living room, and began heading down the hallway toward the kitchen.
Once he was safely out of earshot, Ryan looked at me with the muscles working in his strong jaw. “We’re running out of time. We can’t let Alex lose his entire childhood. We can’t wait for Saturday. We’ll attack Shadow Fen tomorrow at dawn.”
*
In the wee hours of the morning the next day, Hillary came over while it was still dark out, bundled up in thick coat and scarf to fight off the pre-dawn chill. She was going to babysit Alex until Ryan and I returned home.
In the kitchen, I handed her a mug of hot orange-and-spice tea, telling her that Alex was still asleep. “He knows you’ll be here when he wakes up, though, and he knows everything that’s going on. In fact, when we tucked him in last night, we had to answer about a hundred questions about the attack for him before he’d go to sleep. He wanted to know everything about it…where Shadow Fen is, what route we’re going to be taking there…then he insisted we teach him north, south, east, and west. Ryan and I think that it was all his way of dealing with his own anxiety about the whole situation. You know how some people feel more relaxed and in control if they can learn every single detail about a particular thing, like exactly what time certain things are going to be happening and where? I think Alex is going to be one of those people, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. I’m glad he has a coping mechanism to deal with anxiety. I’m not sure I could leave the house in a few minutes if he was terribly upset, making himself sick with worry.”
Picking up her mug of tea, Hillary said she definitely understood. “Alex seems to be handing everything better than I am. Just thinking about the attack, I got so anxious about Steb’s safety last night that I got sick twice. I’m sure my horrible lingering morning sickness didn’t help much, though. Everyone said it would get better in my second trimester, but it’s honestly getting a bit worse. Even just the smell of this tea….” Wrinkling her nose, she set the mug back on the island. “Sorry. I normally love orange-and-spice, but the smell of it is just making me feel queasy for some reason this morning. Maybe I’ll just go have a seat on the couch until Alex wakes up.”
I told her resting was a good idea but that she didn’t have to just sit on the couch. “Why don’t you go up to one of the guest bedrooms, lie down, and try to get some real sleep. Alex probably won’t be awake for a few more hours, and I’ll leave him a note saying that if you’re still resting when he wakes up, to just go get you if he really needs anything.”
With clear gratitude on her face, Hillary nodded, saying that an extra hour or two of sleep sounded like just what she needed. She soon went upstairs, I wrote a note to Alex, and Ryan came inside after letting Jake out. Not long after, Ryan and I left the house, joined his wolves at a designated meeting spot just east of the village, and off we all went through the dark, ready to do battle with the Graywolves. I was actually more than ready, anxious to have the whole thing over with, although I couldn’t deny that I felt more than a bit odd and conspicuous being the only fully-human human among a few hundred wolf shifters who’d all already shifted into their wolf forms. Obviously, I was also the only female in the group. This wasn’t a big deal, though, and I wasn’t sorry at all that I’d volunteered to help in the attack. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to protect Alex and make sure he had a long and happy life.
For maybe the first mile-and-a-half of the march to Shadow Fen, I rode on Ryan’s broad, gray-furred back while he and all his men advanced eastward at a fairly fast pace. However, once the sky had lightened to a pale lavender-gray, with just a hint of peach coloring the horizon, Ryan came to a stop and I hopped off his back. Earlier, he’d told me that at this point, I’d have to walk because he still wanted me protected at the back of the group, but he of course needed to be up front in order to lead his wolves into battle. Also at this point, he and all his men were going to greatly slow the
ir pace to a crawl until we reached Shadow Fen, wanting to be on high alert for any Graywolves, so it wasn’t like I was going to fall behind walking on my own two legs.
After giving my hip a brief nuzzle with his snout, Ryan trotted up to the front of the massive pack of wolves, which was made up of both his elite and “regular” packs combined. He then howled out some sort of signal, and immediately, all the other wolves slowed from a trot to a sedate walk.
At the back, I walked along, somewhat in disbelief that I wasn’t more nervous. I was experiencing a few butterflies, yes, but that was about it. My heart wasn’t pounding, and I wasn’t sweating. I felt like I was breathing at a normal rate for a person who was just walking through meadows and brief stretches of forestland. My butterflies didn’t even feel like nervous butterflies. They were maybe just butterflies of anticipation. I was ready. I felt strong. I actually felt eager to use my power. I thought that being a mother was probably helping keep fear and anxiety at bay. When it came to Alex and protecting his very life, I didn’t think there was any person or any situation that could have made me afraid to fight.
The lavender-gray sky was quickly giving way to bright peach, and we were in the middle of a large, football-field-sized meadow when some commotion up at the front made me crane my neck to see what was going on. With so many wolves in front of me, though, I couldn’t see. I heard some shouting, which alarmed me because I wondered who’d shifted out of their wolf form and why. Slowly, everyone stopped walking. More shouting. A large, pale gray wolf trotted around the side of the pack, shifted into his human form, and shouted at everyone in the back.
“One of our scouts has just joined us. The Graywolves are coming our way, led by Bennett. We’re not going to make it to Shadow Fen. The battle is going to have to take place right here.”