The nurse will be taken care of but as for my boyfriend…it feels like I’m talking to a stranger as I say, “Yes, I’m a little over two months pregnant. I didn’t want to tell you in a voice message or even confront you like this, but I didn’t know what else to do. You didn’t return any of my calls. And when I showed up at the hospital’s front desk they said I was on the restricted visitor list. I thought surely there must be some kind of mistake…”
I trail off for two reasons: because I can all but hear the voices of my High Media teachers telling me it’s better to stop talking when my prose wanders into hysterical ramble territory. And because as obvious as that “it must be some kind of mistake” explanation seemed a few minutes ago, when I say it out loud while looking into his face, still red from his attempt to literally run away from me, I can see how badly I got it wrong.
You’re not on that restricted list because of some security mix up, the new growly voice informs me. He put you there. Your perfect boyfriend put you there.
“Yes, Layla, I put you on a restricted list because you wouldn’t stop calling,” he said as if to confirm what the voice was telling me. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
His sonorous English accent which I used to love so much now sounds snotty and disgruntled.
I don’t understand. Until suddenly…I do. “Oh dear…did we break up?”
He runs a hand through his wavy blond hair, confusion overtaking righteous indignation in his blue eyes. “Yes,” he answers nonetheless, “We broke up. Pretty spectacularly, in fact. How do you not remember that?”
I slice my eyes to the side. And for the first time (that I can remember), I’m embarrassed with the man whose made me feel so comfortable from the start of our relationship. Still, I force myself to explain. “We’re keeping it out of the media but my accident…it caused me to lose all memory of the last six months of my life before I was found by that river.”
He stares at me, obviously stunned. Then he says, “Oh…I get it now.”
“What? What do you get?” I ask because I’m still completely confused by all of this.
“Why your father sent that East Asian fellow to my office again. Even though you and I haven’t been in contact since I tried to reconcile with you in Kansas.”
Numerous questions pile up inside my head, so many that I hold my hands up and say, “Let’s start from the beginning. Why did we break up?” With narrowed eyes I think of the nurse. “Were you cheating on me?”
“No!” he answers as if I’ve deeply offended him. “Do you think I’d be that stupid? Especially considering who you are? Cheating on you would have ruined my career. Maybe my whole life if your father had anything to say about it—”
He cuts off with a frustrated shake of his head. “Really, I should end this conversation with you right now. The East Asian fellow said—”
“East Asian fellow?” I repeat. “Are you talking about Uncle Suro?”
Ethan gives me an exasperated look. “I don’t know his name. He never gave it to me during either of his particularly unpleasant visits. But if your Uncle Suro, as you call him, is a tall, older East Asian man who gets his jollies threatening the lives of innocent doctors, then yes, that’s who visited me.”
My hand flies to my chest, because yes…tall, older East Asian man, who is more than a little comfortable with threatening to do others bodily harm, is exactly how I might describe Uncle Suro. And as confused and upset as I am, I wouldn’t wish him on anyone. Much less the perfect boyfriend I’d been looking forward to introducing to my family a mere six months ago.
But it’s clear something happened that caused us to break up. And I need to find out what that was.
As if to demonstrate how few answers I’ll get from him, Ethan starts backing away from me like I’m radioactive, and not the woman he said he loved just this past Christmas.
I shake my head recalling the last big conversation I remember us having…
“If I ask you to marry me on your birthday do you think your father would be offended I didn’t request his permission first?”
“Of course not! He’s not that old school. And if we get married before I get pregnant without me keeping the baby secret from you for seven years, we’ll be doing better than he and Mom did.”
“Then I suppose my next question is if I ask you to marry me on your birthday, do you think you would say yes?”
I’d grinned and answered, “Of course! Who wouldn’t say yes to you?”
And then he smiled at me like he’d won the lottery.
But now…now all I see is fear in Ethan’s eyes. “Please don’t ever visit me like this again.” His voice is desperate, tone pleading. “I like my life as it is. And I never would have let your father interview me if I thought it would end up like this—”
He stops as if realizing he may have said too much.
“Wait, what do you mean ‘let my father interview you?’” I ask him, feeling way more confused now than I did mere seconds ago.
He shakes his head and says, “I’m terribly sorry we didn’t work out, Layla. Truly I am. I think we would have made a good couple if not for…circumstances. But I am most certainly not the father of the baby you’re carrying. So I beg of you, Layla…if you ever cared about me at all, do not contact me like this again. And please let your father and that East Asian fellow know I didn’t say anything to you.”
I stare at him mutely. I know it must be a trick of my imagination, but it truly feels like I can smell his abject fear. He’s a coward, the new voice says inside my head. How did you not see that before?
I’m unable to answer the voice. Or get Ethan to tell me what happened between us when he’s so obviously scared for his life—which frankly he should be if my father sent Uncle Suro to “talk” to him.
“Okay,” I say, finally letting him off the hook. “I’ll respect your wishes. I won’t bother you again.”
“Thank you,” he says. So polite. Then taking that as his cue, Ethan turns and this time he doesn’t just jog, he bursts into a flat-out run toward the D2 station.
I remember how we used to meet there and take the subway to attend a concert or grab drinks after work. I remember how he sent me flowers after the first time we had sex.
And strangely I want to call after him and tell him I’m also sorry we didn’t work out. Even though, even though…
I don’t know why, but he’s morphed into a terrified version of the perfect boyfriend he used to be.
Actually, I do know why…
My mind hardens at the thought. Dad.
8
Two months before Kukunniwi…
“Please don’t be angry with me but I have a huge favor to ask of you,” Hot Social Worker said when she showed up at his door three days after the full moon. She was covered in blood—not her own, as it turned out, but that of the bleeding wolf cub in her arms.
Their NSA relationship was about two months old at that point. Knight would like to say he held out until she called him for a hook up. But the truth was it had been the other way around.
For as long as he could remember, his wolf had been his most dependable ally. His human was dogged by a mood disorder that his childhood therapist described as “on the bipolar spectrum”—but not bipolar disorder. Translation: near uncontrollable anger over the smallest of triggers—but hey, at least you’re not manic.
The calm wolf who’d been tamed during his four-year stay in Viking Age Norway had been his one saving grace, and he’d turned to it often. How many times had he ended up in the woods surrounding his Colorado kingdom town after fights with his brother Rafes or his teachers or some random boy who just looked at him the wrong way? “Walking his wolf,” as his mother used to call it whenever he decided to stalk around in wolf form because his human couldn’t deal with any kind of conflict without bringing his fists into it.
With training from his Uncle Grady and his Wolf Force commander in the Marines, he’d learned to control his angry human w
ithout shifting. Instead, he focused all that anger into becoming a cold and efficient killing machine.
All that killing he’d done. First for the U.S. government, then for his brother who’d set his sights on becoming—and was eventually elected—President of the North American Lupine Council. Both jobs required everything that came with being a wolf, along with some rather dubiously acquired human skills. But it hadn’t been his wolf running black ops. His wolf hung around in the background, neither approving nor interfering. Like an old security blanket—there if you needed it, but you really shouldn’t need it past a certain age. And for a while it had been easy to forget he even had a wolf inside him when it wasn’t a full moon night.
With training and detachment his human learned to make all the sensible decisions. Like whether to risk smuggling a silencer across borders, or simply use an old-fashioned piano wire to carry out the job. Detached from his wolf, and human to his cold, cold core…it had been simple to remain remote and distant. Easy even. And he’d had no emotional problems whatsoever while carrying out those missions during his black ops days.
But then five years ago his serene wolf decided to go Jiminy Cricket on him.
That over-sensitive fuck ended his black ops career. Had actually steered him—him! —toward a medical vocation in pediatrics, of all things. Which had, in turn, forced him to transfer his weird skill set to a job that just about everyone except his wolf considered him pretty damn unsuited.
But he’d done it. Done it and excelled at it. And with a job well transferred into, his wolf faded into the background once more. Leaving his cold human to deal with things like shitty insurance companies and making sure his conquests didn’t get too attached.
But then Hot Social Worker happened.
Hot but cray-cray. Easy but complicated. His human wanted to be done with her. Was already done with her and decided about five minutes after her smell faded that even though he’d sent her away with a pay-as-you-go-phone, he’d probably never bother to use it.
But his wolf started badgering him to text her within an hour of her departure. His wolf wanted her as soon as he got off his shift. In his bed. Ass bared. For him and him alone.
Sixteen hours. He’d only held out a measly sixteen hours before texting the phone he’d given her and asking if she was DTF.
“I believe I might be DTF. What exactly is DTF?” she’d immediately texted back. Proving even though he hadn’t grown up in the human world, he seemed to know more about dating within it than she did.
“Down to fuck.”
“Oh, in that case, I definitely am DTF. I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”
Thirteen minutes later (his wolf counted, not him) she showed up at the door with a big grin on her face.
“Hello, Buddy!” she chirped. “Level ten, please.”
She liked it rough. And he liked giving it to her that way.
They didn’t talk much—their relationship wasn’t based on talking. However, he sensed something in her past. A break-up maybe? Something that had made her diverge from her original path, the same way the wolf had made Knight diverge from his.
And now she was at his door with a bloody wolf cub in her arms. One his nose immediately recognized as Jandro, the kid she’d brought to see him when they first met.
He froze, not knowing how to handle this. She’d found out. But how? Had Jandro shifted in front of her?
But then she said, “I found him outside your building underneath the steps. He’s hurt and I brought him to you since you’re a doctor.”
“A doctor, not a vet,” he answered. But then he said, “Here, give him to me. Let me take him into the bathroom.”
“I think he might be a German Shephard-mix,” she said, kneeling down beside him after he’d deposited the cub into the bathtub. “Maybe with some Doberman in there? Look at those pointy ears and the strange black-and-tan coloring. He’s probably fully grown. And it sure looks like he was stabbed…maybe with a knife? Who would do something horrible like that to a defenseless animal? Poor guy.”
She was way off base about the cub being a German Shephard mix. And about him being fully grown. Jandro’s coloring was similar to that of his brothers’ Nago and Rafes. Maybe the kid had the same mix of Latin and African blood. He was also small for a wolf his age—not to mention, really thin. But she was right about the stab wounds. Jandro had a deep cut about three inches wide on his right side. And it was deep. Definitely looked like it had been done by a knife.
The Wichita Children’s home was about a mile or two west of his place. The boy must have stumbled all the way here, bleeding out—only to be confronted with a locked outer door. And of course, he couldn’t use the number on the card he’d been given. Without his own phone or the ability to hear, both were pretty much fucking useless to the kid.
Knight cursed himself. He’d bet two months’ salary if he went downstairs he’d find a pile of bloody clothes under the stoop where Jandro shifted.
Smart kid to come find him. Even smarter to shift since it was the quickest way to heal a wound. But from what he’d heard, shifting under the influence of meth hurt like hell. And it must have been a job and a half to pull that shit off with a knife wound that would have killed a human kid. As it was, Knight couldn’t help but be impressed with Jandro’s quick thinking, and appreciative of Hot Social Worker for bringing him up here.
But of course, his sappy wolf had to take it a bridge too far. Jandro could have bled out from this knife wound if she hadn’t found him, his wolf pointed out. She saved his life.
Whatever. Ignoring his wolf’s adoring words, Knight patched the cub up as best he could. Then he gave the kid a sedative to keep him in wolf form until he was done healing.
He’d wait to get the whole story from Jandro when he woke up, but he already had a feeling about what had happened. Meth plus kid with not enough money to pay for meth but desperate equaled Jandro being lucky he hadn’t gotten shot. Or worse.
Yeah, the boy was lucky. But as Knight cleaned himself up in the sink afterwards, he could feel the old red anger start to percolate in the back of his mind. Why the hell was Jandro still here in Wichita and not living with his state pack in the country anyway?
“Do you have a shirt I can borrow?” Hot Social Worker asked, drawing him away from his dark thoughts. She was still kneeling beside the tub, stroking Jandro’s fur though he’d already fallen asleep.
“Yeah,” Knight answered, focusing on that. Focusing on her.
He brought her a t-shirt then waited in his empty front room, listening to the sounds of her cleaning up as best she could in the sink. She hummed a tune he recognized: the last number of Chrysanthemum, that opera his mother liked to listen to while grading papers.
“Do you mind if I have one of the beers I left in your prop refrigerator?” she asked when she came out. The blood was gone, but she still smelled of the boy’s whose life she’d just saved.
“Let me get it for you,” he said, rushing over to the fridge before she could. He wanted to do something to thank her even though she had no idea how important her decision to bring Jandro up here had been.
He was off tomorrow so he got out two of the zero-calorie gluten-free pale ales she’d brought over a few hook-ups ago (but had yet to actually get drunk on), cracking the first one open with his bare hand before passing it to her.
“Thank you. By the way, you have amazing hand strength,” she observed, before taking it from him.
He didn’t answer, just cracked open another beer for himself.
“I thought you didn’t drink.”
“Special circumstances,” he answered, taking a swig.
The beer was cool and crisp against his throat. Exactly what he needed after sewing up a kid in his bathtub.
“Probably not how you imagined this night ending when you sent that DTF text,” she said with a wry smile when they were done drinking.
“Now I’m wondering if you remember what DTF means?”
She
laughed. “Dog to fix?”
But he didn’t laugh with her. Calling a shifter a “dog” was akin to using the N-word in his culture. But she didn’t know that. She was only human. A fact his wolf needed to stop ignoring any day now.
She also doesn’t know what she did tonight, his wolf shot back at full defensive. That child might have died if she hadn’t brought him to the one person who could give him the help he needed.
Whatever, he answered his wolf. Then he set his empty beer bottle aside and took hers away, placing it on the counter. “Hey, Hot Social Worker?”
“Yes, Buddy?” she asked.
“You’re a good person. A real good person.”
She shook her head at him with a sexy smile. “Thank you. But why are you suddenly giving me compliments instead of telling me what to do?”
He sighed, sometimes hating how she often zeroed in on the real point even when he was intentionally beating around the bush.
Also because he did want to fuck her. To throw her down on the bed and tell her what to do. But…the kid was in the bathroom. And the meth in Jandro’s system would probably shift him back to human as soon as his wolf was done healing him. Knight couldn’t risk it.
“I appreciate you bringing him up here, but um…I’m not DTF anymore.”
An embarrassed beat of silence passed. Then she recovered with, “I completely understand.” As if eager to change the subject, she glanced over her shoulder. “How about the dog? He doesn’t have any tags, and if he survives, I’d like to make sure he ends up in a good home. I have a list of no-kill shelters…”
“Don’t worry about the…patient,” he answered. “I’ll take care of getting him to a good vet tomorrow. And I will make sure he ends up at a quality, no-kill shelter.”
“Oh, that’s kind of you. Thank you,” she murmured.
Then came another awkward beat before he said, “I can call you a ride if you need one but you should probably get going. I have to wake up early tomorrow.”
KNUD, Her Big Bad Wolf: 50 Loving States, Kansas Page 6