Masked SheWolf

by Yara Gharios

  "Steven, this isn't what we came here for," Mom reminds him in a tone gentler than her stoic expression.

  "Why are you here, anyway?" I venture to ask, thinking that whatever it is, it can't be as bad as their reaction would have been if they find out Sadie knows my secret. "I thought you were going to that brunch with the pack?"

  "We were, we did," Dad tells me icily. "But then I got a call, and we had to have a family meeting."

  Choosing to focus on the topic and pretend to not notice his anger, I frown. "What call?"

  "From Berklee College of Music," he replies, and my body heat suddenly drops. "Apparently, you are late in sending in a recording that is required with your application, and you have until the end of July to submit one if you wish to get an interview or an audition."

  My dread is instantaneous. When the applications demanded my parents' numbers, I hadn't filled it out, obviously. I did give them our address, since I'm usually the one that checks our mailbox every day. However, I didn't take into consideration the fact that our address is listed with Dad's phone number in the books, and they could have easily found that. I must have forgotten my phone on silent and that's why Berklee called him.

  This is just as bad as them finding out Sadie knows. I remain speechless, and Dad takes that as an admission of guilt.

  "I cannot believe you would go behind our backs like that. I thought we raised you better!" he gradually starts raising his voice until he's yelling at the end.

  I flinch, but he doesn't stop or acknowledges it, although he does lower his voice again.

  "I thought we had a better relationship than that, I thought we trusted each other enough to be honest; instead we find you lying to us and going behind our backs, willingly putting yourself at risk of exposure!"

  Something about the way he uses the collective 'we' makes his lecture so much worse. An uncomfortable feeling starts to churn right beneath my heart and makes it beat faster.

  "What were you thinking, Michael?" Mom demands.

  The churning increases by a tenfold at the sound of my full name. "I was thinking that I want to do something for myself for once," I reply, and I'm just as shocked as they are by the steadiness of my voice.

  Normally, this is the part where I would be apologizing for my risky behavior and promising that I would be more careful next time. For some reason, I don't feel like doing that. I'm not sorry, and I'm definitely not afraid to let them know that.

  "I'm tired of doing this," I confess, "always hiding who I really am and want to be, all because someone may or may not find out I'm a girl, and may or may not use that information to harm me. Well what if they don't? What if I do go to college as a girl and no one cares?"

  "Dylan, you know what our kind would do if they found out, we've been over this a thousand times," Dad chastises me.

  Upon hearing my middle name, the churning in my heart turns into a suffocating burning sensation. "Do I?" I snap back. "Do I know that for sure? Because so far, two people have found out, and they're doing just fine with that information!"

  A collective gasp resounds from the six members of my family -well, five now that Mason's not here. A rational side of me is telling me that I need to take it back, or at least apologize for letting Cade and Sadie know my secret, but I can't seem to make myself care. I'm in a bizarre state that's alien to me, where I've lost control of my emotions and the words tumbling out of my mouth are not passing through brain censorship first.

  "What?!" Mom breathes. "How did this happen?! Who found out?!"

  I hold my head up defiantly. "Sadie found out about three weeks ago when she walked in on me singing, and Cade has known for two weeks because he thought we were doing something and attacked me, and I had to physically show him the truth," I say all in one breath.

  Mom is the only one who gasps again. "Dylan... what have you done?"

  The burning sensation is really getting uncomfortable now. "They are not going to tell anyone, I trust them," I announce through my building anger.

  Mom suddenly looks pained. "Dylan, why can't you see that all we want is to keep you safe?"

  That's when the heat in my heart explodes into the rest of my body, crawling over my skin and urging me to let it out of me.

  "What's the point of keeping me safe if I'm also a prisoner?" I shout. "Do you think I enjoy living like this? I spend my days worrying about everything I say or do, hoping it doesn't reveal anything about my secret!" I use my fingers to make air quotation marks.

  "I wonder why I don't have any friends," I go on screaming, "but then I remember I can't, or else they might get too close! I don't have a choice in anything; not what I wear, not who I hang out with, not even what I can do in my life! And the worse part is that I ask myself everyday, how could my own family force me to live like this and expect me to be okay with it? How could the people who are supposed to love me unconditionally and accept me the way I am, ask me to hide my true self even with them? It's pulling me in two, and I'm so f*cking tired of it all!"

  After my outburst, they all stare at me with wide dumbfounded eyes. Some instinct that is still submissive to them berates me for talking to my parents in such a way, but I'm still in the state of frustration and not caring what I do or say. The only reason I'm stopping is because I'm out of breath and my throat is starting to hurt from all the screaming. This time, Daniel is the first to speak, which is enough of a shock to quiet my mental voice that is continuing its rant.

  "Dad, something's wrong," he simply says. "Can you hear that?"

  For a second, I'm distracted.

  "Yes, I know," Dad replies calmly. Too calm. "She's having her first attack."

  What? I'm not attacking anyone, I angrily but silently protest, because my throat still hurts.

  My heart is beating so fast that my breathing is all over the place. It's like I've run a marathon. No, more like ten marathons. I feel a bit lightweight all of a sudden, and I fall back on my bed. They rush over me and hover so closely that it's suffocating.

  "Get away!" I snap angrily.

  "Give her room to breathe," Dad orders.

  All at once, they back away but remain close enough to touch me. I'm getting dizzy. This can't be good. And suddenly I understand what they were talking about.

  When werewolves turn for the first time, their five senses suddenly become heightened. That's what makes the transformation so painful. They learn to adapt to it with time, and the change becomes pretty painless later on, and even exhilarating.

  But there's another kind of change that happens after they've turned back to human form; their emotions become heightened. In wolf form, this is easy to control because you have an outlet for all that pent-up emotion; running and howling work the best, for example.

  But in human form, if not stopped, these emotions are externalized through physical violence, rage and, when it reaches its peek, an episode of blacking out where the person literally loses control of himself and wakes up not remembering what happened.

  Like with the first shift, the first attack is the most difficult because it's new, and fearing it only intensifies it. I've mentioned already that I've never "blown up" before. That's because I always keep everything bottled up, and I try to act as detached as possible in order to keep my secret and make my parents happy.

  I didn't expect for it to happen anytime soon, and to be honest, I was hoping I escaped having to go through it. Turns out I was wrong. My secret, the college argument, my family's anger at me; all of it was too much for me to bottle up, especially since I was also apparently harboring some resentments I didn't know I felt towards them.

  The sensation of all these emotions attacking me at once is overwhelming; anger, bitterness, sadness, frustration and guilt are coursing through me all the same time, and I don't know how to stop them or even let them out the right way. I understand now why they call it an "attack". Add fear and panic to the list of emotions flooding through me.

  I begin to struggle for breath when my hear
tbeat accelerates and becomes too fast for me to keep up with it. I'm afraid it might burst at any moment. It's never happened before, but that doesn't stop me from worrying about it.

  Either my family hears the rapid change in my heartbeat and senses the fear in me, or they see me gasping for air with terror in my eyes, because suddenly, they start comforting me in a way that completely contrasts their behavior only minutes ago. They all talk at the same time, however, and it's impossible for me to focus on just one.

  "... all right, darling, breathe..." Mom's voice is gently saying.

  "... calm your anger and then you'll..." Dad, obviously.

  "... think of Marianna and how..." Danny tells me, which yet again is surprising on its own. When did he become so observant when it comes to my mood and what I like?

  "... chocolate cake..." I want to roll my eyes at Nate's stupid reassuring words, but I can't do anything other than try to properly breathe.

  "... asked Andrea to be my mate..." What?

  My eyes widen as they find Connor. Seriously? I ask him with my gaze. The rest of them are just as surprised as I am, and they stop to listen to him.

  "Yes, yes, that's right," he encourages, his eyes softer than I've ever seen them. "You heard me correctly. I told Andrea about us two days ago, and I asked her to be my mate."

  "How did she react?" Dad asks him curiously.

  "Uh, she was excited," he admits in a somewhat embarrassed tone. "She's watched tons of movies and shows, and um, she kind of thinks it's cool. Although she was worried that I would find my soulmate one day and leave her, which was kind of weird, but I guess it could have gone worse. She could have rejected me."

  Focusing on what he's saying is distracting me. Little by little, I feel my breathing slowing down. I try to open my mouth to ask him something, but it's still difficult.

  He sees me struggling and goes on. "You were right this whole time; I've been a coward. But I won't be anymore. I love her, and it's about time I stopped hiding it."

  My lips finally touch each other and I can breathe again, which means speech comes back to me. "Took you... long enough to... admit that," I say in a raspy voice, which makes them all sigh in relief.

  The attack has been halted this time; who knows when I'll truly lose it. While I catch my breath and calm my raging emotions down, they stand there and wait for me. I try to ride it out as long as possible, because I don't want to hear Dad lecturing me again. But after about five minutes, it becomes apparent that I'm stalling and that I'm fine again. I can't delay the inevitable, so I sit up straight on my bed and face my parents.

  Dad takes a moment to just stare at me, and although he's not cold like he was when they first came in my room, his mood is now much worse; he's disappointed in me.

  "I'll tell you the truth, Dylan, I would have at least hoped that you would be honest with us about how you're really feeling," he says with such sadness that I feel much more guilty for saying those things to their faces. "You've never mentioned anything like that before, and I'm disappointed to think you don't believe you can tell me and your mother anything you want anymore."

  I try to search for my voice again, at least to say that I'm sorry I said those things and that I didn't mean them. I know he won't believe it though, because I don't think I do either. I can never hate my parents; I love them very much. But I really do feel trapped because of my secret and how much they push me to protect it. It's very tiring to keep doing that.

  "I'm going to let you rest now; I know how much of a strain the first attack can put on you, and you came pretty close to your breaking point," he adds dejectedly when I don't respond after a long silence. "As for the other two issues, we'll talk about them when you're feeling better."

  Then wordlessly, he and Mom stand up and exit my room, closing the door behind them. My brothers and I remain in silence for a bit.

  "Well that could have gone worse," Nate finally breaks the ice, making the rest of us chuckle.

  "Somehow I doubt it," I comment.

  "At least one thing came out of this," Danny hints. "Con's finally got a mate!"

  He and Nate start wooping and behaving like goofs while Connor groans and covers his face, although I can see the hint of a smile pull up the corner of his lips, which in turn makes me smile.

  "Can you please not?" Connor complains.

  "Oh, what did you expect? That we wouldn't say anything?" Danny teases.

  "He must have known that was never going to happen," Nate goes on similarly.

  Although I'm glad they're not talking about what just happened, for once, I decide to come to my eldest brother's rescue, since he's the reason why I just narrowly escaped having my first attack, and put him out of his misery.

  "You guys do realize that this only means he is one step closer to becoming the head of the family after Dad, right?" I point out smugly.

  One of the important parts of becoming the new alpha is the necessity of bringing a new heir. Some packs even use an interim alpha for a while until the next in line gets closer to having a son; in other words, until he chooses a mate. In our family, for instance, Dad has decided that the next in line is not necessarily the eldest; it's whoever brings an heir first.

  Mason was closer than any of us to accomplishing that goal, but there's a chance he'll want to make a family of his own with Marianna instead of living with the rest of us like a regular family pack. Now that Connor has chosen a mate, he's back in the running to be the next family alpha. Danny and Nate apparently hadn't considered that.

  It is precisely at that moment that Mason chooses to knock on my bedroom door and join us. He looks at our faces respectively, seeing none of that sadness and sympathy for me they were all feeling when he left us, and frowns in confusion.

  "What did I miss?" he asks.

  We stare at each other, not really sure where to start.

  Chapter 26

  Logan

  A pattern started to emerge after Cade and I have met with more than half of the families on my father's list; almost all of them have have a son who was kidnapped at one point. That can't be a coincidence. Not all of them were returned, like Jace.

  One of the families was as afraid as the Mariners and wouldn't even let us in. On a hunch, and because Cade thinks the police will turn us away again, we did some online research. Neither of us is very good at it, but I picked up a few things about this during my training that were helpful.

  We found out that not only was their teenage son Ben, the youngest boy in the family, kidnapped ten years ago when he was five, he's also still missing to this day. I presumed that they must not have taken the threat as seriously as the Mariners did, and they're now suffering the consequences.

  The only other still missing boy is Paul, but we couldn't talk to his parents or find out anything more about them because they moved a year after he was taken. We can't be sure if the families who turned us away have also gone through the same thing, but my gut is telling me that the kidnappings are no coincidence.

  This is the only lead we have, but unfortunately, all it does is make me so stressed out that Cade convinces me to put it on hold for a while. He's not as affected by this as I am because it's not as personal for him. And frankly, the only reason he's going along with it is because of me; like Reena, he doesn't believe it will lead to something the way I do. I've been taking Michael's advice and keeping Reena updated on what's happening with us. She even tagged along when we paid a couple families another visit. It's not doing much, though; she's against the idea even more.

  "Take a week off," Cade suggests. "Work on your love life. Be with your friends. Soak in the sunshine. Just enjoy your life for a bit. I will handle this until you're ready to get back to work."

  Naturally, I have to put up a fight, but it's only half-hearted because I'm exhausted, and I really could use a break. "We still need to see the families again and offer them our protection," I remind him. "We have to start with the Mariners."

  He puts his hand on
my shoulder to calm me down. This is my best friend speaking, not my beta. "I know that, that's why it will be the first thing we'll do," he guarantees.

  I finally relent.

  The first thing I should do is start making up my weeks of absence to Reena. My priorities get rearranged, however, when I get a call from Michael asking if he could come over after school. He sounds mad, although he doesn't say anything about it, but I immediately know he could use a friend. I tell him to stop by for a round of video games. I promised Jared and Sam that they could have the game room all weekend if they let me and Michael have it for the afternoon. It's the only way I know he will be comfortable enough to talk to me.

  It's the usual casual small talk and joking at first, but I know when he's about to start talking about what's bothering him when he hits the most sensitive topic.

  "Have you ever had a fight with your parents?" he asks.

  I'm surprised by the fact that I'm not bothered to talk to him about them anymore. "Well my mom died when I was six, so I don't remember any fights I might have had with her," I admit. "They might have involved me not wanting to go to bed, eat my vegetables or put my toys away."

  I have come to learn that humor and honesty are the best way to approach things with Michael. It's a tactic that puts him at ease, and is a good way to judge his mood, based on how much he responds to it.

  "What about your dad?"

  He didn't joke back. Which means it's not a random question. But he didn't make a grave comment either, which means it's not a very serious problem.

  "My dad was not always around after she died," I tell him seriously. "He had a minor drinking problem for a while, as I told you, but he got through it."

  I'll never forget his face when he hit rock bottom; I was only twelve, and he came stumbling into our living room, calling for me like an adult child who was just barely learning how to walk and talk and didn't yet have a handle on either.

  He told me to get my uncle before he passed out. That was the last day he ever had a drink. It was also around the time he started visiting lone families and was gone for most of my life.