Secret Daddy

by Liam Kingsley

  There was nothing I could do. So I kissed my son gently on his cheek. “I’m sorry I don’t know how to help you with this, Brocky,” I said as I ran my hand over his hair.

  “Do you think my other dad would know?” he asked quietly. It was like a shot through my heart.

  When I’d hired the private investigator to look for the gorgeous guy I’d slept with after a big night at the Cove Brewery, he’d come up with nothing, saying that he needed more info to go on. But what was I going to tell him? That he should be looking for a wolf? So that led nowhere, and I was left with a huge weight of guilt and a son who I didn’t know how to help.

  “I’m sure he would,” I admitted. “I’ll keep trying to find him, okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.” Brock nodded then closed his eyes. “I really, really, really want you to.”

  I bit down on my bottom lip to stop from letting out a soft sob. “I’ll do my best,” I promised quietly, then watched as my boy quickly drifted off to sleep.

  All I could do was my best.

  3

  Gavin

  The backstage area of the gaming convention wasn’t particularly glamorous, but that was par for the course. The warehouse on Silvercoat Way, was full of upholstered room dividers, a makeshift coffee station, and a lot of dust. As I waited for the event to start, I picked up on the smell of superglue, synthetic fabrics, and glitter. Cosplay stuff. The hoards must have been entering the arena. Soon enough, the place was filled with the squeals, cheers, and chatter of thousands of nerds vying for a photo op with their favorite gamers.

  Luckily, I wasn’t on my table until later in the morning. I had an hour to kill. I filled up a paper cup with thick, burned coffee and sipped at it while the opener—Carol, a British developer of a cute romance game—did her Q&A.

  “What size shoes do you wear?” someone in the audience asked. I could hear the desperation in his voice and my stomach turned.

  “Uh, I think I’m a UK nine,” she answered in her adorable accent. “Next question?”

  “Can we see them?” someone else asked.

  “See…what? My shoes? Right here, they’re Vera Wang.” She giggled nervously, and I guessed this was her first convention.

  “No, your feet!” a gruff man yelled.

  “Can we see your feet?”

  “Please, just a glimpse?”

  The absolute lack of game these guys had was giving me severe second-hand embarrassment. I needed to get the hell out of here. I downed the rest of my coffee, grimaced at the taste, and then headed out into the arena. The best part about being a game developer is that most of the time no one knew who you actually were. Like most gamers I hid behind a handle, and though my game had made me rich, I was mostly anonymous. Yes, I’d had my photo taken, but it wasn’t often posted online, and unless someone specifically brought me up into the limelight, I usually stayed in the shadows. So, with that in mind, I strolled through the aisles with the hopeful assumption no one would recognize me.

  Just another middle-aged nerd.

  I glanced around and found that I was right. Everyone was either over forty, or under twenty-one.

  I stopped at a stall filled with custom made, glittered game controllers, and was browsing the colorful array when I caught a scent. It was faint and it faded quickly, but it was like nothing I’d ever smelled before… Floral… Sharp… With an edge of cottonwood trees.

  “Excuse me,” I mumbled to the stallholder. I turned and tried my best to chase the scent. I hurried along and pushed through a group of teenagers who were taking up space by standing in the middle of the aisle.

  “Hey, man! Watch it!” one said as I knocked his backpack.

  “Sorry,” I said absently, focused on trying to find that cottonwood trail again. But as I rounded a corner and found myself back at the Q&A table, I realized I’d lost it. All I could smell was the hormone-filled sweat of the teens and the overwhelming stink of glitter glue. I let out a frustrated grunt and ran a hand through my hair.

  “Uh, Gavin!” I looked over and found Carol waving to me. Her crowd turned to look at me, too. “This is my friend, Gavin Stanton.”

  A murmur of surprise rocked through the crowd. I glanced from Carol to the crowd. I gave everyone a short wave and was about to scurry away when she continued with my introduction.

  “He’s the developer of RuneMaze,” she said, beaming at me. Now everyone was looking at me, and a loud cheer started up in the middle of the audience and spread throughout them.

  “And I’m done.” Carol quickly stood up and rush backstage. A few of the weirdos who had been heckling her let out some groans of complaint, but they were drowned out by people clapping and whistling and starting to throw questions at me.

  “Woah, woah, woah!” I said, holding my hands up defensively. “No Q&A from me. Just signings. I’ll be back here in a few of minutes!”

  People were starting to get out of their seats and make their way over to me, so I did my best to race to the backstage area without being mobbed. I got through a shitty plastic curtain just in time, and gave the security guard a look that said, “You gonna do your job?”

  He just grunted, but luckily most people who are obsessed with video games are also good at following the rules, and no one tried to bust into the backstage area.

  By the time I went back out there, the majority of the weird crowd had dispersed. Or so I thought. I could only see a few people lining up for their meet and greet opportunity, but when I sat down at the table I had a better angle to see it was just the front of a very, very long queue. The line snaked down the aisle and through the convention center. I raised my eyebrows and let out a long whistle.

  “Uh, hey buddy?” I asked the security guard. “I’m going to need another one of those nasty coffees from the backstage area. Would you mind?”

  The guy just looked at me like I was asking for a major favor.

  “I’ll sign whatever you want,” I offered.

  A sly grin spread across his face, and he disappeared behind the curtain. When he came back, he handed me an oversized cup of that burnt black tar and dumped a pair of extra-large women’s underwear on the table in front of me. My eyebrows shot up and I looked up at him with suspicion.

  “Are these…what you want me to sign?” I asked as I cautiously reached for my sharpie.

  He grunted and nodded.

  “And to whom should I make them out to?”

  “No-one,” he said.

  “Well, alright,” I said, then scribbled Dear No-One, Enjoy the puzzles herein! Gavin xo

  With the security guard pleased, I motioned for the organizer to announce that the table was open and I got on with the signing.

  It was off to a good start. Half an hour in and halfway through my coffee, I’d realized the people who I thought were weirdos were actually really nice and just wanted to thank me for making a game they loved. As I took a short break to sip my coffee, I wondered why I’d been so resistant to doing these meet and greets. When the game had been released, I was hitting the booze pretty hard while I toured the gaming conventions back then, and my memory was more than a little hazy. Maybe I’d had a bad experience at one and painted the rest with the same bad brush.

  I smashed through another hour of signings and was thinking about taking a break when I caught that cottonwood scent again. I looked up, intrigued. The line in front of me was full of kids in costumes—aliens, gladiators, three different Supermen, and someone dressed up as an entire games console. Kids, no adults. I frowned, not understanding why I was getting such an enticing scent when there were only kids around. I sighed but continued to search the crowd, spotting a kid who wasn’t dressed up as anyone. He looked around ten but was big for his age, and he was holding an early copy of RuneMaze to his chest and staring at me eagerly. He looked vaguely familiar, and I assumed he was a friend of one of the kids from the pack.

  “Make it out to Lucas, please,” a girl in a warrior costume said as she slid a game controller over to me.r />
  “L-u-c-a-s?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s for my brother, he’s really sick…” She sighed softly, and I carefully signed her game controller.

  “Want a picture?” I asked, glancing over her head to the search the crowd again. That’s when I caught a glimpse of an adult’s hand resting supportively on that other kid’s shoulder. I craned my head, but couldn’t see who it was.

  “Nah, it’s okay, I have to go now.” The girl grabbed the controller and ran off.

  I almost stood, wanting to see who that adult was, but another kid pushed a game across the table, waiting for me to sign it. Suppressing a groan of frustration, I quickly surmised if the adult was with the kid, and the kid was only a few people back…

  I got through the next signings as quickly as I could, that intoxicating scent growing stronger by the second, and I suddenly had an inkling of what that scent meant… By the time the kid was up next, my heart was racing. I looked up and smiled at him, expecting to see an adult with him, the one I was positive I was getting the scent from, but the scent had practically faded, and the kid was alone. But, as our eyes met, I almost fell off my chair. The kid had my eyes, and that familiarity I thought I’d noticed earlier… It was because he looked just like me. At least before the gray hairs and wrinkles had set in.

  For several seconds I didn’t know what to say, how to react. My wolf nudged me, and I reflexively pulled his game closer to me to start signing it while trying to figure out how to get him to talk to me, to tell me who he was and who his father was because…

  “I just wanted to ask, um… When you did the game, did you put the puzzles in first and then build all the walls and bad guys, or did they go in last?” the kid asked in an adorable, assertive voice.

  “That’s the best question I’ve heard all day,” I told him honestly as I leaned forward, a fierce understanding blooming in my chest.

  “Really!” He smiled and I couldn’t help but grin back.

  “Most of the puzzles went in after we built the walls, but the bad guys went in after that. Though some levels are different. The Castle Den, you know it?”

  “Yeah! I was playing there last night!” he said excitedly. “It’s really hard.”

  “It can be, but the more you play the easier it gets,” I told him, loving his enthusiasm. “So, what name do you want on here?” I hoped the information would give me a starting point on finding out more about him and where he was from.

  “Can you sign it to FangHunter? That’s my name on the live game.”

  My eyebrows shot up. The same FangHunter I’d often felt drawn to? Had to be.

  Just then, the cottonwood scent came back, hitting me like a shot of caffeine. Every single one of my senses kicked in, and as I looked up, I inhaled sharply. A gorgeous man in a band t-shirt stood beside FangHunter.

  “Sorry, Brock, I didn’t think you’d move up the line so fast,” he said in an oddly familiar voice, as he ruffled the kid’s hair.

  “It’s okay, Dad. This is Gavin, he’s just signing my game.”

  Dad. So this was the kid’s father, and he was definitely the source of that heady scent. As I gazed at him, taking in every detail of his hazel eyes and dark brown hair, to the little dimple on his right cheek, I could barely control my wolf. I felt its paws burrowing hard and fast against my skin, urging me to shift, to lunge, to get closer to this man.

  Mate.

  I couldn’t shake the word from my mind.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said with a polite smile. “C’mon, Brock. We’ve been holding up the line.”

  “W-would you like a photo?” I managed to stutter.

  “Yeah!” Brock cried.

  “Are you sure?” The guy looked at me then at the restless crowd behind them.

  “Of course, c’mon,” I said, standing and urging them to join me. Brock rushed forward while his dad took out his phone and started taking snaps. We threw up some hand symbols from the game and did a goofy high-five like the characters do at the end of the harder levels. I did my best to focus on it, but my eyes kept roaming away from the camera lens and down the long, lean body of Brock’s dad. I didn’t know him or remember him, but we damn well had to have met about ten years or so ago, I was sure of it.

  “Alright, we have enough for a whole photo book,” Brock’s dad said as he lowered the camera. “C’mon, Brock. Kennedy’s waiting by the car.”

  Brock suddenly threw his arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug.

  “RuneMaze is my favorite game ever,” he said, a light shining in the exact shade of blue eyes as mine.

  I awkwardly squeezed him back and looked over his shoulder to his dad, who was gazing at me with a strange look in his eye. Just as quickly as it had happened, the kid let go and hurried off. And then his dad was gone too.

  No, shit, they couldn’t go!

  “Hey, buddy, you’ve got a restless queue, let’s get this moving,” the security guard said.

  I shook my head. “I’ll just… I need a break,” I said, thumping the “BACK SOON” sign on the table and ignoring the groans from the line. I grabbed a bag of merch and games from the sales table and chased the scent, frantic about losing it.

  I followed it out to the parking lot and saw Brock and his dad walking away.

  “Hey!” I called out. The dad turned around and looked at me with raised eyebrows. He slowed down and came to a stop as I raced over.

  “I, uh… I wanted to give you these,” I said as I held out the stack of merch and watched as Brock’s face lit up with unbelievable excitement.

  “What? Oh my god!” He happily took it all from me, fumbling it as he tried to hold it all in his arms.

  “Oh, we can’t,” the dad said as he took the t-shirts and guide books from his son before they spilled onto the ground. “It’s too much.”

  “No, really. Brock had the best question I’ve heard all day, and it was really nice to meet you both,” I insisted. “It’s my pleasure.”

  The guy swallowed nervously and I caught his eye again. Human, of course. If he’d been a shifter, he would have felt this intuition too. He would have been all over me, wanting to mix our scents and mark each other… Instead, he just held out a hand.

  “Well, thank you. I’m Kyle.”

  “Kyle huh?” I took his hand. “Gavin.”

  “Oh, I know,” he said with a laugh. That same feeling of being hit with caffeine raced through me again, and heated tingles started from the place where our skin touched. They raced up my arm and landed in my chest where my wolf yelped, leaped, and howled. I clenched my jaw and took in a sharp breath as I resisted the urge to shift right there and then.

  Just as quickly, Kyle pulled his hand away and I regained my senses.

  “Do you have lots of cheat codes and stuff?” Brock asked. I dragged my eyes away from Kyle and tried to make out what Brock was asking.

  “Cheat codes? For RuneMaze?” I asked.

  “No, for other games. I like how hard Runemaze is, I wouldn’t want to cheat at it,” he said as he looked at the t-shirts he was holding in his arms.

  “I have some cool codes for turning the walls different colors, and there’s even one where you can turn the bad guys into donuts.” I grinned as Brock’s face lit up again.

  “Well that actually sounds pretty cool,” Kyle said, sounding genuinely impressed.

  “Would you want to get some dinner tonight after the convention? We could chat more about the games…” I asked, internally grimacing at how damn nervous I sounded. Where was my game? I was sounding like one of the weirdo nerds. Next thing I’d know, I’d be asking to see his feet.

  “Tonight?” Kyle asked, sounding very hesitant.

  “Yes!” Brock said, bouncing on his heels. “Please, Dad? Can we? Please?”

  “I have to prepare for work…”

  “Don’t lie! You don’t have to do work on the weekends!” Brock remarked. “Please, Dad. Please. Gavin’s my gaming hero!”

  I gave Kyle an
apologetic grin, but I wasn’t going to back down. No way was I letting my mate walk away without getting a promise to meet me later.

  “Oh geez, alright. How am I supposed to say no to that?” He laughed and ruffled Brock’s hair like he’d done earlier. “What time?”

  “I believe I get out of here at seven. Maybe eight. I’ll check with the organizer and text you,” I said, motioning for him to hand me his phone. He hauled the merchandise from one arm to the other then fished his free hand into his pants pocket while I held back a groan, wishing I could be doing that for him. Once he got his phone out we exchanged numbers, and I watched with both sorrow and elation as they walked away. I was sorry to see them go, but absolutely delighted by having secured a date for the coming evening.

  Back inside, I found Nicole standing by my table, looking at her watch and frowning.

  “I’m here! I’m here!” I said, holding my hands up

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked in a tight whisper as she motioned over her shoulder to the restless crowd.

  “I…think I just met my son,” I admitted.

  “Excuse me!”

  I gave her a quick grin before I turned back to the crowd and called over the next person in line. My sister growled but disappeared, and I focused on the task at hand: getting through the line as quickly as possible so I could get the fuck out of that nerdfest.

  After another hour I was at my wit’s end, and my coffee had run out. When I went to ask the security guard for a refill, he was nowhere to be found. I threw up the “BACK SOON” sign again and raced to the back where I found Nicole waiting to ambush me.

  “What do you mean your son?” she hissed as she grabbed my arm tightly.

  “He looks just like me,” I said. “But the thing is, I think his dad is my fated mate.”

  “What? Seriously, Gavin. You’re telling me you have a son with your fated mate? Why the hell did you not know this?”