Chapter Three

No, I am not shitting you.

—Arnold Schwarzenegger

 

THOMAS WOKE UP in a quiet and small room. It wasn’t like any hospital room he’d ever seen before. Solid stone made up the walls and ceiling, not a stacked manmade material. He saw no mortar joints like every building he’d been housed in during his incarceration. No, this was old earth stone. Something ancient. Nothing but pressure, water, and time had made this. He knew a thing or two about rock.

Thomas lay in a comfortable bed in a room with modest furnishings. His father slept in an oversized chair, leaning uncomfortably. Conduit and light fixtures ran along the walls and windowless room, and medical equipment sat near his head. An IV line was in his arm, and a sheet and warm handmade blanket covered him.

Thomas rolled his head to the other side, wincing at the pain in his neck and shoulder. A door, only half open, led to a hallway with the same stone walls beyond his room. With effort, Thomas rolled his head back to the left and stared at his father’s harder face. His features differed slightly from Thomas’s childhood memory, not an old man but not as he had looked before he died.

Or didn’t die.

His hair, still light and straight like Thomas’s, was pulled back in an exhausted ponytail that appeared to be about to come undone. He wore faded jeans and big worn black steel-toed shitkickers. A clean, plain T-shirt stretched tight across his broad frame. How Thomas wished he’d taken after his father and not his mother.

Thomas licked his dry lips and swallowed. He blinked a few times, realizing his left eye was taped closed and covered. He tried to reach up, but his left arm was immobilized in what felt like a heavy cast. It felt numb and like a dead weight. Thomas realized he really could do nothing but just lay there. That knowledge also brought on the thankful feeling that he was alive.

“Dad,” Thomas whispered. He watched as his father’s legs stretched long, and he lifted his cheek from his palm and blinked a few times.

“Thomas,” Malcolm got out. He shot from the chair and headed to the door, where he barked out for someone to come, that his son was awake. And then he was at Thomas’s side.

“Don’t move around. How’s the pain?” Malcolm asked.

“You died,” Thomas said, and Malcolm hung his head just as a woman in scrubs came in. Their attention turned to her; Thomas assessed that she looked like a hugger.

She smiled down at Thomas. “We almost lost you there. But I’m happy to see you decided to stick around.”

She went over each injury and checked the status of the machines near his head. Thomas, ever-leery of anyone or anything medically related, noticed how the equipment looked very old. Her hand moved to the bottles hanging from the IV pole, glass, and with handwritten labels. Very old, he decided and turned his attention back to the nurse.

“Everything looks as I expect it should,” she said. “You were quite banged up but healing nicely now. There was an old break in your left arm that we reset from the second fracture during the accident. You’ll be in this cast for a few weeks.” She folded down the blanket so he could see.

Thomas blinked down at his arm, which was encased to his shoulder. Only his blue-and-purplish fingertips protruded from the end of the white plaster. He moved them, but they had a fat lip feeling. Two of his fingernails were entirely missing. The ugliness stood out starkly against the white sheet.

“Your eye… Well, dear, we’re just going to have to wait and should know in a few days if your vision will be alright. Glass from the accident,” she added. “We got it out. And you cracked your head pretty good, honey. Sorry about your hair, but you’ve been stapled and stitched. It will scar for now, and the hair will grow back.” She smiled at him sympathetically.

Thomas reached up with his good hand and ran it over his shaved head. He looked to his father. “My neck hurts,” he admitted.

She glanced quickly at Malcolm and then smiled again at Thomas. “I’m sure everything hurts. You’ll be black and blue for some time. Quite the tumble, but I suspect you’ll recover completely. It’s just going to take a bit of time and a lot of rest. Now, more importantly, for you to heal, we need to get some weight on you.”

She pointed to a tube that disappeared beneath the blanket, then frowned a bit and gave Thomas a severe look. “I understand you haven’t had a pleasant past. I also understand things are probably very confusing for you right now. But your body is too weak to heal on its own, so this will have to be in place until we can get you healthy enough to be on a regular diet. Do you understand?”

Thomas was compelled to say “Yes, ma’am” to this ample figured woman, who was kind, honest, and didn’t sugarcoat. She was pleasant but straightforward, and Thomas respected that. She was the tough grandmother type. One of those who would bake you cookies and ground you at the same time. Thomas smiled at her again. He couldn’t help not immediately liking her.

She smiled, nodded once, and fixed his blankets over him. “I’ll check on you again soon. Rest and recover.” She pointed to a side table. “And you can drink all the water you want.”

Thomas nodded, and his father poured water from the pitcher into a cup with a straw. He held it out for him to drink from.

“My name is Grace—Thomas; it’s nice to finally meet you,” she said and patted his good hand lightly. Then she pulled the door half closed as she left them alone.

Thomas looked back expectantly at his father.

Malcolm sighed and turned from him, sliding the big chair over with a single hand. He sat down, shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose, and squeezed his eyes tight. There was a long silent pause between them where neither one of them knew what to say.

“I’ve found,” Thomas started and swallowed hard. “When you dread saying something, it goes better when you just rip off the Band-Aid and spill it. Like Grace there, a real straight-shooter.”

His father let out a light laugh, shook his head again, and sighed. “Alright, but it’s a lot.”

“I can handle it,” Thomas motioned to himself at the state he was in. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I had no choice. I left and faked my death. Your grandfather died, and I had left our group here back when I met your mother. He was in charge for many years. When he died unexpectedly, that responsibility fell to me, and it wasn’t something I could refuse to take over. Your mother didn’t know about any of this. It wasn’t something I could tell her or she would ever understand. It wasn’t a place where she would be accepted. So I chose to leave. I would have stayed with you and your mother until the end of your lives, but things didn’t work out that way. I couldn’t see you or her. We have rules and laws that can’t be broken. Breaking them endangers our entire pack.”

Malcolm took a deep breath but kept staring down at his boots. “It hurt to leave you. So much happened, all of it out of my control. My hands were tied—first with the fire and then you being sent to jail. I couldn’t do anything to help you and it nearly killed me. Then, you were in the accident. I felt it because there is a death bond between a father and his son. It’s in our blood, our bloodline. We were coming, but it was so far away. I knew you were seriously injured and would likely die, but I couldn’t lose you again. So, I broke our laws and bit you; that’s why your neck hurts. Then, I brought you here to our homeland, our packhouse, back to Grace for medical treatment. You’ve been declared dead in that wreck, and you won’t be able to ever go back into the human world, Thomas. You are part of my pack now.” Malcolm sucked in a lung full of air before adding, “We are Wolves.”

Thomas blinked and then grinned. “Grace, more morphine, please.”

His father fought a smile but soldiered on. “We are human, but not. We shift to the Wolf and back to humans, but we don’t live among humans. We do engage some for supplies, but it is minimal. Our pack is very old-fashioned—think nineteen forties and never-changing. We live by the old ways, apart from humans. It has kept us safe for generations.”

He directed his attention at the ceiling and scratched at his chin. “We have strict laws. Our four gods—the Pillars—aren’t forgiving. Violating our laws means punishment, banishment, war, and often death. That’s why we aren’t supposed to mate with humans either. It’s against our laws because the offspring…it’s unpredictable if they will even survive. They aren’t born with what is needed to shift to the Wolf. That’s why you are the way you are. It’s my fault. Your mother was my mate, human or not, and I couldn’t deny our bond. I never imagined we could even have a child.”

Malcolm was quiet for a moment and swallowed hard. “I didn’t want to ever come back here. I hated this life.” He shook his head. “It was a punishment for having a half-human offspring. I’ve always struggled with obeying some of our laws; the rest, I respect and follow.”

He waved a hand as if to get himself back on track. “You were never expected to survive after your birth, but you did. Leaving you and your mom made me angry with our gods. It was a risk, but I bit you to try to save you—I wasn’t going to lose you again.” He glanced at Thomas and then back down at his clasped hands.

“You will have to endure this medical treatment until you are strong enough to shift. When you shift to the Wolf for the first time, your injuries will heal. For now, you are too weak for the shift. It would kill you.”

“Werewolves?” Thomas asked, wanting to laugh but knowing it would hurt too much.

“That is a human term,” Malcolm said with some disgust. “All Wolves are like me, like us. Just Wolves. There is no such thing as an animal that is only Wolf, just an animal.”

Thomas nodded slowly and took a long moment before he spoke.

“So, I’m gay. I just thought you should know since we are throwing it all out there for truth time.” One big reveal would be enough for now. He didn’t really think sharing his cross-dressing desires with his not-dead father or four imaginary gods would be wise. Few understood it, and only two people in his life had ever accepted it.

“I’m all for what you have going on down here in your dungeon,” Thomas continued. “Other than the catheter, it really is already far better than where I’ve been or where I was going. But I have a life partner, a very human soulmate. And I will under no circumstances give him up. You can bite him, too, if that’s what it takes, but if I go, he goes. That’s the deal. Thank you for the rescue, but I will not stay here if he can’t come too.” Thomas smiled and then closed his mouth and waited.

Malcolm frowned.

“What, no queer Wolves?” Thomas asked with a laugh that did hurt.

“No, it’s not that at all. There are many male-mated and female-mated pairs in our pack. That has never been an issue. It’s against our laws to turn humans. It isn’t done, Thomas. Or I would have turned your mother and brought her back here, the three of us.”

Thomas pointed at himself in an obvious way.

“You were never completely human, half Wolf,” Malcolm said. “And I did break the law.”

Thomas shrugged. “Well, it will be cool to hang out with you and catch up for a while—while I heal.”

“Thomas,” Malcolm sighed.

“Wait. If I bite him, would he turn into a Wolf?” Thomas asked with a criminal grin.

Malcolm pressed his lips together tight, and Thomas smiled more wickedly.

Thomas waved his good hand. “Solves that.”

“I expected a different response,” Malcolm admitted.

“For me to freak out?” Thomas sighed and then yawned wide. “No, I know when I wake up and the morphine wears off, I’ll be in the psych cell again, and this will all have been one hell of a bad dream.”

Malcolm leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “We will discuss it more when you wake up and realize I’m still here, and this is your new reality.”