HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 187

Chapter One Hundred and Eighty Seven

You know what's fucked up? 

Like, seriously, ultra, mega fucked up? 

The fact that I hadn't had a single truly relaxing moment since my twenty first birthday. 

The relief washing over me like cold ocean waves made me realize, in a detached sense, that the last time I'd had the chance to feel fully relaxed was that day I'd been lazing in the sun-warmed sand that graced the shores in front of our old beach house, water lapping at my cloven hooves.

I mean, sure, I'd had some relaxing moments, but they were always overshadowed by something else. With Echo, even when we'd been cuddling together, or doing domestic stuff, or having conversations about emotions and our somewhat new relationship and our possibilities for the future, I'd constantly been worried about him having a seizure, or getting sick, or doing something that would put too much strain on his body, which could possibly cause his death.

With Luka, Sasha, and Yuma, another fresh wash of worries and anxieties had come along, like how my dad would react to me acting more like a satyr, the dangers of learning magic after the night Yuma and I had nearly been swallowed by roots, wondering if other satyrs would judge how different I was from them physically, psychologically, and more as a mixed species.

Hell, even meeting Katrina hadn't been calming--I'd braved the most dangerous historical storm in modern history and endured a house rolling on top of me with four to five hundred mile-per-hour winds shredding the landscape just to keep her, her brother, and Woody's kids alive, only to get kicked in the head and labeled as a monster. Sure, she'd mended things and befriended me after, but it wasn't like I hadn't been stressed out over it.

My college environment hadn't been free of stress, either, what with Erika's ex boyfriend, Dylan, being a psychopathic sexual predator who was running, or at least involved in, a literal drug ring that put many girls--including but not limited to some of my friends--at risk for date rape. That didn't even include the risk of being exposed as someone who wasn't human by other people, all just to take college classes I was no longer even sure would help me achieve what I really needed and wanted to become happy. 

I truly didn't know if college was something I wanted anymore since I still felt like I'd been searching for my happiness and sense of worth in the wrong place, and I'd felt that way ever since the night I'd danced with Luka as a satyr for the first time in my life. For that one night, I'd felt happier than I ever had trying to fit in with my werewolf family.

That one night had changed everything inside me.

And thanks to that, I'd also started feeling anxious and stressed about potentially hurting my packmates, because if I ever chose to admit I'd been happier acting like a satyr for just one night than I had in all the years I'd spent trying to be a werewolf, that would be the end result. I'd wind up hurting everyone I loved because it would mean acknowledging that I was a satyr, not just a werewolf with the body of one, but a satyr who happened to have been born with lycanthropy. 

It would also mean admitting that I wasn't just Jak's son, but the son of the same piece of shit who'd damaged them all in the first place, too--the monster responsible for my existence.

It had literally been one thing after another--from the moment Erika had dropped a water balloon on my face, life had begun to spin for me, to change, and the pieces of my puzzled life had started sliding into place. Or maybe, instead, they'd unraveled... I literally didn't know.