The Shadow of Stars

Twenty Two

I slump down on the couch in his apartment, exhaustion hitting me like a ten tonne truck. My body only feels somewhat numb and I don't know whether that is due to the alcohol I consumed last night or everything else.

"So you're a werewolf?" Henry asks, handing me a mug of hot cocoa as he sits beside me. Gabe leaned back into the arm chair, his own drink laying dormant on the coffee table.

He promised to explain it all when we both immediately questioned his outburst and so here we were. He said he needed a coffee but considering he hadn't touched it, I think he just needed some time.

"No." His response comes quickly. "I'm human—fully human. My step-father is a wolf and all of my siblings are too."

Both of us sit in confusion. "How..." I start, a million scenarios running through my head.

Gabe sighs deeply, pain washing over his features in a flood. "My real father was a human. My parents had me as teenagers and he died when I was young. My mom raised me for the first few years of my life on her own, back when wolves had complete power, before the reforms and I don't remember much but I know she suffered."

A single mother to a small child with no income in a world like that would. Immensely I'd say.

"I do remember meeting him though. He found both of us at the shelter we were living in on duty and marked her then and there. Tore straight into the flesh of her skin while I screamed. I only remember it in flashes past that, the blood, the look on his face and the fact that I was left alone there that night after she blacked out."

My heart twists at the story, at the way his words become tight with emotion and his eyes well up. Henry and I barely breathe.

"Of course she woke up and I was brought back to her but it wasn't easy. He would never admit to it but he hated me, probably still does. I am a walking, breathing reminder of the fact his mate was with another man, another family aside from him—every fibre of his being goes against my existence. But he couldn't get her without me."

"She wouldn't even let him be in the same room as me in the beginning, whatever his reaction to my existence was it must've been enough for her to do that with good reason. We had our space and he had his, so long as she didn't try to leave him, and coming from having nothing I don't think she would have left regardless. We had everything we needed to survive with him, it was dependency on another level and I hate myself to this day for being the reason for her staying, if it were just her she could've left and fended for herself—or at least tried."

Tears do fall from his eyes then and he doesn't bother to wipe them away. "She was so scared of him, all I ever saw in her eyes was fear, as much as she tried to put on a brave face for me I saw it. And they fought so often I don't think they had a spare moment to even think of anything else for the first few years. Things didn't even change out of love—he tried, tried being kind and gentle and respecting her space but it never lasts with them. Ever." The look he sends me is so firm it make shivers ripple down my spine.

"He used what she needed most against her to get what he wanted. Which was me. It was a good education for having her sleep in his room as opposed to mine. Getting the privilege of leaving the house unsupervised to run regular errands for family dinner each night. A budget and one day a week where we could go anywhere provided he came, the zoo or the cinemas or the aquarium, in exchange for a weekly date between them alone."

I placed my now cold hot cocoa on the coffee table, still full to the brim. I felt sick hearing his story though I knew of so many before it. It twisted my gut in a different way knowing I could relate now that my life was like this.