Page 69 of Forget Me Not

“I’d hoped it would be different when I sent you there.” Calvin said it as though he’d said it before. “Ray and Penn were detectives. I’d hoped it would be different. I didn’t realize then, didn’t want to, that the whole thing was…”

“Dad.” Cal stopped him, voice thick. “He’s never said I can’t. Never asked me not to. He just… would go tense. Even more than usual when in public. Say ‘fine’ but I could see his hackles up. His colors… Penn’s colors… I stopped going unless I had to. I thought it was making things easier. Now, I don’t know. I think he needed me. Or someone. More than just Penn, who had to be dealing with her own stuff.”

“Cal.” Calvin was gently stern. It shouldn’t have soothed Ray, but it was probably more that it soothed Cal. Cal took a deep breath and then released it. Calvin waited a second, two, then went on. “Maybe it did help. Maybe it was good at first, but you forgot you are Lis’s son, and more or less married to a werewolf.”

“They’re soemotional,“ Cal confided in a whisper, like a familiar complaint, before returning to their quiet discussion. “I had to protect him, even from himself and the wolfy instinct to keep me safe.”

Calvin sighed. “In my admittedly limited experience, wolves, kid, are not unlike dragons. I’ve been keeping an eye on that case up north, reading things. There’s some good books on the subject in my book club. My point being; dragons choose dragons. I’d imagine wolves choose wolves.”

“Not half-fairies?” Cal didn’t put much effort into his joke, if it was one.

“Lis’s son,” Calvin repeated himself firmly. “That’s who the wolf chose. Not anyone else.”

“Chose.“ Cal snorted as if that was funny, as if he thought Ray hadn’t chosen him, or worried that Ray wouldn’t have without the bond telling him to.

Ray raised his head and blinked to realize their conversation had gone on without him while he’d stared into space and wondered what someone else, a human detective, would have done when confronted with Callalily Parker calling him his happiness.

“They are supposed to be his pack.”

“Some of them are,” Calvin argued, more calming than forceful. “But they are not in charge of that pack, are they? What did we tell you when you were little in all of your bedtime stories?”

“You mean the ones about Cal, prince of two kingdoms?” Cal asked, fond and annoyed at the same time. “Those were stories for a lonely half-fairy kid who hadn’t met his Benny yet, or was separated from his Benny while Benny was at summer camp, although I’m glad others find something in them.”

“The point of those stories was to show you how strong you are.” Calvin still did not get forceful, or even raise his voice, but Cal sighed as if his father had scored a hit in some debate. Calvin was not about to let go of the topic. “They can’t even handle the village without Ray and Penelope. Beings aren’t confined only to the village anymore. We’ve got one married to a state senator, a former mayor of this city, for Pete’s sake. They can lash out all they want—and they will, and they will strike hard. But it’s different now. Maybe… maybe it’s time to try moving forward again. The last real push was when I was working, Cal. Then just before I left, there he was. Theretheywere, the two of them. I hoped…. Maybe the wolf chose you for a reason.”

Ray couldn’t hear even the faintest rustle of Cal’s wings. He imagined Cal utterly still and didn’t like the image.

“What if…” Cal stopped, then started again. “What if he didn’t choose me? What if he was just stuck with me and decided to go on with it? I know that’s nonsense,” he tacked on quickly before Calvin could do more than draw in a breath. “Sorry. Late night thoughts. That’s all.”

“Hurting you hurts Ray. I don’t think the origin of his feelings matters, in the end. He loves you now—or will again, I have no doubt.”

“Very fatherly of you to say so.” Cal, unlike his father, tried for sarcasm. His voice was much too wobbly to pull it off. “I don’t think,” Cal got even quieter, almost muffled, as though his face was hidden, “Dad, I don’t think I supported him right. I should have pushed, maybe. Or gone in more to force them to do something or say something to make him finally accept what they are. But he was worried they would think he was a beast, an animal, if he reacted. And now…”

Calvin cut him off there. “Ray has never lost control for anything and never even come close for anything less than you. But if he did, and he did it to defend his mate, that is a choice he would be responsible for, Cal. Not you. He wouldn’t want you to.”

“But I’m keeping him,” Cal stated, losing the wobble for those four words.

Calvin didn’t argue. He said, “And Ray lets you,” in a tired, pointed way. Maybe that had also been said before. But he paused and neither of them spoke for a while afterward, as if this time, Cal was listening. “Kid, Ray would do anything within his power for you. More than even he knows, probably. Instinct and all that. When you get stressed, or worried, you run to him, and he picks you up, every time, without fail, no matter what he’s doing. You keep him but he keeps you too.”

“Fairies choose fairies?” Cal asked tartly. “Is that like deciding you won’t be kept instead of letting the fairy who loves you stay with you?”

Silence on the other end of the call, although Calvin hadn’t hung up.

Cal was apparently in the mood for fairy honesty and he was ruthless with it. “You retired early because of how they treated her, didn’t you? Even though you told her to leave you. You let me think it was your heart without ever actually saying directly that it was. You let me think you were scared of aging. You letherthink that!”

“My heart was the official reason,” Calvin said.

Callalily made a scornful noise. But he didn’t sound angry, and Ray doubted his scent would hold any rage if Ray went to him. “You couldn’t take how they talked about her. How they treated her and all the other fairies and everyone like the fairies, unwanted or poor or weird, to their eyes. And you pretended it was about age and said you were burned out, and made jokes about your ‘bum ticker,’ but now you’re…”

“I was good at what I did, but I didn’t have to do it.” Calvin shut his son down in a rough voice, far less composed than he had been a moment before. “There were a lot of things going on in the city, in the department then that I…. Things are different now—not in that way, in how it can be talked about now. It didn’t… hell, kid. I don’t know.” He exhaled heavily and Cal’s wings finally, finally, moved, a hushed shiver. “It was easier then to tell myself it was worth it. Maybe especially when I was the only one in the village who seemed to give a damn. But maybe that’s what you tell yourself when you’re being used to prop up… This is a hell of a talk for this hour.”

Calvin had decided it was late, after all.

“Go on anyway,” Cal ordered.

Calvin went on. “But… your mother could have anyone. Anything she wants. And she should. Without a weight around her neck. Without threat. Without worry or danger. That much of what I told you is true. That is the best a human can do in return. At least Ray should be with you for most of your life, Cal. That’s all I could ask for you. That you get to keep your happiness for as long as you can.”

“The hypocrisy,” Cal muttered, then sniffed and sighed and probably scrubbed his face.

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