Page 34 of Strays
Jo opens her eyes. There’s a crease between her brows, and when she looks at me, her voice is quiet but confused. “Are you saying you don’t want to sleep in the nest with me?”
“We want to,” Jay says quickly. “Of course we do, but if you’re not ready, that’s okay, really, we—”
“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” she says, cutting him off. Her voice doesn’t waver, but she’s not smiling either.
She closes her eyes, breathing slowly. “Can you... just sit here with me for a minute? I think we should talk. Before anything else.”
We ease onto the edge of the nest, careful not to crowd her. She sits up against the headboard, still holding the blanket in her lap like armor.
“I know I’ll have some struggles to adjust,” she says. “With us. With all ofthis. I wish I knew another nyra to ask what it was like for her, what it felt like when she met her mates and her whole heart and head got flooded with... everything. But I don’t. I’ve only ever known my mother, and she pretends she’s human.”
Jay tilts his head, listening. Shane doesn’t move beside me, but I can feel how tense he’s gone.
“Until a few years ago, I avoided anything even remotely related to gregalis. My parents always acted like... if I even talked about it, I’d wake something up inside me and go running off to marry a bunch of men instead of just one.”
She lets out a humorless snort. “And now that I think about it... maybe they weren’t wrong.”
We all smile, nervous. She keeps going.
“When I went to college, I started researching our species. And I felt drawn to it, to all of it. Slowly, I started to accept what I am. I even told people I was a nyra for the first time. No one at the school knew until then, and I ended up in the news. I think I was the first nyra in this country to go to college.”
There’s sadness in her tone, but pride, too. “My father wasn’t happy at all, but eventually, he found a way to spin it. He founded an evangelical council aimed at preaching to gregalis, using my mother’s story, and mine, as an example.”
Her eyes flick down to her lap. “The way he reacted drove us further apart. I already wanted to get as far away from him as I could, just to have space to figure myself out, and in the end the whole mess with the local news made it easier for him to let me go. It was the safest thing to do, because at that point we didn’t even know if any schools near home would take me; they would probably recognize my name on the application. So, I picked the farthest med school I could find. That’s how I ended up in New Jersey.”
She pauses. We wait. “When the Matching Program launched, my dad called me every day for a week. He never said the words, but I knew what he meant. He talked about the path he raised me to follow. About holding on to my values. I knew he was begging me not to even consider signing up.”
“But you did,” I say softly.
She nods. “Not right away. But a couple of months later, after a lot of guilt and indecision... I volunteered my genetic data. And I didn’t tell anyone. I told myself if it was meant to be, fate would decide.”
She exhales. “I got two matches early on. One was fifty-seven percent, the other sixty-two. I came to DC, went through the same fuss about being here alone and where they’d put me up for the night because they won’t let me stay inside the MAB. But when I met the packs, they weren’t my scent-mates. Both wanted to meet again, try for a non-scent bond, but I walked away.”
My stomach twists. I feel my brothers shifting, uncomfortable, beside me. So many things could’ve gone differently. She might never have volunteered. She might’ve settled with another pack. We might never have met her.
“And then, nothing. For years,” she continues. “I figured that was my answer. That I didn’t have true scent-mates. That maybe God had decided for me, and I was meant to live a human life.”
She gives a sad smile. “I tried dating human men, but it always felt... off. I didn’t know why. But even after years, I kept waiting for that call.”
All these years we were waiting for our nyra, I never thought she might have been waiting for us too.
“Then the call came,” she says. “Ninety-three percent. And I just... knew. I knew they’d found my mates. It was too high. It had to be you.”
Her voice trembles. “It was terrifying. I have a good life. I love my job, I have friends, I love living in Bridgeport. And saying yes meant risking all of it. It meant breaking my father’s heart. It meant walking into the unknown.”
She looks at her hands again. “I don’t even know why I couldn’t say no,” she whispers. “I just... couldn’t. The idea of being complete, of my body finally working the way it was meant to, I couldn’t walk away from that.”
She glances up. “Then they called again, telling me the meeting would be delayed... I almost cried with relief. I needed that time. Four weeks to prepare myself. Four weeks to try to believe that instead of a sinner turning her back on God, I was a nyra who’d been taught her instincts were wrong.”
My chest clenches. Back then we thought it was just bad luck that the school shooting happened the same week we matched with her. But now it feels like it happened the way it was supposed to.
She draws a breath. “I wish I could say I’ve let go of the guilt, but I haven’t. Not completely. I still feel like I’m doing something wrong. But I’ve made peace with the idea that twenty-five years of fear and shame don’t just vanish overnight. And if I don’t move forward anyway, I’ll spend the rest of my life letting those feelings decide everything for me.”
Then she looks at me. “So I came. And the second you walked into that hospital room and that birch scent hit me, I felt crazy. Like... fear, but also joy. Real joy. I felt alive. And confused. And high. Almost like I was...”
“Drunk,” I murmur.
She smiles. “Yes. Drunk. And then the scent filled something in me I hadn’t even known was empty until it wasn’t anymore. I know it’s going to take time for me to feel okay about all of this, but I’m open. Open to you. Open to wanting what I want, even when it feels shameful.”
