Page 37 of Strays
I can’t help myself; I huff a laugh. “True,” I say.
“How…” she starts, then trails off.
After a moment, Shane speaks. “You can ask anything you want.”
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” she says. “I’m just curious… how did you guys end up in the Strays Program?”
It’s something we’ve only ever talked about with each other, but I want her to know us.
“I don’t know why my mother never had another child after me,” I start. “I remember how hard it was on her and my fathers, how anxious they were after every heat, hoping for another child so I wouldn’t be solitary… but it never happened. Then she went missing, and my fate was sealed. When I was ten, my fathers found out about the Strays Program through my grandfathers. A friend in D.C. told them about it before it even hit the news. I was one of the first kids donated to the Program.”
Jo squirms between me and Jay, shifting until she’s facing me. I can’t see her clearly in the dark, but I feel her gaze.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” she whispers. “How… how did she go missing?”
“She’d been so sad for so long that she finally decided to get help. She found a psychiatrist in Chicago who specialized in women’s mental health. She had an appointment with him that day. My dads dropped her off there, and she was supposed to wait for them to pick her up after. But when they got to the doctor’s office, she was gone. And we never saw her again.”
“You never found anything? Not even a trace?”
“Nothing. The police always said she probably ran away, but we knew that wasn’t true.”
“Why did they think she ran away?”
“Well... four years after bonding with my mother, my fathers found their scent-mate. And... you know.”
Now, more than ever, I know they could never have rejected Lydia. I’ve only known Johane for a few hours, and she’s already filled my future.
She sighs. “They couldn’t help it. So they kept them both, your mother and their new mate?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to sound ignorant or insensitive,” she says. “So if I say something wrong, please tell me.”
I brush my fingers lightly across her cheek. “Don’t worry.”
“If your mother had three mates, how couldn’t she understand your fathers needing two?”
I’ve never thought about it that way. Maybe because, as an aegis, it feels completely normal to me that a nyra would have three mates. But the idea of three aegis sharing more than one nyra, not so much. Still, I get her point.
I take my time before answering, trying to find the right words. “I think she could’ve accepted it if they’d actually needed two mates. Or even acted like they did. But the truth is… they didn’t. After they found Lydia, they didn’t want my mother anymore. At least, not as a nyra. They were polite; they cared about her, but they treated her more like a friend they felt responsible for. They were never affectionate. I don’t think I ever saw them touch her. They never slept in her nest. I think they only touched her at all during her heats.”
I feel Jo shake her head. “That’s so sad. For everyone. That’s probably why she never got pregnant again. From everything I’ve read about nyras, chronic stress can suppress ovulation.”
Silence stretches between us. I think she’s about to ask something, but before she does, Jay speaks up.
“My mother was a very stupid human woman who thought my father could survive without his brothers. She didn’t want anything to do with the rest of his pack; she just wanted him to live with her. And he was even more stupid than she was, so he tried.
“His pack was a Tier-Five, and they had been kicked out of a training quarter before he met my mother. Permanently unstable, all of them. And every time hespent a night or two at her place, away from his brothers, he got worse.
“He and my mother were on and off for years, but when I was nine, she’d had enough and decided to break up with him for good. Along with all his stuff she took from her apartment and dumped at his pack’s house, was me. But he clearly had no idea what to do with a kid. A year later, he saw a news story about the Strays Program. He told me to pack a bag and dropped me off at West Kempton the next day.”
She turns to him again. “I’m so sorry, Jay. You never saw them again?”
“Thankfully, no.”
Shane’s voice drifts from beside Jay. “My mother was human too. My fathers were soldiers, and she was a librarian at the base community center. She fell in love with them, and they loved her back. So they bonded. Not the way we will tomorrow, but they lived as if they had. They were together for over ten years, but they died on a mission when I was seven.”
“I think she felt guilty, because without the physical bond with a nyra, they stayed stuck at Tier-Four, with the worst deployments and assignments,” he continues. “She fell into a deep depression… and a few months later, she killed herself.
