Page 18 of Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
I pressed on the accelerator, weaving through traffic while my brain ping-ponged between a dozen different thoughts. The case… What if we found nothing? Dev… was he still alive? What would it be like if we found him dead? The missing wolves… were they really connected to this? How Maxwell was going to act at Undertone… would he be his usual grumpy self or actually try to blend in? Should I have worn the other shirt after all? Did he think I looked ridiculous? Why did I even care what he thought?
“Can you stop that?” Maxwell snapped suddenly.
“Stop what?”
He pointed at my hands against the wheel. “That. The tapping.”
I hadn’t even realised I was doing it. My fingers froze mid-beat, and I scowled at him. “I’m sorry my existence is so fucking annoying to you.”
“Do you ever keep still?”
An icy grip seized my heart as every muscle in my body tensed, the words cutting deeper than he could have guessed.
“Sit still, Rory! For god’s sake, what’s wrong with you?”My mother’s voice echoed from the past, sharp with frustration as I fidgeted through another endless Sunday dinner.
“Look at your brothers. Why can’t you behave like them?”Dad comparing me to my perfectly still, perfectly normal siblings who could sit endlessly without needing to move, to touch, to tap.
“You’re disrespecting the alpha.”Dad’s harsh whisper during a pack meeting, his nails digging into my thigh to force me still.
“He’s doing it for attention.”My father’s second-in- command, Tariq’s dismissive judgement when I couldn’t follow the strict formation patterns during pack runs.
“Just discipline him properly and he’ll learn.”Delivered with a sniff while I twisted my napkin into shreds, desperate to quiet the buzzing in my body.
“There’s something wrong with that boy.”Whispered behind hands when they thought I couldn’t hear.
The memories washed over me in a sudden, overwhelming wave. My throat tightened. The familiar shame burned hot beneath my skin—that broken feeling that had followed me from childhood. The constant disappointment I caused just by existing as myself.
I glanced over at Maxwell and caught him staring at me with an expression of dawning horror. His left temple twitched under his fingertips.
“Rory, I—”
“I have ADHD, you dickhead,” I seethed, gripping the steering wheel with all my strength. “So no, I won’t ‘keep still’ just because it annoys you. And fuckingstopreading my mind!”
Maxwell flinched as if I’d slapped him. His expression shifted to what might have been genuine remorse.
“Please accept my apology.” His voice was softer than I’d ever heard it. “I didn’t know. Nobody ever mentioned it,” he added, sounding confused.
“You don’t know how many times I heard it growing up.” Though to be fair, he now had a bit of an idea because he’d read my mind, the creepy bastard. The anger drained from me, leaving a hollow ache in its place. “When I got to sixteen, I finally saw a doctor about it, behind my parents’ backs. But they found out anyway, and then forbade me from even trying out ADHD medication. Said it wasn’t natural and it would suppress my wolf or some bullshit. They thought I just needed more discipline.”
Why was I telling Theodore Maxwell all this? But he was quietly listening, his usual judgement absent from his face, so I continued.
“I ignored them and picked up the prescription. Then, when my mum snooped in my room and found the packets, she threw them away, and I was locked up for three days.”
“Christ,” Maxwell said, eyes wide. “I don’t know much about ADHD,” he admitted after a moment. “I’m not sure I’ve met many people who have it.”
How many friends did Theodore Maxwell even have? I pictured him alone in an immaculately tidy flat, his footsteps the only sound as hewalked between empty rooms. Then I quickly tried to squash the thought in case he was listening again.
“So the medication helped you?” Maxwell asked.
I glanced at him, searching his face for that familiar judgement—that “god, what must he be like without meds, then” look I’d seen before. But instead, he seemed genuinely curious.
“Helped me? Mate, it changed my fucking life.” I drummed my fingers against the wheel, this time deliberately. “There are so many things I didn’t realise were ADHD.” I laughed, the sound edged with bitterness. “I thought I was just constantly overwhelmed because I wasn’t good enough to keep up with everything my parents wanted. But no… turns out I didn’t know how to tune anything out.”
We stopped at a red light, and I turned to face him properly.
“It was like my brain forced me to pay attention to everything in my surroundings all at once. Sounds are really loud—and that’s before you factor in wolf hearing—but on meds, I can actually tune things out. Focus on one conversation instead of drowning in background noise.” The light changed, and I pulled away. “And the emotional regulation—I didn’t realise so much of the spiralling was ADHD. Now I can have an anxious thought without completely losing my shit.”
Stay on topic, Rory, stay on topic.
