Page 36 of A Surprise Baby for the Wolf Shifter

For hours the pain continued. I squeezed my eyes closed, begging for an end to the pain and I considered death to be a horrible experience.

Then everything in my body felt like it exploded, and all at once, the pain ended.

I crawled out of bed, in my wolf form. Seeing for the first time through my wolf’s eyes. I was uneasy on my feet and terrified out of my mind.

I headed downstairs. My parents would know what to do.

I inched into the kitchen, finding my dad at the table, drinking his morning cup of coffee, and my mom was making breakfast.

I made a noise. It was somewhere between a growl and a whine.

Both of my parents looked up at me.

It was then I realized just how huge of a mistake coming to them was.

Their eyes were wide with horror. Mom screamed. Dad jumped up from the table, knocking over his coffee. The brown liquid dripped onto the floor. Then he grabbed a knife from the butcher’s block and held it toward me.

I whined and desperately searched for an escape.

Dad was blocking the door. Mom started throwing canned food at me.

With nowhere else to go, I launched myself through the living room window and took off through the backyard and into the alley. There was a park nearby filled with thick trees. I decided to hide there until the sun went down… or I turned back into my normal self.

It wasn’t until the next day that I went back home. I knocked on the door, unsure of what to expect. Both of my parents opened the door and stood on the porch, keeping their distance from me.

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked.

“Son, we have to tell you something,” he said.

Mom nodded. “We didn’t think you needed to find out about this until later on in life, but we’re out of time now.”

I switched my gaze between the two of them. “What do you mean?”

“You’re adopted,” Dad said. “We’re not your real parents.”

I wasn’t sure of how to take that news. And then it got even better.

“We don’t know what you are, or why. When we adopted you,” my mother said, “we thought you were a normal, beautiful baby boy.”

“Not a monster,” Dad said. He spat out his words like they were poison in his mouth.

“You can’t stay here anymore,” Mom said. “I’m sorry, but we didn’t sign up for this.”

“We can’t help you,” Dad said.

Both of them walked back into the house and slammed the door in my face. Seconds later, the bolt lock clicked over.

I stared at the door for the longest time. I had nowhere to go. No idea of what to do, much less of who I was. Rather, what I was.

And as I stared at Gemma’s frightened form, I was right back there all over again.

Her reaction was the exact reason I had decided a long time ago to live alone and keep myself distant. To stay out of relationships because no one ever really meant what they said.

For whatever reason, my biological mother and father didn’t want me. I knew nothing of them. And my adoptive parents gave up on me as soon as they learned what I was.

After all, if your own family—adopted or not—turned their back on you simply for the curse I had never asked for, then why bother trying with someone else.

When my world first shattered and I learned the truth of what I was, I was starving, lost, and had no idea what I was doing. My only saving grace was with the man who had found me, broken, and beaten, in the middle of the Navajo reservation in Nevada.

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