Aurora
Creed blurted out something that bizarre so fast that my mind couldn’t seem to put it together. I blinked at my brownie and then out at the kitchen.
“I beg your pardon? Could you repeat that?” I was in shock as he did, mumbling it for some reason, like he was embarrassed, but I couldn’t imagine why. I set down my fork and grabbed his arm, waiting until he looked at me. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need you to start at the beginning. That makes—I’m very confused.”
He awkwardly chuckled which was rather endearing for such a large man. “Yeah, I used to think it was fucked up crazy, but now I get the world is just fucked up crazy. My shit isn’t anything like your shit and—”
“It’s not a competition, Creed,” I said firmly. “One of the reasons I’ve hesitated in speaking in my support group is I don’t want to diminish what any of those ladies is validly feeling. I understand my situation is abuse and traumatic to an extreme level and I caused even more, but—everyone’s trauma is valid and their own.”
I smiled after saying that, realizing how far I’d come that I could accept that and say something so healthy.
“Not sure why you’re smiling at the idea of me being traumatized,” he hedged. He nodded when I explained. “Yeah, that’s a healthy thought. And yeah, not competing with you, but I hear you. I had a minute of thinking I needed to stop bitching and moaning because you had it way worse than me and for centuries.”
“You’ve also done more with paying for your sins and moving past your traumas,” I pushed. “All I’ve been doing is breathing and cooking, being selfish really.”
He studied me a moment and then shook his head. “You’re still trapped in your trauma, Aurora. That’s so not true. Breathing andfightingto be free is fucking amazing. You get out of fuckingbedafter what you’ve been through. That’s fucking amazing to me, woman. For real. I’d… You’re selling yourself short.”
“Thank you, but enough about me. I want to hear about you,” I countered, feeling bad that we were back to talking about me.
He let out a heavy sigh and looked younger and older somehow. Older because thinking about everything that had happened to him was like acknowledging the weight he carried with him. But also younger because he was going back to the beginning and felt like that boy again who suffered so much.
I knew both feelings and was apparently much,mucholder than him.
That didn’t matter much in the supe world, but it was also weird that I hadn’t thought about my daughters being two centuries older than the man I was… Something with. Interested in?
Interested in spending time with, but I didn’t think getting involved with like a man. That part of me was long since broken.
And would definitely be an issue since all men wanted certain things. Could I hope he was gay? I’d heard of people who had lasting relationships like that.
Or was that truly only in fiction.
“I’m an orphan,” he started easily enough, completely focused on the massive brownie sundae I’d fixed him. “It was all a con job, from the orphanage to saving me to give a single fuck about me. The wolf pack in New York City is the mob. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows the cops are corrupt as fuck there.
“I used to give bribes and grease palms for them like fucking candy. What I didn’t know until later was that theorphanagewas owned by them. It’s a shifter orphanage completely set up to fucking buy us kids basically. They adopt us into thefamilyand then we’re in the mob. They own us. I was raised like a cousin to the main family.
“They saved me. I owed them everything. The pack didn’t let no one fuck with me and I had a family—a pack. I was fucking grateful even if I didn’t remember the orphanage.” He snorted. “My ‘parents’ took me back there a few times a year to help the others who didn’t get adopted and always remember how good I had it.”
“Listen to me,” I cut in, grabbing his arm again. “You adopt a child out oflove. Everyone thought Ellie was mine, but I adopted her in a weird way no matter my sins. I kept her from her mother—legally her stepmother, but Ichose that. I chose to take on that role and she owed menothing. A child owes a parentnothing, Creed.
“We are the parent. We have children and raise childrenselfishlybecause it’s what we want. Yes, especially back then, it was expected of us. But we make the decision. You did not. You were born. That is biology. You did not ask for it. Can you and should you be grateful? Yes, but youowe themnothing for what they did. Gratitude and owing someone are different.”
He blinked at me for a full minute. “That’s the best way anyone’s explained it to me.” He swallowed loudly and focused back on his dessert. “Thanks, Aurora, really. I knew what theydid was wrong, but it still always seemed like I did have a debt that they took me in.”
“No, they are evil for using a child, investing in one that way. You investloveinto a child and hope for a loving family.Hope. It’s not a guarantee. It’s not a contract signed by the baby who had no say. All of it is the parents’ wishes, not the child’s commitments.”
“Yeah, they never loved me,” he chuckled darkly, quickly wiping his eyes. “I was a fool to think it was ever love. I thought if I just worked hard, did better—more than their actual kids they—”
“Start from the beginning,” I guided.
He let out a heavy, long breath. Creed then told me how the youngest brother of the New York City wolf Alpha adopted him when he was a toddler. He had no idea who his parents were, how he was found—any of it. They said the orphanage had no records of him or anything. That he was just dumped at a police station and the police brought him to the orphanage.
It was clear that Creed now thought that was all lies.
My spoon could be bent back to the right position.
He worked hard to help his “family” and prove that he was worth taking in, but apparently he did too good of a job. He shone too brightly ahead of their real kids and that was why he was set up.
“They fucking adopted orphans to take the fall for their crimes when they piled up and couldn’t not—someone had to take the blame, at least publicly. The cops couldn’t look that inept for so long. It had to look like someone was being punished. I wasn’t stupid. I knew we set people up, but it was when theyfucked up,” Creed ranted. “They deserved it then.
