“He reminds me of you sometimes,” I whispered, and the admission hurt more than I'd expected. “The way he sees good in people who don't deserve it. The way he makes everyone around him want to be better than they are. The way he looks at me like I'm worth something instead of just a fuck-up who can't even keep his own pack safe.”
The wind picked up, rustling leaves in patterns that almost sounded like whispers. Like someone trying to speak throughthe static of too much distance, too much grief, too much time spent pretending I was fine when I was anything but.
“Dad thinks I don't remember much from when I was little. About what happened to you, I mean. He's wrong.” The words scraped against my throat like broken glass. “I remember you getting sick. I remember you crying when you thought no one was looking. I remember the nightmares.”
My hands clenched into fists, nails digging crescents into my palms. “I remember watching you disappear piece by piece, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. Couldn't save you. Couldn't even make you smile near the end.”
The waterfall roared louder, or maybe that was just blood rushing in my ears as seventeen years of suppressed grief finally found its voice. My wolf paced beneath my skin, agitated and desperate, wanting to shift so it could howl out the pain I'd never let myself feel.
“I stopped talking after you died,” I said, and the confession tasted like copper and regret. “Did you know that? I just... stopped. Because what was the point of words when the only person who understood me was gone?”
The breeze shifted, carrying that lavender scent stronger now, so real I could almost convince myself she was sitting beside me on this rock, patient and loving and ready to listen to all the things I'd never been brave enough to say.
“Everyone thinks I was traumatized by losing you. That I went mute from shock or grief or whatever psychologists call it when kids break down after watching their mothers waste away to nothing.” Tears were streaming down my face now, hot and bitter and long overdue. “But that's not why I stopped talking.”
I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, feeling about as dignified as a wet cat. “I stopped talking because I was afraid. Because the last thing I said to you was 'I hate you' when you toldme I couldn't go to Mason's sleepover because you were too sick to drive me there.”
She'd died three days later, and those words had been echoing in my head ever since.
“I'm sorry,” I sobbed, the words ripping out of me like they were taking chunks of my soul with them. “I'm so fucking sorry, Mom. I didn't mean it. I was just scared and angry and too stupid to understand that you were dying. That you were fighting something I couldn't see, couldn't help with, couldn't punch until it went away and left you alone.”
The wind rose to a howl, bending the pines and sending ripples across the pool in patterns that looked almost deliberate. Almost like someone was trying to touch the water from underneath, trying to reach through the barrier between worlds to offer comfort to a son who'd been carrying guilt like a millstone around his neck.
“I love you,” I whispered, voice barely audible over the sound of wind and water and my own ragged breathing. “I loved you then, I love you now, and I'm sorry it took me this long to come here and say it properly.”
The response came as a shift in the air pressure, a sudden warmth that wrapped around me like invisible arms. The scent of lavender grew stronger, mixed now with the smell of chocolate chip cookies and the vanilla candles she used to burn in the kitchen when she was having a bad day.
It could have been imagination. Could have been my grief-addled brain manufacturing comfort where none existed. But my wolf went still beneath my skin, recognizing something that bypassed logic and went straight to the part of me that had always known when she was near.
“I miss you,” I said to the clearing, to the wind, to whatever remained of the woman who'd given me life and love and the stubborn determination to keep fighting even when everythingseemed hopeless. “I miss you so fucking much it feels like drowning sometimes.”
That's when I heard footsteps behind me, careful and measured like someone trying not to intrude on private grief. I didn't turn around, didn't need to. There was only one person who would have followed me here, only one person who understood that some conversations needed to happen in sacred spaces.
“She used to bring you here when you were little,” Dad said quietly, settling onto the boulder beside me with the careful movements of someone who carried his own weight of memory. “Before you could shift, back when you were just a pup who asked too many questions and had nightmares about monsters under the bed.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice to work properly. Dad's presence was solid and warm beside me, anchoring me to the present when the past felt too heavy to bear alone.
“She loved this place,” he continued, voice soft with remembering.
I nodded, throat too tight to speak. The waterfall kept singing its endless song while Dad and I sat with our shared grief, two men who'd loved the same woman and lost her to something we still didn't fully understand.
“She worried about you,” Dad said, staring out at the waterfall like he could see her ghost dancing in the mist. “Near the end, when the pain got bad and the nightmares wouldn't stop. She was terrified that losing her would break something in you that couldn't be fixed.”
“It did,” I said simply, because there was no point in lying about it now. “I'm still broken. I just got better at hiding it.”
Dad was quiet for a long moment, and I could feel him weighing words like they were weapons that could either heal or wound depending on how carefully they were wielded.
“You stopped talking,” he said finally, and there was so much pain in those four words that it made my chest tight. “For almost two years, you just... disappeared inside yourself.”
“You used to sit with me for hours, trying to get me to say anything. Even just 'yes' or 'no.'”
Dad's hand found my shoulder, grip firm enough to ground me. “I was so afraid I'd lost you both. That whatever took your mother had somehow reached through death and stolen my son too.”
The raw honesty in his voice caught me off guard. We'd never talked about this, not really. Just danced around the edges of it with careful words and mutual avoidance.
“I wanted to talk,” I said quietly. “But every time I tried, all I could think about was that last conversation with her. How angry I was. How cruel.” I swallowed hard. “It felt like speaking would make it real again. Make me have to face what I'd done.”
“She died knowing you loved her enough to be angry at the world for taking her away from you.” Dad's voice broke on the words, seventeen years of his own guilt finally finding voice. “She died knowing that her son cared so much about keeping her safe that he threw a tantrum when she couldn't be the invincible mother he needed her to be.”
