Conleth shook his head. “That’s not why you don’t want to go back.”
“What would you know about it?” He was mad now, real mad, anger revving from zero to furious faster than a Ferrari. “How do you think it feels, to know you’re nothing but a giant problem for everyone you love? And it should be so easy to stop, but you can’t? Even though youwantto? You have no idea what it’s like!”
“Like carrying a heavy backpack,” Conleth said quietly. He looked down at his hands. “And every day adds another rock. You try and try, but you keep making mistakes, even with things everyone else finds easy. Until there’s so much guilt and shame weighing you down, it hurts to breathe.”
Archie felt a bit like Conleth had stuck out a foot and tripped him up. “But you never make mistakes.”
“If that was true, you wouldn’t be making a determined break for Utah,” Conleth said dryly, sounding much more his usual self. “Believe me, I make mistakes. A great many of them. Just in different ways than how I used to, back when I was your age. Expelled from school, remember?”
Archie was still having a hard time wrapping his brain around the idea of Conleth ever getting in trouble. “You swear you’re not just making that up?”
“Ask Leonie, if you don’t believe me. We grew up together. She can tell you what I was like as a kid.”
It was hard to imagine Conleth hadeverbeen a kid, let alone one who made mistakes and got kicked out of school. He always gave the impression of having been born in a business suit.
Curiosity got the better of him. “So what were you like as a kid?”
“A localized hurricane of chaos and disaster.” Conleth leaned his elbows on his knees. “I drove teachers to despair. Other kids always started off thinking I was the funniest person in the world, and ended up hating my guts when I went too far.”
That sounded painfully familiar. Still, Archie didn’t think Conleth could ever have felt the same knot of shame and anger twisting his own stomach.
“Yeah, well,” he muttered. He drew up his feet, hugging his knees. “At least you didn’t hurt your family just by existing.”
“Oh, I hurt them a great deal.” Conleth sounded like he was just reciting boring facts from a history book, but a muscle tightened in his jaw. “And not by accident. My brother Connor was my loyal shadow, following my lead without question. He constantly got into fights over things I’d done. My other brother Callum wasn’t anything like me, and I was so jealoushenever got into trouble that I’d go out of my way to try to pin the blame on him. I did so much damage to our relationship when we were young, I barely saw him for years after we grew up. And rightly so.”
He blinked. “But you’re Beth’s uncle. She’s always going on about family events with you and her parents and her other uncle and everyone. I thought you all got along.”
“We do, now. More thanks to Callum than anything I did to deserve forgiveness.” Conleth looked away, staring into the trees. “But if you’d told me as a kid that one day we’d all be taking family trips together, I would have laughed in your face. I thought I’d always be an angry, impulsive idiot who ruined everything. My parents didn’t know what to do with me. Sometimes I’d hear my mom crying at night, when she thought I was asleep.”
“Sometimes my mom cries at night, too,” Archie said quietly, because some things were too terrible to say with your whole voice. “It’s the worst sound in the world.”
“Yes, it is.” Conleth fell silent for a moment. “I don’t claim to understand everything you’re going through, Archie. Your situation is different from mine, and you’re facing far tougher challenges than I ever did. But I do know something about howit feels to not be able to control your impulses. No matter how much you want to.”
Archie fiddled with his shoelaces. “You’re not like that now, though.”
“Not on the outside, no.” Conleth tapped his forehead. “But I still have the same brain. One that works differently to most. It’s noisy in here.”
“Sometimes it feels noisy in my head, too,” Archie admitted. “Like there’s a million thoughts going around and around, and I can’t catch any of them. That’s why I like to be a bear so much. Nothing bothers a bear.”
Conleth’s mouth quirked. “Unfortunately, stallions aren’t exactly known for their grounded and easy-going nature. My animal was never a refuge for me. If it had been, I suspect I would have spent a lot of time in my shift form, just like you.”
“So what did help?”
“Medication.” Conleth shrugged again. “Some other things, too. Figuring out systems that worked with my brain rather than against it, making sure I got enough exercise, hiring people to do the things I found difficult to do for myself. But none of those solutions would be enough on their own. If I want to stay focused and disciplined, I need medication to level out my brain chemistry.”
He had a strange feeling in his chest, like a growing bubble of light. “So if I took pills too, maybe I wouldn’t need to shift so much?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to talk to your mom, and your doctor. Everyone’s different, and what works for me might not work for you.” Conleth leaned forward, looking him right in the eye. “But I am absolutely certain that you have a hard time controlling your shifting because itishard for you. Harder than it is for most shifters. Not because you’re lazy, or wrong, or bad.”
“I am, though!” His throat closed up as he remembered the way his mom had looked at him. “I don’t want to be the way I am. That’s what’s hurting my mom!”
“You. Are. Not. A. Problem,” Conleth said firmly, spacing out each word in emphasis. “Yes, your mom has issues with shifters, and we’re going to have to figure out what to do about that. But the answer isn’t for you to try to hide important parts of yourself. That’s what your mom was trying to do, by not telling anyone about her own feelings. And look how that turned out.”
Archie had to turn that one around in his head a few times, looking at the idea from different angles. “Can I have a granola bar?”
Conleth handed him one. It was his favorite type, with raisinsandchocolate chips. Archie chewed on it, thinking.
“I guess Mom was trying to protect me,” he said eventually. “But it makes me feel worse now, knowing that she was hurting inside all this time. I wish she’d just told me the truth.”
