“Can confirm,” Cassius said with a rumble.
“Well, Trevor?” Mom pointed her spoon at him. “It’s time to fill us in.”
“Okay,” he said. He closed his eyes a long moment, then looked to where Kelsey sat on his left. So far she’d been quiet, not intimidated but understanding the gravity of all this. She would speak up if he needed her to, that was certain. “Kelsey’s my mate.”
Mom gave a little gasp. “Son! Congratulations!” The spoon jabbed toward Kelsey, then back toward him. “Hold on now, you two aren’t bonded, are you? You wouldn’t go and do that while your daddy and I were out of town?”
“No, Mom, but it’s… Well, it’s not complicated anymore, but it has been, and I haven’t told you, and I’ve got to apologize for that.”
He launched into a recounting of the last nine years. He tried to condense, but Mom caught the thread of every detail and tugged it until Trevor spilled everything. By the end, he felt both clean and empty. The rest of the family had listened, holding his gaze by turns. Not once did he catch the tang of judgment, not from any of them. But Dad and Mom alternated concern and sorrow until he needed to go for a long run and cleanse his senses.
When the last of the story was told, Mom sat with glossy eyes, shaking her head. Seeing her speechless brought home the magnitude of what Trevor had hidden from them. He tucked his chin.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
Her voice was tight, quiet. “Did you think I wouldn’t want to know my pup was suffering?”
“I know better than that. But you worried so much, that first week or two, nobody knowing what was wrong with me, and then I thought I was fine, same as y’all thought. It took a while to realize I wasn’t. It took longer to realize why, that she was my mate, that I was fading because she was gone.”
Mom said, “When you understood, you should have come to us.”
Kelsey was nodding beside him, no doubt hearing the echo of her own words to him.
“I know now,” he said.
Mom reached across the table, and Trevor reached back, let her take both his hands. “Son, you’ve got such a heart inside you. Your father and I have always known that, since you were a tiny pup. We watched you grow and we knew you had it hard sometimes, so much feeling inside such a heart, and trying all the time to be a tough wolf.”
Tears welled up. Always his folks had let him be himself. They had let him howl at the heavens when he was too happy or sad to hold it in, let him gel his blond spikes electric blue for a few months in seventh grade because he wanted to stand out from the pack, let him roam and dream and play. Never had he felt the need to deaden his heart. Yet he hadn’t realized how deeply they’d understood him. He’d thought no one could or did except maybe sometimes Kelsey.
He said, “I’m not so tough. Kind of had to give up on that.”
“You’re our son, and if you’re in pain, we want to be there with you, in it with you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Dad shifted in his chair, and the focus in the room shifted to him. The rumble from his chest filled the room, told Trevor more than words how deep-down his dad had felt his story, though unlike Trevor’s, his heart wasn’t pinned to his sleeve.
“Trevor,” Dad said.
“Sir.”
“I’m sorry for how long you hurt, son. I’m truly sorry. And I’m grateful Arlo had answers. Even at my age I wouldn’t have known what to do for you.”
“He said it’s rarely spoken about unless it happens to someone you know, so the knowledge isn’t common anymore.”
“I knew in the paddock something had changed in you. Your scent is lighter, stronger. It’s closer to the scent I knew you by when you were small. I always wondered—” Dad’s voice broke, and he pressed his fingers to the corners of his eyes. “I wondered what had happened to that scent.”
Trevor had known they would try to help, if he could only share his hurt. But it had happened the way it happened, and he wouldn’t let any of his family, any of his pack, carry guilt forward.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t hold onto this, any of you. I’ve claimed my mate, and she’s claimed me too, and we’ll be bonded soon.”
Kelsey leaned her head on his shoulder, but still she kept quiet, letting their elders do the talking, expressing and asking whatever they needed to.
“How are you feeling now?” Mom said.
“Strong.” It was the first word that came to him. A smile found his face. “I’ve got my voice back, and my gifts are showing up more every day.”
“And he’s constantly ecstatic, as Dad and Cassius can also smell right now.” Ezra, seated on his right, bumped Trevor’s shoulder.
