a different person since, as if the past two months had transformed him into someone who wasn’t only focused on his own needs and pleasures. And what if Mom really didn’t have all that much time? The property was massive, and they could technically move into the guest house.
He dared a little smile and squeezed her hand harder. “I mean… it would be sweet to use the pool.”
Something changed in her face. As if his openness made her features relax for once. “I know we argue a lot, but… it’s become so quiet without your father.”
“Mom? I know I’m putting you on the spot here, but any time I ask, you avoid the subject. You and Dad had me very late in life, and I really need to know if there were any… unusual circumstances around it.”
She gave a short laugh, but her gaze instantly drifted off. “Strange? What could you possibly mean? You might be gay, but I’m sure you know how babies are made.”
Again, she was trying to change the focus of the conversation by being dismissive. But Radek would be patient this time.
“Mom, I will never ask again, but you have to tell me if something happened at the fox farm. Whatever it is, I’ll understand. Since I remember, you refused to go there, and you never let me accompany Dad either. I need to know, even if you feel it doesn’t make sense.”
“And what could have happened at the fox farm?” she snapped, but the pallor of her unbruised skin showed that there was something she wasn’t telling him.
“Whatever it was, I won’t laugh at you. I need to know, Mom.”
She pressed her lips tightly together, panting as if she were about to have some kind of fit. “Fine. I was pregnant, and I thought I’d miscarried. I went down with a bad fever and had a really strange dream about the farm. And when I woke up, turned out you’d been born, and I remembered it happening. Is that what you wanted to know?”
Radek promised himself he’d be patient, because this was already more than he’d ever gotten. “What was the dream?” he asked softly.
Her nostrils flared, and she spoke in a hushed tone, as if afraid of what might happen if someone overheard her. “I dreamt that I heard a baby cry. We lived in a house close to the farm at the time. I followed the cry all the way into one of those fox sheds, and when I entered—” her voice broke, and she swallowed hard, as if she found it difficult to speak. “One of the foxes had a newborn in her cage. Only one, all her other cubs were dead. I’d miscarried that same night, so seeing it broke my heart. Then, out of the blue, the vixen spoke to me. She offered me her child if I set her free. I didn’t understand what she meant, because it was a kit, but when I looked down again, the baby I heard crying before was lying in the straw. I took it with me, and set the fox free. And then, I woke up with you in my bed.”
Relief flooded Radek’s muscles when he realized his biological mother hadn’t been skinned for fur. She might have given him up, but at least she’d lived out her days in the wild. “I need to show you something, okay?” He got up and locked the door, glad that the other bed in the room was empty.
“Now? You’re not going to call the psychiatric ward?” she asked, shaking her head.
Unlike Yev, who ripped his clothes apart with the bulk of his wolf body, Radek didn’t even need to undress first. He sat on her bed. “Watch, and don’t be afraid.”
Shifting came naturally to him now, like holding his breath or running faster. He shrank in an instant, for a second, tumbling around in his sweater, but soon found his way out, nose first, ready to transform back if Mom screamed or called for a nurse.
But she didn’t utter a sound, staring at him with wide eyes, as if she’d never seen anything stranger. A few tense heartbeats later, Radek approached her and got to his hind legs to place his muzzle on the edge of the bed. She uttered a soft sigh and traced the top of his head with the gentlest brush of her fingertips. “So it’s true… I really do have a changeling.” She exhaled, and Radek wasn’t sure if it