The Shadow Wolf - G. Bailey Page 0,7
the father is. I’ve been with each of my guys, some more than once, in a short amount of time. Could any of them be okay with that? I lean up, kissing his cheek and letting go of his hand in the same moment.
“I’m sure. I can handle her,” I firmly say. Alex looks reluctant to let me go, but he does step back and let me walk with my mum to the car. I get in the passenger side as mum gets in the driver’s seat and does up her seatbelt. I do mine before she starts the car and reverses us out.
“If you have any plan to hurt me or my guys—”
“Your dad always threatens first and thinks about it later. I see you have inherited that quality,” she says with a sigh, turning the car around and driving us up the gate. It opens up for her to drive through, and there is an awkward silence in the car for a twenty-minute drive down the beachfront, past the full streets of familiars. I want to ask how many familiars live here, but I end up not saying a word as we get to a car park. Mum gets out and I follow, shutting my door behind me. “Come on, I want to show you some place that is special to our people, and I can explain everything. I’ve waited for this day for a long time.”
“How did you know you’d ever get to this day?” I question her as I move to walk at her side. She doesn’t answer me as we head down a wooden deck to a spherical statue that has glass in the centre of it. Frozen inside are hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny little dots that look like raindrops, but they are dozens of different colours. The glass catches the sunlight, reflecting it onto the white stone floor surrounding the statue. The multicolours look so pretty, like a million rainbows scattered all over the ground. As we get closer to the statue, I see the stone circle has hundreds of thousands of names carved into every inch of it, and flowers are engraved, lining the floor in another circle.
“Our people believe that all life is born more than once and there is a circle of life. Death is not the end, it is a journey to the next life you need to lead. Every life has a purpose, a reason, even when it is short or long like your father’s life or yours will be,” she softly speaks, pulling me into her story. “When I met your father, I knew something was different. He was not Clive Dawn, the shy boy I met when I was a kid. No, that Clive Dawn was gone, and in his place was a man who showed me how alive the world could be. Clive is kind, loving and most importantly, he always fights for those he loves. I didn’t care if he was a god, if he was immortal and if he killed Clive Dawn, taking his place, changing his body to look like him. I know he did it all to try and save the familiar race in that city.”
“But instead he failed them and took you?” I fill in some of the blanks that I know.
“Yes, because we were in love and the empire was lost. See, your father had been saving familiars for hundreds of years and keeping them safe. But then the humans found out about our existence, and they publicly told people. It caused so many deaths,” she whispers. “In our world, a war started, and every raindrop in this glass means a life was lost in the fight. We fought the humans in secret, and then we found this island.”
“How do we fit into this? Why did you leave us?” My voice catches, and mum’s eyes soften.
“I cried for years, never stopping, never moving on when we were forced to leave you. The humans saw us as threats, leaders of a race they could never control. They tried to kill us so many times, and sometimes you three were so close. Clive and I knew the only way to pull the attention from you and let you have a normal life in the shadows was to fake our own deaths,” she explains.
“So you’re saying you left us for our own good?”
“We never left you alone!” she protests. “Grandma Pops isn’t just a random foster parent, she was the mother