Silver Eyes: The Alpha Kings Secret Heir

The afternoon light hits the school fence at an angle that makes the chain links look woven from copper wire. I stand at the gate with flour still dusting the front of my apron and the canvas tote bag hanging off my shoulder, scanning the playground for a five-year-old in a dinosaur shirt who should be lining up with his backpack by now. The monkey bars are crowded. Backpacks lie dumped in the dirt as the teacher calls names from a clipboard with the weary precision of someone who has done this a thousand times. Two mums lean against the fence near the gate, takeaway coffees cradled between their palms, their voices sliding into the thick coastal air. The usual. The ordinary. The kind of afternoon I’ve stood through two hundred times at this exact spot, watching Rory climb off the play equipment and jog toward me with his hair sticking up and his shoelaces undone. He’s been off all week. Running hot at night, kicking his sheets onto the floor. Sniffing the air whenever I fry onions. Growling, actually growling, at the cat next door, then laughing like it was a game. Growth spurt, I told myself. Too much sugar. A bug going around Prep. I told myself a lot of things. He’s on the monkey bars when I spot him, hanging by his knees, his dinosaur shirt riding up to show a pale strip of stomach. His face is turned toward the ground with the fearless concentration of a kid who hasn’t yet learned that gravity is a law and not a suggestion. I raise my hand to wave him down. He sees me, his grin flashes, and he lets go. He doesn’t land the way kids land. Not feet first with a laugh and a stumble. He drops sideways, heavy and uncoordinated, and hits the rubber matting with a wet, blunt sound that cuts straight through the playground noise. “Rory!” His name tears out of me, and my body moves before my brain catches up, the tote bag slapping against my hip, my sneakers skidding on the packed dirt. By the time I reach him, he’s on his hands and knees, but his hands are wrong. I see it in pieces, because my brain refuses to put the whole picture together at once. His fingers curl against the mat. Grey-silver fur pushes through his skin. Then his spine arches. Hard. His back bows so violently that his dinosaur shirt splits at the seams. Then he screams. The sound freezes me where I stand, because it isn’t the sound of my five-year-old boy. It’s caught somewhere between a child’s shriek and an animal’s yelp, raw and terrified, and every part of me knows exactly what it is. No. Not yet. He’s five. It’s not supposed to be now. I drop to my knees, the rubber mat still warm from the sun. My hands are already in the tote bag, yanking out the spare hoodie I keep there because Rory spills things and coastal evenings turn cool. I pull him against my chest and wrap it around him in one swift motion. It feels like something programmed into my muscles six years ago. His body bucks against mine. I feel his shoulder blades moving under the hoodie, sharp and wrong, and I press my palm flat against his back and hold him there. “Rory,” I say as a shadow falls across us. His teacher, Mrs. Chen, clipboard clutched to her chest, her face folded with concern. “Is he all right? Did he hit his head?” Her voice is pitched to sound calm. The voice adults use when children are watching. I look up at her. My jaw is set. My throat is dry. The lie forms in my mouth like a stone I’ve been carrying for years. “He’s had a seizure,” I say. “He gets them. I’ve got him.” My voice is flat. Certain. The voice I use at the bakery when a customer swears the sourdough is gluten-free because someone online said so. The voice I use on anyone who asks where I lived before Linden Falls. The voice that makes people stop asking questions, because they can hear the wall behind it. Mrs. Chen doesn’t stop. Her eyebrows draw together. “We don’t have any medical notes about seizures.” She’s already sliding her phone out of her cardigan pocket. “If he’s seizing, I have to call an ambulance. It’s policy.” “No.” It comes out too sharp. I make myself breathe. “He’s had them since he was a baby. Sirens and strangers make them worse. His doctor has a plan for this, and I’m following it. I’m taking him home and calling her from the car.” “Nell, I really think…” “Please.” I hold her eyes. “I know my son.” She hesitates. I watch her decide. I watch her glance at the bundle in my arms, at the way my body is curved around it like a shell, at my white-knuckled grip on the hoodie. Something in her face softens. Not understanding, because she doesn’t understand, but the softness of someone who has seen enough children in distress to know when to step back. “All right,” she says slowly, and the phone goes back into her pocket. “But I’m ringing you tonight to check on him. I’ll need an incident form tomorrow, and I want a medical plan on his file.” “Tomorrow,” I promise. It’s the easiest lie I’ve told all day. She steps away. The two mums by the fence have stopped talking. Their coffees hang forgotten at their sides. They are watching us. I turn, putting my back between them and Rory. Under the hoodie, his breathing comes in short, ragged pulls. Something shifts beneath my palm. Bone. Muscle. I don’t know which, and I don’t want to. The playground carries on around us. Somewhere behind me, a ball thuds against the asphalt and children shriek with laughter. Normal sounds for a normal afternoon. Except my son is changing into a wolf beneath my hands. An old instinct rises inside me, sharp and immediate. Hide him. Get him home. Now. I tighten the hoodie around him and lean close. “I’ve got you,” I whisper. “Stay with me.” Then I lift him into my arms. I don’t look up. I don’t check whether the mums are still watching. I head for the car. His feet hang lower than they should as I carry him. Something sharp scrapes against my leg through my jeans. Claws. I don’t let myself think the word again. My dented white hatchback waits two cars down from the school fence. I fumble the keys from my apron pocket, jab the button, and the locks click open with a sound that feels too loud for the afternoon. I yank the back door open and lower Rory into his booster seat. “Stay still,” I say, my voice low and steady in a way my hands are not. “Stay quiet. I’ve got you. We’re going home.” He whimpers. The sound is small and high, and it cuts straight through me. I draw the hoodie up over his head, loose around what should be his face, and fold back a gap at his mouth and nose. I hold my hand there until I feel his breath, hot and quick against my fingers. Then I pull the seatbelt over his shoulder and low across his hips, check that it sits flat, and click it into place with a sound that feels like surrender. Driver’s seat. Key in the ignition. The engine coughs to life. My hands find the steering wheel at ten and two, the way my driving instructor taught me thirteen years ago, in a different life, when the worst thing that could happen was failing a parallel park. The school-zone traffic crawls ahead of me, red brake lights stretching in a patient, indifferent line toward the roundabout. Forty kilometres an hour, painted on signs no one reads. I press the accelerator just enough to keep moving, not enough to draw attention. The bakery is three blocks behind us, three trays of sourdough proving on the bench. Dot will be wondering where I’ve got to. The thought is so ordinary, so crushingly normal, that I nearly laugh. From the back seat comes a sound. A scratch. Delicate, precise. Claws on upholstery, testing the fabric the way a child tests a new texture, except this isn’t curiosity. This is something older. A sound I haven’t heard in six years, from a life I’ve worked hard to bury. My jaw works. I feel the muscles jump beneath my skin, the grind of my molars. The light at the roundabout turns red. I stop. I wait. The car idles beneath me, and the whine from the back seat rises and falls like a tide. Five. He’s five. I was supposed to have years. Shit. Options. I need options. Home. The cottage. The cool kitchen floor, and the hope that whatever is left of my wolf can guide him through it. If the shift finishes, he’ll come back to me. If it stalls… No. I won’t think it. The hospital is twenty minutes north. Fluorescent lights. Forms. X-rays. Human doctors watching bones rearrange themselves beneath my son’s skin. No. Not the hospital. There isn’t a single person in Linden Falls who would understand what Rory and I are. The main street slides past. The surf shop where Rory presses his nose to the window every Saturday to look at the boogie boards. A bus pulls out in front of me, slow and wide, and I brake hard enough to hear the seatbelt lock behind me. Rory yelps. I hold my breath until the bus finally turns off. Then the shops thin out. Houses, then holiday units, then nothing but scrubby dunes and the glint of the ocean between them. The turn-off. Left. The coastal road unwinds ahead of me, lined with Norfolk pines, the afternoon light falling through their branches in long stripes across the asphalt. Five minutes to the cottage if I drive the speed limit. Four if I don’t. I take one hand off the wheel and reach back blindly, until my fingers find the hoodie. I don’t look in the rear-view mirror. I can’t. If I look, I’ll see the fabric moving, and I’ll have to admit what’s happening inside it. Under my hand, the scrabbling stops, and for one long moment there’s only the hum of the engine and the pine shadows sliding across the windshield in slow, dark bars. Then, from beneath the hoodie, a voice. Small. Hoarse. Barely a word. “Mum?” It breaks halfway through into a growl. It’s the last word he says in a voice I recognise.