Chapter 12: What Leo Asked
913 Words
Leo asked about the wolves on a Tuesday.
He had been in the garden with Damon, supposedly learning about the different plants that grew along the south wall, which was one of Mrs. Caldwell's projects and which Leo had taken an interest in for reasons that had more to do with the beetles living between the stones than the plants themselves. Aurora was watching from the bench near the fountain, nominally reading a book.
Leo looked up from a beetle and said, without particular preamble, "Are you a wolf?"
Damon crouched beside him. "Yes."
Leo thought about this. "Like those ones that came on the street?"
"Not exactly. I'm a different kind."
"There are different kinds?"
"Yes."
"What's the difference?"
"The ones on the street were looking for a fight. Most of us aren't."
Leo considered this with the focused fairness he brought to all new information. "Like how there are different kinds of people."
"Exactly like that."
"Am I a wolf?"
This was the question Aurora had been expecting and dreading simultaneously. She put her book down.
"Part of you is," Damon said, with the same complete seriousness he applied to all of Leo's questions. "It hasn't woken up yet. You're still young. But it's there."
"How will I know when it wakes up?"
"You'll know. And when it happens, I'll be there to explain it and make sure you're okay."
Leo was quiet for a moment. He looked at the beetle, which had resumed its journey across the stone. "Will it hurt?"
"The first time, a little. After that, no."
"Okay." Leo sat back on his heels. "My friend Marcus at school is scared of dogs. Will he be scared of me?"
"You'll still be Leo," Damon said. "Being a wolf doesn't change who you are. It's just another thing you can do."
"Like swimming," Leo said.
"Like swimming."
"I'm very good at swimming," Leo said, with the modest confidence of someone who has been told this often and believed it.
"I know. Your mother told me."
Leo looked at Aurora on the bench. Then back at Damon. Something in his small face was working through something.
"Are you going to live with us?" he asked.
The question was simple and direct and made Aurora's heart do something complicated.
"I'd like to be in your life as much as possible," Damon said. "The exact arrangement is something your mom and I are still working out. But I'm not going anywhere."
Leo appeared to find this satisfactory. He looked back at the beetle. "This one's a ground beetle," he said. "Mrs. Caldwell told me. They eat other bugs."
"Do they."
"It's efficient," Leo said.
Later, when Leo had gone inside for a snack and Damon had joined Aurora on the bench, she said, "You did that very well."
"He makes it easy. He only asks what he actually wants to know."
"Some adults could learn from that."
"Many." He looked at the wall of plants. "He asked if it would hurt because he was thinking about me. Whether I was in pain when I transformed. Not about himself."
"He does that. Considers the other person."
"It's unusual in a child his age."
"He's had a lot of practice being my only company," she said, and there was something in the sentence that she heard herself, a small admission, the shape of what the last five years had been. "We talk a lot. He asks a lot. I try to give him real answers."
"You've done well by him," Damon said. "More than well."
"I've done the best I could."
"Yes. Those are the same thing."
She looked at him sideways. "You can be unexpectedly kind sometimes."
"Only sometimes?"
"You lead with authority. The kindness is underneath."
"That's probably accurate." He looked at her. "You lead with competence. The vulnerability is underneath."
She opened her mouth and closed it.
"Not a criticism," he said. "An observation. The competence is genuine. So is the rest of it."
She looked at the garden. The afternoon light was particular about this time of day, falling sideways through the gap between the south wall and the house, making everything look slightly more significant than usual.
"Ten days until the new moon," she said.
"Nine."
"Are you ready?"
"We'll be ready." He said it without performance. As a fact.
She had spent five years becoming the person who handled everything herself. She had gotten very good at it. The idea of trusting someone else with the parts that mattered most was terrifying in a way that had nothing to do with reason and everything to do with the history of what happened the last time she trusted something she couldn't fully understand.
"I need you to promise me something," she said.
"If I can."
"Whatever happens with Reyes. Leo comes first. Not the territory. Not the political consequences. Not the council's position. Leo."
He turned to look at her fully.
"Aurora," he said quietly. "Leo has been first since the moment I understood who he was. Before the politics and before the mate bond and before any of it. He is my son. That is not negotiable and it is not a strategy."
She held his eyes.
"Okay," she said.
He nodded once.
They sat in the afternoon light for a while longer, not touching, not talking, both of them understanding that something had shifted between them again, settling into something more real than it had been before.
- Writer
