Silver Eyes: The Alpha Kings Secret Heir

The afternoon light hit the school fence at an angle that made the chain links look woven from copper wire. I stood 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 have been lining up with his backpack by then. The monkey bars were crowded. Backpacks lay dumped in the dirt as the teacher called names from a clipboard with the weary precision of someone who had done this a thousand times. Two mums leaned 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’d stood through two hundred times at that exact spot, watching Rory climb off the play equipment and jog toward me with his hair sticking up and his shoelaces undone. He’d been off all week. Running hot at night, kicking his sheets onto the floor. Sniffing the air whenever I fried onions. Growling, actually growling, at the cat next door, then laughing like it was a game. Growth spurt, I’d told myself. Too much sugar. A bug going around Prep. I’d told myself a lot of things. He was on the monkey bars when I spotted him, hanging by his knees, his dinosaur shirt riding up to show a pale strip of stomach. His face was turned toward the ground with the fearless concentration of a kid who hadn’t yet learned that gravity was a law and not a suggestion. I raised my hand to wave him down. He saw me, his grin flashed, and he let go. He didn’t land the way kids land. Not feet first with a laugh and a stumble. He dropped sideways, heavy and uncoordinated, and hit the rubber matting with a wet, blunt sound that cut straight through the playground noise. “Rory!” His name tore out of me, and my body moved before my brain caught up, the tote bag slapping against my hip, my sneakers skidding on the packed dirt. By the time I reached him, he was on his hands and knees, but his hands were wrong. I saw it in pieces, because my brain refused to put the whole picture together at once. His fingers curled against the mat. Grey-silver fur pushed through his skin. Then his spine arched. Hard. His back bowed so violently that his dinosaur shirt split at the seams. Then he screamed. The sound froze me where I stood, because it wasn’t the sound of my five-year-old boy. It was caught somewhere between a child’s shriek and an animal’s yelp, raw and terrified, and every part of me knew exactly what it was. No. Not yet. He’s five. It’s not supposed to be now. I dropped to my knees, the rubber mat still warm from the sun. My hands were already in the tote bag, yanking out the spare hoodie I kept there because Rory spilled things and coastal evenings turned cool. I pulled him against my chest and wrapped it around him in one swift motion. It felt like something programmed into my muscles six years earlier. His body bucked against mine. I felt his shoulder blades moving under the hoodie, sharp and wrong, and I pressed my palm flat against his back and held him there. “Rory,” I said as a shadow fell 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 was pitched to sound calm. The voice adults use when children are watching. I looked up at her. My jaw was set. My throat was dry. The lie formed in my mouth like a stone I’d been carrying for years. “He’s had a seizure,” I said. “He gets them. I’ve got him.” My voice was flat. Certain. The voice I used at the bakery when a customer swore the sourdough was gluten-free because someone online said so. The voice I used on anyone who asked where I’d lived before Linden Falls. The voice that made people stop asking questions, because they could hear the wall behind it. Mrs. Chen didn’t stop. Her eyebrows drew together. “We don’t have any medical notes about seizures.” She was already sliding her phone out of her cardigan pocket. “If he’s seizing, I have to call an ambulance. It’s policy.” “No.” It came out too sharp. I made 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 held her eyes. “I know my son.” She hesitated. I watched her decide. I watched her glance at the bundle in my arms, at the way my body was curved around it like a shell, at my white-knuckled grip on the hoodie. Something in her face softened. Not understanding, because she didn’t understand, but the softness of someone who had seen enough children in distress to know when to step back. “All right,” she said slowly, and the phone went 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 promised. It was the easiest lie I’d told all day. She stepped away. The two mums by the fence had stopped talking. Their coffees hung forgotten at their sides. They were watching us. I turned, putting my back between them and Rory. Under the hoodie, his breathing came in short, ragged pulls. Something shifted beneath my palm. Bone. Muscle. I didn’t know which, and I didn’t want to. The playground carried on around us. Somewhere behind me, a ball thudded against the asphalt and children shrieked with laughter. Normal sounds for a normal afternoon. Except my son was changing into a wolf beneath my hands. An old instinct rose inside me, sharp and immediate. Hide him. Get him home. Now. I tightened the hoodie around him and leaned close. “I’ve got you,” I whispered. “Stay with me.” Then I lifted him into my arms. I didn’t look up. I didn’t check whether the mums were still watching. I headed for the car. His feet hung lower than they should have as I carried him. Something sharp scraped against my leg through my jeans. Claws. I didn’t let myself think the word again. My dented white hatchback waited two cars down from the school fence. I fumbled the keys from my apron pocket, jabbed the button, and the locks clicked open with a sound that felt too loud for the afternoon. I yanked the back door open and lowered Rory into his booster seat. “Stay still,” I said, my voice low and steady in a way my hands were not. “Stay quiet. I’ve got you. We’re going home.” He whimpered. The sound was small and high, and it cut straight through me. I drew the hoodie up over his head, loose around what should have been his face, and folded back a gap at his mouth and nose. I held my hand there until I felt his breath, hot and quick against my fingers. Then I pulled the seatbelt over his shoulder and low across his hips, checked that it sat flat, and clicked it into place with a sound that felt like surrender. Driver’s seat. Key in the ignition. The engine coughed to life. My hands found the steering wheel at ten and two, the way my driving instructor had taught me thirteen years earlier, in a different life, when the worst thing that could happen was failing a parallel park. The school-zone traffic crawled 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 pressed the accelerator just enough to keep moving, not enough to draw attention. The bakery was three blocks behind us, three trays of sourdough proving on the bench. Dot would be wondering where I’d got to. The thought was so ordinary, so crushingly normal, that I nearly laughed. From the back seat came a sound. A scratch. Delicate, precise. Claws on upholstery, testing the fabric the way a child tests a new texture, except this wasn’t curiosity. This was something older. A sound I hadn’t heard in six years, from a life I’d worked hard to bury. My jaw worked. I felt the muscles jump beneath my skin, the grind of my molars. The light at the roundabout turned red. I stopped. I waited. The car idled beneath me, and the whine from the back seat rose and fell 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 was left of my wolf could guide him through it. If the shift finished, he’d come back to me. If it stalled… No. I won’t think it. The hospital was twenty minutes north. Fluorescent lights. Forms. X-rays. Human doctors watching bones rearrange themselves beneath my son’s skin. No. Not the hospital. There wasn’t a single person in Linden Falls who would understand what Rory and I were. The main street slid past. The surf shop where Rory pressed his nose to the window every Saturday to look at the boogie boards. A bus pulled out in front of me, slow and wide, and I braked hard enough to hear the seatbelt lock behind me. Rory yelped. I held my breath until the bus finally turned off. Then the shops thinned 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 unwound 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 drove the speed limit. Four if I didn’t. I took one hand off the wheel and reached back blindly, until my fingers found the hoodie. I didn’t look in the rear-view mirror. I couldn’t. If I looked, I’d see the fabric moving, and I’d have to admit what was happening inside it. Under my hand, the scrabbling stopped, and for one long moment there was only the hum of the engine and the pine shadows sliding across the windscreen in slow, dark bars. Then, from beneath the hoodie, a voice. Small. Hoarse. Barely a word. “Mum?” It broke halfway through into a growl. It was the last word he said in a voice I recognised.