He Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 1)

Christmas in Wisconsin III

Tyler

“What do you mean? Because of Aly?” I ask, wondering how unveiling Matt’s family background could be as much about me as him. We do share a mate, though, so I guess it is important for all of us to know.

“No, not because of Aly,” Mr. Taylor shakes his head, and then stands and picks up his chair, bringing it over by me so he can sit next to me and put a hand on my shoulder. He’s still giving me that soft smile bursting with fondness. The one he’s been giving me for days straight.

Then he says, “Because my love gave birth to twins, two beautiful baby boys, one bigger and stronger than the other, his brother coming into the world silent and still, so tiny he fit in the palm of my hand.”

“Oh God, Mr. Taylor. I’m so sorry,” I tell him sympathetically, though I’m still wondering where I come in. It breaks my heart that Matt’s brother didn’t make it. I don’t even think he knew about him.

He smiles, and this new look he’s giving me is one I recognize. People have been looking at me like that most of my life, like what I said is cute, but wrong.

He blows a breath through his nose, sucking in his bottom lip as he thinks. Probably trying to decide how to break whatever he is trying to tell me into simpler terms even this i***t can understand. I just keep reviewing what he said over in my head. How did I mess it up? I can’t tell.

“Dad, why did you never tell me?” Matt questions, a little bit of heartbreak creeping into his tone. Poor guy. It would suck to learn about a sibling you almost had.

“It’s just … hold on, I feel like I’m going about this all wrong,” Mr. Taylor answers without answering. “Tyler, let me ask you this, because part of my problem is that I don’t know what you already know. Where were you born? Do you know?”

“Yeah, uh, my mom has told me the story. I was born in Arkansas, but my birth mother gave me up and then my real parents adopted me. We moved away from there after my dad died, though, back to where my mom grew up.”

I notice him wince as I tell him that, and my heart starts to race. I think an unconscious part of me starts putting things together before the rest of me. It clicks why he would ask me that in the context of the conversation we were having, considering that Aly said her pack is close to the place Matt’s family comes from. I was born in a hospital that is a couple hours away from her pack. I don’t want to believe it’s true, but I’m not as stupid as a lot of people think.

“Your other son didn’t die, did he,” I blurt out, and when I hear it, I realize it comes out bitter, as though I spit it at him. My body starts acting on its own, shrugging the hand off my shoulder and bolting out of my chair.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I say as my body is already in motion, trying to get away from him.

“Tyler, wait,” I hear Aly call after me at the same time I hear Mr. Taylor call, “Please, let me explain! It’s not what you think!”

I don’t care to hear his explanation right now, not after he as much as said that Matt was “big and strong” just like a werewolf would want, but I was obviously too small and weak to be his son. What’s worse is that from the way my mom tells it, my birth father was never involved. No one ever mentioned him even being there. Just my birth mother, who left me alone at the hospital after I was born.

It wasn’t these people who sat with me day after day, reaching into the incubator to hold my tiny hands and stroke my shriveled little face through all the wires and tubes connected to me. No, that was my real parents, the ones who wanted me even though I wasn’t their own flesh and blood. My mom tells me the story so often I have it memorized.

She and my dad had been trying to have kids for years, but it just wouldn’t happen for them. Then they decided to adopt, and what they had in mind was not what they got. They expected a chubby little bundle of joy all wrapped up and ready to go home, but they got a weak little boy struggling to survive. My mom says that the moment she laid eyes on my tiny, wrinkled, misshapen face, it was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen, and she couldn’t bear to leave me alone there.

She spent a month with me there, while these people took their healthy golden boy and went home without me. Sure, I mean, it sucks what they went through with their pack, but Mr. Taylor just got done saying that he was willing to steal away in the middle of the night with nothing so that he could save Matt. Where was that fighting spirit when it came to me? I don’t really care what he has to say about it. He failed me, and I don’t want him.

I feel arms snake around my waist from behind, and I know it’s Aly. She leans her head against my back, and I can feel my body start to relax a little bit. I’m so relieved that she followed me. I didn’t intend for it to be a test, but I realize in that moment that if she had chosen to stay with them, I would have felt betrayed by that. I need her.

It’s as though that epiphany awakens something within me. I feel a warm, tingling sensation surging through my body, centered on where she has her hands tucked against my stomach under my shirt. I hear her gasp, as if she can feel it too.

“You smell like cedar and pine,” she exclaims, breathless.

It makes me smile, though I don’t really feel happy. Lost mostly. Lost, except for the feel of Aly against me. If not for her, I’d just be floating away.

“I want to go home,” I realize aloud.

“I’ll take you,” she agrees without question or argument. God, I love this woman.

-

-

Matt

“Your other son didn’t die, did he,” Tyler says bitterly, and then stands and hurries out of the shelter where we’re all gathered.

I’m still reeling from the revelation that I had a twin, and then he says that, and I feel like my head is swimming so fast I don’t know which way is up. I don’t know what’s going on anymore. What are they even saying?

I hear Aly and my dad yell after Tyler, but their words are garbled to my confused brain. Aly turns and looks at me, seeming conflicted. She leans over and puts her forehead against mine, and then sighs.

“I have to go after him,” she tells me. “You’ll be okay. Lean on your family and hear your dad out. Call me if you need me, because I have a feeling Tyler needs to get away and sort things out before he’ll be ready to listen to anything else.”

“Yeah,” I agree, not quite sure what I’m agreeing to. My tongue feels thick and funny.

She kisses me, and that little bit of contact with her seems to ground me and clear my head a little. I take a breath as she breaks apart from me, feeling an emptiness settle in as I watch her walk away, but also feeling a little more ready to confront my dad.

“I need you to explain this to me,” I say, my voice sounding a lot more confident and composed than I feel.

“I know you do, and I will,” my dad attempts to pacify me, or maybe just avoid telling me by putting it off again. “But I think we should pack up and start heading back. It’s cold, and I think we’re done here.”

“I want you to tell me,” I demand, to which he responds with a defeated sigh, his shoulders falling a bit.

“Tyler is your brother,” he says softly, with a look on his face like he expects me to react with anger like Tyler did.

I’m slower than him, though. I don’t know what to feel yet. I just feel numb and empty, like the fabric of reality was just ripped out from under me and now I’m stuck somewhere that nothing makes sense because I don’t understand the rules or the physics that make it work.

“He’s your twin brother,” he explains further, “and though his heart stopped during delivery and the doctors had to rush to rescue him, he lived that day. We knew we couldn’t keep him, though. We didn’t know yet that we would be forced to leave the pack anyway, or we wouldn’t have made that decision.”

I sit quiet and still, focusing on breathing and not letting myself react yet. I don’t want him to close down and stop explaining himself.

“But in that moment, it seemed like his best shot at a happy life, since he was so tiny and frail,” he continues. “Other kids would have bullied him, worse than what had happened to me and Uncle Marty. We feared he’d have health problems or special needs, too, and that pack was not someplace where he could get the care he would need or the treatment he deserved.”

He pauses a moment to take a breath, or maybe suppress a sob judging by how he shudders. He leans on his knees and holds his head in his hands before continuing.

“So, we left him with the hospital, and signed off our parental rights to him. We did hear he was claimed pretty quickly by an adoptive family, and it was a closed adoption so we couldn’t check in on him or see where he lived or anything like that. We also couldn’t go and get him when we decided to move here, though your mom and I desperately wished we could. Not being able to take him home with us broke us, son, and for a little bit there, it nearly tore us apart.”

He’s quiet for a bit after that and it seems like he’s done explaining. I guess what he is saying makes some sense, but there’s still a fire brewing in my belly and I’m vaguely aware that I’m shaking. I wish Aly didn’t leave, but I also know why she did.

This is horrible for me to hear, but I’m not the one they abandoned. I can only imagine what he's feeling. I almost feel like I need to be angrier on Tyler’s behalf or something, though so far, I’ve held it together. I mostly just feel stunned, like this is a dream, but the anger is there. I just haven’t tapped into it yet.

I clench and unclench my fists a few times, trying to find words for my feelings, or decide what I need to ask him. An urge to go after Tyler is creeping up on me, but I want to learn what I can before I can’t take it anymore.

Betrayed. That’s what I feel. First, I learned he lied to me about Uncle Marty being a werewolf, and now this. It has me questioning what else I don’t know, and whether my parents can be trusted to tell me important things.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I demand finally. I feel like that’s the biggest thing on my mind. “I can understand all of what you just told me. I mean, I hate it, but I understand it to a point. But why would you keep that from me? And how long have you known that one of my best friends was my brother? I feel robbed.”

“I didn’t know about Tyler, not until your grandpa came and told me the other day,” Dad tries to assure me. “And he hasn’t known long either, just since the Elders told him. We’re lucky they even did that. If they had been able to find all that information some other way, they wouldn’t have called him in, and I don’t know if we ever would have known.”

Then I remember that Aly was the one who forced this conversation, and my heart sinks. I need to know if she’s been keeping it from me, too.

“Did Aly know?” I ask, already cringing in anticipation of the answer.

“No, she only knew that we needed to talk to you,” Grandpa cuts in. “I told her I met with the Elders, but never revealed to her what they told me. I knew it would upset Tyler, and I didn’t want him to leave before we got to enjoy the holiday with him.”

“That was selfish of you,” I grumble, though again I can see his point.

I’d been looking forward to this year’s gathering, too, not just because of my family, but because I finally got to bring home people that mean so much to me and enjoy seeing how they fit right in with my family.

And then I realize my dad never answered the more important question.

“But why didn’t you ever tell me that I had a brother out there somewhere?" I demand to know. "Maybe we didn’t know how to find him, but we could have at least tried. He spent his life in a tiny one-bedroom apartment being bullied by his cousins, did you know that? He has never had a big holiday dinner surrounded by lots of family before now. He has a single mom struggling to get by, cousins who walk all over him, and a bed that isn’t even big enough to fit him.”

I start to rub up and down my arm with my hand, trying to make the creepy crawly sensations that usually mean I’m about to panic go away.

“You didn’t save him from anything,” I realize out loud, having come too far to stop now. “You only saved yourself from having to deal with his ‘special needs.’ Which is bullshit. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s stronger and healthier than I am. He’s multi-talented and well-adjusted. He doesn’t have panic attacks over everything.”

I laugh to myself when I realize where this train of thought is heading, and then add bitterly, “You gave up the wrong kid.”

I know I’m starting to sound childish, and probably a bit unstable, but I don’t care. This whole thing bothers me so much that it feels like my skin wants to crawl off my body. I get up from my chair and walk away. I have no idea where I intend to go since Aly and Tyler probably left already, but I need to move. If I don’t, I’m going to lose it, and there’s no one here I want touching me to bring me back.

I laugh to myself when I realize I still didn’t let him answer my question. I also know that right now, I don’t really want to hear that answer. It will just make me angrier.

I just visited Tyler’s home and got a glimpse of his life. His mom is great, but I can tell it’s been hard for her, and Tyler is tough and doesn’t want anybody to see, but he grew up lonely and ashamed. He could have been with us. He should have been with us. Neither of us would have been alone. We could have protected each other and been each other’s best friend.

I hear a car honking at me and look up to realize that I’ve made it to the road near where my dad and uncle’s vehicles are parked. I’ve just been briskly walking in a direction, hands shoved in my pockets, not really paying attention to anything but my own thoughts.

I recognize the car, though. It’s Aly’s, and she’s with Tyler. She has her window lowered and shouts to me.

“We were going to go grab our stuff from your place and then head back to my pack. You want to join?”

I don’t even hesitate before striding over to her car and opening the driver-side door to the backseat and sliding in. I feel the tension and panic starting to subside once I close the door and position myself comfortably, leaning my head against the seat. We don’t say anything, but when Tyler reaches a hand back to me, I take it and grip him tightly. Aly smiles and kisses our joined hands, then turns her attention to getting us back on the road.