His Rejected Mate, His Hidden Heir

Chapter 11 — The Terrible Twos (Plus Fangs)

Kael was two, and the terrible twos were a lie.

Terrible implied something within the range of normal. Terrible was tantrums in the grocery store and refusing to eat vegetables and drawing on walls with crayons. What Kael had was not terrible. What Kael had was a problem.

It started small. He healed too fast. A scraped knee from the playground would be gone by naptime — not faded, not scabbed, but *gone*, new pink skin where the wound had been, like it had never happened. I told myself it was the hybrid blood. Faster healing than a human, not as fast as a full wolf. Manageable. Explainable, if anyone noticed.

No one noticed.

Then came the strength.

I was in the kitchen — our kitchen, the tiny one in the apartment above the bookstore we'd moved into when Kael was ten months old and the boarding house got too loud and too small — making dinner. Mac and cheese from a box, the kind that was seventy-nine cents and tasted like salty disappointment but filled the belly. Kael was in the living room, playing with his blocks, stacking them into towers and knocking them down with the manic glee of a toddler who'd just discovered gravity was his personal servant.

"Mommy, look!" he called. "Big tower!"

I looked. The tower was impressive — twelve blocks high, wobbling dangerously. I smiled. "That's great, baby."

"Knock it down!"

"Go ahead."

He wound up — both arms back, face scrunched with effort — and shoved.

The tower exploded. Not fell over. Not toppled. *Exploded.* Blocks ricocheted off the walls, one cracking the window shade, two bouncing off the couch, one hitting the front door with a sound like a gunshot.

I stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, my hand still on the mac and cheese spoon.

Kael giggled. "Again!"

"Kael." My voice came out too high. I took a breath. "Kael, honey, that was... that was a very big push."

"I strong, Mommy." He beamed at me, gap-toothed and golden and completely unaware that he'd just demonstrated the upper body strength of a twelve-year-old.

"Yes, you are." I forced a smile. "But we need to be gentle, remember? Gentle hands."

"Gentle," he repeated, nodding solemnly. Then he picked up a block and crushed it in his fist. Not squeezed. *Crushed.* The wood splintered, and he looked down at the pieces in his palm with mild surprise, like he'd expected the block to still be there.

My stomach dropped.

* * *

The coffee table was next.

Three days later. Kael was having a tantrum — a real one, the kind that turned his face purple and made him scream like he was being murdered — because I'd told him he couldn't have a third juice box. I was in the bathroom, trying to have thirty seconds of privacy for once in my life, when I heard it.

A crash. Not the crash of blocks or toys. The crash of *furniture.*

I came out of the bathroom and the coffee table was against the far wall. Not fallen over. Not dragged. *Pushed.* It had traveled six feet across the room, gouging the hardwood floor, and was now wedged against the bookshelf at an angle that said it wasn't planning to move again anytime soon.

Kael was standing in the middle of the room, his face tear-streaked, his tiny fists clenched at his sides, breathing hard.

"I wanted juice," he said.

I stared at the coffee table. I stared at the gouges in the floor — deep, parallel scratches, like something with claws had dragged across the wood. I stared at my two-year-old son, who looked small and ordinary and very, very sorry.

"Mommy?" His lip trembled. "I sorry. I didn't mean to."

"I know, baby." My voice was steady. My hands were shaking. "I know."

I knelt down and held him while he cried, and I told him it was okay, and I meant it, because he was two and he didn't know what he was doing. But inside, I was calculating. How long before he did it at Mabel's? At the park? At Mrs. Okonkwo's? How long before someone saw something they couldn't explain and started asking questions I couldn't answer?

* * *

That night, after Kael was asleep, I sat at my laptop — a five-year-old ThinkPad Mabel had given me when she upgraded — and started searching.

Werewolf development in hybrid children

Early shifting signs in wolf-blooded toddlers

Alpha bloodline manifestations age two

The internet was useless. Everything I found was fiction — Twilight fan wikis and role-playing forums and someone named WolfKing99 who was very confident that real werewolves lived in Romania. Nothing about the real thing. Nothing about what I was.

I tried different terms. *Genetic anomalies in early childhood.* *Unusual strength in toddlers.* *Supernatural healing.* More fiction. More nonsense.

Then I found it — a single post, buried in a forum so old it looked like it hadn't been updated since 2008, written by someone called *HalfMoonHalf*:

My son is three. He's half-blood, like me. His wolf is waking up early — far earlier than the books say it should. The pack healer told me it means he's powerful. More powerful than a full-blood. But it also means he's dangerous. To himself and others. I don't know what to do. The pack wants to test him. I want to run.

The post had no replies.

I stared at the screen for a long time. Then I closed the laptop, pressed my hand against the mark on my neck — still quiet, still dormant — and whispered to the dark:

"His wolf is waking up early because he's powerful. That's not a problem. That's a warning."

I stared at the gouges in the hardwood floor, then at my two-year-old son, who was now happily stacking blocks like nothing had happened. This wasn't normal. None of this was normal. And I was running out of time to figure out what to do about it.