His Rejected Mate, His Hidden Heir

Chapter 13 — Under the Full Moon

The moon rose at 8:47 PM.

I knew the exact time because I'd been watching the clock all day, the way you watch a storm on the horizon — not hoping it misses you, just calculating when the lightning's going to hit. The farmers' almanac app on my phone said full moon at 8:47, and the farmers' almanac had never let me down before.

Kael was three and a half, and this was the first full moon since his birth that I hadn't been able to suppress.

Not that I'd ever been good at suppressing it. The hybrid curse — half wolf, half human, all screwed up — meant I felt the moon like a fever I couldn't sweat out. Every month, the pull: the heat under my skin, the restless pacing of something in my bones, the way the mark on my neck went silver and sensitive in the moonlight. Every month, I locked myself in the basement of our apartment building (the landlord thought I was weird; the landlord was right) and I rode it out, teeth clenched, fingernails digging into my palms, fighting the shift that wanted to happen and couldn't.

I'd never shifted. Not once. The wolf in me was too diluted, too confused about what shape it was supposed to take. The human half gave me form; the wolf half gave me longing. What it didn't give me was the ability to actually *do* it.

So I stayed human. Month after month, year after year. Human and hurting, the wolf pacing in its cage, the cage getting smaller every time.

Tonight, the cage was the least of my problems.

* * *

"Mommy, I don't feel good."

Kael's voice came from his bedroom at 7:30, and I was at his side before the sentence was finished. He was sitting up in bed, his face flushed, his small hands pressed against his temples.

"What hurts, baby?"

"Everything." His voice was small and tight. "My bones hurt."

My heart dropped into my stomach.

I put my hand on his forehead. He was burning up — not a human fever, not the kind that came with a cold or a flu. This was a different heat. A deeper heat. The kind that came from the inside out, like something under his skin was trying to get out.

"Mommy, make it stop." His eyes were wet. "It *hurts.*"

"I know, baby. I know." I picked him up — he was getting too heavy for this, my strong boy, but I didn't care — and held him against my chest. His skin was radiating heat like a little furnace, and I could feel his heart hammering against mine, too fast, too hard, the rhythm of something that wasn't entirely human.

Not yet. Please, not yet. He's too young.

I carried him to the basement. The same basement I went to every month, the same cold concrete floor, the same bare lightbulb that buzzed like a dying insect. I'd set it up over the years — a sleeping bag, a pillow, a thermos of water, a bucket in case of nausea. My little fortress of solitude. My prison cell.

I set Kael on the sleeping bag and sat beside him, my back against the wall, his hot little body curled in my lap.

"Mommy, what's happening to me?"

You're like me,* I thought. *Half of something that wants to be whole. Half of something that will never stop reaching for the moon.

"Your body is doing something new," I said, keeping my voice calm. "It's like... growing pains. But bigger. You're going to be okay. I'm right here."

"I want it to stop."

"I know. I'm going to help you."

I started singing.

* * *

The lullaby was the only weapon I had.

My mother had sung it to me — back when she was alive, back when I was small and the moon was just a light in the sky and not a monthly appointment with pain. The words were in the old language, the wolf-tongue, the one that predated English and probably predated writing. I didn't know what they meant. I only knew that when my mother sang them, the wolf in me would settle. Go quiet. Curl up and sleep.

So I sang.

Ailo, naro, viras te

Soma luna, kessai me

Durano vir, durano som

Ailo, naro, vash te com

Nonsense syllables, probably. A folk song passed down through wolf-blooded mothers for centuries, the lyrics garbled by time and translation until they were more sound than meaning. But the sound was the thing. The rhythm. The rise and fall of vowels and the click of consonants that felt like a heartbeat in the mouth.

Kael's breathing slowed. His temperature dropped, degree by degree, as I sang. His eyes — squeezed shut against the pain — fluttered open, and in the dim light of the basement, they caught the bare bulb and *flashed*.

Gold.

Not the newborn flicker I'd seen once before. This was real. This was his wolf, pressing up against the inside of his eyes, trying to see the moon that was calling it. I could feel the energy in him — Alpha energy, vast and raw, pressing against my skin like standing too close to a fire.

"Mommy." His voice was drowsy, fighting sleep. "My eyes feel funny."

"Close them, baby. Just close your eyes and listen to my voice."

He did. The gold faded back to gray. His body went slack against mine, the fever breaking, the wolf retreating to wherever it went when the moon wasn't looking.

I kept singing until I was sure he was asleep.

* * *

Then I let myself fall apart.

Not loudly. Not where he could hear. I eased him onto the sleeping bag, tucked the blanket around him, and then I sat on the cold concrete floor with my back against the wall and my knees drawn up to my chest, and I let myself shake.

The full moon was still outside — I could feel it like a weight on my chest, like a hand pressing down on my lungs. My own wolf was pacing, whining, clawing at the cage I'd built around it. The not-shifting hurt. It always hurt. It hurt in my joints, in my spine, in the mark on my neck that flared silver in the moonlight that came through the tiny basement window.

But I didn't shift. I never shifted. The hybrid compromise was this: I got the pain and the longing and the monthly reminder of what I was, but I didn't get the release. I didn't get the freedom of running on four legs under an open sky. I didn't get the pack.

What I got was a cold basement and a sleeping child and the knowledge that next month, it would happen again. And the month after that. And the month after that.

Some night,* I thought, pressing my palm against the mark that burned on my neck, *the cage won't hold.

And I have no idea what will happen when it breaks.

I sat on that basement floor until the moon set at 3 AM, my hand on Kael's chest, feeling his heartbeat slow and steady, and I didn't sleep. I didn't trust myself to. Not with the wolf still pacing in my chest, not with the mark still burning, not with my son's Alpha blood humming in his veins like a promise and a threat.

At 3 AM, the pull faded. The moon went down. My wolf curled up and went to sleep.

I picked up Kael, carried him back to his bed, and sat in the doorway of his room until dawn.

The full moon set, and I was still in one piece. Still unshifted. Still human enough to hold my son and wolf enough to feel the cage I'd built around that part of myself. Some night, I knew, the cage wouldn't hold. And I had no idea what would happen when it broke.