She was crying and screaming into her phone.
I wanted to ask her if she was okay, but my voice came out in a whine. She kneeled in front of me, and I nuzzled my nose into her stomach. The frightening woman I now knew to call her mother appeared next to her.
“I’m fine,” Chris said. “You have to help his parents.”
“Take him home,” Lydia said.
Chris buried her fingers into my fur. Psychic powers were so much faster than
magic,
there was no lapse in time as we moved. In a blink, she’d rescued me from the tormenting odors of the forest.
“Calm down, Nate,” she said. “Everything is going to be fine.”
Calm down? I felt calm. I felt tired, actually. Exhausted enough to close my eyes and sleep. So I did. I slept away the memory of those odors. I made myself believe that the smell I had wished wouldn’t pass my door without coming in, the smell that was eventually masked by her husband’s rot, had not been in that forest, in that circle, with her fragile face under a shifter’s boot.
I slept until I almost believed it was a dream.
I woke up in a tub of frigid water. There was blood smeared all over the ledge and on Christine’s shirt. She was bawling and panting when she pleaded, “Please, Nate. Say something.”
“What’s wrong?” She nearly jumped in the water with me, throwing half of
herself
onto my naked body. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” I shook my head. I looked around the bathroom to assess the situation. My arms were scratched, gashed really, in several places, and I hurt all over. “I put you in so you would shift back. You – you were hurting yourself.” She motioned to my arms. “Scratching yourself, biting too.
And growling like crazy.
I put you in cold water because you told me that made you shift once. You wouldn’t calm down any other way.”
Because her heart was the loudest thing in the room, because there was blood smeared on her face, because her beautiful eyes were red with thick tears cascading from them, I braced myself for the death her answer to my next question could cause.
“Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, and I let myself breathe.
“I’m fine. I’m worried about you. Nate …” Her breath snagged in her chest as she tried to stop her sob. “
Your parents.
They’re dead. My mom called. She got there too late. I’m sorry.”
It burned for a moment.
A quick, merciless moment.
My canine side didn’t like the way it felt. My bones twisted to change me to a state were I felt less, understood less. But her tears made me stay Nathan.
I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my waist. I cradled her in my lap on the cold floor.
A few things happened on that floor – I continued to pretend that my mom didn’t matter to me, I told Chris for the millionth time that I didn’t want to discuss my past, and our lives shifted for the worse. Devin had murdered two humans, Lydia Shaw may or may not have caught him, and he had followers who I knew wanted nothing more than to be the dominant species again.
And I’d just run away like a coward and let my mother die.
The silence in the room seemed to scream:
things will never be the same
.
####
From the Author
Thank you so much for reading Lost, Book Two of the Hidden Series. I am now working on Book Three, Shattered. I appreciate your interest. I hope you enjoyed it.
Read, rate, discuss
. Thanks again!
About the Author
M.
Lathan
lives in San Antonio with her husband and mini-schnauzer. She enjoys writing and has a B.S. in Psych and a Masters in Counseling. Her passion is a blend of her two interests – creating new worlds and stocking them with crazy people. She enjoys reading anything with interesting characters and writing in front of a window while asking rhetorical questions … like her idol Carrie Bradshaw. Visit
mlathan.com
for more information and extras!
Other titles by M.
Lathan
:
Hidden (Hidden Series Book One)