13. ~Ronan~
Chapter 13
~Ronan~
“So why fighting?” Dr. Theriot sat in her plush club chair across from me, cross-legged and attentive.
“Why not?” I shot back, more defensively than I intended. “Most werewolves tend to lean into a creative field, being the gift that came with the curse of transformation of wolfkind.”
“Fighting can be a creative art form,” I explained gruffly. “It requires skill and finesse and sometimes creativity to beat an opponent.”
She nodded in that sage way of hers, then kept pushing. “It’s just that you could’ve gone onto a thousand different career paths. But you chose wolf cage fighting, which was illegal where you were born and lived the majority of your life.”
“It’s legal here.”
“But it wasn’t where you first chose it.” “Maybe I didn’t choose it. Maybe it chose me. ”
She smiled that doctorly smile. “That’s a thought. Let’s follow it. Why would fighting choose you?”
I leaned back all the way, my fingers clasped loosely between my legs. “Maybe I had to fight.”
“Why?” she asked gently.
I snorted and turned my head toward the window. No cardinals on the tree outside today. “Because nobody was going to fight for me.”
“You said that your grandfather took you in after your mother died.”
“He did. And when I was too much for him, he gave me to my aunt. And when I was too much for her, she kicked me out.”
“But that was for more than a decade. And now you’re living with your uncle.”
I shrugged, not knowing where the hell she was going with this. “And?”
“Perhaps you’re right,” she added. That was a shocker. “Perhaps fighting chose you. Your feelings of abandonment needed an outlet.”
“I never said I felt abandoned,” I argued gruffly.
She paused but didn’t comment on that. “Your wolf went silent as an adolescent, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been there for you all along. He’s a fighter, that’s certain, so he’s been fighting for you, with you, all this time.”
I stared at her, unable to say a word, my knee jumping as I tapped my heel nervously on her soft carpet, my throat feeling thick as I swallowed.
“When was your first fight?” she asked. “Not in the ring. I mean, after your mother died. ”
My leg still jumping, I slid my palms to my knees and squeezed, willing myself to calm down. “About a month after I went back to school.”
“What happened?” she asked gently.
I hadn’t thought about that incident in a long time, so it was strange to recount, even when I could see it as clearly and feel the anger as if it had happened yesterday.
“This kid named Patrick in my seventh-grade class had never liked me. Maybe he somehow sensed the wolf in me and saw me as a threat. He was human, of course, and Mom had made sure that no one knew what I was. She’d wanted me to have a normal upbringing, she always said.”
“Yes, you’re different,” my mother said as I was curled up on the floor in the kitchen, my head in her lap. She calmed me with soft words, combing her fingers through my hair as I battled the first signs of the wolf emerging, my fingernails curled into black claws.
“I’m a freak,” I mumbled.
“No, Ronan. You’re special. There’s nothing wrong with being different. You’re as fine a son I could’ve ever hoped for, and you’ll be an even finer man. I love you no matter what.”
Pressing a palm to my chest, I could feel my heart beating wildly at the sudden, jarring memory. It wasn’t the one I was recounting, but it had popped into my head unbidden. My mother had even apologized to me for my father not being there. He’d left her shortly after I was born, saying he wasn’t fit for family life. I’d never bothered or cared to find him. I was happy to have her last name and not his. I didn’t want anything from him. Even so, she lamented I didn’t have the proper influence I needed .
“We were actually planning to move from Amarillo to Austin.”
“Why did you plan to move?”
Clearing my throat, I said, “Mom had wanted to be closer to family. And I wasn’t adjusting to middle school very well.” Because my wolf was finally coming out. “Her father, brother, and sister lived in Austin. She thought they could help me adjust to this new transition in my life.”
Dr. Theriot nodded but said nothing.
“So this kid Patrick had been bullying me.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I was a loner. I didn’t fit in, and it got worse when I went to middle school. Anyway, the day after we buried my mom, he and his friends were standing behind me at my locker. Patrick was running his mouth as always. It never bothered me before. But that day he said, ‘Your mom is probably happy to finally be rid of you.’” I scoffed. “I fucking snapped. I turned on him and beat him bloody. It took three teachers to get me off him.”
She stared a moment before saying, “It was a reasonable reaction. Anyone talking about your mother would’ve set you off so soon after her death.”
It was my turn to go silent.
“And the wolf didn’t emerge then?”
I shook my head. Not since the day my mother died. “Did you believe him?” she asked.
“Believe what?”
“That your mother was finally happy to be rid of you? ”
My gut clenched and my stomach flipped at her question. It was ridiculous, and yet, it poked at me and made me feel raw, like a tender bruise not yet healed.
“Of course not,” I answered softly.
She raised her brows. “You said you had to fight for yourself because no one was there to fight for you. Not your grandfather or aunt or uncle. Or your mother.”
Or the piece of shit who’d been my father.
“My mother didn’t abandon me.” My voice was rough as I choked out the words.
“No, Ronan.” She reached across the space between us and placed her palm over my hand, her empathic magic softening my hard edges and the beginnings of despair that had begun to spiral through me. “Your mother did not abandon you. And she never would have. She was taken from this world too soon. It was a tragic accident. That is all.”
Closing my eyes, I let her words and her Aura magic sink in, forbidding myself to think about the accident, to wonder if maybe she was wrong. I let my feelings of powerlessness and that sharp emotion that liked to haunt me—abandonment— wash and roll away. When I’d calmed down enough, I opened my eyes.
Dr. Theriot leaned back, offering me that kind, soothing smile. “Also remember that your uncle is here for you now. He cares so much that he’s sending you to a phenomenal therapist.” A bark of laughter escaped me, breaking the bubble of tension. “Yes. He certainly is.”
“There’s nothing wrong with fighting as a career. I only meant for you to look at the reasons you’ve chosen this path. ”
“You may be right about why I chose this career. But I don’t fight now because I feel I have to. I fight because I’m good. Because it makes me feel good to compete and win at the highest level.”
“And those are very healthy reasons,” she reassured me. “But look at the greater picture too. Every step we take in this life, every choice we make is guided by an intrinsic motivation. Sometimes they are positive, healthy instincts. Sometimes they are not.”
“You think when I first started fighting, it was a bad instinct?”
“Not at all. I think you were surviving, you and your wolf. Somewhere along the line, it became not about surviving but about winning, about thriving.”
I nodded, because that’s exactly how I felt about it now.
“Did you have to leave Austin and come here? Were there no other options?”
I thought about it for a second. “I’d been living in my aunt’s extra bedroom, and she made it clear I couldn’t stay there anymore.”
“But you had no friends at all you could’ve moved in with?”
“I had plenty of friends. A couple of teammates.” I chuckled, remembering how pissed Malcolm was with me for moving.
“So you could’ve stayed there, but you came here instead.”
“Uncle Shane called me up, offered me his extra bedroom on the condition I work in his garage to earn my rent.”
“You’ve always been close to your uncle?”
“Not especially. I was when I was younger, but as I grew up, he was a bit of a hard-ass with me.”
“And you took the offer anyway, even though you knew it might be difficult living with him. Why?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to start over, get out of Austin. Something told me this was the right move. ”
“And perhaps a chance to rekindle a relationship with someone who you knew deep down did care about you.”
I pondered that a moment. “Maybe.”
Because the minute I landed in Louisiana on his front porch, the sun setting nicely behind the trees that surrounded his house, I felt like I’d found my way. It had felt right.
She checked her watch. “Our time is up, Ronan.” We both stood. “But I want you to think about that a little between now and our next session.”
“Will do, Doc.”
“I’ll see you next week?”
“Yeah. See you next week.”
She walked me out into the lobby, and I waved to Michael at the reception desk. Once in the foyer of the building, I could hear the muffled voices on the other side of Celine’s office door. I couldn’t help it. Even though I didn’t shift into my wolf once a month, my senses were heightened just like any other werewolf. The scent of her lured me closer, and I nearly whimpered at the sweetness of it.
But then I paused, pressing a palm to my stomach. The session with Dr. Theriot today had left me feeling raw and vulnerable. I’d never been good at hiding my emotions, and I wasn’t quite ready to dump all my baggage at Celine’s feet. I wanted to tell her about my mother, but not yet.
Knowing I’d see her tonight was the only way I was able to force my feet to turn and walk the other way. As I made my way to my Bronco, Dr. Theriot’s observation came back to me.
Yes, I’d come here for the fresh start and perhaps to bond with a male who was my blood and who did, in fact, care about me. But perhaps my wolf led me here for other reasons too. Or for one very specific reason.
When I’d stood on my uncle’s porch for the first time, I’d taken everything in, inhaling deep, filling my chest with the sounds and scents of the summer in the Deep South. A golden sunset, the buzzing of cicadas, the call of a crow in the pine trees along the back of the house.
Something resonated with me, a rightness I couldn’t exactly put my finger on, but one that I felt down to my bones. It was like Uncle Shane had told me. I was home.
And a few days later, I was working in the garage, scenting her on the wind, seeing her standing there in a halo of sunlight. Like the universe had literally dragged me here for that moment, to see her, to know, to recognize who she was to me the second I laid eyes on her. My beautiful, radiant mate.
The only problem was, she didn’t know. And I wasn’t sure how a woman, even a witch raised around wolves, would feel about that.
I suppose there was only one way to find out.