Who the Wolf Loves #8
But what if, I thought, the earth beneath me, the sky above, the woods welcoming me home.
What if she became an Iron Sister simply because she wanted to?
What if she stayed not because she didn’t love me enough, but because she loved them more?
What if her choices were not about me at all?
What if I’d never known my mother, not really, because of all the pieces of herself she’d kept hidden—and because I’d failed to see her clearly, with so much of myself in the way?
What if I’d failed to see you clearly too, because I saw everything you said and did as an answer to the question I refused to ask:
Could you ever love me?
—
That was why I came looking for you, Jocelyn.
Not because I loved you, not because I couldn’t stand to be without you—that had always been true, from the start.
It was because I needed to tell you the truth.
Not so I could find out once and for all how you felt, but so you could finally understand how I did.
So I could stop hiding myself, and finally see you, the person I loved most in the world, for who you are. Before it was too late.
Of course, deciding to find you was not the same as successfully doing it.
You’d disappeared entirely—if I could find you easily, then Valentine could too.
For all I knew, his forces were watching me, waiting for me to lead them straight to your door.
So I had to search carefully, quietly. And without any clue where to begin.
I let chance steer me, or fate, if you want to call it that.
I searched in all the places I thought you might love, and then in all the places I thought you would hate, just in case you’d imagined them the last place anyone would look.
I crossed continents. I couldn’t ask too many questions, because anyone who knew me would know that if I was searching for a woman, she could only be you.
And if I was searching for a woman with a child, it could only be Valentine’s.
It was a slow quest, and for a long time a futile one.
When does this end, I wondered. Would I waste my whole life, looking for someone who didn’t want to be found?
Would I forever be doing as Valentine predicted, making of myself a sacrifice no one would witness and no one would want?
I’d almost given up hope of finding out, when I reached New York, and, of course: There you were.
First as a painting in a gallery window—I told Clary it was a painting of Idris, and it was. But buried in the lush greens you’d hidden two small, unmistakable figures, holding hands. You’d painted our childhood, and it felt like a sign.
You weren’t ready to erase the past. Not entirely.
You hadn’t erased me.
—
You know the rest, Jocelyn. You know I found you and your daughter and the life you’d built in the mundane world. You told me you were happy, and you meant it. But you were also lonely, you said. You were hiding so much of yourself from the world, even from Clary—from Clary most of all.
“I’m starting to feel invisible,” you said, that first time after I’d found you.
“I see you,” I said, and for the first time, I did.
I’d come prepared to tell you I loved you, no matter what—and so, for the first time, I wasn’t searching your expression for clues, evidence that you did or did not feel the same way. I wasn’t trying to hide the brightest, truest part of myself. I wasn’t thinking of myself at all.
And so, finally, I saw you clearly. I saw that more than anything, you needed a friend.
Maybe this sounds like more of the same to you. But it felt different: It felt honest, this time, my silence. Because I needed it too, your friendship, your happiness, your safety.
The rest, I decided in that moment, and every day after, could wait.
—
Hiding for the right reasons is still hiding.
I’ve had a lot of time to think lately, sitting in that hospital room, waiting for you to wake up.
And one thought I can’t escape: Despite the horrors that have beset us since Valentine’s return, despite the suffering and the death and the fear of what’s to come, despite Clary’s plunge into the danger you tried so hard to keep her from, despite even you, lying there unconscious, day after day after day, despite all of it, I have not felt so whole, so wholly alive and wholly myself, in a very long time.
I did the best I could to live as a mundane for you, because that’s what you needed.
And even before that, I tried to be the man you wanted me to be: the same Lucian Graymark you’d grown up with.
A Shadowhunter, who just happened to have been bitten by a wolf.
That’s what you told me, when you found me alive in the woods—it didn’t matter if I was a Shadowhunter or a werewolf.
I was the same man I’d always been. I used to love hearing you say it—that the bite didn’t have to change anything.
But it changed everything. I understand that now.
Maybe it’s watching Clary come into her own.
Maybe it’s watching Simon come to terms with his new life after death.
Clary doesn’t want to see it, that what he is has reshaped who he is.
That it’s not a question of whether this is good or bad.
It simply is. He’s a Downworlder. That’s a part of him, now, as much as Shadowhunter is a part of you. None of us can leave our selves behind.
I’m out of excuses now, Jocelyn. And so are you. The worst has happened. Valentine is alive and we’ve survived it. You don’t need to protect Clary anymore. You don’t need to hide who you are for the sake of your daughter. You get to choose now. Any life you want.
And so do I. I’ve waited so long to tell you who I really am. But after a lifetime of silence, I refuse to say it when you’re lying there so still. It would be another half measure, another way of hiding the truth in the shadows. I’m done hiding.
All the stories are true: I am Lucian Graymark.
I am Luke Garroway. I am a Shadowhunter.
I am a werewolf. I am the man who once loved Valentine like a brother.
I am the man who has loved you since I was a boy.
I am, will always be, that boy in the woods, caught between darkness and light, between the lure of the shadows and the beautiful girl calling me home.
Come back to me, Jocelyn, and I promise, this time I’ll tell you the truth.
I’ll tell you anything you want to know.
Just…
Come back.