Chapter 7
Kodi
Of course, I knew that she’d made it home thanks to my handy-dandy tracking app, but her responding to my text to confirm it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling I surprisingly enjoyed.
As soon as she gave me her name, I put my computer science degree to work and did some light sleuthing. It wasn’t hard since I checked out the team that plays at the rink where we met first.
The Saguaros.
I could have pulled up the team picture and found out her name that way, but I wanted her to tell me on her own. I wouldn’t have known about her full name though because she’s done a pretty good job of ensuring everything she does is under her preferred name.
Scrolling through the available information it looks like she’s twenty-two years old to my twenty-five, a college senior, and the team captain.
I would almost feel bad about getting her information this way if she wasn’t able to do the exact same thing with me.
My eyes widen when I continue looking through years of hockey pictures to find that she’s almost always alone. The team rallies around her, in a way, but they seem distant. There’s nothing about her parents, like you won’t find with mine.
Her record is impressive. I don’t know as much about hockey as I do about football, but having been a Predators fan when I lived in Ohio, I went to enough games to know the gist of it. It makes me wonder how much of her team’s success could be credited with her being a part of it.
Stepping away from my computer, satisfied with the entry-level amount of information I was able to gather about my mate, my thoughts drift back to my parents again, wondering how they’re doing.
They had me later in life than most shifters.
You’d think they’d have given up after three hundred years of trying, but they never did.
It’s not often shifters have trouble conceiving, but they did, which resulted in me being their “miracle baby”.
In addition to my parent’s struggle to conceive, they also endured multiple miscarriages.
They loved me insurmountably. It was suffocating at times, and back then I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have parents that cared about me so completely.
They were also constantly worried that something would happen to me.
As an adult who’s now found their mate, the thought of having a cub at all is terrifying.
I imagine it would feel as though a piece of my soul was allowed to run free.
Why do adolescent brains and hormones have to make such a mess of things? You’d think being a creature that could live to nearly a thousand years old, Goddess would have granted us a better teenage experience.
While we’re not immortal like werewolves, secondary shifters can still live up to a thousand years—give or take—if they take care of themselves. Werewolves are the only primary shifters, and they’re immortal unless they’re murdered.
When Goddess granted werewolves access to the human realm, they saw the wild variety of creatures that roamed the lands.
Over time, many werewolves grew tired of their immortality and made a deal with her.
A lesser lifespan and the inability to access Zabella—the werewolf realm—unless accompanying a werewolf, for the life of another creature of their choice until all of the human realm’s species were chosen.
Even the more ancient creatures like dragons, unicorns, mammoths, and other beings of legend.
Most people think they’ve gone extinct, but I think they’re just tired of the state of the world and went into hiding.
Scrubbing my hands down my face at the runaway nature of my thoughts, I decide it’s probably time to call it a night and be ready for another brutal, hot practice in the morning.
At least our game this week is Wisconsin and I can get a break from the unbearable heat.