Chapter 6
SIX
RAWLING
When I woke up this morning, the last thing I’d expected was to be blown by Phelan. But here I was, coming down from one of the best orgasms of my life, trying to figure out how the heck I got here. I couldn’t believe that I let him in, much less begged him to wrap his lips around me.
The second I saw him, it was like he was meant to be there. Maybe it was the loneliness from the self-imposed isolation that was getting to me. Even as I tried to convince myself that was it, I knew it was wrong. This feeling? It was because of our mate bond.
I’d always dismissed the whole mate thing.
Not that it existed. Obviously, I’d been told that shifters mated.
But this bond, the one that I could now feel?
That was something I thought was exaggerated at the very least, but more likely something similar to the poetic ways people talked about true love. More of a fantasy than a reality.
And maybe that was why I felt safe enough that I let my guard down. Not only for intimacy, but also for letting him know that I wasn’t latent, that I was instead human. I’d planned to keep that to myself for as long as possible, and out it fell from my lips.
More shocking than that was what I wanted to do next, to confess to him that I was a hunter.
Confessions while drinking were always bad because you said more than you wanted to and more than you would sober. Orgasms were no different. But that didn’t stop me. There was such a relief letting him know that I wasn’t latent.
He hugged me to him and whispered how much he missed me, and that was all it took to have me blurting out, “I think I’m a hunter.”
It was soft, so quiet that he could have pretended he didn’t hear if he wanted to. At least, that was what I told myself as it flew from my lips.
I waited for the horror, anger, panic, or one of a great many things to hit. Instead, I got laughter, the very last response I’d considered.
“Oh, Rawling, hunters aren’t real. That’s like saying the boogeyman is under your bed or there’s a zombie at the window. They’re just made-up stories.”
“How do you know that?” I pushed my head up to look at him a little better. “How do you know that? Everything I know is that they’re real. It’s not that I know a heck of a lot, but still, from what I’ve read, they’re real.”
“I know because all the records aren’t really records at all.” He kissed my cheek. “The ‘records’ are stories that have been passed down, nothing more than lore. Not a single story has been verified. It’s just the stuff that shifters tell their kids to keep them from doing stupid shit.”
I didn’t doubt that Phelan believed every word he was saying, but still, it didn’t feel right. Hunters were real. My gut shouted that they were. And the voice that was now mainly silent told me I was one.
“Then how come my scent wavers?” I pulled off my ring and then put it back on again. “See? Without it, I scent like a shifter, and I smell latent when I pop it on.”
“That’s because you’re bonded to me and you’re carrying our baby. I’m scenting our child.” He put his hand on my belly. “It means our baby’s probably a shifter. You said it yourself earlier than the scent was because of the baby.”
Being a shifter meant that our child would be accepted. I didn’t have to worry about our little one being rejected in shifter society, even if I was discovered as human. Shifters protected their own, and our little one was one of them.
If all things were equal, I’d have happily welcomed a human or shifter baby. But they weren’t human, and being a shifter was invaluable for our baby’s future.
“My gut tells me hunters are real,” I said, pushing myself to stand and pulling my pants back up. “If they’re not, why don’t you help me prove they’re not?”
“How can you prove something isn’t? You can prove something is.”
If he was going to get all fact-based, I could do that too.
“Well, then, how about you prove that they are real? Come and look at what I’ve been doing.” I went and showed him the papers.
“This just looks like old stuff people are too hesitant to throw away. Every family has this.”
“Yes and no. Come with me.” I grabbed his hand and dragged him down into the basement. “Look at all this.” I indicated the mounds of boxes that remained in the basement after I’d brought a lot upstairs. “We need to go through all of it, because if hunters are real, it’s gonna be in one of these.”
Phelan looked at me like I had two heads.
“Rawlins had always kept me from this place. There had to be a reason.”
“Bugs? Rats? Things that go bump in the night? Not gonna lie, Rawling, it wouldn’t be hard to keep me out of here, not even as an adult.” He grabbed the back of his neck. “This basement’s kind of creepy.”
“It’s not kind of, it’s 100% creepy. But that’s beside the point. There’s something here that we need to find. Please. Help me.”
“Don’t you think sometimes secrets are better left buried? You dig up the past, a past that was before your time, you might unearth something that you don’t want to know.”
“But what if it’s something we need to know? Something that will protect the baby?”
He stood there looking at the piles for what felt like forever before saying, “Okay, tell me what to do.”
I had him lug the rest of the boxes upstairs. There was no way I was going to be allowed to carry heavy boxes with Phelan there. I had to give him that, he was already being very protective.
We found more pictures, a box of random takeout menus, and some old journals someone scrapbooked in, wallpaper samples. Just random stuff.
That was until we found a property transfer agreement.
On the surface it was another random document.
I went to put it with the other papers, but the house was in a different town, not far at all.
That wasn’t the weird part, Rawlins probably had assets all over the place I hadn’t figured out yet.
But what caught my attention was that it had Charlotte Dempsey on it, the same name as from the bank papers, and also an Arnie Guthrie.
It wasn’t new, but it wasn’t extremely old either. It was from seventeen years ago.
Why was it there? And once again, I asked myself what this woman had to do with Rawlins. She had to be a relative with the same family name.
“We need to check it out,” I said. I wasn’t asking. It was a must and for no reason I could explain.
“What good would seeing a house do?”
“I need to see it.”
“Why? Give me one logical reason why.”
“Because… hormones.”
He immediately agreed. I was going to have to put that in my back pocket. Next time, lead with hormones.
It wasn’t a long drive, and I didn’t know what I was expecting by going there, but it was more than I got, which was nothing.
I didn’t recognize the town, the street, or the house.
Not from living near here and not from any of the pictures I’d spent so much time culling through. It was just a random building.
“Can we go see if they’re home?”
Phelan wasn’t keen on the idea, but he agreed. We walked up to the door. It was a horrible shade of brown, and it was peeling. The place wasn't being well taken care of.
“Hello.”
I nearly jumped. I turned to see a man watering his yard only a few feet from me. It was almost dusk, which was the perfect time for watering.
“Hey. Do you know where the owners of the house are?”
“Selling something?”
I shook my head.
“Neighbors are at a work thing, I believe. Friends of yours?” He was being vague in a way that told me I was keeping him on edge, and that was the last thing I should be doing when I wanted information.
“My fiance is doing a family research thing. Do you know who they bought it from?” Phelan saved the day because I was feeling boxed in a corner, and when that happened, I was shit at making up stories.
“I never knew them. They kept to themselves. Their name was… huh. I don’t remember. My memory hasn’t been so good this side of seventy.”
“Thanks anyway.” Phelan grabbed my hand, my eyes glued to the door once more.
“Kind of needs a paint job and some repairs. Neighbors aren’t good at keeping things up, but they’re quiet.”
“Thanks anyway.” I turned back to face him. “We’ll be going.”
“I wish I could’ve been of more help.”
I did too.
We went back to the car. “I was sure I’d get here and pieces would fall together. I didn’t know how or why, but my gut said I needed to be here.”
“Do you have any idea as to what?”
I appreciated that Phelan wasn’t being an ass about this. I couldn’t say that I wouldn’t have been if I were in his shoes. There was nothing logical about any of this.
“No, but it feels like… This is gonna sound weird, but I feel like that old man who was talking to us. Like I know the memory is there, but he can’t find it.” Almost like someone just pulled it out of my head. It was probably just the hormones, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.
The car ride back was silent, and when we got there, Phelan helped me get ready to go back to school.
As we were packing, I grabbed the documents and anything I could find that even hinted it belonged to that Charlotte Dempsey, anything that felt like it might be important, even when it didn’t make sense, and a picture of Rawlins.
I didn't know what these documents were proof of, but they were proof of something, something wrong. And I needed to keep them safe until I figured it out. My gut demanded it. In the end, we had a lot of huge boxes of paperwork to take back.
I planned to figure everything out, because our child’s first blanket would not be secrecy. It’ll be a warm and snuggly one.