Chapter eleven
“Dad, you’re back!”
Lark smiled as Kal jumped off the couch and ran over to hug Mike, clearly relieved his dad was home.
She was relieved, too. Even though Mike had said he and the other guys were just going to see if Trey’s fiancée had any leads, she’d been anxious about him tracking them down.
She knew Mike would have to go up against Roman again, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t worried about it.
“We just FaceTimed with Grandma and Grandpa,” Kal said. “They’re coming to Dallas. Everett, too.”
Mike looked at her, expression curious.
“They’re overjoyed Kal is safe,” Lark said, uncurling her legs from under her and getting to her feet. “But like us, Mom and Dad are worried Roman is still out there, so they’re flying down along with my older brother to help make sure Kal is protected.”
“That’s probably a good idea.” Mike’s mouth curved. “And it’ll give me a chance to finally meet your parents in person.”
That was true. They’d FaceTimed with her mom and dad a lot after getting engaged and Kal was born, but then Roman’s bomb had happened, and everything had gone to crap.
If they were lucky, Mike and his pack mates would find Roman before her parents got to town, and they could simply focus on trying to become a family again.
“What do you guys think about grilling some burgers out by the pool for lunch?” Mike asked.
Kal’s eyes lit up at the mention of one of his favorite foods.
“Sounds good to me,” Lark said.
Mike looked relieved they’d both accepted the invitation. As if he’d been worried they wouldn’t. “I’ll go get changed and meet you back here in a few minutes.”
He was actually faster than that, and when he came back into the living room—wearing jeans and a tee that deliciously hugged his muscles—Kal was telling her that he wished it was warm enough so they could go swimming.
Lark was right there with him on that. It wasn’t often warm enough to swim back in Washington State, but when it was, she and Kal were always in the water.
It was one of the few things that could tear him away from his video games.
“Ready?” Mike asked with a grin.
Kal nodded and enthusiastically led the way to the kitchen.
While Mike added ground beef to a bowl and generously seasoned it, she and Kal grabbed buns and chips from the walk-in pantry, then bottles of iced tea, condiments, and a jar of dill pickle spears from the fridge.
Lark started to get the plates when she noticed Mike wasn’t making very many burger patties.
“Isn’t everyone else eating, too?” she asked.
Mike shook his head as he glanced at her. “It’s just going to be us.”
Huh. She wondered if Mike had choreographed that to give them some family time, or if someone else suggested it. Either way, it made her want to do a happy dance.
The outdoor kitchen was like something out of her dreams. A trellis covered both the cooking and dining area, making it easy to use the fancy grill and surrounding granite countertop as well as eat outside regardless of the weather. Today, however, it was perfect.
And so was the company.
“Do your parents live in Dallas?” Kal asked Mike after they’d all sat down to eat.
Mike glanced up as he squeezed some extra ketchup on his plate for dipping his burger. Lark couldn’t help but smile. He’d introduced her to that particular move on their first date, and she’d been putting a pool of ketchup to dip her burgers and fries in ever since.
“They do,” he said.
“Can I meet them?” Kal asked excitedly.
On the other side of the table, Mike chuckled. “You already did when you were a baby.”
Kal scrunched up his face, thinking, then shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
Mike’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “I didn’t think you would. But I know they can’t wait to see you and your mom again. We’ll go visit them after it’s safe.”
“Cool!” Kal ate some chips. “Do they know you’re a werewolf? Mom said not everyone knows we exist.”
Mike’s gaze flicked to hers for a moment. “Your mom is right. And since most people don’t know about werewolves, we have to be careful about who we tell. But to answer your question, yes, my parents know.”
Lark smiled. She’d gotten to know Mike’s parents when she and Mike had been together. They were awesome people. She only hoped they forgave her for taking their grandson away from them. “That’s good. I’m glad you were able to tell them.”
“Me, too,” he said. “It’s made things easier, that’s for sure.”
She felt her chest tighten, once again hating the decision she’d made not to tell him she was a werewolf all those years ago. But she couldn’t wallow in that. If they were going to have a chance at being a family, they needed to leave the past where it was.
“How did you turn into a werewolf?” Kal asked, taking a bite of his cheeseburger.
Lark looked sharply at Mike, bottle of iced tea halfway to her mouth, hoping he’d realize their son didn’t need to know all the gory details. Heck, she didn’t want to know them, either.
Mike gave her a little nod to let her know he understood what her look had meant before turning back to Kal. “You’re in... fourth grade, right?”
Kal nodded.
“Have you talked about DNA in science yet?”
Their son thought a moment. “That’s like why I have purple eyes like Mom, right?”
“Exactly,” Mike said. “Well, I have something in my DNA that turned me into a werewolf when it decided the time was right.”
As Kal did some more thinking about that, Lark found herself hoping he didn’t ask why it had. Luckily, he didn’t.
“Does that mean your parents are werewolves, too, and don’t know it?” Kal asked.
“Um...” Mike started to answer, then stopped, looking questioningly at Lark.
She finished the mouthful of cheeseburger she was chewing before answering. “Maybe? All we can say for sure is that since you’re a hybrid werewolf, at some point, someone in your family was born a werewolf.”
It was Mike’s turn to think. “Is that how someone becomes a hybrid werewolf?”
She nodded. “Yup. One parent is always born a werewolf, and the gene is passed down to their children, sometimes for generations without ever turning on.”
“Huh,” Mike said.
“Is that the only thing that makes you different from a werewolf like Mom?” Kal asked. “That you have to wait for your DNA to turn you into one when it wanted to?”
Mike’s mouth edged up at that. “Well, I know it takes my pack mates and me longer to turn into wolves than it does for your mom and her pack mates.”
Okay, so Mike could turn into a wolf. She hadn’t really been sure after what she’d seen when all there’d been were claws and fangs. She and the other wolves in her pack couldn’t do a partial shift like that. Maybe hybrid werewolves could because they were human first before becoming a werewolf.
Kal looked at her. “Am I the kind of werewolf Dad is or the kind like you?”
On the other side of the table, Mike seemed just as interested in the answer to that.
Lark smiled at their son. “You’re a werewolf like me.”
“You’re sure?” Mike asked.
She nodded. “I actually wondered about it a lot when I was pregnant. Since I thought you were human at the time, I assumed Kal would have the hybrid gene, but I knew from the moment Kal was born, and I picked up his scent, that he’s a werewolf like me.
I didn’t think too much about why, but now it makes sense.
You already had the hybrid gene, even though you hadn’t gone through the change yet.
When one parent is a First Clan werewolf like me—that’s what we call ourselves, by the way— and the other parent is a hybrid werewolf like you, the child will always be First Clan. ”
Mike looked relieved as he dipped his cheeseburger in some ketchup. “As I understand it, werewolves are descended from dire wolves. At least, that’s what we figured out after one of my pack mates accidentally had his blood put through a DNA scan.”
Lark frowned, repeating that last part over in her head a couple times to make sure she’d heard it correctly. “How does someone accidentally have their blood taken and scanned?”
He chewed, washing it down with some iced tea.
“Technically, it wasn’t an accident. When they were first dating, Trey’s fiancée was suspicious about all the weird things that seemed to go on around the SWAT team, so when he fortuitously sliced his finger in the kitchen, she got a sample of his blood, then gave it to her sister to test at the genetics lab where she works. ”
Mike must have seen the shocked—not to mention terrified—expression on her face because he quickly hurried on.
“There’s no reason to freak out, though. Once Samantha turned out to be Trey’s soul mate, she didn’t do anything with the information she learned. But that DNA panel is where we learned the wolf material in our DNA comes from the dire wolf that went extinct about ten thousand years ago.”
There was so much there to unpack that Lark didn’t even know where to start. The link to extinct dire wolves made sense, but the idea of the woman Mike’s pack mate was dating stealing his blood to do a DNA panel on it was still all kinds of terrifying.
“That sounds like the stories you told me when I was little, Mom,” Kal said. “About us getting our werewolf nature as a gift from real wolves long ago in repayment for a kindness our ancestors showed them.”
Lark nibbled on a chip thoughtfully. “That would definitely explain what Samantha discovered in the DNA panel.”
Mike picked up his other cheeseburger. “You have stories about where werewolves originated from?”
She smiled, thinking of how the story was passed down from generation to generation in her pack.
“Legend has it that our ancestors once faced terrible creatures that threatened to wipe out all of humanity, and just when it seemed like there wasn’t any hope, a miracle happened.
One of our ancestors—Amias—was running from the creatures, barely able to keep ahead of them and close to collapsing from exhaustion, when he came across an alpha from one of the ancient wolf packs.
Even though the wolf was huge and a dangerous creature in his own right, he’d gotten trapped in a narrow canyon during a forest fire and was close to perishing.
In return for Amias risking his life to save him, the alpha wolf gifted Amias and his family and all of his descendants with the speed, agility, strength, and form of the great wolf.
As a result, Amias and his family were able to defeat the creatures.
That blood continues to run through our veins today, thousands of years later. ”
“That has to be one of the coolest origin stories I’ve ever heard,” Mike said with a grin and laughed. Mike did love his superhero movies. “And it kind of fits with everything we’d been told about how our ancestors became werewolves long ago to protect humanity from vampires.”
Kal’s eyes widened. “Vampires?!” He looked at her. “Those creatures in the stories Grandpa told me were vampires?”
Mike nodded, looking from Kal to her. “According to what Davina told us, yeah.”
“That makes the tales even cooler!” their son said.
Mike chuckled at that, and even Lark couldn’t help laughing again. Spoken like a true ten-year-old boy. One who was also definitely his father’s son. She’d have to remember to mention the whole vampire thing to her parents and see if they knew that part of the story.
As they ate the rest of their lunch, they talked about other things, like why Mike became a police officer, how the SWAT team came to adopt Tuffie, and whether Kal could try to do the obstacle course on the compound they’d seen the other day.
The sight of them bonding like this made her heart happy.
“Do you want to play some video games, big guy?” Mike asked when they’d finished eating.
Kal grinned. “Definitely!”
“Good deal. Why don’t you go inside and pick a game while your mom and I clean the table?”
“Okay!”
Lark laughed as Kal ran into the house. “Lunch was a great idea. Thanks for suggesting it.”
Mike’s mouth curved as she stacked the plates, and he put all the condiments on the tray. “I’m glad you and Kal were cool with it.”
“Kal loves spending time with you,” Lark said, then softly added, “So do I.”
Mike stilled, hand on the bottle of ketchup as his gaze met hers, and her heart did a little somersault at the emotion she saw there.
“You’re good with Kal,” she said softly.
Mike let out a little snort. “I’m not even sure what I’m doing when it comes to being a parent.”
Well, for someone who didn’t know what he was doing, he was a natural. “Just keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll be fine.”
“Speaking of which,” he said, stopping to look at her again. “You did a great job with Kal. He’s an amazing kid.”
Lark gazed at him, the words meaning more to her than she could ever have imagined. Before she could thank him, though, Kal’s voice rang out from the open kitchen door.
“Mom! Dad! Are you guys coming or what?”
“I guess we should finish cleaning up and get inside,” she said with a laugh.
As they joined Kal on the couch to play video games in the living room a few minutes later, it almost felt like they were a family again.
And while she knew it could take a while to actually get back to that place, she allowed herself to enjoy the moment and daydream about the life they could have had if she’d never left.