Chapter 33
Iknocked on the door and waited.
“Go away!” Cody yelled through the wood paneling.
“I’ll stay out here,” I promised, “but I’m not going away.”
I sat down in the hall, putting the plate and juice box aside.
“It’s okay to be upset,” I told him, loud enough to be heard through the door. I moved a bit closer, leaning against the wall. “What are you specifically upset about?”
“I don’t know!”
“That’s okay, too. Figuring out what we’re feeling isn’t always easy, but it’s important work. Is Whiskey in there taking care of you?”
A quiet “Yeah” followed.
“Good. Give him a cuddle and when you’re ready to talk, I’m right here.”
I understood reactivity in children because I had been that way myself.
Too many changes, too fast, no matter if those changes were good or bad, threw off the foundation.
A new center had to be reached, but it had to be at his pace.
The girls were easier in that they were younger.
Paisley had already faced a big change besides all of this with starting kindergarten, and Nora was relatively content so long as her mom was her anchor point.
Cody was more set in the way of things, had more solid relationships developed with friends, and saw the world from a different angle than his sisters.
“What are we supposed to talk about?” Cody asked a few minutes later.
“You,” I replied. “Tell me about how you felt when Paisley said that she wished Carter was her dad.”
“We already have a dad!”
“You do, and nothing in the world will change the fact that he’s your father.”
“We don’t need a new dad.”
“What about some extra dads? Lots of kids have extra parents. What about your friends at school? Did they all only have one dad?”
“No, but…”
“But?”
“No one at home has more than one. I remember asking when I started school and Daddy said it was unnatural.”
Of course Paul would say that. What better way to convince a child of a path they would eventually be forced into.
Hell, if anything, only one alpha with an omega was far more out of the norm.
Paul was a poison, being part of a bond with him that made that clear as day.
His mere presence was necrotizing—to Maisie, to his children, and now to me.
“It’s not unnatural. Packs are just a bigger family. They come together to take care of each other. Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘many hands make light work’?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s how packs work. Like, for example, if you were sick and your mom stayed up with you, someone could still go to work in the morning and make money, someone else could take care of your sisters, someone else takes care of the house, and then someone can take care of you while your mom sleeps.
Packs are a team that loves each other.”
“Mama has to take care of everyone. Last time I was sick she had to take care of me and my sisters, and Daddy.”
“I bet she did. Do you think that’s fair for her to do so much work by herself?”
Cody was quiet for a moment more, sounding louder and closer when he responded with, “I guess not.”
“Do you love your dad?”
“Of course, but…”
I waited silently for him to continue.
“Sometimes he’s scary. Paisley is afraid of him and Nora cries when he holds her.” Cody let out a tiny growl, a thunk following like he’d let his head rest hard on the door. “I get mad at Daddy when he scares them, but then he gets mad at me.”
“Are they scared here?”
“No. Paisley talks a lot more here, like she did at school. That’s how I know she’s happy.”
“I was scared of my dad too when I was your age,” I confessed. “He had a temper.”
“What’s that?”
“He yelled all the time, slammed doors, that sort of thing.”
“That’s what my daddy does.”
“And it’s not right, not for my dad or for yours. No one should be afraid of who they live with.”
More silence lapsed before Cody quietly asked, “Am I not right, either? I slammed my door.”
“The thing is that it’s something we have to learn not to do. You’re still a kid, and it’s okay that you haven’t learned it yet. It’s not okay when grown-ups still do it.”
The door cracked open, one of Cody’s brown eyes peeking out at me. “How do I learn not to?”
I turned to face him, offering up the juice box. He opened the door a little more, sitting cross-legged with Whiskey’s head in his lap. I opened the juice for him and he took one of the cookies, too.
“It’ll take time, but we can work on figuring out what you’re feeling so we can address it.
A lot of times anger isn’t really anger.
Sometimes when we’re afraid, or sad, or embarrassed, it’s easier to be angry than to feel what’s really going on.
” I pulled up an emotion wheel on my phone and showed Cody the screen.
“Have a look on here. See if you can figure out if you were really angry, or something else.”
“I don’t know what all of these mean.”
We talked through definitions and examples while he nibbled his cookie, eventually coming around to him feeling helpless against everything changing, confused why it had to change to begin with, and guilty that he felt safer here than he had at home.
I opened my arm to him, and Cody scooted under it, Whiskey adjusting to keep using him as a pillow.
He felt so little tucked against me. “Everything you’re feeling is normal.
It’s okay to feel guilty, but you don’t have to.
Your father made home unsafe and harder for all of you.
You can love him because he’s your father, but it doesn’t have to stop you from feeling comfortable somewhere else without him.
Your mom loves you so much that she risked herself to make sure you could grow up without him making things hard.
You didn’t get a choice in that, but sometimes when it comes to safety, we don’t get choices, but we understand later. ”
Cody worked his way through the second cookie before peering up at me with eyes so like his mother’s. “Are you our new dad?”
“That depends on your mom. Whatever we get to be to each other, I’ll be here when you need me.”
I left out the part that his mother and I were bonded, making me responsible for the children no matter what. I didn’t want them to feel like an obligation because they weren’t.
“Did you have more than one dad?”
“For a while I had only one. Eventually, I had three, but none of them liked me very much. I was only a year older than you when my mom added two new alphas to her pack. Do you know what happened after that?”
Cody shook his head.
“I had to go to boarding school.”
“What’s boarding school?”
“That’s where you live at the school.”
His eyes widened. “You had to sleep in the classroom?
I laughed. “No. They have bedrooms for students. You might go home for holidays, but otherwise you don’t see your parents.”
“Not even your mom?”
“Not even her. My parents didn’t really want to be parents, so they sent me away.”
Cody looked absolutely horrified by the concept. “I don’t want Mama to send me away!”
“She wouldn’t. She loves you way too much,” I assured him. “And none of us want you away either. We love having all of you here. I know change can be scary, but you can always talk to us about it. It doesn’t have to get to a point where the only thing you feel like you can do is run away.”
He self-soothed, petting Whiskey until he heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry I did that.”
“I know. You’re a good kid, Cody. We pick things up from our parents.
Some things are good, and some things aren’t.
You learned slamming doors from your father, but you can learn not to do that, and how to talk about things instead.
It doesn’t have to be something you do overnight, but it’s a part of growing. Do you feel any better?”
Cody nodded, twirling Whiskey’s fur and snuggling against me a little harder.
“If you need alone time or a cuddle, you can ask for those things, too. There’s nothing wrong with needing space or needing someone to hold you. When I moved here, I had too much alone time. I hid in the guesthouse most of the day, but I feel a lot better now that I’m spending time with everyone.”
“When did you move here?”
“Only a couple of months before you. This place is new for all of us. We’ll get through all the changes together, yeah?”
“Yeah.” He gave a decisive nod.
Maisie tiptoed down the stairs, freezing at the end of the hallway when she noticed me. She changed direction immediately, coming over to investigate. “Everything okay?”
Cody looked up at her with watery eyes, instantly spilling into an apology and a rapid-fire explanation of everything we had talked about. Maisie looked utterly confused, but hugged her son nonetheless.
“Thank you for telling me all of that, honey. That’s very grown up of you. I’m sorry you’ve been feeling so stressed.”
“Being a kid is hard,” I added with a tentative smile. “Lots of choices being made on their behalf. I understand how frustrating that can be.”
“That’s how it was for Mama at home,” she explained, stroking a hand over Cody’s curls.
“Everyone else made decisions and the only way I could keep you and your sisters safe was to listen, even when it hurt me to do that. I couldn’t keep living like that and I didn’t want you, Nora, or Paisley to grow up thinking how we lived was normal or good.
I know it’s a lot to try to understand, and most of it is nothing you need to worry about, but if you have questions, I can do my best to answer them.
And when you’re older, I can answer a lot more. ”
“Do you have questions right now?” I prompted.
Cody shook his head. “Maybe later. I have too much in my head for more right now. I’m sorry I ran out of lessons.”
I got to my feet, giving Whiskey a pet on the head on my way up. “It’s all right. Maybe we can add in a lesson where we work on figuring out our feelings a little bit every day. Are you ready to get back to them?”
He nodded and threw himself from his mother’s arms and into mine. Maisie joined us. She mouthed ‘thank you,’ smiling up at me with shiny eyes. Her scent was sweet in my nose, delicate peach blossom that soothed my soul.
We walked downstairs together, Whiskey trotting at our heels.
I’d dreamed for a long time of a family where I felt safe and valued.
As I looked around the room, seeing children being doted on, dogs comfortably napping, and pack members attentively focusing on one another, it occurred to me I had actually found it.
It was no longer just a dream. Fate had blessed me with this reality, with people and a situation that was forcing me to grow and adapt, to thrive.
Cody grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the table. “Come on, come on. I want to finish learning about frogs.”
Crash course parenting wouldn’t have been at the top of my list for what might help me develop the most and start healing from the strictures and mistakes of my past. Apparently, it was the ticket, though. And maybe I wasn’t the only one who would benefit from my effort.