Chapter 12
TWELVE
NAOMI
Two of a Not-Kind
I was still staring in bewilderment when Rowan finally calmed down, panting slightly from the exertion. While I loved sharing jokes with the guy, I didn’t have a clue what had gotten his goat so much. Besides, ya know, a giant wolf shifter out of nowhere.
And for that matter…
“How do you know what a shifter is?” I asked, more than a bit concerned.
A human, upon seeing one of us, would accuse us of being a werewolf before using that particular vernacular.
Yes, we shared many similarities to werewolves, but in our mythos we were the original wolves, and we were bigger and more hulking than the monsters of human legend.
Rowan straightened, and despite how confused I was, I was relieved that his expression was definitely on the positive side rather than horrified. “I know what a shifter is,” he said slowly, becoming more and more serious by the moment. “Because...”
He trailed off, and the mood shifted. Maybe I was crazy, but it felt a lot like when he’d first confessed to having albinism. But what else did he have left to admit?
“Because?” I prompted after the silence went on for far too long.
“Because...” Another deep breath. Yep, it definitely felt the same as his first confession. “Because I am a vampire.”
“V-Vam…pire?” I repeated, like he had suddenly started talking in tongues.
This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t, right?
Abruptly, there were about a hundred different questions in my head, and they were all fighting to get out of my mouth at the same time.
I sputtered a bit, a habit I absolutely hated, but I was sure no one could blame me under the circumstances. “You’re not a human?”
“Afraid not.” Although his expression was still gentle and his eyes still kind, the levity that had been there before had vanished.
“What were you doing on a human dating app?” Perhaps a bit of a hypocritical question, but like I said, the queue for queries in my head was overwhelmed, and my mouth was running the show. Always a bad situation, really.
“Looking for a connection I was denied by my own community. I’ve been at this a long time, and believe it or not, I’ve never been able to land a relationship with another vampire.”
Oh wow. I found that hard to believe. He was such a catch. Surely it couldn’t just be the albinism thing, right? I knew vampires had a reputation for being shallow and caring a whole lot about how they were perceived, but that was taking it a bit far.
“Why were you on the app?”
I suppose I could have dodged the question, or come up with a vague answer, but Rowan had already made himself vulnerable by admitting that he had used what was essentially a disguise on our first date, and then that he was a vampire, so perhaps I could also be brave and admit the secret I had been keeping so close to my chest.
“Because I am only technically a shifter.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I have no wolf form. I can’t shift. That was why my brothers called me Otto.”
“I… I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“It’s a play on words. I can’t shift, so I’m like an automatic car. And automatic is often shortened to auto which sounds pretty much exactly like the name Otto, so there ya go.”
Rowan’s eyebrows slammed into a scowl so fast, I was surprised I didn’t hear an audible click. I could almost see him recontextualizing everything in his mind, adding together the different pieces of what I had told him, hadn’t told him, and how my brothers had acted at the restaurant.
“Wait, that’s why they’re dicks to you?”
Perhaps it was strange that I wanted to laugh, but the way he said it tickled something in me.
“Pretty much.”
“And is this a common thing in your community? I have to admit, I’ve been around quite a while, and I’ve never heard of a shifter who can’t shift outside of being very injured or extremely old.”
Confusion lanced through me once again before I reminded myself Rowan was a vampire. That meant he likely wasn’t in his forties, like he’d told me.
“Yeah, it’s not exactly a popular topic of conversation.
It’s kept pretty hush-hush. About one in ten thousand of us is born with no inner animal to call on.
We have somewhat accelerated healing, somewhat enhanced senses, and somewhat of an extended life, but nothing in full, and we can never shift.
There’s no curing it. There’s no injecting of an animal spirit. It’s just a thing.
“As you can imagine, we’re not exactly the most popular in our communities. In the past, you’d hear all sorts of horrific tales of banishment or even execution with the excuse that it was like a virus that needed to be stopped, so it’s much better than it used to be. But it’s still not that great.”
Now that I had opened the floodgates, it was impossible to stop the word vomit. I had grown to trust and be quite fond of Rowan in the past weeks, so the weight of keeping my full backstory secret from him had been steadily increasing. Despite my nerves, it was a relief to get it out in the open.
No more secrets. No more lies.
“Sometimes people treat me like a leper, sometimes they just try to ignore me, and sometimes they act like saints just because they were interacting with me. So, as you can imagine, it’s made dating pretty hard.
For a long time, I thought I was fine being permanently single, but now that I’m getting older.
..” I trailed off in embarrassment, not entirely sure how I wanted to word it.
“Now that you’re getting older, you’re realizing you want companionship and support that values you for you.”
God, how did he know exactly what my brain was trying to say before I even said it?
“Yes. That.” I wanted to take comfort in that, but my anxiety was raging far too hard.
After a lifetime of being rejected for what I couldn’t help, it was hard for my conscience to come to terms with Rowan being okay with that.
When I thought he was a human, it was different.
But now that I knew he was magical... “I’m kind of the equivalent of a disabled shifter.
I get it if that’s a bit much for you. But I have to admit, I would really, really like it if you still wanted me despite that. ”
Rowan took a very deep breath, and the back part of my brain reminded me that it had to be an old habit because vampires didn’t actually need to breathe.
Wow, I had so much to reexamine now. This was bigger than finding out that Samus Aran was really a woman and that Fruit of the Loom’s logo never contained a cornucopia.
“I don’t care if you’ve got no wolves, two wolves within you, or are a human. I care about you for you, Naomi.” Another deep breath. “I hate that I know exactly where you’re coming from, but believe me when I say that I understand.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “You see, the reason I’ve never had a relationship with my own kind is because they see me as a corruption.”
“A corruption?” While I’d assumed in the few minutes since he revealed himself to me that his albinism had caused some of his kind to be prejudiced toward him, that particular word sounded like something far more serious.
“That’s the most common phrase for it. There’s also aberration.
Curse. Failure.” I was openly staring once again, baffled at how awful all those terms sounded.
“You see, when one of us goes through the change, we’re buried in the soil as imperfect humans and are supposed to resurrect as perfection itself.
Scars are erased. Limbs regrown. Features sharpened or softened, hair thicker and healthier.
All sickness is banished. All maladies vanish. All weakness is eradicated.
“The blind are able to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, the frail become mighty, and all become beautiful.”
If anyone else was saying those words in that particular order, it might have sounded lovely. But from Rowan’s mouth it almost sounded like a funeral dirge, a lamentation of a culture that clearly cut deep.
“You see, I was never supposed to rise out of the ground as white as I was when I went in. Most vampires think that means I’m not a true vampire, that I’m some sort of half-turned thrall or twist of what they’re supposed to be.
Some are not as harsh, but they all find it uncomfortable to be around me.
I’m a deviation from the norm they all rely on. ”
I hated the pain in his voice. I hated it so goddamn much. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to go to war with every vampire who had ever made him feel less than for something he couldn’t help. For something that wasn’t even a problem.
“I’m essentially a pariah of my own people,” Rowan said in what I recognized as a reflection of my own words. “So, I get it if that’s a bit much for you. But I have to admit, I would really, really like it if you still wanted me too despite all that.”
“God, Rowan!”
That was all I could say before I slammed into him and wrapped my arms around him. He returned the hold almost instantly, and I finally got why he was so preternaturally cool despite the summer heat.
“Yes, I want you. I do, more than anything.”
Yeah, there was the whole issue that we’d both essentially catfished each other (speciesfished?
magicalfished? werecatfished?), but I simply didn’t care.
Now that the truth was out between us, not only were we clearly equals, but we had both been struggling with the same thing in different fonts.
I’d been so sure that I was largely alone in my journey through the solitary quagmire, with only Tweety to understand some of it, but no. That wasn’t the case at all.
“I’m sorry that anyone ever treated you as less than,” Rowan murmured against my hair, his cool lips soothing against my heated scalp. “I am happy to inform you that you are spectacular, Naomi Bracken. In every possible interpretation of the word.”