11. Riley
Riley
Nobody dared look at me as I left the canteen, hot on the heels of the giant, tawny wolf shifter who’d saved my ass.
I still couldn’t figure out why he’d stepped in to help me when I highly doubted he gave a shit about a hybrid wolf like me. Assuming he even knew who I was. Which was unlikely.
Still, I looked forward to seeing Dirk and his friends have their asses handed to them on Monday night. Well, I would if I could find out where this fight was taking place.
My phone buzzed in my pants pocket as I jogged toward the building where my next class was being held. It was possible shifting was a part of the class, so I had my excuse all prepared.
Hybrids can’t shift. Good luck proving otherwise, assholes.
No way could I shift, even if my wolf cooperated, which she likely wouldn’t.
Although she had woken up when the alpha shifter exerted his dominance on the others in the canteen.
That was another thing that puzzled me. As a wolf shifter, well, a hybrid wolf shifter, the alpha’s command should have forced me to submit to him. That was how alpha commands worked, or so I’d read in the shifter FAQs Felix had sent me before I came here.
Only it didn’t.
Yes, I’d felt the pressure to submit, but it lasted barely a second or two at the most before fading. Not enough to make me hit the deck like all the other shifters. And from the surprise on the alpha wolf’s face, he didn’t understand why I was immune to his alpha command either.
Perhaps being half human made me immune? If so, it was a major advantage. I had no great desire to be coerced into something against my will by an asshole alpha wolf.
The buzzing in my pocket continued, so I pulled out my phone to check if Felix was trying to get hold of me. When I saw Mom’s name on the screen, shock caused me to stop dead in the middle of the path.
A feline shifter ran into my back and cursed loudly.
“Watch where you’re going, stupid hybrid scum,” he snarled before storming past in a huff.
“Charming!” What an asshole.
Why was Mom calling? She was supposed to be in rehab without access to a phone.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
“Riley! Oh my god, where are you?”
“Err, Mom, I thought you were in, um, rehab?”
“Honey, they said I could go home, so I persuaded a nice man to give me a lift. But I’m back now and there’s no sign of you! I was so worried!”
My heart sank into my shoes. Knowing my mother was safe was the only reason I’d felt comfortable coming here. If she had left already, she definitely wasn’t safe. And even worse, Frank had made it clear our trailer was no longer ours because Mom owed too much in back rent.
Fuck my life. Now my mother was in all kinds of trouble while I was thousands of miles away and unable to do a damn thing to protect her.
“Mom, you weren’t supposed to leave the rehab clinic! The doctor pulled a lot of strings to get you in there.” I did my best to sound caring and reasonable, even though I felt like screaming.
“I didn’t like it there, Riley,” Mom whined.
“The nurses were mean to me.” What she meant was they wouldn’t enable her by supplying the shit she wanted.
“Besides, I feel fine now. Totally fine.” Hmm.
She’d only been in there a few weeks. Long enough to be past the worst of the withdrawal symptoms but not enough to be clean.
“Where are you going to stay? Frank took the trailer back because we owed rent.”
Mom gasped. “What? I don’t owe a cent!”
“Are you sure? Frank isn’t a liar, Mom.” Frank was actually a nice guy, and he’d been way more lenient than most landlords would be under the circumstances.
“There must be a mistake.” Mom’s voice wobbled, and I sighed. “Can’t you talk to him? Persuade him to fix this?”
“I’m in Europe, Mom. I can’t fix anything right now.”
There was a long pause while she digested the unexpected news. “Okay, but you can still call him, right?”
Typical Mom, expecting me to fix her problems while showing no interest in me. My phone screen cracked as I squeezed the cheap handset a bit too hard. Goddess, give me strength.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do, but in the meantime, can you call Felix and ask him to let you stay for a day?
” I felt bad about involving Felix but what choice did I have?
It wasn’t as if I could let her sleep under a bridge.
“I have to go, but I’ll call you after my class.
” Which I was now ten minutes late for. Wonderful.
“Oh, no need,” Mom said cheerily, even though she had literally just implied she had nowhere to go. I heard a male voice in the background. “My new friend says I can stay with him, so I’ll be fine!”
“Wait, Mom, who—” The line went dead. I stared at the now-cracked screen and questioned all my life choices up to this point.
Perhaps Felix had been right when he warned me that embarking on a crazy quest to find Lorna was a mistake.
In doing so, I’d abandoned my mother who, in the grand scheme of things, was even less equipped to handle life.
Yeah. No matter what I did, I was fucked.