.Must Come Down
Next of kin.
Next of kin.
Why- why would Rudy set- why would they need to call-
“Aegis! Aegis! Something’s wrong!”
The ringing in my ears was explosive. My breathing was coming out in short puffs. Someone was holding my arm, gripping it hard, because my knees were buckling. I couldn’t hear anything else over the phone; all I could hear was that sharp voice next to me.
A second later, the phone disappeared from my fingers. I heard Aegis, now.
“Hello? What’s going on?” There was a horrible pause. I wanted to know; I didn’t want to know. Was that it? Rudy was dead? I finally realized after all this time what we all meant to each other, and that was it? No good-byes, no nothing?
“Mom,” Collin said, his voice close to me. “Mom. Breathe. Please, you have to keep breathing.”
“In and out, Mom, in and out,” Dylan said. He was holding my other arm now. “Big breath, Mom, or you’ll hyperventilate. You always told me that, remember? Deep breaths.”
“She’s here,” Aegis was saying. “She’s panicking. I’m the Alpha in our region- Alpha Aegis Black, up in the Werewolf Hollow territory, Oregon. …Yes. Yes, I’ve worked with Agent Rodriguez in the past, several times. …Ah. Shit. All right, hang on, stay on the phone.”
Multiple people were holding my arms. I couldn’t breathe. Ivy’s voice was there, and several others. The blood was rushing into and out of my head so rapidly, the world was spinning on its axis.
Was Rudy dead?
“Sylvia.” A pair of rough hands cupped my face, and I looked up; the stars in my vision cleared, and Aegis was there, expression grim… but gentle. “Sylvia. He isn’t dead.”
My chest could have collapsed from the tension. I sobbed, all that pent up terror releasing. Not dead.
“Rudy’s alive, and he’s going to survive,” Aegis said, helping me to sit down on the floor. “Breathe. No one is dying.”
“Why- why- why-“ I was trying to speak, but my breathing came out in ragged breaths.
“It’s all right.” Aegis wrapped his arms around me. “It’s not great, but it’s all right. He’s been bitten.”
“Oh, God,” I heard Ivy whisper.
I felt my eyes widen, and for a moment, my near-hysteria abated. Bitten? There were… too many implications. If Rudy was bitten, change was imminent; there was no going back from a werewolf bite. Once it was done, it was done. The fact that he’d gotten away from whatever had happened with only that was a miracle in itself, but…
Rudy was the Executive Director of the FBIDWC. You couldn’t be the head of a Department of Werewolf Control and be a werewolf. Conflicting interests, or whatever.
My mind was racing, catching up now that I was breathing. Why was I next of kin? Where was Rosa? What about his kids? They were all adults. Where were they?
“Sylvia,” Aegis murmured, pulling back to cup my face again. “We need to go down to sign for him. He’ll be on probation, and then likely let go. He can’t be alone, right now. He’ll be an unstable shifter until he learns form mastery.”
“Where’s his family?” I whispered. “Aegis, what’s happened?”
He hesitated. It was like there was no one else around us right now, the entire field silent and on edge. His amber eyes flicked up to look around us. In a low voice, he said, “They’re gone. All of them are gone.”
The floor could have opened up to swallow me alive, and I’d never have noticed.
“When did this happen?” I whispered.
“Five years ago.”
Five years? I fought to remember where we were five years ago. Lucy had just been born; I was knee-deep with another newborn and the betrayal of my freshly disappeared ex. I tried to remember what Rudy had been like. I’d handled most of that period alone, and now I knew why. He’d come to her birth, been there with me, and then arrived with diapers… food… meals… but I never questioned anything. I was drowning in emotions and post-partum, and the boys were only six years old, then.
I never noticed him struggling.
“Don’t spiral,” Aegis said quickly. “Ivy, can you get her home?”
The anxiety and despair in her voice was almost palpable. “Aegis, there’s still the issue going on with the packs right now, I have to stay.”
“Shit. Jade? Where’s mom?”
“I’m here,” came Leanne’s voice. “I’m here. Someone fill me in. Ivy?”
“I can get her to the car.” That was Brittani. “Annie, stick close to me. Lawrence?”
“I’ll stick around here and help Aegis and Paul.”
“Sylvia, look at me.” Aegis was holding my face again, eyes trained on mine. “I will be there as soon as I can. Please, bear with me.”
“Alpha Black?”
We looked up to see the grizzled Alpha he’d originally been addressing, concern on his face. Aegis stood immediately, expression solidifying into that perfect mask.
“I apologize, Max,” he said. “We’ve got a situation going on.”
“I understand.” The older man nodded. “I’ve seen the footage. Better proof of the situation couldn’t have been provided. Our side was fully at fault; we’ll bow out gracefully.”
“It’s just teens, Max,” Aegis said quietly. “You don’t need to leave the festival. Your people are more than welcome to remain.”
Max nodded, looking relieved. “We’ll send the boy and his parents home. I need to have a discussion with them, anyway,” he added, shooting an irritated look over his shoulder. He turned back to Aegis. “Please. Go, be with your people. I will not allow any more mistakes, today.”
He and Aegis clapped arms, and a small part of me was relieved to see things work out where that was concerned.
For now, anyway.
The boys stuck close; Jade was hanging onto Lucy, who was frightened and keeping silent. Brittani lifted me up by the elbow, and I saw Ivy give me a pained look.
I shook my head and tried to smile, but it must have looked awful, because her face just fell. I just wanted her to know that I was going to be okay.
I wasn’t alone, and Rudy wasn’t dead.
----
“You took their deaths pretty damned hard, didn’t you?”
I looked up from my spot in the passenger seat to see Brittani watching me, a small frown on her face. “What are you talking about?” I asked, too tired to think.
“Your family.” Brittani shifted, and suddenly looked uncomfortable. “You took it a lot harder than I really thought you did. It’s like something’s broken in you.”
I swallowed. “Rudy’s all I’ve got left from that time.”
She rolled her eyes and blew out a long, irritated gust of air. “Look, I thought you were just showing your true colors, abandoning everyone when they needed you most. It felt like you were just taking off, more than happy to let us all think you died.”
“I didn’t know you cared,” I said dryly. “If I remember right, just a year before that, you were more than happy to embarrass me to the whole school.”
She threw her hands up. “I was a bitch, I get it. I’m still kind of a bitch.”
“Kind of?” Collin muttered from the back seat, where he and Dylan were pretending they weren’t listening in.
“Watch it,” Brittani said, pointing at him. She turned back to me. “I don’t do emotions well. I don’t handle disappointment well. I like being in control of everything in my life. I’m working on it.”
I tried to maintain a poker face. “You’re doing great.”
She snorted. “Yeah, all right, I get it.”
“Why do you keep talking about my ‘true colors’?”
“Because I’ve always known you to be someone who drops people when they’re no longer useful to them,” she said promptly.
I stared at her. “Brittani… we were kids.”
“You left me.”
“You made me choose.”
“And you didn’t choose me.”
“Ivy had no one, Brit. Literally no one. She was new in town. You at least had friends.”
“But you were my best friend.”
“I was five!” I said again, throwing my hands up. “Or maybe four, I don’t remember- look, we were super little, and you’re still bringing up a decision I made literally twenty years ago!”
Brittani screwed up her face. “Did I mention I hold grudges?”
“No kidding!”
She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Look, Aegis will be going with you. We’ll hold down the front here, in the meantime. We’ll do whatever it takes to make it so he doesn’t need to be here.”
I swallowed. “Thank you.”
“It’s the right thing to do.” She dropped her hand, studying me. “Something-something-what your mom would want me to do, or whatever. Just don’t take too long.”
----
The drive home was tense. Aegis was behind the wheel, concern on his face. Both Dylan and Collin were silent… but I couldn’t tell if it was because of Rudy, the fight, the weird attitude Dylan had copped, or all of the above.
Probably that last one.
“Mama,” Lucy said from her seat, her voice small. “Is Mr. Rodriguez going to be okay?”
I twisted in my seat to look at her, and my heart twisted at her frightened face. She’d apparently picked up more than I’d thought she had.
“Yes, honeybun,” I said, trying to keep my voice relaxed. “Everything’s going to be fine. Mama’s going to go and get him.”
“Is he going to come stay with us?” Collin piped up. “We don’t have another room.”
I hesitated. With Rudy in the state he was about to be in, simply staying in any old house wasn’t going to be good enough…
“We’ve got a place lined up for him,” Aegis said smoothly. “This isn’t my first rodeo; we’ll get him home, get him safe, and get him set up for the future.”
I looked up at him. “Thank you.”
“I’m not that altruistic,” Aegis chuckled. “Rudy and I have been working together for ages, now. He’s good people; it’s hard to find anyone in the government who isn’t constantly looking for ways to screw you over.”
“Is Mr. Rudy sick?” Lucy asked, bottom lip quivering. “Is he hurt?”
“No, baby,” I said, reaching over to squeeze her knee, the one part of her I could reach. “Everything’s fine, thankfully. Mama’s just got to go pick him up, that’s all.”
“But he’s a dangerous werewolf, right?” Dylan asked suddenly. “He’s not safe.”
I shot him a look, but Aegis was the one who responded.
“I’ve got it handled,” he said. “I’ll be with your mom. Nothing’ll go wrong with me around.”
“But you’re heading straight into the heart of all the problems,” Dylan said. “I’ve seen some stuff on social media. Things have been pretty bad out there. A lot of protests, and a lot of conflicting sides; things aren’t always peaceful. This isn’t even the first bite.”
“We gotta go where we gotta go,” I said. “We can’t leave him behind. He… doesn’t have anyone else.”
That seemed to mollify Dylan, if only slightly. He turned his head to look out his window in silence. I turned to look at Collin, but he was staring at his hands with a slight frown.
“Hey,” I said, twisting a bit more so I could pat his knee. “What’s on your mind, kiddo?”
“Huh?” Collin looked up, processed what I’d said, and then shook his head, frowning. “Nothing.”
“What you did out there was brave of you.”
“Hmm.” Collin dropped his hands. “I think I may have made things worse by calling him out. I should’ve just gotten Annie out of there.”
“Not everyone has the right answer every time,” Aegis counseled. “Keep it on your mind. When I get back, you and I can talk about what happened today.”
My heart twisted slightly, because that basically cemented in my mind what had happened with Collin.
“Mom,” Dylan asked suddenly, and I turned to look at him. He had a strange look on his face. “Am I a werewolf, too?”
“Well…” I hesitated. “We don’t really know, sweetheart. We won’t know until you shift.”
“So I could be… just human.”
I snorted. “I take offense to that, you know. I’m ‘just human’ myself.”
“Me, too,” Lucy grumbled, though her eyes were still a little shiny with tears.
“Yeah, but you don’t have a twin who’s suddenly cooler than you,” Dylan said, and I was surprised by the anger in his voice.
“Whoa,” Collin said, startled out of his reverie. He stared at Dylan. “The heck was that about?”
“No one is cooler than you,” Lucy chimed in. “You’re the same.”
“But we’re not, are we?” Dylan said. “Look, I thought I’d have changed by now. Then Jade said it took her ages to shift.”
“It did,” Aegis muttered. He was pulling into our driveway now, where both Jade and Leanne were waiting.
“But I think that guy was right. I’m not a werewolf.” Dylan looked out the window. “And now everyone wants to talk to Collin, but not me.”
“Hey, Dylan, come on,” Collin said, alarmed. “That’s not true.”
“Everyone at school is a werewolf but me.” He threw his door open and slid out of his seat. “Nevermind. It’s stupid. I’m fine.”
Before any of us could stop him, Dylan took off toward the house, ducking past Leanne without a word and dredging up the house key from under the mat.
I blinked, before turning to Aegis in disbelief. “When it rains, it really pours, doesn’t it?”
“In my experience, yes,” Aegis said dryly, kicking his door open. “I think he just needs space. You get started on your bags; we can head to my place after and finish packing. I’ve got to pick up the trailer, anyway.”
I watched him stride toward the house, pausing only to give his mother a quick kiss on the cheek.
Talk about a rock and a hard place, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut. I can’t stay, but my kids need me.
What’s the right thing to do here?
There was no answer, of course. Life was never that easy.