Page 28 of Collar Me Crazy
"Didn't realize you'd followed me."
"I'm beginning to think following you is becoming a habit." She pulled her coat tighter against the chill. "Want to talk about it?"
"About what?"
"About how that story just made you look like you'd seen a ghost."
Ryker picked up a stone from the shore, turning it over in his hands while he tried to find words for things he'd never spoken aloud. The fiddle and laughter carried thin on the cold from here, and the only sounds were gentle waves lapping against stone and the whisper of wind through bare branches.
"Do you know what it's like to grow up knowing that strangers would kill you rather than risk what you mightbecome?" he asked, his voice giving away he felt more angst about it than he cared to admit. "To have your entire identity reduced to a choice between saving or destroying everything you touch?"
"No," she said simply. "I don't."
Her honesty was refreshing after years of people who claimed to understand when they clearly didn't.
"Maddox doesn't know. About me, I mean. To him, it's just another founding legend, dramatic and mysterious. He catalogs legends, not people’s scars." Ryker threw the stone across the water, watching it skip in the moonlight. "But I was there when Varric told me about the prophecy. I remember every word."
"How old were you?"
"Fifteen. Three years after my pack died." Another stone joined the first, disappearing into the dark water. "Old enough to understand what it meant, but young enough to let it shape every decision I've made since."
Sonya was quiet beside him, and he found himself grateful that she didn't rush to fill the silence with empty platitudes. It gave him space to decide how much of the truth he was willing to share.
"The night they came for us, I was asleep in the den I shared with my sister. Maya was two years older, planning to mate with the beta's son come spring." The memories felt like shards of glass, cutting him even after all these years. "My father burst in, told me to hide and not come out no matter what I heard."
"But you did come out."
"Eventually. When the screaming stopped." He closed his eyes, but that only made the images more vivid. "Twenty-three wolves dead. My parents, my sister, my friends. All because a group of humans had gotten hold of old prophecies and decided I was too dangerous to live."
"Humans killed your pack?"
"Hunters with specialized gear and inside intel. Someone had told them exactly when and where to strike for maximum damage." The bitterness in his voice surprised him. "They would have killed me too, but Varric arrived with reinforcements just as they found my hiding spot."
"How did Varric know to come?"
"He'd been visiting our pack, studying old texts and asking questions about the blood moon births. When he couldn't reach my father by phone that night, he got worried." Ryker opened his eyes, focusing on the gentle movement of water against shore. "Found me half-dead from blood loss and shock, surrounded by everyone I'd ever loved."
Sonya's hand found his, her gloved fingers warm and steady. "I'm sorry. That should never have happened to a child."
"Varric brought me here, gave me a new name, a new life. But he also told me about the prophecy that had gotten my family killed." Ryker's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "A wolf born under the blood moon who would either unite or destory. October thirteenth, thirty-one years ago, during the hunter's moon eclipse."
"Your birthday."
"My birthday." He confirmed as he turned to look at her, noting how moonlight caught the warm brown of her eyes. "Do you understand now? Everyone I've ever dared to love has paid the price for what I represent. And that was before I knew what I was capable of."
"What are you capable of?"
The question should have been simple to answer, but Ryker found himself hesitating. "I don't know. That's the problem. The prophecy doesn't come with an instruction manual."
"Maybe that's the point." Sonya shifted to face him more fully. "Maybe you get to choose what kind of wolf you become."
"And if I choose wrong?"
"What if you choose right?" She squeezed his hand. "What if all this fear, all this isolation, is preventing you from becoming exactly what the supernatural world needs?"
"You don't understand?—"
"I understand that you've spent so long preparing for the worst-case scenario that you've forgotten to consider the best case." Her voice carried gentle challenge. "Yesterday, at the sanctuary, you lit up when you talked about your expansion plans. That's not the perspective of someone destined for destruction."
