Page 1 of The Wolves At My Sides

Chapter One

Marcus

“I just don’t understand why I’m having nightmares about her now,” Cord sighed, sinking deeper into the plaid green armchair and running his fingers through his tortoise shell-colored hair.

“Would you care to elaborate on why the timing matters to you?” I asked him.

“You’re doing that thing again,” he said.

“The being your therapist thing?” I arched a brow.

“Yeah. That thing,” Cord nodded.

“Well, Iamyour therapist, and we’re not here to discuss what I think. We’re here to get to the bottom of what you think and feel,” I said.

“I know, but do you have to ask such therapist-esque questions?” He asked, crossing his ankle over his knee.

“That is the point of therapy, and you’re trying to change the subject again.”

Cord was my first patient of the morning. He preferred our twice-a-week appointments to be as early as possible, as if sitting in my office was the toad he had to eat first thing. Cord’s life had recently become beyond complicated. He grew up sireless in a decently happy magical home until Ginger Barrel rolled in. The now-dead leader of the hate group, Mundanes Before Magic, was his sire. She showed up out of the blue, killed his carrier, and kidnapped him. Her plan had been to execute him to prove to her followers there was nothing she wouldn’t do to eradicate magic from Earthside, including executing her own son for being a witch. His escape was orchestrated by a dragon shifter, and then he ran away from the first safe house, fearing she’d find him. Then he hid out here with our resident witch and the ender of wars, Starry. None of us knew he was a shifter until after everything was said and done. Starry had pulled off more than one miracle over the winter.

Now, the domestic cat shifter sat in my office wishing he was anywhere else. No one but himself made him come to therapy, but he was still resistant to the process.

“The timing matters because for most of my life, I didn’t know who the fuck she was,” Cord finally said. “Now she’s dead. She can’t kill me, but she’s all anyone can talk about. I heard about her death from the only person who witnessed it, but the story keeps---” Cord stopped midsentence and shook his head.

His cheeks puffed up in frustration and for a moment I thought he’d hiss. I didn’t speak again until he exhaled.

“What does the story do, Cord?” I asked and he shot me a dirty look.

“It’s only been a couple weeks, but it keeps evolving in the mouths of others. I wish they’d just forget her fucking name, honestly. I want to.”

“Perhaps that’s why she’s in your nocturnal visions?” I asked him.

“Because I want to forget her name?” He asked.

“Because everyone is talking about her now.”

“I miss when no one knew I was a shifter,” he sighed.

“Life would be simpler if we didn’t have to deal with our human lives,” I nodded.

“Holly had it easy.”

Holly was his ‘familiar’ name while he was hiding out with Starry.

“I bet he did. Starry’s a very sweet guy,” I said. “There are parts of Holly you get to keep, right?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I get to stay here and do magic with Starry and the rest of them. I get to keep my stuff too.”

“But?” I asked him.

“Now people want to ask me about Ginger Barrel and when she---” his words trailed off. “Did what she did.”

“You can tell them to mind their own business. You get to set that boundary. Just remember a boundary is something for you. For example, let’s say I was the annoying gnat asking. You could tell me that if I don’t stop asking you won’t talk to me. Then if I ask again, you get to never talk to me again, no matter how I feel about it, because you set the boundary and you kept the boundary.”

“So I’d never talk to anyone really again?” He arched a black brow with a smudge of orange in its center.

“If that’s what you want.”

---