To Be More (Slate/Gray Book #2)

One month ago, cities across America…

“It’s the truth, I promise.”

“How do you know for sure, though?”

“Well...someone I trust has seen it in person.”

“...hey...that sounds like something else I’ve heard before! It’s a wolf with gray eyes, right?”

“What? Gray--no, no we need to stop spreading false rumors. Keep it simple. What I can tell you for sure is that a healer is out there somewhere. It can heal anything.”

“Whoa...my cousin needs to hear this, she has a human daughter that…”

Present day, Atwood Territory...

Gray stares at her new phone. When she arrived home yesterday, there had been a plastic bag of technology on the kitchen table. When Aria heard her come into the house, she--surprisingly--emerged to greet her. Aria’s face was flushed and her eyes were glassy, but her mood seemed to have improved exponentially. She’d told Gray that the electronics were for her, given her a big hug around the middle, and disappeared again.

Since then, Alexander has been painstakingly teaching Gray how to use the phone, and Aria has actually come around and teased her about it–without insulting her first. Gray asked Alexander about her shift in mood and he had no idea what happened and the girl has been keeping mum about the whole thing herself, so the mystery remains unsolved for now. Gray is just happy the house isn’t radiating gloom and angst anymore.

Gray had copied a few contacts from Sara--basically all the Atwoods old enough to have cell phones--and then from Alexander she copied his and Aria’s number, and one extra. She stares at the name another few moments before squeezing her eyes shut tightly.

Miss Audra.

She wonders if it’s wrong to call now only when she needs something. She owes a lot to that woman in so many ways, and yet she was also part of the reason Gray had left her siblings behind. Some days Gray can reconcile with the fact that it probably allowed her siblings a less tumultuous quality of life, but a lot of the time, she can’t help but think there had to have been some other way. Gray was in such a vulnerable place that Miss Audra could have told her to do anything and she probably would have done it without asking. She just trusted her that much.

Frankly, Gray doesn’t even know if the woman is alive anymore, though the thought itself makes her throat constrict. All these thoughts and more have been swirling around in her brain, frightening and taunting her in turns. But she has to do this. It’s going to be a significant part of her journey to recovery if she can stomach it.

Gray has realized it’s one thing to declare one’s commitment to healing, and another to be devoted to it. It’s really easy to look like you’re trying to move on--easy enough to even convince yourself as well--and still know deep inside that you’re safe as long as you’re still “preparing” to apply for jobs or “looking into your options” and not actually making forward progress. Anxiety and terror grip her everytime she gets just a hair too close to venturing outside her little world in the Atwood compound. She’s just spinning her wheels, dreading the day someone notices and makes her shift into gear.

But she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want someone else to have to push her into doing things that are good for her. She wants to be able to recognize the things she knows she needs and to take steps to accomplish them instead of doing things because she thinks other people expect it of her. She needs to learn to captain her own life.

It’s going to be hard, extremely hard, but she’s devoted to getting better. She doesn’t want to live like this anymore.

She dials the number and puts the phone to her ear.

“Hello?” an impatient voice comes across the line after a few rings.

All Gray can do is gape for a long moment because the voice is so painfully familiar but also different. She’s hit with a maelstrom of longing, sadness, anger, fear. That voice coached her through making healing salves and comforting teas and pressure points and healing. That voice sang to her when she was still young and confused about why her parents didn’t love her. That voice whipped her into shape when she started to feel sorry for herself. That voice also convinced her to leave her siblings alone.

Then she hears Miss Audra’s famous huff of displeasure and realizes she has to actually say something. She rushes to get something out before she gets hung up on. “Wait, Miss Audra, wait.” She pauses just to breathe. “It’s...Grace. Grace Holt.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath and then...nothing. Silence reigns for too long to be comfortable. Gray wonders, if such a whirlwind is whipping Gray around, what kind of whirlwinds are going on in Miss Audra’s head? Does she miss Gray like Gray missed her?

Finally, Miss Audra’s voice is oddly...guarded when she responds, “Hmm. It surely is, isn’t it? I recognize the voice.”

Gray tightens her hold on the phone as a crashing wave of emotion descends upon her. If Gray dismisses Audra’s obvious hesitation--and she does, desperately, out of self preservation--Miss Audra is talking to her; she never knew if she’d hear from the woman again in her lifetime. A crescendo of love overwhelms the whirlwind. “Miss Audra,” she gushes, “how are you? How have you been? Are you still seeing patients? Are you--”

“Grace.” The voice is cutting. Immediately Gray knows something is very, very wrong. Miss Audra nevers sounds like that with Gray. Miss Audra teases Gray and smiles at her and hugs her with a hand tucking Gray’s head against her shoulder. Miss Audra sounds like this with Gray’s father, with Alpha Jackson, with people she thinks are wastes of her time. Gray has no idea what she’s done, but whatever it is, Miss Audra is not happy with her. The air around her starts to feel thin. The whiplash takes her breath away. “I do not wish to exchange pleasantries with you. If you’ve called just to talk, then we are not--”

“Wait, no, no. Miss Audra, wait, I…” Gray manages, feeling wrong footed. Her heart feels constricted and her mind is swirling with confusion. What would cause Miss Audra to be so...bitter? Resentful? Gray hated disappointing Miss Audra more than anyone else as a youth, even her father. It kills to know that she’s done it without even knowing what it is or how to begin to fix it. Old self doubt curls nefariously into her thoughts. Can’t I do anything right?

“You what?” Miss Audra clips.

“I just need…” Gray needs a lot of things right now. A lot of things the old Miss Audra would have been able to provide, but Gray senses that that chapter of life is long dead.

Unbidden, a memory of Sara rises to the surface. “Sometimes,” she’d looked into Gray’s eyes and said, “you’re lucky enough to be around people who know you so well that they know what you need before you do, but you’re likely to only encounter one or two of those people in your lifetime. And it’s never fair to expect it.” Sara’s expression was inscrutable. “You need to know who you are, but you also need to know how to tell other people who you are. Don’t hide. Be who you are and never, ever excuse yourself for that.”

Gray gulps in a big breath of air and centers herself. She may have once bent to Miss Audra’s will no matter what, but she’s older now, and she doesn’t have to hide, not from anyone. She forces herself to stop thinking of ways to apologize for an unknown trespass or how to beg for another chance and tries to remember her one true objective. Gray’s lower lip starts to wobble, but she can’t give up now, even if it kills her. At least she will have died trying.

“Do you still have the number of that psychologist you referred werewolves to?”

Silence. Breath crackling across the line. “Yes.” Miss Audra says finally. “I will text it to you.” Then she seems to draw in a shaky breath of her own. “And never call this number again. You’ve done enough.”

The line goes dead.

:::::

For a while, Gray feels too tender to even speak about her conversation with Miss Audra. Immediately after, she stares at the phone for a long time, eternally grateful she waited until the house was empty to make the call. With shaky legs, a fuzzy mind, and a broken heart, she stumbles out of the house and runs in a stupor to her cave.

It might be wrong, it might be running from her problems, but right now she needs out. She needs to be out of this skin where people have power to hurt her from hundreds of miles away and everything is wrong and her life of before and her life now are blurring so uncomfortably. All that stuff from before was supposed to stay in the past. She had made so much progress, she was starting to feel like one day those old hurts could be scars and not forever tender, raw skin on the verge of bleeding always.

But everything is coming back in waves now. The need to impress, to please, to gain respect from people who will never give it runs through her in rolling, aching motions. She remembers reading medical journals with her father, bringing her mother dinner in bed, brushing her own hair and prettying her face for the boy who was to pick her up in his too expensive, paid-for-by-daddy sports car, even sometimes pasting on a smile for her siblings so they could find in her the things they should be able to look to their parents for: love, support, acceptance, appreciation.

Then of course there are the nightmare flashes of blood and gore from the last full day she spent in her home country. Though, what she did that day is easier to come to terms with than the lessons and patterns that had been ingrained in her by her family and surroundings. She has been able to accept that she did what she did to survive and nothing more. Talking to Slate about his similar experiences has taught her that. He has said he did what he had to do to survive and help his friends survive and that he’d do it again if the circumstances were the same. Gray realizes that she did what she had to do to survive and if the circumstances were the same...well, she doesn’t know what she could have done differently.

The years of oppression and pressure and low self-esteem aren’t reasoned away so quickly. However, while that night is easier to come to terms with, it doesn’t mean it left less of an impression. Her nights are frequently tortured with bloody doctor’s offices and empty syringes.

The warring images and emotions make her want to scream.

But that’s what the psychologist is for, Gray reassures herself. If nothing else, she accomplished her mission today. Even though it feels like she’s taken two steps backward, she has still made it paradoxically one step closer to healing those wounds into scars and no one can take that away from her.

For now though, while she still feels raw and bleeding, she needs to forget.

:::::

Brett frowns at his computer. He’d started getting...messages. From all sorts of people. They were slow and far between and more vague in the beginning, but now they’re getting more serious. He skims the most recent one.

Alpha Atwood,

Forgive me for speaking out of turn, but I have an urgent matter I’d like to discuss. I hope this isn’t founded in rumor, but I’ve been hearing of a wolf near your territory that has healing powers. It almost embarrasses me to say, because it sounds so fantastical, but if there’s any possibility it’s true, I have to find out for myself.

My daughter has fallen ill. She’s human and carrying my first grandbaby, but she caught pneumonia a couple weeks ago and she just can’t seem to shake it. They’re saying it’s starting to affect the baby, something about oxygen levels, it’s all a bit over my head. I’m worried for my grandbaby, but I’m terrified for my daughter. She’s only getting weaker and it feels like time is running out.

Please, Alpha. If there’s anything you can do, I’m not too proud to beg if I need to. This is my daughter. She’s young, she was healthy - if you can just help her get over this sickness, I know everything will be fine. She just needs a bit of help.

Please.

Thank you for your efforts and eagerly waiting a reply,

Carl Sheffield

The situation hits a bit too close to home this time. He can’t ignore it anymore. Something has to be done, he just has to find the most delicate way to present the situation to the involved parties.

“Dad?” Sage says in a small voice.

Brett startles slightly as he looks up to see his second-to-youngest child at the doorway to his office building. He’d heard someone coming of course, his hearing is about as good as his animal counterpart, but he’d assumed it was one of his older children or maybe Brianna and her twins, who sometimes liked to stop by for candy. Sage throws him for a bit of a loop.

“Sage?” Brett returns in the same tone.

“Um, I…” He shifts his weight. “I guess I just don’t know what to do.”

Brett considers the vague statement for a moment before deciding that Carl Sheffield can wait. “Alright,” he says, hauling himself out of his desk chair and walking over to the sitting area in the corner of the office. “Sit down with me for a bit. Tell me what’s going on.”

Sage melts in relief and hurries to sit beside his father. He pulls his knees up to his chest and frowns as he thinks about how to put words to his thoughts. “Well,” he starts. “It’s about Slate.”

Brett’s eyebrows shoot up. That is unexpected. “Okay,” he says slowly. “Fortunately, I’m pretty familiar with the subject matter, so you’re in luck. What about Slate is bothering you?”

Sage shakes his head quickly, “No, no it’s not…” Sage sighs. “It’s not Slate who’s bothering me.”

Brett sighs wearily and drops his head for a moment. Really, it’s his fault. He should have had a talk with his youngest boys about what happened to Slate, especially Sage. Raven is only just barely young enough to accept the explanation of “your brother got very hurt protecting our pack,” so Brett should have known that Sage would have more questions. In some ways, Sage is younger than his thirteen years--he spent most of his formative years thus far without a mother and a few of those with an absentee father as well.

But maybe that’s why he’s been known to catch them all off guard with his close perceptions sometimes. Sage is very sensitive to the moods of others, he can read a room without realizing he’s doing it–he’s a lot like Asher that way–but it’s for that reason that it’s so important for Sage to talk through his feelings so he can recognize why he’s feeling the way he is and to be able to give him the words to express himself. Brett should have known to have a conversation about Slate. He curses himself for the oversight.

“I’m sorry.” Brett raises his head and sees Sage shrinking away. He smiles sadly at his sweet boy and squeezes the back of his neck. “No, Sage, I’m not mad at you, I’m frustrated with myself. I’m sorry we haven’t talked about this before.”

The tension goes back out of Sage and he nods. “It’s just that...people are saying…things. About Slate.”

Brett steeples his fingers in front of his mouth for a moment, trying to decide how to play this out. “Okay,” he begins slowly, “what kinds of things are they saying?”

“Well,” Sages shifts uncomfortably. “They’re saying he looks scary and creepy now, and that...that he should just stay inside so people don’t have to look at him, and some people say,” Sage’s words are tumbling out at light speed now, almost tripping over each other, “that it’s a shame he’s so ugly now because he was pretty before and some say that-that he probably deserved what happened to him and--”

“Sage, Sage,” Brett interrupts. The words hurt Brett to hear, he can’t imagine how Sage feels having to hear his peers say these...these vile things. “Sage, it’s alright, you don’t have to keep going.” He pauses and rubs his hands down his face. “It really hurts to hear people say those things about someone you love, doesn’t it?”

Sage nods meekly with distress still evident all over his face and posture. “Yeah. And I...I just don’t know what to say. I want to tell them how stupid they’re being and how...how great Slate is and how much he loves me and that he’s not scary or creepy, but I don’t…”

Brett’s brows furrow. He’s not sure he’s reading this right. Gently, so that Sage knows he isn’t being judged, Brett ventures, “Sage...do you feel like Slate is a little scary to look at?”

“No!” Sage nearly yells back, body tensing. “No, but...but it is...it’s just…”

Sage is frustrated enough now that there are tears gathering in his eyes. Brett’s heart pangs, because he remembers how hard it is to be having so many feelings and not have the words for them. “It’s different?” Brett guesses again.

“Yes,” Sage says back slowly, now biting a fingernail. “But also...more than that.”

Brett frowns now, thinking he might see some of where this is coming from. “Sage, has anyone talked with you about what exactly happened?”

Sage shrugged with one shoulder. “Forrest just told me it happened after the fight, but I don’t really know what that means. I don’t really know if he knows what that means.” Brett sighs. He’s foreseeing a few more of these conversations in his future. But then Sage continues in a small voice, “But some people are saying...that he asked for it, or something like that. That he even did it...himself? But I just don’t understand.”

Hearing some anger creep into Sage’s voice, Brett sits closer to his son and puts a tight arm around his shoulders. Quietly, he explains, “Sage, what happened to Slate is very complicated, and it has to do with something that happened many years ago, when you were still very little. When Slate was sixteen-years-old, only three years older than you, he was out in the forest late at night with friends and some bad men found them and attacked them.”

Sage gasps and his eyes go wide. Brett squeezes him once before continuing. “Slate had to protect himself and his friends, and to do that, some people had to get hurt. And some people,” he says gently, “had to die.” Sage’s eyes go impossibly wider and his mouth can’t seem to close. “One of the people Slate had to fight that night was a very bad man named Silas. By the end of the night, Silas had deep scars over his eyes--and he was blind.

“Just over a month ago when we had our fight out in the eastern forest, Silas was one of the wolves who was on the other side, and his two children and wife were waiting on the sidelines until it was over. Just when things had ended and everyone was okay,” he stresses for Sage, still traumatized by the fact that his family had gone out to battle and that there were such bad people out in the world at all, “Silas’ family came out to see us. They wanted Gray to heal their daughter. When Silas’ son saw Slate, he recognized him as the man who blinded his father and he wanted revenge.”

Sage gasps. “What? And he slashed Slate across the face?”

Brett sighs and tips his head back and forth. “Yes and no. What you heard about Slate doing it himself was partly true.” Sage’s brow furrows and he leans back a bit. “Slate felt very bad about what happened to Silas and how it affected his family. So he helped Silas’ son cut him across the face, to leave him with a scar like his father had been scarred.”

The silence that hangs in the air is heavy for a long moment before Sage gathers himself. “But why…? Slate was only protecting himself, right?”

Brett nods firmly. “Yes. He only did what he had to do.”

“So then why did he let the boy do that to him? Why did he help him, that doesn’t make any sense!” Sage’s distress and confusion is back.

Brett kisses Sage on the forehead. “Your brother is very strong, Sage, and sometimes he does things that hurt himself so other people can feel better. He knew the boy would feel better if his father’s suffering was justified, and Slate was willing to let the act of justice scar his face forever.”

Sage lowers his gaze and stares distantly somewhere near his father’s collarbone. Then he looks up at his father. Quietly, almost at a whisper, Sage murmurs, “He would do that for a stranger?”

Brett’s eyes well up in pride and sadness. “Yes, my son. Slate would do that for a stranger.”