Find My Heart - Chapter 31: Chapter 31

Sebastian
I drummed my fingers on the table impatiently. What was taking him so long?
I opened my mouth to shout his name again, but then I heard the door to his bedroom open, so I clamped my mouth back shut.
I suddenly felt very self conscious just sitting here doing nothing, so I glanced around quickly, before picking up a random catalogue that had come through the post, and pretended to be casually looking through it.
I knew I was going to have this conversation with Cole one day. I just didn't think it would be under these circumstances.
As Cole and Nathan approached the table, I shut the catalogue and pushed it to one side, only then realising that it was in fact 'Millers catalogue of Mobility Aids' with "Mobility Scooters Half Price" emblazoned across the front in big red letters.
I quickly shoved the catalogue off the table, letting it plop onto the floor.
Thankfully Cole seemed too distracted to notice anything I was doing.
After they both seated themselves at the table, I gave a short cough to clear my throat.
"So, is there anything the two of you want to tell me?" I asked, using the same tone I often did in the police interview room.
"Erm," Cole said, swallowing nervously. "Well, me and Nathan, are kind of dating, I guess?" he said, shooting a look towards Nathan as if to check that was the case.
Nathan's eyebrows twitched, seemingly shocked to be dragged into the conversation so early, but then he turned to me and said,
"Yes, I am dating your son, Sir. I hope that's ok with you?"
"Mmm," I mumbled in response, my eyes moving back and forth between the two of them, holding a steady glare.
"And when exactly did this all happened?" I asked. "Apart from you bringing Cole home that night he was drunk, I haven't seen or heard anything else of you since."
"I've seen him a few times," Cole replied defensively, "and we've only just started dating, so it's new to me too."
I looked between the two of them again. They were sat so close together that their shoulders and arms were touching, and I'd bet that their legs were pressed against each other under the table too.
I had my suspicions of what was going on here, but I was interested to know if Cole would hide it from me.
"Ok," I said slowly, "I don't mind the two of you dating, but I'm setting some rules."
Cole opened his mouth, either in shock at my acceptance, or to protest against my rules, but I didn't let him interrupt.
"Rule 1. You always tell me where you are, and who you are with. Rule 2. No staying out overnight. Rule 3. Nathan cannot stay overnight here either. Rule 4. If you're in your bedroom, the door stays open. Rule 5..."
"Dad!" Cole said crossly, the chair scraping across the tiled floor as he stood up sharply. "I'm 18! I'm not a child anymore!"
Nathan remained seated, but I could see that his hands had folded up into fists, a clear sign that he was not happy with what I had to say.
"I know Cole, but please look at this from my point of view. You were just kidnapped. You could have been dead for all I knew! And now you're suddenly dating this, this stranger, who I know nothing about. Look, I know what I am saying sounds unreasonable, but it's just while I get to know Nathan, and know that I can trust him."
"But you can trust him!" Cole said desperately.
"I don't know that," I said, folding my arms and sitting back in my chair, "for all I know, he's just using you, trying to get you into bed."
"DAD!" Cole shouted, his cheeks starting to flare up into a bright shade of red.
Nathan stood up and pulled Cole into him, Cole's head buried into his chest as he gently stroked his hair.
"It's ok Cole," I heard Nathan say quietly, "you don't have to do this if you don't want to."
"Do what?" I asked
Nathan ignored me and carried on looking at Cole.
"No, I need to do this," Cole said, before pulling himself away from Nathan.
"Dad, there's something I need to tell you."
Even though I had a pretty good idea what it was, those words still managed to send a shiver of dread down my spine. Last time Cole had said those exact words, it was to tell me that he'd crashed his bike into my brand new car, his handlebars leaving a lovely scrape down the passenger side door.
"I'm listening," I said, my expression giving nothing away.
Cole stared at me wide eyed and I could see his hand shaking slightly. Nathan must have seen it too as he quickly took hold of it in his own, giving it a squeeze.
"Well, you see, the thing is, Nathan is more than that to me. He's sort of my soulmate, you see he's not like us....like people...he's sort of different, and he has a mate, and well, that mate it turns out, happens to be me."
I blinked once, twice, trying to make sense of his garbled speech.
Even though it was what I was half expecting, it still didn't make it any easier to hear.
"So if Nathan is not like us, what does that make him?" I asked.
"Well....you see.....he's sort of....well no, he is....I would say that..."
"Cole stop!" Nathan suddenly said, sending a glare my way.
"You know what I am, don't you?" he said, and for the first time he turned the full force of his glare my way.
Now I was no shrinking violet. I kept myself fit, and was generally either respected or feared amongst my work colleagues and criminals alike, but even I had to exert lots of self control to not cower away under his glare.
Nathan was a powerful werewolf. That was evident to me now.
Still, I knew I couldn't show him any weakness, so I held his gaze.
"I may do," I replied.
Cole's head snapped between the two of us, his jaw hanging open.
"Wait so you know about werewolves?" he sputtered out.
"Yes, but the question is, when did you learn about them?" I asked turning my gaze away from the seething wolf, and back to my son.
"When I suddenly found myself mated to one!" he shot back, then flopped back down on his chair.
Nathan followed, and I was relieved to see his aggression levels seemed to have dropped again.
"And when did you find that out?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't know, maybe a couple of months ago?"
"A couple of months!" I said, sitting up rapidly. "How's this been going on for two months without me knowing?"
I saw Cole suddenly start to fidget.
"Well, it hasn't really been going on for that long, that was just when I found out."
My eyes widened.
"So you didn't want to be his mate?" I asked Cole in surprise.
Again, with the fidgeting.
"Well, actually, he didn't want to be mine," Cole said in a small voice.
My eyes shot over to Nathan, ready to go head to head with the guy who rejected my son, but the look on Nathan's face made the words freeze in my throat.
He looked in pain, like the very thought of what he did was eating him alive.
Cole suddenly snapped his head round to look at Nathan, and instantly, his expression matched Nathan's.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Cole said, gripping onto Nathan's shirt, "I shouldn't have said that, please don't be upset."
Cole's words seemed to snap Nathan out form his thoughts, and he gently ran his hands through Cole's hair before kissing him lightly on his forehead. He then turned to me.
"I did reject your son, but I was wrong to do so. I thought he wasn't good enough for me, but as I've got to know him, I've realised that I was wrong. He's too good for me, and I feel incredibly lucky to have him as my mate."
"Good," I said nodding, "he is too good for you."
"Dad!" Cole said in warning, and for the first time that evening I couldn't help but let a small smile slip out.
My Cole was all grown up.
Cole looked thoughtful for a moment before he asked, "So, how is it that you know about werewolves then?"
This was it. This was the moment I had been dreading for the past 18 years.
of me wanted to tell Nathan to leave. Afterall all this was a private family moment, but part of me knew that he needed Nathan to hear this too, as he would need him more than ever after hearing what I had to say.
"I know about werewolves, because I was mated to one," I said, staring at my hands that were clenched together on the table.
The silence was deafening, and I looked up to see Cole wide eyed in shock.
"So, does that mean that my mum was a werewolf?" he asked in a strained voice.
"Yes," I replied, nodding slowly.
"But...so....does that make me half werewolf?" he asked.
I took a deep breath, "Yes and no. Yes your mum was a werewolf, so it is in your blood, but no one is actually half werewolf or half human, you are born either one or the other."
Cole frowned a little but nodded to show he understood.
I could see the questions burning in his eyes, and I unconsciously held my breath waiting for the one I dreaded the most.
"So, my mum, she's a werewolf," he said, more to himself than me, "so what happened to her? Why aren't you together? Is it because of me?"
"What? No!" I said back forcefully, but I knew this idea was going to be hard to dispel.
I sighed, and looked at my hands, noticing that I was playing with my fingers in a nervous manner. The only thing that would give away just how much this conversation terrified me.
I gripped my hands together tightly to stop the movement.
"I guess I better start from the beginning, but please can you let me get to the end before you interrupt. I'll answer all the questions you have, but only at the end, once I've told you everything."
"Ok," Cole said nodding, and I noticed, Nathan taking hold of one of his hands and giving it a squeeze.
"Me and your mum, Joy, we went to the same secondary school. We didn't have any of the same classes, but that didn't mean I didn't notice her.
"She had this beautiful golden brown hair, that looked like caramel when the sun shone on it. And she had the most beautiful blue eyes. The type that you couldn't help but stare at. But I never talked to her, or tried to approach her. I was a typical high school lad, full of shit. I could talk and flirt with any of the girls I didn't fancy, but show me one I liked and I went all tongue tied and embarrassed.
"Anyway, we were in our senior year and I was failing maths miserably. For some reason, no matter how many times the teacher explained it, I just didn't get it. So they asked if I would take some extra tutoring from someone in the top class.
"Imagine my surprise when your mum walked into my tutoring sessions, with a maths text book tucked under her arm.
"And it was amazing. I was too tongue tied in front of her to mess around or flirt, so I just listened and tried my best to impress her by doing well in my classes. And suddenly my test scores were getting better, and her smiles were getting wider and wider.
"I finally managed to get the confidence to ask her out just a few weeks before the end of the year. And she turned me down. Told me it wasn't the right time to get into anything serious right before college.
"I was heartbroken but I didn't let anyone see that. I had never liked another girl the way I liked your mum.
"After highschool finished, she sort of just disappeared, and after a while I resigned myself to thinking that I would never see her again.
"Then about three years later, I bumped into her at a supermarket. Literally. Her shopping went flying and she ended up in a heap on the floor.
"I was absolutely mortified, and I quickly offered her my hand to help her up. When our hands touched, there was this funny spark, and warmth radiated up my arm. I thought it was little weird, but your mum had this really strange expression on her face, like she'd seen a ghost.
"I knew we hadn't seen each other in quite some time, but I didn't expect her to look so shocked.
"Anyway, we talked, and caught up a bit on what had happened in our lives since high school, then right then and there, she asked me if I wanted to meet up for coffee sometime.
"I agreed and two days later we met up again.
"It took a while, but I started noticing that certain things were a bit odd. Like whenever we held hands, my arm would start to feel tingly, and the feeling would spread throughout my body. And it was like we couldn't stop touching each other, and it would start to really hurt when we were apart.
"I know a lot of this is normal for any couple that was in love, but what was odd for us was that it was happening so quickly. We'd only known each other for about two weeks, when it just became absolutely unbearable not to be with her.
"I didn't know what was happening, and didn't dare talk to her about it because I thought it was just me.
"But then one night I woke up with a start and I just felt this awful heaviness and loss in my chest. I knew something was wrong and it sent me into a blind panic.
"I'd never been in her house before, but I knew where she lived from dropping her off, so in the middle of the night I drove round there.
"When I got there all the lights were on in the house, so I sneaked into the garden and peered in the window.
"Joy was there with what I presumed were her mum and dad, and they were in floods of tears around what looked like a dead dog on the floor. I couldn't really see much, but it looked like the dog had some sort of wound on it's side.
"Now I know the truth I feel really guilty when I remember that what I felt was relief. Relief that it was just a family pet that had died and nothing else.
"I went back home and back to bed.
"In the morning the feeling was still there, and in fact if anything it was even worse. I felt like I was grieving too, and I couldn't understand, firstly why I was feeling what I assumed to be Joy's emotions, and secondly, why they were still so strong given that it was only the family dog that had died.
"She ignored my calls all the next day and the feeling just kept getting worse. So that night I went to her house again. I was about to knock on the door when it suddenly opened and Joy just flung herself into my arms, sobbing uncontrollably.
"We went inside and when she had calmed down and I asked her what was wrong, she told me that her mum had died.
"I was in shock, not quite understanding how I could have got it so wrong. Eventually I told her what I had seen, and told her about these weird feeling I was having, and then she told me everything.
"She told me about werewolves, and how we were mated. She told me about her family and the pack she was part of.
"And the strange thing was, I believed her. Every last word. It didn't even occur to me that she could be lying. Which of course she wasn't.
"But her dad wasn't pleased that she was mated to a human. He didn't forbid it, because he knew he couldn't, but he certainly didn't make it easier for us.
"And then a few months later we discovered your mum was pregnant. It wasn't exactly planned, but it wasn't really a shock, if you know what I mean.
"It was only then that your mum explained that out baby would be born either human or werewolf, and we wouldn't know until the birth.
"We'd already decided that if you were born human, we would leave the pack and live as humans, but if you were a werewolf, I would move in with the pack.
"But then were were thrown a curveball, because..." I paused knowing that this was probably going to be the hardest thing for Cole to hear.
"....because Joy was pregnant with twins."
Cole drew in a deep breath, his eyes wide with shock.
"When you were born, you were human, but your sister was a werewolf. We had no choice. A human child is not allowed to be brought up with the pack, but a werewolf child cannot live in human society. The only option was to split up as a family.
"At first we used to meet up regularly, but things just got complicated. You have no idea how hard it is to keep the whole werewolf thing a secret. When you were both about to turn two we went for a family picnic, in your mum's pack's territory. We were in the middle of eating when this injured rabbit came limping out of the bushes in front of us. Your face lit up in excitement, but your sister immediately turned into her wolf and ran over and grabbed it by its neck, biting and shaking it until your mum managed to prize the rabbit's dead body out of her mouth. You absolutely freaked out and it took me over an hour to get you to stop crying. It was at that point that we realised that we couldn't expect a child to understand and to keep these things a secret, so we knew we'd have to keep the two of you apart.
"So we began meeting up either just the two of us, or with either just you or your sister. But it just got so hard. We were mates, and so everytime we parted, it was just so painful. It would take a week before I could even function again each time I saw her.
"So we changed our meetings to just once a year. Just enough to keep the bond, to make sure it didn't break. But even that was tough. It was like having your heart broken every year. So after 10 years of this cycle of pain and heartbreak we decided we'd had enough. And I've not seen your mother since. We've exchanged the odd letter or email, to let one another know about how the children were doing, but we never talk about ourselves."
I paused, not intentionally, but Cole took this to mean I had finished.
"So what's she called?" he asked.
"Your sister?"
"Yes."
"Oh," I said, surprised that this was his first question. "She's called Lyla."
"Lyla," he repeated, as if trying out the sound of her name. "And she lives with my mum?"
"Yes."
"Do you have a picture, I mean a recent one?"
"I do somewhere. I'll find it for you in a moment."
Cole looked thoughtful. "And does she know about me?"
"Not that I know of, but I haven't heard from your mum in a while, so it is possible that she might have told her."
"Mmm," Cole hummed, still lost in thought.
"I think I'd like to meet her," he said, looking at me with hope in his eyes.
I nodded at him. "I'll see what I can do."
"Where does she live?" he asked.
"She lives at Blackwood manor. She's part of the Bournville pack."
Nathan's head snapped up. "That's Casper's pack," he said, looking at Cole.
"Then Casper might know her!" Cole said, his face lighting up.
"Casper's the Alpha right?" I asked to Nathan.
"Yeah," he replied.
"Well don't get your hopes up too much because the alpha of the pack doesn't tend to associate with lower ranking members of the pack."
"You'd be surprised," both Cole and Nathan said at the same time, making them look at one another in shock, before grinning at each other like fools.
"Wait! Joe!" Cole said suddenly, jumping up in excitement.
Of course, I'd forgotten that Joe was also part of the Bournville pack. Joe had made it known quite quickly that he didn't want to talk about what happened in his pack, so we had never really had a conversation about it.
"Wait, how do you know Joe?" Nathan asked, looking at Cole.
"We've known his mum for years," Cole replied, "then he showed up out of nowhere a few months ago."
I saw a look of realisation flash across Cole's face. "Hang on, does that mean you knew he was a werewolf?" Cole asked me.
I sighed, "Yes, I knew. It's also kind of my job to know."
"What do you mean? What's your job got to do with anything?"
"Well, you know how I've been setting up new teams in the police force?"
Cole nodded.
"Well, the new teams are being formed to deal specifically with werewolf crime, both committed by werewolves, and crimes against werewolves."
"I can't believe you didn't tell me!" Cole argued, although his expression was one of disbelief, not anger.
I just shrugged and stayed silent.
"So you knew Joe was a werewolf as well?" Nathan asked Cole.
"No, I only realised that after talking to Emily when were were held captive. We had a lot of time to kill, so she told me stories from her past, and she told me about Joe, or Joel as she called him and what had happened with him and Casper."
"Wait," I interrupted, "what happened with Joel and Casper?"
Joel had never let on that his dispute was with the actual alpha of the pack, and this might cause me some problems further down the line.
"I think that's for Joel to tell you. Or Casper, or Emily," Cole replied smiling. "Speaking of Emily, is she ok?"
Cole's eyes bored into me, and I could see he expected good news.
I looked down at my hands as I shook my head.
"I'm afraid she didn't make it," I said.
I heard the scrape of a chair, and looked up to see Nathan's arms wrapped firmly around Cole.
Cole just looked in shock.
"Oh god, poor Emily," he said, his face crumpling up as the emotion finally hit. "Poor Casper! And her children!"
Nathan reached his hand round to the back of Cole's head and pulled it into his chest.
I heard Cole let out a sob and watched as he buried himself deeper into Nathan.
I coughed a little awkwardly, just to draw Nathan's attention.
He looked round at me, his face etched with a concerned frown.
"I think Cole's gone through enough today," I said, "I'm going to head into work for a bit. Please can you keep an eye on him for me, and of course you are welcome to stay the night with him. I'll have to speak to him again tomorrow though to ask him about what happened."
Nathan just nodded in agreement, his hand still stoking the back of Cole's head.
I stood up and left them alone.
I found it strange that Cole had fixated on his sister rather than his mother. Cole had always been a bit of a loner, without many friends, but I always assumed that was how he liked it to be. Could I have been wrong? Did he grow up longing for a companion of his own age?
Before I left to go to the office, I booted up my laptop to send off a quick email.
It was about time Cole got to meet the rest of his family.