Thoreau - Chapter 13: Chapter 13

Leo
The day after Beta Tyler's party, Beatrix, Zayne, and Zayden dropped by for Beatrix to read Thoreau's memories as king's evidence, and our little luna and Alpha Cole arrived a few minutes later. Luna gave Thoreau a gift - a soft wolf stuffy - and the boy squealed with happiness as he told her it looked just like Tanner.
Sometimes I wonder if our luna is part witch, I murmured to Ruby. I mean, her insight is incredible. That was exactly what Thoreau needed, and how did she know what Tanner looked like?
Our luna is the best, he smirked.
Beatrix had a present for me, too, but it wasn't nearly such a nice one.
"We destroyed everything else that was in the trunk you found in the bayou, as it was all black magic or tainted by black magic, but there was nothing wrong with the ruby pendant." She handed me a small white jewelry box. "We purified it just to be safe, and now it's clean to do whatever you want with it."
I made a face as I opened the box and stared at the nickel-sized ruby pendant where it lay on the black velvet.
So pretty a thing to cause such horror, Ruby murmured.
I sighed. He was the reason why I'd picked the necklace up out of that trunk in the first place.
I'd stood there in that crumbling house, wondering if I could reset the big ruby in a signet ring to honor my appropriately named red wolf, when the floor shifted under my feet. The pendant swung, whacked my cheekbone, cut my skin, and awakened the demon inside it.
"We know you might not want it," Beatrix said softly, drawing me back to the present, "but no one else has the right to it."
I nodded, but didn't say anything as I slipped the jewelry box into my pocket.
Poor Thoreau didn't realize they were all here for more than a simple visit. He did not like hearing Emerson say that Beatrix needed to read his memories to help the king understand what had happened at Gray Shadows.
Although we all know the truth of it, Ruby muttered.
Yeah, but the king can't issue a verdict without evidence, I reminded him, earning me a grunt in response.
Thoreau's little face screwed up in protest, but Emerson told him he had to. After the luna offered to let the boy cuddle up to her, he agreed and laid down on the couch with his head in her lap and his thumb in his mouth.
Beatrix knelt next to them and filled the air around his head with a shimmery web, but Thoreau didn't even notice. His whole focus was on luna as she sang an impromptu song about all of us happily living in our house in the woods.
Before Beatrix was finished, he fell asleep so deeply, he didn't even wake up when the Z twins pulled their girl to her feet and squished her between them.
Let's go into the kitchen to talk, Alpha Cole said.
So we all stood and quietly left luna to watch over our boy.
"You know, Leo, Wyatt has an eye for fine jewelry," Alpha Cole said as we gathered around the breakfast bar. "You should see some of the pieces he picked out for our mate. I bet he could at least tell you if that ruby is worth getting assessed."
I looked at him with raised eyebrows. I'd seen Alpha Wyatt's own ruby signet ring and, even with my limited knowledge of jewelry, knew it was worth a pretty penny. He wasn't the kind of guy to buy cheap things.
"I mean, if you want to sell it," Alpha Cole continued. "I know I wouldn't want that thing hanging around my neck, literally or figuratively, but you do what you feel is best, man."
"I have no interest in keeping it," I admitted. "You think it might have real value?"
"I know jack about jewelry, but any money will help tide you over until you figure out a career, right?"
A career? If I couldn't find a job in the pack, I'd have to apply in the city, and my only qualification in human eyes was a high school diploma. I'd be lucky if the library hired me to shelve books.
"If you trust me with it, I can take it home and have Wyatt at least confirm that it isn't a fake," he continued. "Who knows? You could be sitting on a gold mine."
"You mean a ruby mine, alpha," Zayne said with a grin.
"I think you should do it, Leo," Zayden added. "If you got rich off it, it'd be like giving the demon the finger."
"More like giving the finger to the witch who set the trap," Beatrix murmured, and we all looked at her. "What? Surely you realized that's what it was?"
She rolled her eyes when we all stared at her in silence.
"For whatever reason, he or she had to leave that trunk hidden, so of course he or she set a trap! The ruby pendant probably had a See Me spell to draw your attention right to it and overlook everything else inside. As soon as your skin touched the ruby, you would have been possessed."
"I thought it was because I bled on it." I absently rubbed my forefinger over the star-shaped scar on my cheekbone. "I thought the demon used the blood as a conduit."
"There is a lot of blood-based magic in the world, but this trap would have only needed skin contact. Still, the fact that it actually cut you was probably also part of the trap."
I nodded, realizing she was right. Even faceted, a gemstone shouldn't do that, and an unexpected injury would distract a victim from noticing something was wrong until it was too late.
"Damn good trap," I muttered, knowing I was living proof that it had worked exactly as intended.
"Could you tell which strega or stregone (female or male witch) the hoard belonged to?" Angelo asked.
"Oh, you'll love this." Beatrix curled her lip up with disgust. "Everything inside that trunk belonged to Alecto Sanderson."
"Seriously?" Angelo yelped. "Are you sure?"
"One hundred percent."
"Cazzo! (Fuck!)"
"Language, Gelo," she murmured with a disapproving glare.
"It's probably a good thing no one else here speaks Italian," Alpha Cole smirked.
"My ears don't need to be polluted by it, either," Beatrix frowned.
"My apologies, bambina (baby girl), but you know how long I've been looking for that creatura malvagia (evil creature). She is responsible for many crimes, each more heinous than the last. Brioc Winterlight, the faerie king, has a kill-on-sight order out for her, and Julian added her to his wanted dead or alive list three years ago."
"He's the king. Call him by his title," Zayne chided.
"He's not my king." Angelo lifted his chin proudly. "Bird shifters have no king."
"Not many shifter species have formal leadership like we wolves do," I explained when both Zayne and Zayden looked like they were about to argue. "Only dragons, whose colonies are ruled by a matriarch. Otherwise, most are either solitary, like bear and big cat shifters, or den in small family groups, like birds and foxes."
"He's still the king," Zayden muttered.
"He's your king. He's my friend and ally. He has my loyalty and respect, but I will never bend my knee to him."
Gelo raised his eyebrows in challenge, and I decided a diversion was needed.
We were supposed to be talking about what Beatrix saw in Thoreau's memories, anyway, not debating supernatural politics.
"Here." I reached into my pocket, pulled out the white jewelry box, and handed it to Alpha Cole. "If it does have value, Alpha Wyatt can be the first to make an offer for it."
"That'll make him happy." Alpha Cole grinned. "He's determined to build Posy a collection that a queen would envy."
"Even though my little luna bunny neither wants nor needs such things," Emerson pointed out as he rolled his eyes.
"He knows that, but it's his way of spoiling our precious girl." Alpha Cole tucked the jewelry box into his pocket.
"All right, bambina (baby girl)," Angelo sighed, "what did you see in Reau's memories? Anything we didn't already suspect?"
"Probably not," Beatrix admitted. "Emerson, before I begin, is Binda the same woman who you call Ms. Marriott?"
"Yeah." Emerson nodded. "Her name is Belinda Marriott. She was a cook at the alpha house when I was a pup, but retired about ten years ago. She helped me take care of Reau during the sickness and, from what I can gather, they appointed her as his caretaker after I was banished."
"Does she have any family?" I asked, curious about the woman Thoreau spoke of with such fondness.
"No. She never found her mate, and my great-grandfather wasn't strict on forcing she-wolves to choose one if they didn't want to." Emerson ran his fingers through his hair, then left his hand resting on the back of his neck. "She's outlived her immediate family and, to be frank, I was shocked to learn she's still alive."
"She's in a lot of Reau's memories, so I wanted to make sure before I started." Beatrix took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. "They constantly taunted him, calling him broken and dumb. They told him they had to beat some sense into him since he didn't have any. They convinced him that they were 'fixing him' when it was really Alpha Bellamy just beating him every evening."
"Every evening?" Gelo and Alpha Cole rumbled in unison.
"Almost, and always between 7:30 and 9 p.m. Sometimes, Alpha Bellamy was feeling particularly sadistic and would show up at 8:59, just when Reau was sure he was safe for the night."
I couldn't even imagine the mental stress that caused our poor boy and didn't need to hear anything else to know Alpha Bellamy Jones' fate. The king would issue a death sentence for that alone.
"I know what you're thinking," Alpha Cole said as our eyes met. "Like his father and grandfather before him, King Julian has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to psychological torture."
"Yeah, that's more the faerie king's style," Angelo smirked.
"What did Mother Dearest do while that bastard hurt my brother?" Emerson hissed.
"Shouted at insults mostly, but she also participated in the beatings two or three times a week."
"His mother, the pack's luna, beat him?" I clarified as outrage bloomed in my belly. Either position should have prevented her from being able to hurt him, and everyone sitting here knew that.
"We can investigate more when we get to Gray Shadows," Alpha Cole said in a grim tone. "Beatrix, by beat him, I assume you mean they beat him. Like punched him?"
"Punched him and kicked him." She nodded and her eyes teared up. "They also punished him, which was different from being "fixed." If he made a sound during the 'fixings' or if he wet himself while he was locked in the crate, which was sometimes up to twelve hours at a stretch, they denied him food, which wasn't much to begin with—"
"He told us about that," Gelo interrupted. "Dry toast for breakfast and chicken noodle soup for lunch every single day. Jello twice a week if Ms. Marriott could smuggle it up to him."
"He had a half bath attached to his bedroom, which was the attic, and could access the tap water, but that's all he was allowed to drink," Emerson added in a raspy voice as he swiped at his eyes. "He told me the attic had no heat in the winter and no air in the summer. He said he couldn't get the window open, either, so I can only imagine how badly he baked in the summer."
By this point, I was having a hard time holding onto my temper, and I wasn't the only one. Gelo muttered what I was sure were obscenities in Italian, Alpha Cole seemed ready to burn down the world, and the Z twins looked downright murderous.
"I want to kill them," Zayden growled.
"Or put them through the same torture," Zayne added.
"Beatrix, were there other punishments besides starvation?" Alpha Cole asked after he took a few calming breaths.
She nodded and shivered.
"Don't you have enough evidence yet to give to the king?" Zayne snapped as he pulled her into his lap and tightened his arms around her waist. "This is hurting our mate!"
"It's okay, my loves," she whispered as Zayden laid his head on her back and held her hips. "They need to know the details so there are no questions later, and I am happy to be Reau's voice. I want him to receive the justice he's due."
Then she told us that Alpha Bellamy's primary punishment for Thoreau was to lash his back with a leather belt, but sometimes he used the buckle end.
That made me see red.
Being hit with a belt would be painful enough, but being whaled on with the big metal buckle she was showing us in the link? That was brutal beyond belief, especially for someone who'd been starved into a state of fragility and had no wolf to heal him.
"Reau could never hold back his screams with that punishment," she sniffled into Zayne's chest, "and that earned him more lashes. After Alpha Bellamy put Tanner to sleep, there were days when Reau couldn't even crawl out of the crate to go to the bathroom because he was in so much pain."
"And let me guess, he was punished for that, too!" I snarled, Ruby underscoring my voice as fury fired through him, too.
"Ms. Marriott helped him clean up as best she could, but she's very old." Beatrix raised her head and wiped her face on the hanky Zayden held out to her. "It was so hard for her to wrestle Reau in and out of clothes and clean up the crate. Twice, he had diarrhea, most likely from the stress and panic, and she did her best, but it wasn't enough, and Alpha Bellamy punished our piccolo orso (little bear) for messing in his crate."
"Oh, my Goddess," Emerson whispered and closed his eyes.
"Do you need to step out, Em?" alpha asked, but beta only shook his head.
"I need to hear it. I need to hear what they did to him."
"If Belinda Marriott is still alive, I want to get her away from Gray Shadows," Gelo said slowly. "Even if she can't come to Five Fangs, I want her out of there."
"She'll come to Five Fangs," alpha declared as his eyes flashed with silver wolf light. "Whoever is sent to deal with the Joneses, I'll make sure they know to bring her back here. If nothing else, I will personally pay for a private room for her at our care facility."
"I want her to live with us," Emerson said. "I want to reunite her with Thoreau, and I'll make sure she draws her last breaths in peace and comfort."
"Definitely," Alpha Cole agreed, then looked at Beatrix. "I know this is a hard question, and it disgusts me to ask, but did either of them touch him inappropriately?"
"No. Never. That was the only kind of abuse he was spared."
"Did others hurt him? Pack members or anyone else?"
"No. His interactions were restricted to Mommy Daddy and Ms. Marriott. The only time he ever saw anyone else was the day he was brought here. Alpha Bellamy sent two shifters to the attic to carry Reau and his crate out of the alpha house."
"Okay, last question. The big one. Did Alpha Bellamy or Luna Ivana give Thoreau medicine that affected his wolf?"
"Yes. Alpha Bellamy gave him three round tablets that the alpha called special medicine to help 'fix' him. They made Reau quite ill and, within ten minutes, Tanner ... was ... gone. Sorry. I can't—"
She broke down, and her mates murmured soothing things as they stroked her hair.
Emerson rushed out of the room and Gelo quickly went after him, and Alpha Cole scrubbed his hands over his face.
"I'm going to take Posy home now," he sighed. "I need to report this to the king, and I want her to have some time to de-stress before my brothers get home from work. Hell, I need some time to de-stress."
I stood up with him.
"I'll carry Reau up to his bed," I offered and he nodded.
Whoever is sent to investigate at Gray Shadows, I linked him, he or she needs to discover the source of the wolfsbane.
Then I shared the conversation I'd had with Emerson and Gelo about the unlikelihood of luna's stepfather and Thoreau's father finding two separate suppliers for an illegal and heavily monitored drug.
Agreed. There's probably only one, he linked back with a nod.
Walking into the living room, I saw luna still holding Thoreau's head in her lap as she played with his messy curls and hummed softly.
"Baby, let's go home," Alpha Cole whispered. "I need to call the king."
She looked up and her dark blue eyes glittered with tears as they darted from alpha to me and back down to Thoreau.
"It was bad, wasn't it?" she sniffed.
"Yeah, honey, it was bad."
"He's safe now," I offered her what comfort I could. "Safe in a place where he has so many protectors, no one will ever hurt him again."
"If anyone tries, I'll skin them alive and laugh as they scream," alpha muttered.
"Cole," luna chided him gently.
"Sorry, honey, but you didn't see what he endured."
"I don't need to see it." She lifted her chin, and both alpha and I heard what she wasn't saying.
She didn't need to see it because she'd survived her own version of hell.
And yet she remains a gentle soul with kindness and compassion for all, Ruby murmured. What magnificent courage our luna has.
She does, I agreed as I leaned down and scooped Thoreau up in my arms. I hope one day to be as strong.
You are already. Ruby rolled his eyes. Do you think everyone could be so brutally broken, so mired in darkness, and come out of it able to care about anyone else, much less an abused boy who is no relation to you? Give yourself some credit, Leo.
I shrugged off his comments and focused on carrying Thoreau to his room without waking him.
After everyone left for their own homes, I volunteered to stay with Thoreau so Gelo and Emerson could go to the one o'clock fighter practice.
I wouldn't have minded the stress relief found in hand-to-hand combat myself, but I could see the pair of them definitely needed that - and some alone time - more than I did.
And I can always hit the home gym in the basement later and take my anger out on the weights.
So, while Thoreau napped, I headed into the kitchen to see what I could make for lunch. At this point, I'd eat anything that wasn't a 'peabutter jelly sammich.' Thoreau could live on those things, but I was heartily sick of them.
When thunder rattled the windows, I looked out to see lightning arcing through the black clouds coming toward the house. A minute later, my phone went off with a weather emergency warning about dangerous thunderstorms and the chance of hail, which was almost immediately followed by Alpha Jay linking everyone that all fighter practices would take place in the training center for the rest of the day.
Crap. Now I need to find something to entertain Thoreau inside whenever he wakes up, I grumbled, knowing the boy was going to be upset he couldn't play outside. We need to get some games or coloring books or something.
I'd just pulled a pan of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets out of the oven when Thoreau came pelting down the stairs, running hell for leather, which we'd all told him not to do so many times that we should just get it printed on signs and hold them up.
Oh, let the boy be, Ruby chuckled. After being confined for so long, of course he wants to run everywhere.
Run everywhere is right, I scoffed. From the moment he gets up until he crashes somewhere, running is his primary mode of movement. Run down the stairs, run up the stairs—
And what's wrong with that? Ruby demanded.
If he falls on them, he'll break his neck, I pointed out, and not even Gelo or luna can bring him back from the dead!
How many times has he fallen?
That's not the point! A broken cervical bone severing his spinal cord is pretty damn fatal!
You worry too much. Ruby rolled his eyes. Even without Tanner, he is as naturally athletic as any wolf shifter. Besides, he didn't escape one prison only to enter another, now did he? He's a kid. Let him be a kid.
"Going out to play in the rain, Leo!" he screeched as he streaked into the kitchen wearing only a pair of gray boxers.
"Hold up there, cowboy! You certainly are not. It's lunch time," I said calmly as I blocked the back door. "And where are your clothes?"
"I like to feel the rain on my skin, Leo the lion." His hands started doing that thing they did when he was excited or stressed, his fingers flexing hard and fast into his palms. "Let me out! Let me out!"
"Inside voice, please. Usually, I'd say have fun and would even let Ruby play with you since he also loves the rain, but, one, you haven't eaten yet and, two, you can't be outside in a thunderstorm."
He was not having it. His little black eyebrows beetled above his narrowed eyes and his lips smashed down into a thin white line.
"I can so play outside in a thunderstorm, and I will eat later."
Not used to anyone challenging my orders, I had to work hard to stay patient with him, but it was getting easier to find that patience now that I understood him a little more. He liked to be right, and he liked to argue to prove he was right. He also liked - no, needed - to feel in control of a situation, although I didn't know if that was from being abused or from being Thoreau.
Another thing I learned was, if I kept arguing with him, he'd become escalated and wouldn't process anything I was saying anyway. Emerson hadn't been kidding when he warned us about Thoreau's meltdowns. After witnessing him have one the first time he was made to drink the witches' anti-bane potion, I did not ever want to see him so distressed again, and certainly not when I was home alone with him.
The only problem was, we didn't always know the right thing to say to help him understand. So far, we'd learned that he responded best when we gave him direct and precise instructions, stated a fact and walked away to let him process it, and gave him choices when he didn't want to do something.
Alpha Jayden also suggested that we explain how his actions affected us to teach him empathy, so I thought I'd try that now and see how it worked.
"I made dino nuggets, and it will hurt my feelings if you don't eat them while they're nice and hot."
Okay, that sounded a little more manipulative than it did in my head, I admitted and Ruby chuckled.
"Hmm." Thoreau put his index finger on his chin as he stared up the ceiling, and I could almost hear the gears whirring in his brain. Finally, he nodded to himself and said, "I will eat dino nuggies first, then go play in the rain."
He trotted over to the table and sat down in his usual spot and looked up at me with a happy smile. Since he was cooperating so far, I left the no-clothes issue alone for now.
"Okay, bud, I'm going to explain about the rain, then give you some choices. Can I do that while you eat?"
He nodded as he stabbed a dino nugget with his fork.
"Even though we don't hear any thunder yet, the storm is moving closer and I can see lightning in the clouds. It is not safe to go play in the rain when there is lightning. Do you know why?"
I waited until his not-gaze looked in my general face area and he shook his head.
"If lightning hits you, it could kill you. During a thunderstorm, there is no safe place outside. The alphas even moved all fighter practices to the training center for the day. If that's not enough reason to stay inside, there's a weather warning that it might hail."
"Hail?"
I took out my phone and googled a video, then played it for him as I explained why thunderstorms in the summer occasionally produced hail.
"I'm sure you'll learn more about that in science class when you start school this fall," I told him.
"I get to go to school?" he perked up with a grin. "I love school! I love learning and making friends and sports and reading!"
Remind me to have luna assign someone to keep an eye on him or he's going to get bullied so badly, I told Ruby.
Archer and Wayne will not allow that, my wolf laughed. Plus, their wolves, Ocean and Firth, are so besotted with Reau, I think they'd choose to protect him over their own boys.
"What are they?" Thoreau said out of the blue.
"What are what, buddy?" Even after replaying the last few minutes in my mind, I didn't catch what he was talking about.
"My choices. You said you were going to give me choices."
"Oh. Right. Choice one. We can explore inside. There's something weird about the study. The dimensions are off, and I think there's a secret room in there."
"We also haven't checked out that glass box on top of the house, Leo!" He nodded really fast, sending his curls into a riot. " 'Member we saw it when we were playing basketball the other day?"
"Oh, yeah! That looked interesting, didn't it?"
I knew it was a rooftop greenhouse, but he didn't, and it would be a fun discovery for him. When I asked him about it, Emerson told me he'd checked it over and it was in sound shape, but completely empty. He was thinking of turning it into a lounge for stargazing, but said Thoreau could use it for gardening if he wanted.
Which reminded me that we still hadn't explored the abandoned garden at the edge of the woods. It was surrounded by stone walls and had an old, iron-bound door, and I knew Thoreau would be fascinated by it, even if there was nothing but overgrowth inside.
Time for that in better weather, though.
"I like choice one, but what is choice two?" Thoreau asked.
"We can make a blanket fort in the living room and have a Disney movie marathon."
"A blanket fort sounds fun, but I like watching Disney with all of you before bedtime." His finger landed on his chin again, and I bit back a smile. "Hmm. I choose 'sploring the house, please."
"Great choice. Eat your lunch while I grab your clothes."
"Thank you, Leo."
He gave me his sweet smile, the one that always melted my heart, and I patted his head before I left the kitchen.