Chapter 7: Don't Be Afraid

I arrived at Liv’s house at eleven in the morning on Friday. “Unky LEO!” Vicki raced at the door, reaching up for me while I was still walking up the sidewalk.

“Where is your jacket, young lady?”

“In dere,” she said. “Sharks! Unky Leo, we saw sharks!”

I stepped inside the door, where Liv was waiting with Vicki’s jacket. “She didn’t want to wait, so we went to SeaLife yesterday when they opened. I had to drag her out of there,” she said with a laugh.

“HUUUUUGE sharks, Unky Leo! Ovah my head!”

“Wow, it sounds like you had fun,” I said. “Are you ready to have fun today?” She nodded as Mom zipped her jacket up. I looked around and didn’t see Natalie. “Is your grandmother coming?”

“No, she’s not up for it.”

I led them out to my truck, where I’d purchased a booster seat for Vicki that I installed in back. “Snowmobiling is fun, but you have to have the right equipment or you freeze. We’re going to get lunch, and then we’ll go shopping.”

“You don’t have to buy stuff, Leo,” Liv started to say.

“I’m hoping this will be something you want to do again, and I don’t compromise on safety. Now, do you two like chicken strips?” They did, so we drove to Raising Cane’s in Apple Valley and ate lunch before heading to Lakeville and the power sports dealers. It took almost an hour to get both of them set up with snowmobile gear and helmets before we were heading back east to my home.

The garage had radiant floor heat installed, so as soon as I parked, we were able to get out and start dressing in their equipment. I’d purchased matching suits for them, in black and hot pink with the Polaris logo. Snowmobile pants when on first, and I helped them adjust the straps over their shoulders as they extended well above their waists. I held open Vicki’s new boots as she put her feet into them, then zipped them up and pulled the pant legs down over them. The jackets went on next, the racing neck tight, then the helmets. It took a while to get everything adjusted, but once we had it, they would go on a lot faster. Last on was the gloves. I took a photo with my phone of them in their matching Polaris-logo suits; they looked amazing. I quickly pulled my gear on, then opened the garage door in front of the snowmobile.

Vicki was bouncing as I brought the big sled out and started it up. It was a snug fit on the long seat, with Liv behind me, and Vicki in front, but I didn’t mind a bit. Since Vicki had never been on one, I started slow. The little girl wasn’t impressed as we puttered around my land. “Faster, Unky Leo! Faster!”

“We have to go to the trails then,” I said. “I want you to hang on, and lean the way I do,” I said as I went out to the road. We had to drive along the ditch until I could join the trails that cut across miles of open farmland. Going a little faster, they liked that and the motion of going up and down the slope as I avoided power poles and drove over driveways. We caught up to a trail crossing a mile down the road. Turning on to it, there was almost a mile of flat farmland ahead of us with a fifty-mile-an-hour speed limit. “Hang on,” I said. I opened up the throttle, and both girls started to scream as the engine accelerated us down the trail.

I immediately slowed to a stop, thinking I’d scared them. I was wrong. Vicki turned in the seat and looked at me with her gloves on her hips. “No! We go FASTER, Unky Leo!”

I turned around to check with Liv, who was laughing. “You heard the girl,” she said. “We feel the need…”

“THE NEED FOR SPEED,” I finished as I turned back and gunned the throttle. I don’t know who had more fun on the trails, but it was the most fun I’d had in years. We stayed out for another hour before the sunset, and by the time we got home, it was completely dark. I’d scheduled a pizza delivery for six, and we pulled into the garage at five-forty.

Vicki gave me a big thank-you hug after I helped her get her helmet off. “Go again? I want to go AGAIN!”

“Another day,” I said. “I’m hungry, and dinner will be here soon. Put your helmet on that shelf, then I’ll help you with the rest of your stuff.” Liv helped her with the helmet, then we hung up the suits and put the boots and gloves on a dryer. “You can take the gear home if you want,” I said.

“I think she’ll want to ride again,” Liv said as Vicki agreed. “You have a beautiful home,” Liv said as she looked around the big kitchen and the open main floor plan.

“Catherine and I built it expecting we’d have a big family, but it didn’t happen that way,” I said. “It’s more than I need, but I can’t sell it because she was so much a part of building it. It feels like a museum sometimes.”

She looked at a photo on the wall of Catherine and me on our wedding day. “She was beautiful,” Liv said.

“Inside and out, the best person I’ve ever known. We had twenty-five great years together,” I said. I heard the driveway motion alarm and looked out to see the driver was here. Liv and Vicki set the table while I took care of the driver, then we had our pizzas. Liv and I both knew that after dinner, we were going to talk, and both of us were afraid of what might be said. You could tell how nervous we were by how we picked at our food while Vicki inhaled piece after piece.

I’d promised to explain everything today, and so far, I hadn’t told them a thing. I was praying that Liv would listen long enough for me to explain everything. I asked her to help Vicki wash up, then meet me in the living room. I was hoping that being away from knives would give me the advantage.

I went back to my bedroom and stripped, pulling on a terrycloth robe. When I came out, the two were sitting on the couch. Liv’s eyes got wide when she saw what I was wearing, and I know she was wondering if she’d made a mistake in coming here. I sat down in a chair across from them. “Vicki, have you been talking with that voice in your head,” I asked.

“Uh-huh. She likes you,” she said.

“What does she tell you about me?”

“Twust you. Unky is like us, he will help.”

Liv had wide eyes and looked ready to snatch her up and run all the way home. “Just relax, Liv. I’m not going to hurt either of you, but I told you I would explain things to you. The explanation isn’t something I can just do with words. I have to show you.”

“Show me what? Why are you in a bathrobe?”

“You might be frightened, you might even scream, but know that nothing that happens here tonight will hurt you. I promise you that you are both safe here in my home.” I stood up, pulling my arms out of the bathrobe before getting on my hands and knees in front of the couch. Liv’s mouth was open as I let the robe hung down, still covering me, then I shifted.

There were two screams as the change completed, and the robe fell off.

Vicki screamed, “PUPPY!”

Liv screamed, “OH, FUCK!”

Then Liv grabbed Vicki and disappeared out of the room in a flash. I heard a door slam as the bathroom door locked.

Well, that could have gone better. I shifted back, pulling on my robe and tying it as I listened to Vicki asking to see the puppy again, while Liv was cursing that her phone was in her purse, hanging from the chair at the kitchen table. I walked over to the door, glad that she wasn’t calling 911 right now. I knocked, and it got quiet in there. “Liv?”

“What the hell, Leo?”

“I’m a werewolf, Liv.”

“That’s impossible. Werewolves are fantasy, fictional creatures that cannot exist.”

I chuckled; she couldn’t accept what she couldn’t understand. “Vicky, what did I change into?”

“BIG PUPPY! Momma, I wanna play wit da PUPPY!”

“I told you I wouldn’t hurt you or Vicky, Olivia. I don’t want you to be afraid of me, but you wouldn’t believe me if I didn’t show you,” I explained.

“You showed me, and I still don’t believe you,” I said.

“Take a little time to think about what you saw, Liv. It’s important you know the truth, because you two are in danger, and you won’t see it coming. I’ll be waiting in the living room for you to decide. If you want to go home, I’ll take you. If you never want to see me again, I’ll leave you alone. If you want to talk, we’ll talk. If you want to sit and play with the wolf in the room, we’ll play. Don’t be afraid of me; my wolf and I don’t like it when you are afraid.” I walked away, going back into the living room. Tossing the robe aside, I shifted and curled up on the rug in front of the couch, my head placed so I could see around the end of the sofa and down the hall.

It took ten minutes before I heard the bathroom door unlock, then it slowly opened. Liv poked her head out, looking at me. I rolled over onto my back, my tail whapping against the rug as they came into view. “Nice doggie,” she said. Vicki was being held in her hand, an open bottle of rubbing alcohol in the other. “Don’t make me use this,” she said.

I guess the medicine cabinet didn’t have many weapon options; I was glad she didn’t think of breaking the mirror. I tried to make myself as non-threatening as possible; rolling onto my stomach as they came closer, I put my head on my paws while my tail kept wagging. “Tell Mom that you are like me,” I sent to Vicki’s wolf.

Vicki brought her other hand to her ear, trying to figure out where my voice came from. “Mommy, I heard Unky Leo talking in my head,” she said.

“What?” She had moved them until one of the love seats was between me on the rug and the two of them near the kitchen.

“He said to tell you that I am like him.”

“No.”

“Tell Mom that I really am your uncle. It was my younger brother,” I sent to her. Well, either they would grab my keys and steal my truck to get away, or I’d get them to sit down and talk to me.

“Momma, Unky Leo said he is my real unky. It was his wittle brother.”

Her eyes got wide. “No. It can’t be.”

“Show Mommy the pictures in the hallway.” Please, Luna, let her have the courage to know the truth, I prayed.

“Mommy, Unky Leo wants you to look at da pictures.” She pulled Liv towards the hallway, and she turned on the light. The walls were filled with photos of my life. Everything from my family as I grew, to my mating, my time with Catherine, and my brother Ivan’s mating ceremony. The ceremony at Marengo Lakes, where he mated the only daughter of the Alpha shortly before he died.

“Oh, God…. Oh, God…. It’s him,” she said as her fingers reached towards the photo. She let go of Vicki, allowing my niece to run back down the hall and plop down next to me. I kept my eyes on her mother as she tried to catch her breath and wrap her head around what she was seeing.

I loved the feeling of her little hands running through my fur as she explored my wolf form. Liv came down the hall, dropping onto the love seat as she watched her daughter play with the massive wolf on the floor. “You’re real,” she said. “You’re a werewolf. He was like you?”

I nodded my head yes before I licked up Vicki’s face, making her squeal. “Dog swobber,” she giggled.

“We need to talk,” she said.

I slowly moved to my feet, towering over Vicki. I stood over three feet tall at the shoulders, and my two hundred pounds was the same in both forms. I sniffed Vicki’s neck, the cold nose making her squeal, then trotted down the hallway to my room. I reached up a paw and opened the lever door handle, pushing my way in. Shifting, I pulled on my clothes and walked back out. “You did a good job telling your Mom,” I said to Vicki, who was now sitting in her Mom’s lap.

“You said you would explain it all,” she said. “Start talking.”