Matthew
She knows who I am.
My daughter, the mini-dragon shifter, knows who I am.
I don’t know how and to be honest, it really doesn’t matter because last week, I didn’t know I had a kid and now she’s wrapped up in my arms. I don’t plan on ever letting her go. I’m crying openly as I hold her, drawing a few strange looks from people nearby, but I don’t care. They don’t know how much I’ve missed this child I didn’t even know I had.
Brooke looks up at me and smiles.
“Don’t cry, Daddy,” she says. “This is a happy day.”
“Brooke?” I ask. “How did you know it was me?”
“Your eyes match mine,” she whispers, and she snuggles against me once more. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ll take it. Maybe it’s instinctual because she’s also a shifter or maybe Michelle had a picture of me somewhere. I don’t know. All I know is that right now, Brooke and I are together and nothing is going to take this moment away from me.
I turn and begin to head back toward the house. Jessica is beside me, quietly protecting me as we walk. I know people are staring, but I can’t bring myself to care. I’m too happy, too relieved that Brooke just instantly accepted me. Who does that? What kind of a pure heart does she have that she just welcomed me into her life?
“Did you have a good trip?” Brooke asks. Her voice is bright and bubbly.
“It was a good trip,” I tell her.
“Did you take the boat?”
“For a little while,” I say.
“Was Kelsey mean to you?”
I laugh out loud. “Why would you ask me that, sugar? Is Kelsey usually mean to people?”
“Well, no, but she gets kind of fussy sometimes.” Brooke rolls her eyes. “You know, Mom always hated taking the boat because she said Kelsey was too nosey and way too fussy. Sometimes we’d just fly to the mainland,” she lowers her voice. “Even though it’s not allowed.”
The reason most people don’t fly from Dragon Isle to Nellenston is that it’s a big, open space where anything could happen. Poaching isn’t much of a problem anymore, but it was at one point, and you can never be too cautious. As an invisible shifter, I have an advantage in that I can easily move from one place to another without being spotted, but not everyone has that same luxury.
“She wasn’t fussy, but she did start asking a lot of questions about why I was coming to the island.”
“To see me, of course.”
“Of course,” I tell her. “But I wasn’t ready to talk about it.”
“What did you do, Daddy?”
“I jumped out of the boat and shifted.”
“You didn’t take your clothes off first? Did they rip?”
“Yep.” My favorite pair of jeans is now lying shredded at the bottom of the ocean, but I still feel like I got the better end of the deal. I can buy new jeans. I can’t buy this feeling that I have now that I’ve found my mate and my daughter.
Brooke shakes her head, like she can’t believe my silly decision to shift without properly preparing, but then she laughs and pats me on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” she says confidently. “You’ll get better. It just takes time and practice, Daddy.”
Now it’s Jessica’s turn to laugh.
“All right, you two,” she says. “Why don’t we head home?”
“Is Daddy going to stay with us?” Brooke asks hopefully. “At our house? Where we live?”
“I am,” I tell her, my throat suddenly choking up once more.
“For how long?”
“As long as you’ll have me,” I tell her.
I meant what I said.
I’m not planning on returning to my job, at least not for work. I’ll need to return to the city and pick up my things, close up my home, and return my keys to my landlord. I’m not going to leave them hanging, but maybe I can convince Brooke and Jessica to come with me while I close up my affairs. I don’t think Brooke leaves Dragon Isle too frequently, and I know for a fact that Jessica doesn’t.
It’ll be good for them to have a little trip and see what else is out there. I’m not planning on thrusting either of them into the world of humans full-time, but I think they’ll both enjoy being able to experience another side of life. Besides, I’m sure that even working on Dragon Isle, I’ll have occasional business trips that take me away, and there’s no way I’m going on those trips without my family.
Family.
It’s hard to believe that I really do have a family now. Despite everything else, I have two people who think I’m incredible, and it really just doesn’t seem possible.
I set Brooke down and we begin walking back to the house. Jessica and I are quiet, but Brooke walks between us, chattering away. We’re each holding one of her hands, and I like the fact that anyone who looks at us will see what we are: together. We’re a family, and we’re together. We didn’t even know how broken and how lost we were, but now we’re together.
Forever.
When we arrive home, Brooke runs up to her bedroom to drop off her backpack, and Jessica wraps her arms around me.
“How you doing, dragon man?”
“I’m blown away,” I tell her honestly. “I can’t believe she knew who I was. Did Michelle talk with her about me? I guess I assumed that if I didn’t know about her, that she didn’t know about me, either.”
“As far as I know, Michelle never breathed a word of who you were to Brooke. She only just confided in me recently, to be honest. For years, she just told everyone the father was not interested in being involved, and she left it at that.”
I sigh. “I hate knowing people thought I walked away from Brooke. I would never walk away from her.”
“Hey,” Jessica turns me toward her. “Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks,” she says. “You didn’t know. It’s not your fault. What matters now is that we’re together: all of us, and the future is bright, Matthew.”
She kisses me again and I feel the energy from that kiss soaring through my entire body.
She’s right, and I know it.
The future is bright because the three of us are facing it together: no matter what.