Chapter Eighteen

THE enforcers’ medic on duty did what he could for my injury. It helped that we were in a medical facility and the wound wasn’t bad. What’s a bullet graze compared to losing my parents or Owen? But there was no hiding the bandaging on my bicep.

Mom and Dad rushed into Dr. Mirza’s waiting room looking as pale and haggard as I’d ever seen them, their council enforcer guards at their heels. They charged toward me, Mom barely stopping from launching herself at me. Her hand fluttered out as though to touch the bandage on my arm, but she stopped before making contact.

I stood from my chair and dragged her into a hug. She trembled in my arms and held on so tight I could barely breathe. She murmured what I knew to be words of love in Persian.

“I’m fine,” I told her. “I promise.”

Dad, after a quick glance assuring himself I seemed okay, became more concerned about the large number of big men with weapons stationed throughout the room. Benedict Snow—I’d finally found out the name of the commander of this little rescue mission—strode forward. “Mr. and Mrs. Franke, I’ve got some questions for you.”

“You are not going to interrogate my parents,” I snapped.

“They have information we need. Until today, we had no idea the Moreau Initiative had gotten as far as they have in their research.”

“My parents don’t know anything about that.” Even knowing what Dr. Mirza said about the Frankes not being my biological parents, seeing them and their obvious concern for me, I knew they would never have knowingly allowed me to be a research subject. They’d been as duped by Dr. Mirza as I had been.

“The Moreau Initiative?” Owen asked, coming out from one of the back rooms where someone had found a sling for his arm. “Like The Island of Dr. Moreau? Nice to know they have a sense of humor.”

Mom reached out to Owen, who looked a little taken aback. He took her offered hand, though. “You are hurt too? Why are my boys hurt?” she demanded of Snow.

“Your boys?” I asked her.

She scowled at me. “You are mine and he is yours, which makes him mine too.”

She thought Owen was mine. Man, I wanted that to be true. And it was great, if a little weird still, to have Mom’s wholehearted support. But I wasn’t sure if I could claim Owen as mine. I wasn’t safe to be around. Not yet.

The reminder of Paul and of what I’d done sobered me. I really wasn’t safe to be around. Not for anyone. I stepped away from my mother.

“There’s a conference room down the hall.” Snow pointed.

I nodded, my parents following suit.

Dad rested his hand on my neck as we made our way across the lobby. I soaked up the touch. Dad. My dad. No matter what a paternity test might show, I believed it.

I stumbled to a stop at the doorway that opened into the hall. The same hall where I’d killed a man. My stomach lurched. My feet might as well have been cemented to the gray carpet. As much as I didn’t need the reminder, I looked to the right. Paul’s body was long since gone, but a blue tarp covered the floor. I could still smell his blood, though, and could make out some splatter along the walls.

A hand rubbed up along my spine, and I didn’t have to turn to see it was Owen. A hundred people could touch me and I’d know instantly which one was him. “Focus,” he whispered. He grabbed my hand and urged me to the left, the direction Snow and my parents had gone.

The conference room was kind of small, with a table that could seat ten people. I sat between my mom and Owen. Dad was on the other side of Mom. Snow and three of the council enforcers sat on the other side of us. One of the enforcers, the only female, dropped a pile of folders in front of Snow and took up a guard position at the door. Whether she was keeping people in or out was debatable.

Without preamble, Snow barked, “What is your connection to the Moreau Initiative?”

Everyone on my side of the table looked around. Finally, as though realizing the question had been directed to him, Dad said, “The what now?”

“The Moreau Initiative.”

Dad shook his head. “It still doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“How long have you been aware of the existence of shifters?”

Snow’s piercing blue glare took us all in, again making it hard to determine who he meant the question for.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Dad said.

Mom shrugged in confusion.

“About a month,” I said, trying not to see the startled expression on my parents’ faces.

“My whole life,” Owen said.

“What is a shifter?” Dad asked me.

“Ah….” I looked at Snow. He seemed to be the highest-ranking shifter representative in the room. It was his call.

He rolled his eyes. “They are human-animal shape-shifters. Individuals who can turn into animals.” Snow’s face was as bland as his voice, but his eyes watched my parents carefully.

Dad blinked.

Mom jerked back. “This is not the appropriate time for joking.”

Snow leaned forward, resting his weight on his elbows. “So you are telling me you were unaware your son is a shifter.”

“Joey?” Mom grabbed my hand, gaze raking over me.

I swallowed. Nodded.

Dad scowled at me, but I could see more concern than anger in his eyes. “That’s not a nice trick to play on your mother.”

“But she’s not his mother, is she?” Snow asked.

Mom gasped, and her hold on my hands squeezed tight for a second.

“Hey.” I glared at Snow. “She raised me and loved me and sacrificed for me. She is my mother and he is my father, no matter what the biology shows.”

The color drained from Dad’s face. Mom’s eyes were wide with shock, pupils dilated.

“You—you know?” Mom’s voice cracked.

“Not all of it,” I said softly, adjusting our hands to weave our fingers together. “But I am a shifter, and, well, you and Dad aren’t. Since it’s inherited, there’s no way we can be biologically related.”

“But I am.”

“Mom….” It wouldn’t do any of us any good for her to continue lying about it.

Mom turned to my dad. “Joseph?”

Dad nodded. “It’s time.”

The council members leaned forward.

Under the table, Owen put his hand on my knee.

Mom said, “I am not your birth mother, but you are Farshid’s—my brother’s—son. I am you aunt.”

“How? I mean, what happened? Who is my mother?”

Tears welled along the edge of her lids. A single drop hung for a second on the corner of her lashes before falling to slide down her cheek. “I did not meet your mother. My brother—your father—had gone to work at the wildlife preserve in—”

“The North Khorasan province,” Owen broke in.

Mom lifted her gaze to him. “Yes. How did you know?”

“It would be the only place outside of India for your brother to have met an Asiatic lion shifter.”

“Asiatic lion?” Dad asked.

“Uh, yeah. I turn into an Asiatic lion.”

My parents examined me for a moment as though trying to see some leonine characteristics.

“What exactly is an Asiatic lion?” Dad asked.

At the impatient look we were getting from Snow and his cohorts, I decided the zoology lesson could wait. “Later.”

We all focused on my mom. “Sometime before Joseph and I got married, Farshid called to tell me he’d met someone special. He was going to bring her to the wedding, but she did not come. A few months later, he called to tell me she was pregnant and he was to be a father. I was shocked, because there hadn’t been a wedding, but I was his sister, not his mother, and he was happy.”

She paused, eyes sad. “We didn’t hear from him for several months. I… I was busy with my new husband and my new life. I didn’t think much of it, even though we had been close. Then I got a letter telling me of the birth of his son, Ebrahim.”

“Ebrahim?” I tried out the name my parents—my biological parents—had given me. It didn’t feel quite right. After all this time, I was Yusuf. Joey to most, but Yusuf.

“We had to—” Mom began.

“Wait.” Dad held up a hand, meeting each of the council enforcers’ gazes before moving on. “Are you in any way connected with the US government? Or with any international government? I won’t put my family at risk.”

“We are not affiliated in any way with any nationally or internationally recognized government. We are part of the US Shifter Council, but we have no jurisdiction in nonshifter matters.”

“Your word this does not leave the room?”

Snow nodded. The rest of the council enforcers did the same.

“Fine.” Dad nodded for Mom to continue.

“A few months after the letter arrived, I got a call from Farshid. He said something was going on around the North Khorasan province. There was a facility there, and several of his wife’s family—he called her wife, so I assume they were married at some point—had gone missing. Mostly children. He was worried about Ebrahim.” Mom stopped to clear her throat.

Dad took over the story. “We made plans with Farshid. He and his family were going to come to us. We didn’t hear from him for a couple of days. Our phone calls went unanswered. We didn’t have his wife’s name, or her family name, so I was going to go out there and see for myself. The day before I was to set out, a woman showed up at our apartment with a baby boy. With you.” He looked at me.

“What happened?” My hands ached from the strong hold Mom had on me. I didn’t mind, since my grip was equally as tight. Owen started rubbing his palm over my thigh in soothing circles.

“The woman, who claimed to be a cousin of your mother’s, said there had been an attack, a robbery, so the officials would claim, and that your parents were killed.”

A small sob escaped Mom’s throat. This had to be horrible for her. Reliving her brother’s death, on top of everything else today.

“She also said that while the official investigation stated robbery, it had been something else altogether. Your father had known they were coming and had sent you to Tehran, to us.”

“He sent a letter, asking us to keep you, love you, and protect you. And to get out of Iran as soon as possible, because people—he thought a militia of some sort, but I’m guessing it was something related to you guys—” Dad indicated Snow and the gang. “—had taken over the territory and bribed government officials. They were looking for Ebrahim and would stop at nothing to get him.

“Legally getting custody of an Iranian child, especially when corrupt local officials claimed his mother’s people wanted to take him in, was impossible. So instead I called in every favor I’d collected, spent all the money I had access to, changed your name, and got forged medical records showing you’d been born to Amaya and me. Then I went to the US Consulate and notified them of your birth and was issued your American birth certificate. A week later we were on a plane headed for the US.”

“What was her name, my birth mother?” I asked.

Mom looked sad. “I do not know. My brother only ever called her his love and his wife.”

I sucked in a breath to help me focus on the issues at hand. I faced Snow head-on. “Okay, now we’ve got that out of the way, you want to tell us how it ties in to our current situation?”

“Twenty-five years ago, the Moreau Initiative was very active in west Asia. The shifter groups there are solitary, and their isolation put them at risk. The Initiative began kidnapping and testing on those groups no one would miss. The International Shifter Consortium destroyed their base in the North Khorasan province fifteen years ago.” He spoke matter-of-factly, but his eyes held regret. “The entire pride of Asiatic lion shifters there was destroyed.”

I let out a pained gasp. The idea that I might have shifter family members—a pride—had been yanked away before it was fully formed. Stinging pressure built behind my eyes. I blinked back the urge to cry, telling myself I couldn’t lose what I’d never had.

I cleared my throat and met Snow’s gaze. “That’s their story. And clearly they didn’t know anything about Dr. Mirza and his freaky group.”

“What does Dr. Mirza have to do with any of this?” Dad asked.

“Ah….” I looked at Snow, then at Owen. I really hoped they didn’t expect me to explain.

Owen patted my thigh and spent the next ten minutes explaining what we’d found out about Dr. Mirza and his tests. He skipped over the incident with Paul. Snow and the enforcers didn’t bring it up either. I appreciated their thoughtfulness more than I could say. The last thing I wanted was my parents to face the knowledge that their son had killed someone.

The pop of the rifle.

Owen slumping to the ground.

Rage.

Shifting.

Blood.

Watching them absorb the knowledge they had put me in the hands of a monster who wanted to run experiments on me instead of heal me… that was almost worse. Mom shook, wide-eyed and pale. She clutched at my arm, knuckles white. Dad, who up until now seemed to take the news mostly in stride, lost it.

He lurched to his feet, planting his fists on the conference table. “That son of a bitch! I’ll kill him! Where is he? He told us… convinced us….” The anger drained from him, and he knelt between Mom and me. He cupped my cheeks and stared up at me.

“God, Joey. I swear to you. We didn’t know. We only wanted what was best for you. And instead, we subjected you to a monster.” Tears flowed freely from his eyes, and the guilt and the regret in them was more than I could take.

I pulled free of my mom’s hold so I could place my hands over my dad’s. “It’s not your fault,” I told him, pushing as much sincerity and belief into my words as I could. I needed him to hear me, to accept I meant what I said.

“If we hadn’t trusted him—”

“Dad, don’t. What other options did you have? I know you didn’t set out to hurt me. I know. Would you have stopped looking for other doctors, other specialists? Let me die?”

“Of course not. But—”

“He’d have found me eventually. No doctor would have been able to diagnose me, not unless you somehow found a shifter doctor. And he was watching for a case like mine.” I was trying to hold it together, I really was. But speaking rationally about this while my father was on his knees was more than I could do.

I slid off my chair and wrapped my arms around him. Mom joined us a second later. We cried for what we’d been through. We wept for what we’d lost.