Chapter 8: Chapter 8: Tales of the past

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Wyatt didn’t say anything, he just stood up. Walking to the other side of the table, he waited for her to scoot over. When she did, and he had enough room, he sat down next to her on the bench.

Becky let out a content sigh as she felt Wyatt’s thigh and shoulder brush hers. It amazed her how quickly she began to warm up.

Wyatt wrapped his arm around Becky and pulled her close. As he moved his hand up and down her arm, he felt how chilled her skin was, so he asked, “Are you cold?”

Becky snuggled closer to him, under his arm, and murmured, “Not anymore.”

When the waitress came back, she gave them an odd look as she quickly put their food down. With a disappointed look on her face, she left just as quick as she’d come.

Becky pulled away from Wyatt so that she would have room to use her hands. She then began to put butter and salt on her baked potato before she began to eat. She was so hungry, she spoke not a word throughout the meal. When she’d finished, she pushed her plate away saying, “Man that was good!”

Wyatt chuckled.

Becky turned to find him watching her, so she asked, “What?”

“Do all women inhale their food that way?” Wyatt inquired.

Becky looked to see that Wyatt had yet to finish his meal. It surprised her because Jeff and her dad always finished before she did, but she just shrugged and said, “No, not all, and I don’t usually either. It’s been a long time since breakfast though and all I had was cereal.”

Wyatt nodded and quickly finished his food. After paying for their food, they left.

“We should stop and get a few things to eat for the house. I had someone to go and do any cleaning that needed to be done, but since I didn’t know what you like to eat...” Wyatt said, letting his voice fade.

Cranking the car, Becky said, “That’s fine, although, I’m not a picky eater. I can cook pretty well, but not as good as Mom can though, so that will limit the selection a bit.”

After driving a few more minutes, the car silent except for the low hum of the engine, Becky pulled into the lot at the supermarket. From there they quickly made their way inside.

Next, they began picking up breakfast foods, lots of meat, and a few other things that looked good.

Finally, they returned to the car and drove to the house Papa had told them they could use while training was going on.

Becky had been in the house a few times when her Aunt Rain would visit the pack. So, she knew her way around, making it easy to put the groceries away as Wyatt brought them inside for her. Once she had everything put up, they met back in the living room. She then cuddled up to him on the couch as she said, “So, I was thinking maybe I could ask you a few questions.”

“Ask away,” Wyatt replied.

“First, what is that word that you call me?” She asked, just to break the ice a bit.

“K’aalógii? It means “butterfly” in Navajo,” Wyatt answered.

Becky gave a sigh of relief, maybe this would be easier then she’d feared. She’d expected him to become quiet, but if he was willing, she’d ask as many questions as she could. Now she just needed to get her jumbled thoughts into questions. So, next, she asked, “Okay, do you live in the pack house with the other single wolves?”

“No, I live in the house that belonged to my parents,” Wyatt replied. “Uncle kept it for me, and I moved in when I turned eighteen.”

“How old are you now, and when is your birthday?”

“I’m twenty-five, and I was born on March twenty-third,” Wyatt replied.

“Mine’s February twenty-third. How cool is that?” Becky asked as she laughed a bit. After a moment of thought, she continued by saying, “Okay, so I know your parents are gone and Alpha Stone is your uncle. Do you have any other family?”

“Uncle had two sisters, my mom, and Aunt Jade. Aunt Jade never met her mate, so she never married, and she takes care of the pack orphans. My father was an only child, and so am I. Both sets of grandparents are deceased,” Wyatt answered her solemnly.

“Oh,” Becky said sadly as she scooted closer to hug him. She then said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know if I have any family myself. I sometimes wonder if I do though and if they ever looked for me.”

“Do you remember much about your family, besides your parents?” Wyatt asked as he rubbed his hand up and down her arm.

“I remember when I was... five, maybe six, and going to a funeral. Daddy said it was Mommy’s mom and she cried a lot for days. It seems like we went to a funeral a few months later for her dad. Mom said his heart broke when he lost his queen. I didn’t really understand what she meant by that until I got older.”

“What about your dad’s parents?”

“He never spoke of them to me, so I don’t know,” Becky told him as she frowned in thought. She then remembered something and added, “It seems like he had a brother though. He’s in the... Army? Navy...? Navy, yeah, I’m pretty sure it was the Navy, but I don’t think I ever met him. His name was Ronald though, I do remember that. Mom was an only child.”

“So, it’s possible you do have some family out there somewhere?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Becky said sadly.

Wyatt hummed softly as if he were deep in thought.

Turning sideways then, Becky brought her legs up and lay them across his thighs. She began to rub at her thigh for a moment as she stared at her prosthetic foot which was encased in a thick fuzzy sock. She hated wearing shoes around the house, but she didn’t like looking at a metal foot either. So, she’d been so thrilled when Jeff had found these awesome fuzzy slipper socks with a non-skid bottom for her. She loved them because they were cute and warm, and they covered up that ugly metal foot! She had almost every color imaginable now because every time he saw a new color that she didn’t have, he bought them for her.

“You know sometimes my leg hurts,” Becky randomly told Wyatt as she leaned against his shoulder. She sighed, then added, “The doctor calls them phantom pains, and sometimes the bottom of my foot will actually itch. Crazy huh?”

“What do you do when it happens?” He asked taking her random comment in stride.

“Not much can be done unless I want to take pills. I did that for a while, but now I mostly just try the mind over matter thing,” Becky said with a shrug. “Kind of like when you get a mosquito bite, and you know you shouldn’t scratch, no matter how badly you want to. So, you do something to take your mind off it.”

“Does that work?” Wyatt asked.

Again, she shrugged and said, “Mostly, but when it doesn’t, I go back to the pills.”

“Do you remember much about the accident?” Wyatt asked her then before placing a kiss on top of her head.

Becky gave a shuddering sigh, thinking, “No, not really. I was asleep when it happened, and I remember waking up screaming. As the car flipped, I remember hearing my mommy scream. I also remember pain the pain in my leg and how it looked funny, plus seeing my mommy all bloody and laying on the dash of the car. I forgot about my own pain for a little while as I tried to get her to wake up,” Becky told him as she felt the tears start to fall.

“Sh... I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. You don’t have to say anymore, my sweet K’aalógii,” Wyatt murmured as he pulled her into his lap and began to rock her.

Becky shook her head at him as she continued, saying, “I remember Papa saving me, how he pulled the door completely off the car. I would have found it so awesome like he was a superhero come to save me, if I hadn’t been in so much pain and so scared. I guess I should warn you that sometimes I still have nightmares. It isn’t very often anymore, just when I’m under a lot of stress or injured in some way, but I wake up screaming sometimes, feeling the pain of my leg being twisted.”

“Is that what happened, it twisted?”

“They think when the car flipped my leg got stuck between the seat and the side of the car. The doctor said it twisted it so badly that it shattered, there was no way to fix it,” Becky answered in a soft whisper.

“Oh, my sweet K’aalógii, I wish I could make it better. I would if I could,” Wyatt told her, cupping her cheek in his hand as he stared into her eyes.

“Wyatt, why do you call me butterfly?

“Because like a butterfly you are so beautiful, and although you may look frail you are strong,” he told her, giving her a half smile. Then he kissed her.

When his head lifted after the kiss, she told him, “I want to be strong for you Wyatt.”

“No, my sweet K’aalógii. I don’t want you to be strong for me, I want you to be strong for you. Once you find your inner strength there is nothing and no one that can bring you down or stop you. That is when you will really know who you are.”

Becky just sat there in his arms, her eyes locked with his, not knowing what to say.

With this thought in mind she asked, “How about I learn to be strong for me, and THEN be strong for you?”

Wyatt bowed his head slightly, saying, “If you like, but I think I can be strong enough for both of us.”

“Yes, you can, of that, I have no doubt, but Wyatt everyone needs somebody to lean on sometimes, it doesn’t make you weak,” Becky murmured. Then after some thought, she added, “It’s easy to accept a strong person because they never need anything, but to accept someone at their weakest point, that is so much harder to do. Werewolves are naturally strong, and I’ve noticed they tend to push out the weak. Papa took me in, loved me at my weakest moment. I believe his strength is what helped me to survive. The fact that he wasn’t afraid to love me through those dark days that I’m here with you today.”

“I am so glad you are here,” Wyatt told her with a deep sigh. “Becky, I had given up on ever finding my mate. Most wolves find theirs by the time they’re eighteen or nineteen, and yet here I am almost twenty-six.

“Even though I was young when I lost my parents, I remember my father telling me, “son, sometimes the only thing, and I mean the ONLY thing that keeps the warrior wolf side of me sane is your mother. She balances the violent side of me and keeps me from going violently insane. Find your mate, love her, and let her soothe the violent beast in you that you may one day become”. When I turned twenty, I lost hope ever finding you and I gave up. I knew my violent side would eventually take me over because I had no balance in my life without a mate.”

Wyatt stopped talking then as he buried his face in her neck, his body tense. He took many deep breaths.

Becky eventually felt his body relax.

Wyatt raised his head then to gaze into her eyes as he murmured, “I’m not proud of what I did, it was a really dark time for me, and I completely lost it. I shifted into my wolf and let him take over. When I did that the violent side took control, and I went on a rampage killing rogues left and right. It didn’t matter to me if they were violent or peaceful if they were rogues, I slaughtered them.

“Then one day my Uncle caught up with me. I remember him yelling at me to stop, but I didn’t want to, the pain of my loneliness was too much. All I could hear in my head was my wolf saying, “kill, kill, kill”.

“Finally, he used his Alpha voice on me, and it was as if I was waking from a deep sleep. I remember my brain being sluggish as I tried to push my wolf back, so it would be me again. When I finally succeeded, I saw a woman and her six-month-old baby I had almost slaughtered in my rage. Everything was just too much, and I passed out. Later, I found out that I had clawed her back so badly that she barely survived.”

“Oh Wyatt,” Becky whispered, seeing the emotional pain on his face as she wrapped him in her arms.

“That was the day I realized I was truly a monster,” Wyatt concluded in a voice thick with pain. He then dropped his head on her shoulder, and she felt his tears wet it.

Not letting him go, she managed to move around so she could straddle him. She then just sat, holding his head against her chest, placing kisses over the top of his head as she cried with him.

she thought.

After a long moment, Wyatt raised his head and said, “Now you know why your mom doesn’t want me for you. She may not know the whole story, but she probably knows enough to know I have done monstrous things.”

Gently, and lovingly, Becky wiped the tears from his cheeks as she shook her head. She then told him, “You may have done monstrous things Wyatt, but you aren’t a monster. If you had been, Alpha voice or not, you wouldn’t have stopped until they stopped you with death. Now, here’s what I think after putting together everything I know about you. You said you have alpha and warrior blood, similar yet different, right?”

Wyatt nodded.

“Okay,” Becky muttered as she looked off into space. She then began pulling her scattered thoughts together enough to say, “So, growing up your uncle taught you the ways of the alpha because, well, duh, he’s an alpha. Did you have anyone to train you as a warrior?”

Wyatt frowned as he gazed into her eyes, saying, “No, but...”

“Uh, uh, uh,” Becky said, placing a finger in his lips, “let me finish. Let’s look at it this way, a man loses his wife and is left to raise his little girl by himself. He teaches her what he knows. He teaches her to brush her hair, her teeth, to tie her shoes, ride a bike, to dress herself, the kind of things every child needs to learn. Then, one day his little girl matures and he’s at a loss. He doesn’t know anything about periods, or bras, or make-up. He’s scared now because he suddenly has, not a child, but a GIRL to raise. I think that’s what happened to your uncle.”

Wyatt’s frown had deepened as she continued to talk. He then said, “I don’t understand how that pertains to me Becky since I’m not a girl!”

Becky laughed and said, “Trust me, Wyatt, I know you aren’t a girl! But, just like a girl, there are two sides of you. The child side, or the alpha side, which your uncle was easily able to raise and train. Then, there is the woman side of you, or the warrior, which he was completely clueless about what to do with.

“Wyatt, this side of you would have been trained by your father at the same time the alpha side was being trained by your uncle. Your father would have told you what to expect as you matured into your wolf, how to calm and control the more violent urges of your warrior wolf. You said yourself the alpha is more compassionate because he’s always thinking of the pack. For him that’s all he needs, the thought of his pack is what helps him control his alpha wolf. A warrior needs more though, but your Uncle isn’t a warrior, he’s an alpha. He was at a total loss at what should be done in that area.”

The confusion in Wyatt’s eyes had slowly faded and understanding took its place. He whispered, “How did you get so very smart about the psyche of wolves K’aalógii?”

“I listen to them talk,” Becky told him, “teen wolves like to talk about the changes they go through.”

Wyatt nodded, looking thoughtful as he said, “So, even though Uncle was able to train and educate the alpha side of me, that wasn’t enough for the violent side of my wolf. All this time I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was... unbalanced or something.”

“Well, I suppose in a way there was an imbalance between the alpha and the warrior, but it doesn’t make you unbalanced Wyatt, just untrained in the way of the warrior. This is something you should talk to your uncle about Wyatt because all I have is a theory, not facts.”

“Yes, I think you might be right,” Wyatt agreed.

“Of course, I am,” she said giving him a wink. “Now, how about some food?”

Wyatt chuckled as he placed her on the floor so he could stand. The solemn thoughts were forgotten for now as they headed for the kitchen and food.