"I'd say Phineas is already set up for a much easier birth," Julie said. She wasn't eating, but she'd filled her plate. "I've always had trouble keeping on weight, and pregnancy, especially with twins, was difficult." She stopped speaking so suddenly I looked over to her. She'd covered her mouth again.
I frowned. She did that a lot.
"Not that I am complaining," she said in a rush. "I ended up in labor for hours, and those moments, alone in my room, while I spoke to you both are some of my most cherished."
"You mean when you and Father spoke to us," I said. Surely John had been in the room while my mother labored for hours?
Her head shook a fraction to the left, then right, like she wasn't sure if she'd get in trouble for answering. "John had things to do for the pack, papers to prepare. I was meant to give him an alpha after all." A sharp noise came from her mouth, like a laugh, but not. "He never forgave me for messing up that one."
As a fireman that served a wide, rural area, I was sometimes required to enter a scene knowing nothing and using the clues to assume the situation. If I were to do that now, it wouldn't take me long to connect the dots. But to do so now meant admitting that my mother had been a woman in trouble, talked down to and ordered around by her husband, left to give birth alone, shamed when we came out not as he expected. How was she supposed to control whether we were alphas or not?
"I'm sorry. I don't mean to bad-talk your father. He has his qualities. And he's taken care of me. He's kept me fed, watered, a roof over my head—"
"That's what you do for dogs," Wyatt snapped, pushing his plate back.
Our eyes met over the table, and my heart broke seeing the same confusion in his gaze that simmered in mine.
"No, really, Wyatt. He's a generous man. Maybe not kind, but—"
Wyatt's body shook. "Stop defending him!"
Just like that, Julie shut down, bringing her face down to her hands folded tightly in her lap. "I'm sorry."
Wyatt jerked back from her, blinking with his mouth gaping open. "Don't apol—I wasn't yelling at you. I'm… not hungry." He picked up his plate and turned around.
All of us looked to Nana, who munched serenely on a green bean.
My phone rang, and if I wasn't waiting for the call I was, I would've ignored it and gone to Wyatt. I pulled it out, blocking the death glare from Nana—she hated phones at the table—and answered.
"Nash, it's me, I've got that information you wanted." My investigator friend had a clipped, no-nonsense tone.
"That was fast. Did you find anything good?" I'd asked him on a hunch, based off what Phineas had said at the party. Ten's company, eleven is overcrowded. That hadn't been the first time I'd heard that sort of phrase, and both times, the numbers were different. Maybe it didn't mean anything. But if it hadn't, the investigator wouldn't have called so quickly.
"I found that guy you were asking about. He saved some kid years ago. Pulled him out of the wreckage. I'll send over the articles so you can see. There's a picture from the front page of the Monterey Times."
Instantly, my current worries faded away. This silly dinner, my old anger, everything that wasn't my mate and the danger he was in crumbled. "Thank you. Send it."
At my tone, everyone at the table stopped eating and looked at me. Wyatt returned, remaining in the doorway, staring warily.
"Do you want me to keep digging? I saw something about the guy having a daughter who was sick."
"A daughter?" That fucker had mentioned having a daughter. Maybe we could call her for information.
"Yeah, deceased. Within the last couple of years. I'll go back and bring up what I can find. I thought I saw an obituary when I ran the search for that name."
"Thanks, I appreciate it."
"Don't appreciate it—you paid me. I'm just doing my job."
He hung up, leaving me with a room of curious faces. My phone chimed, the screen filling with tiny images of an old newspaper article. "Wyatt, grab your laptop."
"Nash Walker, I let you have that call since you're a fireman, but we are eating—"
I shook my head slowly. "I know who the arsonist is."
Wyatt pulled out his laptop while Branson and Aver cleared the table. Minutes later, we circled around the screen, Nana and my mother included as I sent the pics to Wyatt's computer. He opened the first of the images.
"That's the crash," Phin gasped, pressing his face into my chest.
Damn, I should have warned him.
I was too distracted looking at the man in the picture, the man holding a tiny child-sized Phineas. He was tall, with a stocky build and dark hair. The picture was in black and white, so I couldn't tell his eye color, but I would have bet they were green.
"Isn't that the new guy at the firehouse?" Aver asked. "Charles something? I met him… at the party." His tone turned knowing. "You think he is the one?"
"The fires didn't start until he came," I said, tapping over to the picture of the article itself. "Local Good Samaritan, Charles Bracks, was in the right place at the right time to pull four-year-old Phineas Peters from a wreck that had already claimed both of his parents."
Phineas jerked his face up. "Are you guys saying Charles from the firehouse is the man who helped me from the wreck that killed my parents? And he's here now?"
"I know it's hard, but look for yourself, babe. That's his picture there. Charles Bracks. That isn't the last name he gave the firehouse."
Phineas cupped his pregnant stomach with a wince. "He followed me here? And started setting fire to things? Why?"
I shook my head and thought Phineas was shaking his head in return, except he never stopped. His head jerked back and forth, his eyes rolling while his entire body trembled. "What? What is this? What is happening?" I held him, but his shaking was so violent, he nearly tore himself from my arms.
I kicked the table, creating a gap and giving us room as the others spread out.
"He's seizing!" Riley said.
"Call the ambulance," Aver ordered.
Had the shock been too much for him? I knew it would be hard for him to see this, but I thought his thirst for knowledge would outweigh all that. Was I this wrong? Had he fallen into some kind of breakdown? I slid to the ground, all the while holding him in my arms. His arms bent in odd angles, the tendons strained so hard they stuck out like cords beneath his skin. Then his form blurred, becoming a wolf.
"Wait! He's shifting! You can't call!" It killed me to say, but what would the ambulance do for a seizing shifter other than cause more problems? I laid him down, pushing everything back around him so he wouldn't knock into something. His legs jerked, bending and unbending. This wasn't like any seizure I'd ever seen. I dropped down so my head was near his head and cupped his face lightly. My heart tightened as he continued to convulse, shifting suddenly into a human. "Nana?"
"I'm here," she said, her voice coming from close by. I couldn't look away to check. "He doesn't have a condition that would cause this? No medication?"
His form blurred, rearranging into a wolf, but no sooner had he shifted did he shift back just as suddenly. That continued, his body abruptly going from human to wolf back to human so fast he looked like a blur on the carpet.