My Hybrid Mate

Chapter 6: In Tune

After Ben has eaten his pancakes, we all walk out of the house to the car in the driveway. It’s nothing special; a small Ford I don’t know the model of. It’s black. Everest puts Ben in his booster seat in the back and I sit in the passenger seat while he drives. It’s a short journey; about ten minutes. But it gives me time to think. To realise I need some answers and I need them today. I’ve been way too patient in letting him walk around like this tiny little life is nothing. It means a great deal to me that he has a child. And not necessarily in a good way.

Everest turns the radio on while we drive, Ben talking about how he needs a new swing set and a dinosaur for his birthday and me staring out the window at the blurring trees. Every now and then, I feel him glance at me, but I can never catch him in the act.

We pull up outside a detached house in a neighbourhood with a load of red brick houses and gardens with apple trees. Everest mumbles a ‘stay here’ before climbing out of the car and unstrapping Ben from the back. They take off towards the nearest house and Ben excitedly rings the doorbell. Soon enough, another boy about Ben’s age opens it and they both take off running inside the house, Everest waving and calling something after him.

When he gets back in the car, a weird song from the charts is playing on the radio. Everest changes a channel with a flick of his wrist and pulls out of the space he was in. I try to ignore it, along with my ever growing hunger. Luckily, it’s only another three minutes or so before we enter the nearest town.

I can smell it’s mainly inhabited by humans, but my mate doesn’t seem to mind. We stop outside a Costa and walk in.

“You go grab a table and I’ll go order.” He says curtly and heads to the counter. Shrugging, I walk over to the table in the corner with two chairs that look vaguely clean and sit down. This is it. I’m going to get answers this time.

About Ben, about the mate bond, about him being such a douche. And then maybe it will change? Hopefully it will.

Everest reappears balancing a tray with two paper steaming Costa cups, a chocolate muffin and a blueberry one. He hands me one of the cups and I breathe in the scent of coffee, taking a large gulp and ignoring the burning sensation on my tongue.

“How’d you know I like milk and sugar?” I ask, after realising I never said anything about my drink preferences.

“Same way I know you like chocolate muffins.” He shrugs, pushing the plate towards me. I decided to drop the subject when I tasted the chocolate cake. The best thing in the world.

“You know, you’re taking this all really well. I thought you would be more.. pissed off.” Everest starts, taking a sip of his own drink and staring at me intently. I feel uncomfortable under his stare, but quickly recompose myself when I realise how I want the conversation to go; with me asking a lot of questions and him answering all of them.

“I’ve lived around kids my entire life, Everest. I have three other siblings younger than ten whom I’ve watched grow up from babies. It’s normal for me to be around Ben. I just can’t believe he exists. You started a family without meeting your mate. With someone else.” I sigh, raking a hand through my hair. “I’m disappointed. And disappointment doesn’t always come out in the form of punching a table or breaking a wall.” He’s silent for a long time, and the air between us is thick with tension.

“I didn’t know I would ever have a mate.” He finally admits quietly. I let out a humourless laugh.

“Every werewolf has a mate. It’s inevitable. And anyway, it’s no excuse. You’re probably going to tell me it was a drunken mistake one night. It wouldn’t have mattered if you were half blood or not.”

“He wasn’t a mistake, Avery.” He states firmly, taking a long sip of coffee from his cup and fixing his eyes on the table. The news shocked me to silence. He planned to have a kid with another woman? How old is he? I always thought it would just be a one night stand gone wrong, and for some reason the poor girl didn’t want an abortion.

“How old are you?” I blurt out in my confused state. This is not okay. It’s not okay.

“Twenty one. But this isn’t what you think. See I wasn’t the one to plan it.” I raise my eyebrows at him, and he seems to realise what he just said. “She didn’t plan it either. Well, she knew about it, but she didn’t plan it.” leaning back in the chair, I take a swig of the burning liquid in the cup, hoping it will go right to my brain and erase my mate from it. He’s just digging himself a bigger hole. Why doesn’t he just spit it out? “My father did.”

“Do you even hear yourself? Your dad planned for you to have a kid?”

“Just listen to me, okay? It’s because of the bloodline.” When he sees he has my full attention, he continues, and a conflicted look on his face as he recalls the facts. “See, I’m half wizard, half werewolf. My mother was a werewolf and my father a wizard. I have exactly half of each of the genes for both species. My father met this girl called Julie. She was also a half breed, but it was the other way around. As in, her father was the werewolf and her mother the wizard. And he had this theory. You mix two half breeds of wizard and were, and you merge the DNA, so the being has all the affinities of a werewolf and all the affinities of a wizard. This ultimate being could create and start an entire race of indestructible beings. So he used us to start it. I was seventeen at the time, just got my powers. I was a mess, looking for fun. So I agreed. After a while, Julie did too, and we conceived the child.

“During the pregnancy, we became pretty close. I wanted this kid to have two parents growing up, since I, uh, didn’t, during mine. So I stuck around. I went to all the appointments with my father to check the baby’s progress. And childbirth was fine. We were living in her parent’s house, but when Ben came, we decided to move out. We fell in love with him… realised it wasn’t right to condemn him to a life of scientific experiments. We were going to move out and start a proper family life, just for him. But my father caught wind of it. One evening, I came back from training and Julie was..” Everest takes a deep breath, working on not crushing the disposable paper cup in his hand as he speaks. “She was dead. The baby was screaming in the highchair. It broke me. How could I have fooled both of us into thinking we could have a normal family life? I didn’t love her, but she was the closest thing to family I had, along with my baby boy. And I knew who killed her immediately. I mean, he hadn’t done much to cover the scent and I was half werewolf after all. My father. He hid from me, the f*****g coward. But I decided to honour Julie’s wishes. Ben and I moved again, here, and this is where we’ve been ever since. I didn’t want it to end up like this.” He spits out the last line with so much venom it could’ve killed every human in a ten mile radius. Luckily, Costa’s isn’t busy this morning.

Swallowing the impact of the news, I stare down at the forgotten cake on my plate.

“Did it work?”

“Did what work?”

“The theory. Is Ben a werewolf and wizard?” I ask through gritted teeth. A lot of things about his little speech irks my wolf and I. One being the fact that Ben could be in danger. I know I have only spoken to him a handful of times, but the fact my mate created a child who will be wanted by hundreds of different people throughout the country means Ben’s inevitably in danger. Everything about this is wrong. So wrong it makes me feel sick.

“We won’t know until he’s sixteen and his powers come through.” Everest answers simply, as if he hasn’t just told me this and he doesn’t see the problem.

“This is so sick! I can’t believe you’re taking it so smoothly, Everest! You of all people! Creating a hybrid that’s even more powerful than even you isn’t right. Did you even think for a second about what will happen when he turns sixteen? He’s going to shift into a wolf and gain powers all at the same time. The pain will be excruciating! He won’t know what to do with all that power!” I yell. Some of the workers in the coffee shop turn to look at us, but I ignore them. This isn’t processing in my brain right.

“I realise that now.” Unlike mine, his voice is steady and controlled. I look at him with utter anger as he returns my stare with a cool gaze. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m trying to deal with keeping him safe, controlling my anger and you all at the same time.” A pang of hurt flashes through me, and I’m sure it’s evident on my face as well. My own mate thinks of me as a burden. I’m nothing to him. I’m as good as dead. But another thing that confuses me is the second thing he said, you know, before he completely offended me as his mate.

“What do you mean, ‘controlling your anger’?” I seethe, trying to keep calm myself. I will get answers if that’s the last thing I do. I’m determined not to be so passive this time.

“Nothing. It just gets hard to keep in tune sometimes.” He lies. I can see it in the way he doesn’t look at me and directs his angry glare at the blueberry muffin in front of him.

“You’re seriously lying to me about something after you’ve just spilled the truth about your son’s existence without a second thought? Wow, I didn’t think you would sink that bloody low.”

“You read that stupid book about wizards and our history, why don’t you think about it for a minute?” he spits. Regardless, I think back to the book I read at Weston’s café.

When a wizard is sixteen, they gain their powers. It depends on the emotions inside them whether these are good or bad powers. A lot of the time, it depends on the childhood and past of the being.

A good wizard is given powers that mean they can subtly make the world a better place. So they can levitate things and occasionally stop time to get to an accident faster. They could get rid of potential threats to the world.

Bad wizards... they’re cold. Shut off. They can’t feel emotions. They block everything out so they can be completely ruthless. They are the threat to the world... to people.

Surely he’s a bad wizard. So maybe his anger has something to do with that? I don’t know, this whole thing is confusing me. I don’t want to seem like an i***t in front of him, but I really just want to understand his problem.

“Your powers, are they good or evil?” I ask eventually having had my thoughts calm me down. The broken man in front of me pulls a hand through his hair and leans back, crossing his legs under the table.

“Don’t be stupid, Avery. Do I look like I save people for fun?”

“I guess not. But you haven’t hurt anyone since you met me, right? I would’ve smelt it, it’s only been a few days.” I furrow my eyebrows in confusion, pulling a chocolate chip out of my breakfast to keep me occupied.

“That’s correct.” Something in his voice makes me suddenly understand. He’s a bad wizard, made to kill and destroy. He’s not meant to prevent himself from killing, he’s not meant to show affection to anyone. Not his kid, and definitely not me. But when he drove me to his house and I met Ben for the first time, he was gentle. Caring. When I look back up at Everest, he’s holding his coffee cup up to his mouth and watching me. In seeing the resolution in my face, he looks away. “My wolf isn’t making it any easier. He’s pissed at me for pushing you away.” Ah, the joys of the mate bond.

“Why are you? Pushing me away, I mean.” I question boldly. His jaw clenches and he places the cup on the table with way too much force. Smiling sadly and shaking his head, he turns to me and flicks his hand. The chatter that was surrounding us from the other humans in the room stops, and I move my eyes around. He froze everyone. The baby in the corner is mid-scream, the cup about to fall out of an old man’s hand is hovering in the air, a teenager has her mouth slightly ajar as she stares at her phone screen.

“Because I don’t want to hurt you, of all people, and with all this repression I don’t think I can hold it in.”

“My own mate has been pushing me away since we met, you’ve hurt me already.” I scoff. Within a second, he’s standing up next to me, pulling me up by my forearms and pushing me against the wall. I cower slightly at his close proximity, but my wolf hums annoyingly in my ear.

“But letting you in would only hurt you more.” He whispers, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear in a way that makes it seem like we’ve been together for years.

“If you really thought that, you would’ve rejected me when we first met.” I whisper softly back, his face lowering towards mine. Suddenly, the troubles of those last few days came rushing back to me. The reasons I’ve wanted to be with him, hated him and wanted to murder him flooding back into my brain. They build up in the form of tears behind my eyelids, and I try not to let them fall, I really do, but I can’t help it. A couple of drops of tears leak from my eyes and I close my eyes.

“Hey,” he says softly, rubbing his thumb over my cheek to get rid of the tears. “Don’t cry about it. Everything will be fine.”

“That’s what you keep telling yourself, huh? Everest, what if it’s not? Everything is messed up, it’s not ‘fine’. It’s far from fine.” Wiping angrily at my eyes to stop the crying, I spare a look at his face, which is contorted with pain.

“Well, what do you want me to do about it? You don’t understand, I’ve made mistakes in the past, but I’m trying to move on. What do you want me to do?”

“Stop leading me on. Stop making my wolf go crazy in my head. Stop insulting me. Stop pushing the person you think you are to lead your battles for you, because he’s not doing a very good job of it.” he scoffs at my reply. Actually scoffs.

“Oh, I’m not leading you on, Avery Daniels.” He moves his face closer to mine, his breath fanning over my face and smelling like coffee. “I just really need to kiss you right now.” he adds, ducking down and connecting our lips.