Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

S onya Berg tried to keep the impatience out of her voice as she reasoned with her brother. Technically, he was her stepbrother, but that had never counted in their family. And sometimes, like right now, he drove her as bonkers as any brother by blood would. “You need eat your breakfast before we leave. I have a double shift at work, so it’s going to be a long time before dinner.”

“But I don’t like cereal.” Karim stabbed his spoon at the puffs floating in chocolate-colored milk.

“Since when? You asked for that cereal yesterday when we were in the grocery store. Why did you pick something you don’t like?” Freaking expensive too. She’d tried to get him to choose one of the generic options from the lowest shelf, but he’d looked at her with big sad eyes and asked if he could have a brand name, for once.

Before they’d gone shopping, they’d put flowers on his parents’ graves, and Karim had asked if moms and dads went to the same heaven. Her heart ached for him, then and now. He hadn’t turned eight yet, and already both his parents were dead. She couldn’t deny him the small ask of a brand-name cereal. She’d spent her money on that instead of the holiday decorations she’d planned on buying.

But now, apparently, the food offended him, because Karim’s dark brown eyes flashed defiance from under his unruly mop of thick black curls. “Only babies eat cereal.” He attacked one puff with the spoon extra vigorously, and splashes of brown liquid hit the table and his shirt. “I’m not a baby.”

Sonya sighed inwardly. Note to self: Karim now eats breakfast in his pajamas and doesn’t put on regular clothes until right before we leave the house. “Of course you’re not,” she said, wiping the table with a piece of paper towel. Grabbing his spoon as it began another downward arc toward the milk, she gently took it from his hand and sat down in the chair next to his. “Who told you only babies eat cereal?” Probably Ruth, or one of her snooty friends. Sonya hated leaving Karim with the neighbor, but she had to work. There was rent to pay, and no matter how offensive he currently found his breakfast, it still cost money, and they both still had to eat it.

Karim sighed dramatically, folded his arms on the table, and lowered his head onto them before mumbling something.

She resisted the urge to touch his adorable curls. “I can’t hear you.” She missed their cuddles. But a while ago, he’d declared himself a big boy, and apparently they didn’t give hugs. Sometimes she could sneak one in when she read to him or they watched TV.

He twisted his head and looked at her sideways. “I don’t want to tell you, because it might make you sad.” Karim lifted his head. “Or mad.”

Yep, definitely something from the mouth of Ruth, or one of her posse members. Their favorite thing in the world was to find fault with how Sonya took care of Karim. She pasted a fake smile on her face. “You can always tell me everything.”

He fiddled with a drop of milk her wiping had missed. “Ms. Ruth said I should have more pork skins in my food.” His gaze fixed on hers, waiting for her reaction.

She searched her brain for a moment, trying to come up with the word he might have heard. As out-there as Ruth’s advice could be, she didn’t think the woman meant for Karim to add pork rinds to his diet. “Protein?”

“Yes.” He nodded quickly. “She said only babies eat cereal, and that if you have teeth, your food should be chewy, so you learn how to use them.”

Sonya sighed as she stood and walked over to the fridge. As much as she hated her neighbor’s reprimands, the woman was probably right. Karim’s weight and height were below average for his age. And that’s when she looked at statistics for human kids. Who knew what the numbers should really be? They didn’t publish wolf shifter growth charts, on paper or online. She’d tried to ask Ruth, but the woman had only huffed and grumbled about the pup not being raised properly.

The frequent barbs about how she wasn’t “real pack” hurt and burrowed deep, so Sonya had left it alone after that. She’d failed Karim again. She should have pushed more for the information.

She opened the fridge, searching for something that would better build up his skinny body than the sugar-filled cereal she’d let him pick out. Holding up a package of sausage links, she turned to face Karim. “I can fry some of these and scramble an egg for you.”

He scrunched up his face, grabbing his throat as he fake-gagged. “Yuck. I hate eggs.” He jumped off the chair and ran into the hallway, heading toward the back door. His shoes tapped out a rapid rhythm…until they didn’t. Dread filled her stomach as she heard his bare feet slapping against the wood floor.

Sonya rushed after him. “Get back here,” she shouted. “Don’t do this to me again.” She briefly caught a flash of his skinny, bare backside as Karim turned the doorknob. He launched his body through the opening and into their backyard, shifting in midair. The little pain in the butt had waited only long enough to use his hands to open the door.

A midnight-black pup hit the ground on four paws and then ran across their small snow-dusted lawn before clearing the chicken wire fence in a graceful leap. Safely on the other side, it stopped momentarily to look at her over its shoulder. Obsidian eyes filled with sadness begged for her forgiveness before it continued running and disappeared into the woods behind their house. At least his fur would keep him warm in the winter weather.

Sorrow filled her. A few months ago, shifting into wolf form had filled Karim with joy. His wolf’s jaws had been opened in a permanent grin, tongue lolling outside its mouth every time he shed his skin for fur. Now, the pup was as sad and angry as the boy with which it shared a soul.

And she had no idea how to help either of them.

Tears welled in her eyes as she closed the door and then picked up Karim’s clothes on her way back to the kitchen. She felt so freaking useless, couldn’t even feed him right.

“No,” she muttered, shaking her head. She wouldn’t allow the helplessness to take root. This was just another sucky day, one where she felt overwhelmed and sad. But it would pass. It had to. Her brother had only her to look out for him now, and she had to be strong, for his sake.

Sonya blinked furiously to dry her eyes, then sprayed some stain remover on Karim’s chocolate-milk-stained shirt and dropped it in the laundry. She took the rest of his clothes upstairs to his room, where she put them into his backpack along with a clean shirt. Eventually, he’d get hungry and show up at the coffee shop where she worked. She refused to feed him in wolf form there, so he’d have to shift back. Of course, he’d be naked in human form, hence the bag of clothes.

A framed picture lay in the middle of his bed, facedown. She turned it over and studied the smiling boy and his father posing with their arms around each other. Albert had been a big burly guy with long blond hair, a bushy beard the same color, and freckled light skin. In the picture, he’d propped up his son on his hip so their heads were at the same height. Karim’s smile and nose were smaller replicas of his dad’s. His dark hair, eyes, and skin came from his mother, Nagita.

Sonya placed the picture on the nightstand next to two others. One of them showed Albert and Nagita on their wedding day, shoving cake into each other’s mouths, eyes shining with laughter and love. Sonya had never met Karim’s mom. By the time Albert and Nagita started dating, his breakup with Sonya’s mom had been a decade in the past.

Her mother had changed partners often enough that she couldn’t narrow down the candidates for Sonya’s dad to fewer than five—and knew the last name of only one. Sonya had never bothered finding her biological father, because Albert had taken on the role of dad with much love and enthusiasm.

Three-year-old Sonya thought she’d hit the jackpot when her mom had brought home the tall blond man and he immediately joined in the dinner party she’d been throwing for her stuffed animals. And she’d been right. Albert had stayed in Sonya’s life, despite her mom dumping him two years later. He became the stable parent. The one she turned to when her life had too much drama or she needed grown-up advice. She’d loved her mom, but more as a fun and flighty friend than as a parent. And when her mom died from a brain aneurysm while Sonya was still in high school, Albert had dropped everything to help her with the funeral and soothe her grief.

He had also helped her pay for college, and at first, when she went “home” for the holidays and school breaks, it was to his house. He’d never cared that she wasn’t a shifter, just like he never cared that she wasn’t his by blood. The rest of the pack resented her taking part in shifter gatherings, though. She had wanted to spare Albert having to pick sides, so she visited less and less often until she stopped going home at all.

When he directly invited her, she’d always had a plausible excuse. When he got married, she’d been in England on an accelerated teaching pedagogy course. For Karim’s birth celebration, she’d just started a new internship that didn’t allow time off.

She traced her fingertip around the frame of the third picture on the nightstand. Albert’s and Nagita’s smiles shone more brightly than new snow on a sunny day as they looked down on the wrinkly baby in his mother’s arms. Now that it was too late, Sonya regretted not getting to know the beautiful woman. Though she still thought she’d been right to absent herself from shifter politics.

No excuse had kept her from Nagita’s funeral, though. As soon as she’d heard, she’d rushed home. She’d found a broken Albert with a scared and lost little two-year-old boy. Of course, she’d stayed to take care of them both. Karim had immediately stolen her heart, and she’d loved him like a brother from the moment they met.

Now, it was just the two of them. They were each other’s only family, and she had no idea how to help him. Not with his grief, and not with growing up as a wolf shifter.

Sometimes, she thought moving would be the best answer. Maybe taking Karim away from everything that reminded him of what he no longer had would help him process his grief better. But although she was clueless about a lot in the wolf shifter world, she knew that belonging to a pack was crucial. Rogue wolves often went feral, and she couldn’t jeopardize Karim’s mental and physical health.

So, as annoying as Ruth and her biddies were, and as hostile as Dale, the alpha, could be, Sonya had put her own life and career on hold. For her brother’s sake, she would stick it out in the tiny town of Sunbeam, where almost all the inhabitants were shifters.

Her fingers itched to cast Runes. She’d turned to them right after Albert’s funeral, to ask how to soothe Karim’s grief. Instead of the clear guiding images she’d expected—and come to rely on—murky visions of darkness and a sense of danger had flooded her mind. When she cast again a few days later, the Norse symbols felt scary lifeless, their messages garbled.

She hadn’t touched them since.

Sonya forced herself to stop thinking about the Runes.

Enough sadness had filled her morning. She couldn’t face also finding out that her powers had abandoned her.