Keep Her Away
Matt POV
A few months later.
Mom and Dad had sent messengers to every pack to find about Tam AuLuc. But there was no one who could identify. They finally gave up and decided to raise her until they found who she belonged to. And we had no idea why she wasn’t smelling like a werewolf, a bear or a human. She smelled like… warm caramel and chocolate. Cinnamon cake.
The Shaman of our pack determined her age to be around seven months. So my mother decided to celebrate her birthday five months later after she had found her. Mom’s fascination for Tam was beyond my understanding.
Today we were celebrating her first birthday. No me. My parents. While I was detesting every minute of it.
Tam had grown up and now she could crawl and walk, but not without falling. That afternoon, I was playing with Xbox when she came half crawling–half running toward me. I gritted my teeth as I avoided her. Her small hands reached for mine. “Mat! Mat! Toy, pwease.”
I looked at her, irritation bubbling up. I was always frustrated these days and the last thing I wanted was to deal with her. How could mom care for her so nicely when she knew that Tam was responsible for her brother’s death? She adored her. Dad was neutral. He didn’t hate her, but he liked what mom liked. So there you are.
“Tam, go play with your toys!” I muttered, and pushed her away. She fell on her bumps and looked at me with those impossibly big gray innocent eyes.
“I wan‘ it, Mat!” she said, her eyes filling with tears. She crawled to me and grabbed my hand. “Play Mat,” she babbled. She couldn’t even speak my name properly. Her T sounded like T in the name Tatiyana.
I bit my lip, removed her fingers from my hand. “Not now,” I snapped. “Go play somewhere else.”
Her face fell and her eyes filled with tears. I don’t know why but every time she cried, my heart twisted. But she wasn’t my responsibility. So I averted my gaze and started playing with the Xbox. She turned and slowly crawled her way back to her room. Veles! Reluctantly, I got up, went to my drawer, pulled out some conches and shells I had collected at the local riverbed and gave them to her. I had intended to make a necklace out of those, Veles knows why. “Here you can play with these!” I snapped, depositing all of them in front of her in her room. Her eyes lit up, and suddenly my day looked up as well. Ignoring the stupid feeling, I went back to my Xbox, leaving behind a giggling Tam.
That evening, mom and dad celebrated her first birthday in a low–key way. After Magnus uncle’s death, father had to travel a lot between our two packs. Everflame and the Coldmane packs. He had to leave just after the celebrations. After my father left, me and a few of my friends played soccer with me outside in our garden. Our house was located near the edge of the woods because often my father would shift into his bear and run there along with mom. Tam had come out to watch us. She was sitting on the porch in her pink frock, her curly golden hair a mess around her face, her cheeks splattered with cake and cookies, looking impossibly adorable. I tried my best to not see her.
A friend kicked the ball directly in my chest. I muttered as I tackled the ball and before I knew I was too focused on defeating all of them with vengeance. Suddenly, we heard a low growl. I snapped my head only to see that a rogue bear was creeping closer to Tan who had somehow managed to walk up to the edge. My heart stopped as I paled.
Without thinking I rushed toward Tam, shouting at her. “Stay back!” I yelled at her as I rushed to her.
“Matt!” My friends shouted. “Come back!”
Did they even understand the danger? The bear could easily maul Tam. As I approached her, Tam looked up at me with confusion. “Mat, bear. Play.”
I stood between her and the rogue, my hands clenched into fists as I glared at the bear. It dipped its head and let out a growl. My body became tense with anger. Just as I was about to attack him, my mother, and a few other warriors arrived. They charged at the rogue and drove him away as I picked up Tam and ran inside the house.
I put her in her cradle and shouted, “Who the hell asked you to come out?” I resented my actions. If I didn’t want her, I could have let her there. But I wasn’t able to fight this intense urge to protect her. I guess, this urge was there in me for everyone. I would have done the same with any other of my pack members. Tam started crying, but I strode out of her room, frustration mounting inside me. “The sooner you go, the better!” I muttered and slammed the door shut.
One day, when I had just come home from school, the house was unusually filled with Tam’s giggles and laughter. It was as if she wanted to drown my house with her giggles. Before I knew it, my feet carried me to her room. And I saw something strange. She was holding up to a… shadow. I stared at her fist, which she was moving. A shadow was moving with it. It was like she had caught a tail of a shadow and whipped it around. It wasn’t anything solid, just the outline of something that seemed to pulse. “What do you have?” I growled. She looked at me, blinked, and when she looked again, it disintegrated. Like it was gone. I swallowed, sure that it was my imagination.
Tam followed me all the time. So when the next Sunday, she was playing with the dirt with her nanny, near our training ground where I was sparring with my friends, irritation bubbled inside me. “Gini!” I shouted. “Please take her back home!”
Keep Her Away
One of my friends, Jace, laughed as Tam painted her face with mud and looked at me with her gray eyes wide. “What’s with the baby? Always tagging. She’s so weird. I bet she is a witch,”
“Shut up, Jace!” I snapped before I knew it, my tone sharper than I intended. “She’s just a pup, and she’s not bothering anyone.”
Jace raised an eyebrow. “She seems to be bothering you all the time. She’s just-”
I stepped in front of him, interrupting him. “I said. Be. Quiet. You don’t get to talk about her,” I growled. Although my Jace and my other friends went silent, I could feel their surprise. And my anger rolling off in waves. I stomped out of the arena and walked straight to mom with Gini following me with Tam. “Why do you have to send her around me?” I shouted at her. Mom jerked her head back in surprise. “I didn’t.”
Gini intervened with a shaky voice. “Sorry, Matt. Tam wanted to go to you, so I got her.” “You will not get her around me, okay?” I shouted at Gini. “Keep her away!”
