Wulfric

Griffin's parents weren't subtle.

As we stood out in the hall and waited, I focused on straining my ears to try and hear Griffin's conversation with the doctor. Appropriately, the clinic seemed to be perfectly sound-proofed, with not even a murmur making it through. It was damned annoying.

I was glaring at the door, still fruitlessly trying to hear because it was either that or attempt to make conversation with Griffin's parents when we should have been still enjoying our afterglow. I noticed first Everett, then Felix "discreetly" eyeing my neck where the open collar revealed my pale, unmarked skin. They didn't say a word about it, which was worse than if they had commented. I detested the reminder that Griffin hadn't wanted to mark me last night, and I especially didn't need to think about that when I should be worrying after his health.

I had imagined, after learning about Griffin's species, that I would never have to watch him ailing. Barring a bad accident, I had been certain he wouldn't die unexpectedly. He was immune to so much of what plagued humanity, and should have been guaranteed a long lifespan. Even if I knew there was no putting off the inevitable, even if he was going to die someday, there had been comfort in the knowledge that it wouldn't happen for a good sixty to eighty years.

Now, I no longer felt that certainty, and I was trying not to dwell on it.

Was it any wonder I didn't want to be mortal again? Their lives were full of uncertainty. There was never any guarantee everything wouldn't change in an instant. How many times had I heard about someone young dying unexpectedly from cancer or mold poisoning or a car wreck? Who would ever choose to live like that? Not me. This only firmed my resolve.

More importantly, I now decided that a life like that wasn't for Griffin, either. I didn't want to experience a repeat of this morning. Griffin's sudden sickness, his confusion, and this welling sense of overwhelming worry that I couldn't escape... it was all too much. My father had managed to make himself and his children immortal, with some conditions. Surely, he could figure out how to do the same for Griffin.

And if Griffin was already sick...

If it was serious...

Then I needed to get my father working on a solution right away.

I pulled out my phone and sent him a quick missive. I wouldn't risk putting what I wanted into writing. Instead, I requested a meeting. Hopefully, Griffin would be stable enough for me to leave his pack lands for a little while. If he wasn't, it would just have to be a phone call.

How had I not thought of this solution sooner? It was so obvious. If I wasn't going to become human for him, then wasn't the next natural step to make him like me, instead?

I felt better now. More settled. I didn't know how much time had passed out here in the hallway, but Griffin's parents were talking quietly amongst themselves and seemed to have settled into comfortably ignoring me, so I thought it must have been a while.

The door opened and Griffin walked out, looking remarkably normal. His eyes sought me out and he didn't look away, not even as his parents crowded him, talking over each other in their concern.

"Griffin, what are you doing up? Shouldn't you be resting? What did Laura say?"

"Back to bed, kid. Here, let me carry you."

I laughed at that, and Griffin laughed with me. Maybe I should have been fretting over him like his parents were, but they seemed to have it covered, and it was obvious to anyone looking at him that Griffin was feeling better and that he wasn't currently worried. Whatever happened must have been minor, and I was sure he would tell us about it as soon as there was a gap in the conversation.

Griffin let his parents shepherd him back to his suite. They spent the entire walk trying to get him to agree to move back home until he was better, no matter how many times Griffin said he wasn't ill. Finally, he tried another argument as we approached his door.

"I won't be alone!" Griffin protested. "Wulf will stay with me. Won't you?" he asked.

"Of course." Was it presumptuous that I'd already been planning on staying without the invitation? Perhaps. Griffin really was a strange werewolf. The promiscuity, the way he refrained from marking me, the distance he didn't seem to mind keeping between us, the sudden sickness...

My steps faltered as I wondered whether he was even really a werewolf at all. But if he wasn't, then what was he?

I quickly caught up before anyone could notice me lagging, shaking off my conspiracy theories. Griffin was a werewolf. He was just an individual, and I needed to stop basing my expectations of him off of his species alone. It was probably racist, just as Griffin had once accused me of being.

I hung back in Griffin's suite as his parents arranged him in bed with a hot towel on his forehead, fluffed pillows propping him up, water on the side table, and soup on its way to be delivered from the kitchen downstairs. Everett added another blanket onto his bed and I saw the way Griffin fought back a grin. He absolutely loved the attention he was getting.

I looked around for something I could do for him, and my eyes landed on his phone resting on the island counter in the kitchen. When I brought it over to Griffin, he had to wrestle his hand out from under the mound of blankets to accept it. His eyes crinkled with amusement. "Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I'm fine. Really."

"What did Laura say?" Everett asked. No one had pressed Griffin to talk about it since he ignored their questions back out in the hall, but now he had the three of us intently focused on him.

Griffin looked uncomfortable. "It's nothing to worry about," he hedged.

Felix and Everett exchanged looks. "That wasn't nothing," Felix argued.

Griffin sighed. "I was a little sick and now I'm better. Can we please talk about something else?"

Was he avoiding answering the question because he was uncomfortable telling his parents about whatever the problem had been? Or perhaps he was uncomfortable telling me?

"Should I leave?" I offered. I didn't particularly want to and I wouldn't go far, but I didn't mind stepping out if it offered Griffin the privacy he needed.

"What?" Griffin sat up, his blue eyes full of conflict. "No!"

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I quickly checked the display. My father had offered up a meeting time and location, thankfully soon and nearby. It was like the stars were aligning. It was even cloudy enough outside that the sun would only pose a minor inconvenience. I wasn't likely to sustain much more than a moderate sunburn in these conditions.

"Actually, I need to see my father about something, if that's alright. I won't be long."

It was obvious from Griffin's expression that it was not alright, but he didn't say so. He stiffly nodded and turned away from me, burrowing into the covers so only a few messy curls peeked out from underneath them.

Everett sat down on the edge of the bed and nodded his reassurance to me. "I'll stay with him."

It surprised me how much better I felt about leaving Griffin, knowing that he wouldn't be left alone. I would feel better still if Griffin would just tell us what had happened to him this morning, but it was obvious Griffin wasn't ready to talk about that yet.

Griffin stayed resolutely turned away from me, but I was hesitant to leave without some kind of farewell. It was impossible to ignore the knowledge that his parents' eyes followed my every move, but I leaned forward anyway to press a quick kiss to Griffin's head. "I'll be back soon," I promised. Then, I made a hasty exit.

I sped through the forest until I was too close to town to move so quickly. I couldn't risk being sighted by uncomprehending humans. As I moved at a brisk jog toward the park where I would meet my father, I decided to check in on my family. Edmund didn't answer, but that wasn't surprising. He had only agreed to get a cell phone a few years back and still barely knew how to use it. Arlo, whose phone might as well be surgically attached to his hand, answered on the first ring.

"Wulf! You've gotta start texting, man! No one likes talking on the phone anymore."

I rolled my eyes up toward the heavens, wondering how many times in his lifetime he would lodge the same complaint against me. "No one respects good technology anymore. Phone calls are good. They let you hear the tone of a person's voice. And it's quicker to speak than to type."

"Only because you're out of practice," Arlo argued.

I sighed and shook my head. We had carried out this script too many times for the conversation to be remotely engaging anymore. "Yes, I'm an antiquated old man stuck in the dark ages. And you're a child without any appreciation for history."

"Psh, whatever. You're just jealous," Alro accused. It was how he ended any argument when he had no valid points left to make. I huffed a laugh as I waved at a runner who passed me in the opposite direction. If she thought it odd I was running in clothing that was clearly not meant for athletic use, it wasn't reflected in her expression, even as her eyes raked down my body in a way that left me feeling violated.

"I was just calling to check in," I said. "I don't have long." In fact, the park entrance was only a couple hundred feet away now.

"Why could you possibly need to check in?" Arlo asked in a teasing tone. "Could it be because somebody didn't come home last night? Do we need to have the safe sex talk? Because I'm really good at it. God knows I heard it enough times growing up."

"Only because your father was concerned the message wasn't sinking in," I retorted. This kind of teasing should have made me uncomfortable or eager to change the subject... but I surprised myself. I liked that there was something for Arlo to tease me about. Something real. I... I wanted to talk about Griffin. It was a shame I didn't have longer.

"Hey, this isn't about me. We're talking about you."

I could see my father sitting on a park bench. He was wearing a mint green polo and beige golf pants. He looked ridiculously modern, and it was startling. I'd seen my father so little over the years that I still imagined him in a tail coat with breeches and stockings. My eyes drifted lower and I missed a step when I caught sight of his feet. Instead of leather heeled dress shoes, he was wearing strap-on sandals. With socks.

Some sights are better left unseen.

"Wulf? You good, man?"

"Hm?" I was too busy staring at my father for several seconds to remember that I was on the phone. When my brain started working again, I shook my head to finish clearing it. "I apologize. I was momentarily distracted. Are you and Edmund okay? Do you need anything?"

"We're fine. Edmund is getting a little stir-crazy staying with the witches. He's worried we're imposing."

I supposed we were imposing, weren't we? I had done all I came to do, and more. At some point, we would need to return to our home. Or find a new one in the area, closer to Griffin and his family. It was just another thing added to an already-too-long task list. "Noted. I need to go. I'll be in touch later."

I hung up, knowing I'd be scolded for it later. Arlo wouldn't truly be upset with me for the abrupt hang-up. He was too used to it. But he liked to take any opportunity to tease me that arose, whether he cared about the issue or not.

As I approached my father, I tried and failed to maintain eye contact. His footwear situation was worsening the more I looked at it. He wasn't just wearing socks with his sandals. He was wearing toe socks.

For a moment, I reevaluated everything I knew about fashion. My father used to dress well... hadn't he? Or had he been a poor dresser even when we were human? Were all of my clothing sensibilities wrong, too, from having learned from such a man? Or was this just the result of too many centuries of trying to keep up with ever-changing trends?

"Wulfric, it's good to see you, son," my father said. He didn't stand to greet me. Instead, he patted the space next to him in tacit invitation.

I sat, even though there were several ants crawling up the back of the bench. I detested pests. "Thank you for meeting me on such short notice." It felt wrong to be so formal with my own father, especially when he was dressed like this, but we had grown too distant for anything else.

"Of course. What's this about?" Finally, my father met my expectations. His tone was just as brisk as it ever had been, and his eyes on mine were serious.

"I want you to make Griffin immortal." I didn't much see the point in dancing around the issue, and my bluntness rewarded me with a comical expression of surprise from my father.

"Wulf..."

I could hear the apology in his voice. Before he could reject the idea, I cut in. "Think about it. If Griffin is immortal, then our curse will never be broken. It will never be able to break."

That silenced my father. His lips pressed together into a thin line, and he stared off into the distance, looking pensive. "You know I didn't power our curse. That was Benedict."

"But you said you steered it, or something to that effect," I argued. "I have made friends with several witches. You met them. I'm certain they could be persuaded to help us."

This sparked a calculating gleam in my father's cold eyes, and I watched him closely. I saw the moment he came to his decision, though there had never really been any doubt in my mind about what it would be. My father had wanted nothing more than to keep himself and his children alive forever. Was that not what started all of this, so long ago? So of course, he would help me further the curse.

"I'll do it," my father said. And even though this was what I wanted, I felt a strange shiver of foreboding. Something about the light in his eyes didn't sit right with me. It was easy enough to brush off. His motivations didn't matter, just the results.

My father had cut ties with us long ago. Even if all of this had stemmed from his desire to preserve us, that no longer seemed to be the case. I suspected my father was agreeing to help not because he wanted to secure my happiness, but because he wanted to make sure the curse could never come for him. Though I wished we could renew the closeness of my youth, I accepted that it was gone.

After this, I could never see my father again and not grieve the loss. I would have everything I needed.